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A belated end to the 2010 plane saga
Jan. 3rd, 2011 09:59 amThe flights home Wednesday were fine. The first leg was indeed on a zippy little Embraer jet, small enough that I couldn't plant both my feet flat when sitting due to fuselage curvature. And yet, I was cool the whole way over. The crosswinds near the ground greeted the little plane with some playful buffeting as it prepared to land in Milwaukee, and I nearly laughed at the sensation.
Second leg actually gave me more jitters because even though we were on a big fat Airbus. It was moderately bumpy ride for the first hour or so, and it was too dark and cloudy outside to visually recenter myself. But then, just as the NOAA turbulence report predicted, it cleared away completely at around the halfway point. And then, magically, Chuck Jones' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas appeared on the seat-back displays! I plugged my headphones in and I tell you, this time I really did laugh. On an airplane! Several times, and not the hysterical kind, either. This, I would have not predicted.
In retrospect, the thing that has scared me the most about BOS landings has been the descending U-turn over the ocean that flights coming in from the west must often (always?) perform. Back when my I let my caveman-brain run unchecked during plane flights, even when this maneuver involved no turbulence, it was still terrifying. Ugh ugh! Ground went away! Water getting closer! Plane tipping over! Flee!! But this time I rode it down with a smile on my face (though I admit I craned my neck to keep the beloved twinkling city lights in view while we banked).
The fallout of all this is that I find my great personal success on these four flights the most memorable part of this vacation, and a source of honest pride on a personal demon subdued, if not utterly conquered. While I don't have reason to expect I'll ever really look forward to plane trips, I think I'm done being mortally terrified of flight. So, that's good!
As a bonus, enjoy this brief, silly Twitter conversation that happened between myself, my friend Jon, and Milwaukee's General Mitchell airport. MKE's message is what I woke up to find the morning after the flight, and it really was like a grown-up(?) version of getting a pilot-wings pin. I was a flyer, once again.
http://twitter.com/#!/JmacDotOrg/status/20285761140035584
http://twitter.com/#!/roody_yogurt/status/20288326221168641
http://twitter.com/#!/MitchellAirport/status/20489212797124608
Second leg actually gave me more jitters because even though we were on a big fat Airbus. It was moderately bumpy ride for the first hour or so, and it was too dark and cloudy outside to visually recenter myself. But then, just as the NOAA turbulence report predicted, it cleared away completely at around the halfway point. And then, magically, Chuck Jones' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas appeared on the seat-back displays! I plugged my headphones in and I tell you, this time I really did laugh. On an airplane! Several times, and not the hysterical kind, either. This, I would have not predicted.
In retrospect, the thing that has scared me the most about BOS landings has been the descending U-turn over the ocean that flights coming in from the west must often (always?) perform. Back when my I let my caveman-brain run unchecked during plane flights, even when this maneuver involved no turbulence, it was still terrifying. Ugh ugh! Ground went away! Water getting closer! Plane tipping over! Flee!! But this time I rode it down with a smile on my face (though I admit I craned my neck to keep the beloved twinkling city lights in view while we banked).
The fallout of all this is that I find my great personal success on these four flights the most memorable part of this vacation, and a source of honest pride on a personal demon subdued, if not utterly conquered. While I don't have reason to expect I'll ever really look forward to plane trips, I think I'm done being mortally terrified of flight. So, that's good!
As a bonus, enjoy this brief, silly Twitter conversation that happened between myself, my friend Jon, and Milwaukee's General Mitchell airport. MKE's message is what I woke up to find the morning after the flight, and it really was like a grown-up(?) version of getting a pilot-wings pin. I was a flyer, once again.
http://twitter.com/#!/JmacDotOrg/status/20285761140035584
http://twitter.com/#!/roody_yogurt/status/20288326221168641
http://twitter.com/#!/MitchellAirport/status/20489212797124608
Hi everyone
Jul. 7th, 2010 09:37 pmYeah so I've totally let LJ slide. This is my first post in like five weeks, after over eight years of nigh-daily use (though my posting frequency started nosediving early this year). I may be done with it. If nothing else, I am almost certainly not going to re-up my paid account when it comes time, later this year.
