But I’m starting to begrudge being a blogger because people don’t talk to me anymore. They read my blog and feel as though they’ve conversed with me. But I don’t know about their days or their feelings. I don’t get to talk WITH them. I merely talk AT them. Or, more accurately, they overhear the conversations I have outloud with myself.
via Kat.
I agree. And while I can’t say I begrudge blogging, I have noticed that if I go into length on a topic of concern to me on my blog, I will often meet people who’s eyes glaze over when I try to bring it up in person. When pressed, their eyes will glaze and they’ll say “oh, I read that last week on your blog” in a very been there, done that kind of way. It’s a bummer because I sometimes feel like I’m giving half of a relationship (the me-to-them part) without getting the reciprocal. I doesn’t happen often, but when it does it makes me think twice about the time and effort that go into those long posts. I wonder if this is how professional writers feel?
The flip side of this is pouring myself into a post that I really care about and getting absolutely NO response. This happens all the time, most notably a couple of years ago with this post, the one I’m probably the proudest of in all my writing. Different strokes, I guess.
It’s not like there are thousands of people reading this, though- for some reason my blog has never caught fire, even after almost seven years. When I don’t get any responses, I remind myself that I’m really just doing this to keep a record of my thoughts and not to entertain. I guess we’re all busy, and the zeitgeist is that blogs are sooo early 90’s. It is neat, though, that the big Internet machine will still have a copy of all my posts in a thousand years.
Besides, I suspect that if I suddenly got a huge readership I would feel a lot more pressure to write. On the whole I’m very happy with the balance.
7-11 Double Big Gulp is Twice as Large as the Average Human’s Stomach. Eww.
Interesting 7-Eleven facts here.
Watching the first sunrise of the new year. Welcome 2010! Also Spracht Redux. Where’s my monolith?
The next time you feel like things are hard and you’re not capable of doing something, remember that almost anything is possible.
“…though there is a lot of language to describe music, there aren’t words for some of it. It’s a case of you know it when you hear it. Or more to the point, you know it when you don’t hear it…That final spark that takes a piece of music from being competent to being inspired, gives it that last boost so that, even from the first bars, you know this is it.”
John Varley, Rolling Thunder, p 96
At the beginning of the year I decided that I would try to add a couple of interesting Maker skills to my repertoire. My current one is fiberglassing. I’ve been working the past few weeks on a model ship build from scratch using just a few drawings and diagrams from the internet. I’ve got the hull built and covered in Bondo to get the shape I want. It looks great. Tonight I began the very scary step of taking my hull, which I’ve spent about 30 hours on, and covering it in a mass of messy, goopy, fiberglass resin and fabric. So far so good, though I’m a little uncertain how this is going to turn into anything but a Frankenstein looking hull. The fiberglass patches are sticking up over each other and the resin gooped up in the worst possible places. I sincerely hope that the reason it’s not drying is that it’s cool outside, and not that I didn’t put enough hardener into the resin (I think I did, but you never know…).
It’s stressful to subject something that you’ve labored over for hours to a potentially devastating and ruinous process. If the glass can’t be sanded smooth with the bumpy parts removed I am truly hosed. It’s probably a good thing that I began this project more to learn new skills (bondo and fiberglass) than to actually build a useful object.
If it works, the fiberglassing skills will come in handy during an upcoming prop build. I’m working with three groups for the show this year, and one of them has a very cool, very daunting, organic shape that will have to be built using glassing techniques. Pics will follow some time in March when it’s not all a secret.
In the mean time, I’ll post pics of the ship next time I remember to take the camera out into the shop.
*UPDATE* Well, it turned into a Frankenstein hull, with overlapping panels and huge globs of rock hard fiberglass resin. Hopefully I will be able to sand it down to perfect smoothness (I’m pretty confident of this). Lesson learned: don’t overlap the glass as much! I should have taken the time to cut one or two large pieces to lay over the hull instead of a bunch of smaller pieces, but I didn’t know how long the resin would take to harden and I didn’t want to be left with sections I hadn’t finished when it set up. It turns out the 65 degree temperature greatly extended the pot life of the resin. It was workable for 20 minutes or so. Plenty of time.
I’ll sand it all down later today and then see if I need a second coat, or if this one will be enough. One coat by itself added a fair amount of weight.
A good idea for any day, but especially for the upcoming Veteran’s Day (November 11). Take a Vet to Lunch.