Everything I've been writing lately has been either on the Gameshelf (which I refaced and relaunched last month) or Twitter. I am also on Facebook, but only nominally: all my status updates there are actually just cross-posted tweets. (I kind of hate Facebook now, and wish I'd never joined. But deleting my FB account at this point is not an option. That's how they getcha.)
I've also basically stopped reading LJ, which sucks, and deserves reversing. (EDIT: I have begun to eat through N pages of backlogged flist posts. RIGHT NOW.) I have a Perl script that lets me subscribe to all posts - even locked ones - but its formatting was off, and I am incredibly lazy, so rather than fix it I just shut it off. I would manually visit my friends page just often enough to keep up with y'all, but when LJ lowered the default friends-page size to 10, I stopped bothering, because: incredibly lazy.
So, I would like a place to write longer-form, non-Gameshelfy blog posts. Perhaps I shall join the exodus to DreamWidth, which seems to be well and truly underway among my long-standing LJ flist. Or perhaps I will set up a Tumblr. Or maybe I will try hosting a damn blog myself... or maybe I will just listen my to my incredible laziness and continue using this damn thing. I don't know yet.
How're you?
Everything I've been writing lately has been either on the Gameshelf (which I refaced and relaunched last month) or Twitter. I am also on Facebook, but only nominally: all my status updates there are actually just cross-posted tweets. (I kind of hate Facebook now, and wish I'd never joined. But deleting my FB account at this point is not an option. That's how they getcha.)
I've also basically stopped reading LJ, which sucks, and deserves reversing. (EDIT: I have begun to eat through N pages of backlogged flist posts. RIGHT NOW.) I have a Perl script that lets me subscribe to all posts - even locked ones - but its formatting was off, and I am incredibly lazy, so rather than fix it I just shut it off. I would manually visit my friends page just often enough to keep up with y'all, but when LJ lowered the default friends-page size to 10, I stopped bothering, because: incredibly lazy.
So, I would like a place to write longer-form, non-Gameshelfy blog posts. Perhaps I shall join the exodus to DreamWidth, which seems to be well and truly underway among my long-standing LJ flist. Or perhaps I will set up a Tumblr. Or maybe I will try hosting a damn blog myself... or maybe I will just listen my to my incredible laziness and continue using this damn thing. I don't know yet.
How're you?
OK, reading the #sf35 tag on Twitter is really making me regret missing the Thon. (An event that I've never attended as an active Twitter user.) Thanks a LOT, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel.
Next year.
(Actually, am getting a lot of personal poo-poo sorting done today, the previous post being evidence of. But still, it sounds like a hell of a lineup this year. La.)
derspatchel.Next year.
(Actually, am getting a lot of personal poo-poo sorting done today, the previous post being evidence of. But still, it sounds like a hell of a lineup this year. La.)
Mystery Hunt on Twitter
Jan. 14th, 2010 12:26 amThe Twitter hashtag for the MIT Mystery Hunt is #mysteryhunt. Watch the painfully nerdy excitement mount!
36 more hours until kickoff...
36 more hours until kickoff...
Twiddle dee-dee
May. 26th, 2009 10:42 pmOK, so, I've been Twittering a lot, and I'm probably going to keep doing so. If you don't use Twitter or Facebook, you're missing a lot of the crap I'm writing every day. It's a different flavor of crap than what I write here (go look and see what I mean), but it's still crap by me, which is of theoretical interest to my friends.
So. Given my impression that some people react to this sort of thing with profound gross-out yuck, should I use a service like LoudTwitter to post my daily tweets on my LJ?
[Poll #1406258]
So. Given my impression that some people react to this sort of thing with profound gross-out yuck, should I use a service like LoudTwitter to post my daily tweets on my LJ?