11:20: I’m currently sitting in the Toyota dealership awaiting the finalization of all the paperwork. Looks like this long road is almost at an end.
12:00. It’s done! That’s the end of it. I signed the papers at the dealership (still need to sign them at the bank). Got a nice new truck.
UPDATE 2:00. Not so fast! The radio quit 15 miles down the road. 
It’s a known problem with the 2009’s, but something I had hoped to avoid by buying a “fresher” model (this isn’t as fresh as I thought, tho… it was built last October). The radio problem is intermittent and apparently happens to a lot of people, but even though folks are registering complaints with Toyota, whenever you call to complain, they always say “it’s not a problem. Nobody else has complained!”. Tell that to all the folks online. The radio will turn itself off for five minutes or so, then come back on when it feels like it. Until then, no input anywhere on the radio will make it come on. So… back to the dealership next time it happens. I had hoped to avoid them for awhile.
We’re in the home stretch here, and I can’t quite believe all we’ve done in the past three weeks. We’ve become a pretty well tuned machine (albeit one that clanks a bit as it goes down the road). We had a skinny dipping scene today that was a hoot to shoot (don’t worry, the actors wore bathing suits). The water was freezing and the shore was very, very muddy, so it was a bit of a freak-out to have a $30,000 camera and $5000 in audio gear around all that mud and water. Still, it ended up being a lot of cold and muddy fun.
Cessna, Gulfstream, Supertanker? No problem. The life of a super repo man.
Ian Mckellan plays King Lear. And you can watch the whole thing online!
Don’t miss the interview with Sir Ian himself, especially don’t miss MILK LIVERED MAN!
Auto Tune the News!
http://i.gizmodo.com/5224946/auto+tune-the-news
Okay, this is strange. You know how spiral galaxies look? Like a fan where the arms all “spin” in a certain direction. It turns out if you look at all the galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere, the vast majority are “left-handed”, or spin in a counter-clockwise direction. The majority of those in the souther hemisphere turn the OTHER way.
That’s just weird.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23410/
Scientists are still unsure if it’s just a statistical anomaly because it seems way too geocentric (heliocentric? Galactocentric?) to say that we’re in the center of things (hellooooo Copernicus!), but it’s a strange discovery nonetheless.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23410/
Have scientists discovered a new form of matter? Maybe:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17623665.000-ghost-in-the-atom.html?page=1
Anybody know a good mechanic in north Austin?
blockquote>”And isn’t the purpose of education to give students the tools to thoughtfully contribute (on a small or large scale) to society? Right now we are not doing that. With few exceptions, we are not teaching them how to fully and deeply comprehend what they read or write with clarity, precision, and purpose. We are not teaching students to integrate ideas within and among subjects. We are not teaching them to entertain (in good faith) viewpoints with which with they disagree.”
We are failing them at the most fundamental level./blockquote>
More here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090312/cm_csm/yelder
I was talking to Barry last weekend and mentioned that I don’t feel I really started my education until after I graduated from college. For me, the facts I learned in school were secondary to the tools I honed during that period- mental tools that started me down the road to learning for myself. In some sense I feel like I’ve learned more since college that I did during those years. The benefit is that now I can focus on what I love (science, technology, astronomy, hands-on skills, etc) and don’t have to endure hours of classes for which I care not a whit (Ah… as in Gorge. And ONE person will get that reference).
Anyway, it’s much more worth it to learn HOW to think than it is to learn a set of facts. Unfortunately, our culture has gotten the metric of true education wrong.
Can someone lend some wisdom here? Last week I bought three things from Amazon- a set of lathe tools, tax software, and a small digital kitchen scale. All three are listed as being sold directly by Amazon and all three are listed as in stock. I chose Super Saver shipping and the ship date lists as more than three weeks away. I also ordered an individual product (separate order), also in stock, super saver, and sold by Amazon, and it shipped two days later.
If they have all three products, why not ship immediately? If they’re waiting on one product to fulfill the order, why list that everything is in stock? Can anyone offer any advice on this?
*UPDATE* A friend works with an ex-Amazon employee and she writes:
Doesn’t make sense if they were in stock – supersaver usually ships within 5 days. I would email customer service with this issue and get them to expedite. I am suprised lathe tools were in stock – maybe that is holding up the order. If you cancel the order and order the other items separate from the lathe tools I bet you get them quicker. Don’t know if that helps – but customer service could fix this for you.