[Poll #1406258]
On bitchy vacation tweets
May. 13th, 2009 06:02 pmI posted a tweet yesterday that, after a couple of hours, I came to regret for its negativity, so I took it down. It was basically: "This vacation is about 1.5 days too long." Before I did remove it, dianamp04 quite sensibly left a Facebook comment to the tune of "Oh no, a vacation! My heart is breaking for you." I had it coming, but I feel the need to say a few words (ha ha) in my defense.
Two reasons why my vacations need to be either shorter or lower-key than this one:
(0) I HAD A GREAT TIME OK. Nobody seems to believe me, especially when I pronounce it in all caps. But it is true anyway. Future timestream world-branches where I get around to upgrading my Flickr account will see me uploading some nice pictures.
(1) Introversion.classicaljunkie gets a free pass, but being in the presence of any other person on this green earth counts against my being-around-other-people bettery. I need frequent and long bouts of alone-time to recharge. Collapsing in hotel rooms after a day of itinerary-following, then getting up early the next morning in order to continue the itinerary: does not work. After a couple of days of this I am completely and visibly wrung out, and well-meaning people keep asking me if everything is OK. (See point 0.)
(2) Attention-miserliness. Lately, especially since getting back on the GTD horse, I've come to put a lot more value upon my attention, treating it as a highly precious and finite resource. A major reason I love working for myself is that I am in complete control over what things I spend my attention on. When I'm touring under someone else's power and schedule, I lose control over this. It can be fun and relaxing to let it go for a little while, but eventually I end up only feeling frustrated and anxious about it.
Why, yes, I can see you making the "world's smallest violin" gesture from here. Thanks. My point is that vacations are good for me but I have to put better definition on their size and scope in the future, or I'll get sufficiently stressed from them that I'll make bitchy twoots that I'll then bitchily delete two hours later. That's all.
dianamp04 quite sensibly left a Facebook comment to the tune of "Oh no, a vacation! My heart is breaking for you." I had it coming, but I feel the need to say a few words (ha ha) in my defense.Two reasons why my vacations need to be either shorter or lower-key than this one:
(0) I HAD A GREAT TIME OK. Nobody seems to believe me, especially when I pronounce it in all caps. But it is true anyway. Future timestream world-branches where I get around to upgrading my Flickr account will see me uploading some nice pictures.
(1) Introversion.
classicaljunkie gets a free pass, but being in the presence of any other person on this green earth counts against my being-around-other-people bettery. I need frequent and long bouts of alone-time to recharge. Collapsing in hotel rooms after a day of itinerary-following, then getting up early the next morning in order to continue the itinerary: does not work. After a couple of days of this I am completely and visibly wrung out, and well-meaning people keep asking me if everything is OK. (See point 0.)(2) Attention-miserliness. Lately, especially since getting back on the GTD horse, I've come to put a lot more value upon my attention, treating it as a highly precious and finite resource. A major reason I love working for myself is that I am in complete control over what things I spend my attention on. When I'm touring under someone else's power and schedule, I lose control over this. It can be fun and relaxing to let it go for a little while, but eventually I end up only feeling frustrated and anxious about it.
Why, yes, I can see you making the "world's smallest violin" gesture from here. Thanks. My point is that vacations are good for me but I have to put better definition on their size and scope in the future, or I'll get sufficiently stressed from them that I'll make bitchy twoots that I'll then bitchily delete two hours later. That's all.
A really good Memoir 44 game
May. 9th, 2009 10:59 pmAnother exciting Memoir 44 game, playing scenario 40: Breakout at Klin, part of the Eastern Front expansion that classicaljunkie got me for Xmas.
M44 has kind of become "our game" - we have a reputation among some friends for liking it a maybe a little too much - but we hadn't played it in months after I got kind of burned out on it over the winter. Early summer rain combined with a good work-day put me back in the mood.
Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that even though I boasted on Twitter about how I expected to make short work of Amy's russians, she turned it around. I think I made a mistake my throwing units at Golyadi right at the start of the game, figuring I'd be able to hold them for the duration. Amy correctly focused on knocking them out for an early lead, and that kept me off-balance for the whole game. Duh: occupying territory is an endgame move in Memoir, not an opening gambit. I deserved what I got.
And, as always with Memoir 44, it really helps to remember to roll the dice well. I kept forgetting to do this, clearly. It feels like I kept rolling flags, allowing Amy's units to flounce away from all my attacks, and meanwhile she kept rolling tanks, neatly taking apart all my Panzer units.
It came down to one of those ridiculous situations where it's mutual game-point and there's two adjacent units chipping away at each other until one of them finally rolls the right symbols. But that's war for you.
classicaljunkie got me for Xmas.M44 has kind of become "our game" - we have a reputation among some friends for liking it a maybe a little too much - but we hadn't played it in months after I got kind of burned out on it over the winter. Early summer rain combined with a good work-day put me back in the mood.
Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that even though I boasted on Twitter about how I expected to make short work of Amy's russians, she turned it around. I think I made a mistake my throwing units at Golyadi right at the start of the game, figuring I'd be able to hold them for the duration. Amy correctly focused on knocking them out for an early lead, and that kept me off-balance for the whole game. Duh: occupying territory is an endgame move in Memoir, not an opening gambit. I deserved what I got.
And, as always with Memoir 44, it really helps to remember to roll the dice well. I kept forgetting to do this, clearly. It feels like I kept rolling flags, allowing Amy's units to flounce away from all my attacks, and meanwhile she kept rolling tanks, neatly taking apart all my Panzer units.
It came down to one of those ridiculous situations where it's mutual game-point and there's two adjacent units chipping away at each other until one of them finally rolls the right symbols. But that's war for you.
Zoning off interruptions
May. 1st, 2009 11:09 am[Crossposted from Appleseed Blog]
While I do almost all of my work - and maybe a little too much of my play - on a MacBook laptop, I keep an older desktop computer in my office for tasks that are better left to sessile machines. I seldom use it interactively, though, and its display - balanced on the back edge of my desk - usually shows only whichever screensaver has most recently caught my fancy. (Was running SurveillanceSaver for a long time, but lately have favored HAL-9000.)
Recently, I discovered, quite by accident, a new use for this arrangement that may permanently improve the way I work. For a project I'm working on, I had reason to comb through some video footage that existed only on one of this machine's two hard drives. It was a time-consuming task, so inevitably the usual forest of Twitter clients and Gmail windows and RSS feed-readers and such sprouted up as I worked. (How strange, yes, as if by magic.) Presently I completed by task and switched back to my laptop, but decided that I liked how all the happy little info-stream windows looked on the larger display, so left them there.
After getting back to work, I quickly realized that the constant Bing! New email and Bong! new tweets and Doink! new news articles interruptions I had going on my laptop were now entirely redundant, as these same activities were also evident on the screen in the background. My background in physical space, recall, running on a separate computer.
Experimentally, I turned off all my laptop's many new-event notifiers. I found myself in a new place: the streams were still present, and I continued to stay current with the outside world, but the sense of constant interruption had vanished.
Now, when I need a micro-break, I need only cast my eyes up at my other display and see what's changed. I do this often enough that I never fall behind; the crucial bit is that I decide when I'm ready to take another sip from my personal external-info fountain, rather than have it splash me in the face while I'm in the middle of a thought.
I realize this exact solution isn't something that everyone can implement, since not everyone happens to have the same computing setup I do. But I do recommend that fellow information workers who share the need to be continuously plugged in, but also feel the constant low-level stress of continuous, clangorous interruptions, re-invent this solution in whatever way works for them. I'm hopeful that, in a small but crucial way, it's changed my life for the better.
While I do almost all of my work - and maybe a little too much of my play - on a MacBook laptop, I keep an older desktop computer in my office for tasks that are better left to sessile machines. I seldom use it interactively, though, and its display - balanced on the back edge of my desk - usually shows only whichever screensaver has most recently caught my fancy. (Was running SurveillanceSaver for a long time, but lately have favored HAL-9000.)
Recently, I discovered, quite by accident, a new use for this arrangement that may permanently improve the way I work. For a project I'm working on, I had reason to comb through some video footage that existed only on one of this machine's two hard drives. It was a time-consuming task, so inevitably the usual forest of Twitter clients and Gmail windows and RSS feed-readers and such sprouted up as I worked. (How strange, yes, as if by magic.) Presently I completed by task and switched back to my laptop, but decided that I liked how all the happy little info-stream windows looked on the larger display, so left them there.
After getting back to work, I quickly realized that the constant Bing! New email and Bong! new tweets and Doink! new news articles interruptions I had going on my laptop were now entirely redundant, as these same activities were also evident on the screen in the background. My background in physical space, recall, running on a separate computer.
Experimentally, I turned off all my laptop's many new-event notifiers. I found myself in a new place: the streams were still present, and I continued to stay current with the outside world, but the sense of constant interruption had vanished.
Now, when I need a micro-break, I need only cast my eyes up at my other display and see what's changed. I do this often enough that I never fall behind; the crucial bit is that I decide when I'm ready to take another sip from my personal external-info fountain, rather than have it splash me in the face while I'm in the middle of a thought.
I realize this exact solution isn't something that everyone can implement, since not everyone happens to have the same computing setup I do. But I do recommend that fellow information workers who share the need to be continuously plugged in, but also feel the constant low-level stress of continuous, clangorous interruptions, re-invent this solution in whatever way works for them. I'm hopeful that, in a small but crucial way, it's changed my life for the better.
Gruber's right; this demo video for the new iPhone Twitter-posting app Birdhouse is a model of its class, and is required viewing for everyone who might ever need to make a demo video of anything. Even if they hate Twitter.
(Yes, I am likely to drop the $4 on this, since I have been Twittering a lot lately, and feeling like I'm just starting to get the hang of making tweets more clever than the mm-bacon-time-to-wash-my-socks category. Something like this might be useful.)
(Yes, I am likely to drop the $4 on this, since I have been Twittering a lot lately, and feeling like I'm just starting to get the hang of making tweets more clever than the mm-bacon-time-to-wash-my-socks category. Something like this might be useful.)
Planbeast on Twitter
Mar. 28th, 2009 11:08 amPlanbeast has a twitter feed now, where it jabbers about every new public game event that someone schedules. Sometimes it babbles about other stuff too. I like this.
(FWIW, I've been a lot more active on Twitter lately, myself, though you aren't missing much if you already read my status updates on Facebook; I mirror most of em via ping.fm.)
(Icon because it just occurred to me that my Planbeast critter and Zarf's classic Werewolf doodle appear to be cousins.)
(FWIW, I've been a lot more active on Twitter lately, myself, though you aren't missing much if you already read my status updates on Facebook; I mirror most of em via ping.fm.)
(Icon because it just occurred to me that my Planbeast critter and Zarf's classic Werewolf doodle appear to be cousins.)
OK poop is coming out
May. 6th, 2008 11:48 pmBlurb to put into your conference ad if you don't want me to come:
There was so much energy in the room - with everyone taking pictures, blogging, podcasting, and twittering - it was reminiscent of SXSW.
Why yes, I have set up a twitter thing, though I update it maybe twice a week currently (I'm "jasonmcintosh"). And I might go anyway - eh, it's $50, and I could stand to punch up my local network a little. But that description just makes me blanch, still.
There was so much energy in the room - with everyone taking pictures, blogging, podcasting, and twittering - it was reminiscent of SXSW.
Why yes, I have set up a twitter thing, though I update it maybe twice a week currently (I'm "jasonmcintosh"). And I might go anyway - eh, it's $50, and I could stand to punch up my local network a little. But that description just makes me blanch, still.
