The Past Few

Drifted out of contact there for a little bit because I have been hacking away at the code for Jason's website, which is here if you're interested. Jason basically needed to update / redesign his lab website, so I brought my mad Dreamweaver skills (thanks iPJ and iPMM!) to bear on the issue. I believe I can get you through the night, scha-wing. Had to remind myself of all the little headache-inducing behaviors of HTML code and Dreamweaver in particular, so I practiced a bit on my site before putting Jason's together. If you are SUPER astute you will notice that I have put in some stylistic changes there; mainly, I've been making an effort to standardize all the tables and have everything be the same size so the screen is jumping all over the place when you click links. I'm not done yet, but a few things have changed - for example, here's the new art gallery page graphic:

In non web-programming life, it's just been the usual avalanche of reading. Classes start on Tuesday, an otherwise completely un-noteworthy day, and just this morning I got my schedule finalized. I'll be taking a seminar on Philosophy of Science w/ Drs. Hamilton and Creath, the usual HPS lab session, a Bioethics seminar later in the semester with Jason, and a Psychology & Culture class. I was SUPPOSED to take Neuroimmunophilosophy this term, but the Phil of Sci class got moved right into its timeslot, argh. I'll be able to half-audit it, but that's still pretty disappointing.

Have otherwise been very errand-happy this week - I used some of my parents' Xmas gift money to get a wireless speaker set for the house, so now we can listen to music from the stereo in any room of the house or outside. Pretty schwank. That errand was particularly pleasant sa the only Best Buy that carried the speaker was in Chandler, and I drove down there and exited the car to discover that my front passenger tire was completely flat - I probably drove on it that way all the way down, as my next door neighbor asked me when I arrived home (several hours later) "did you know your front right tire was flat?" Why no, no I did not. I didn't damage the rim, but I did melt the tire by driving on it that way, so I had to take it to a Discount Tire and have them replace it for a cool hundred bucks. AND I got to spend two and a half hours in lovely Chandler. I killed the time by playing on an American Fender Strat in a guitar store, which always makes me feel guilty - I bought some strings so I could feel like I had effectively "rented" the strat and amp. Good times. Kinda killed my Monday, though.

Beck had Tuesday off, so she went hiking while I finsihed up the aforementioned website. We hit up Lux for our usual "Beck's day off" date, and then hit up the local Best Buy to finish off our gift certificate - ended up getting a portable external hard drive, some new sports headphones for Beck, a nano carrying case and the Twin Peaks Gold Edition Super Duper Box Set. Thanks Mom & Dad! Beck and I also hit up the Apple Store, and are going to try to figure out how to spend our Apple money on a souped up laptop. Fun times.

Oh, forgot to mention, we've also further furnished both the living room and the bedroom with some shelf sets and plants. I'll take and post some pictures when I get around to it. The home is getting quite homey - Beck is an awesome decorator, and even I am mildly competent at putting IKEA furniture together.

Ultimate has been cooking lately - a TON of people showed up on Sunday for pickup, including the likes of Cole and Vince (whom I backhanded across the face inadvertently on a huck - SORRY!). Big, fun day, and I dominated at times a little bit. That led nicely to Tuesday's pickup / Sprawl practice, which also went very well. Beck practiced on Tuesday night, too, and is learning the ins and outs of the game slowly (largely due to the fact that is near impossible to learn about structure / positioning from the Phoenix women's team who, by every measure, appears to run around en masse like the proverbial headless chicken). She's thinking of playing league, which would be SUPER FUN as hopefully I could demand that she play on my team where there would be at least some structure. Genevieve and I are captaining together again, too, so Beck would get a lot of exposure to a very smart role model of a player in G. OH MAN! Almost FORGOT! I threw together a shirt / disc design for spring league - hopefully it will be chosen. Like all great art, it is a TOTAL RIP-OFF of other people's ideas:

Left would be the front of the shirt, right would be the back / disc design. The Vots-Love inspiration should be obvious, and here's the inspiration for "much better than regular frisbee" again if you've forgotten:

Anyways, hopefully it'll pass the audition (if you remember the hcuk shenanigans from the fall, I'd like to have an at least semi-cool shirt rather than the usual mundanity) (no offense intended to designers of such mundanity intended; it's not like either of these is exactly earth-shattering). Incidentally, after having that song drummed into my head, I can now play it on ye olde acoustic guitar. Dmaj7 - Amaj7 - Bm7 are the only chords involved.

Biggest news is that Beck and I are headed to LA this weekend - there's a big beach Ultimate tournament called Lei-Out that I am playing in with the Tufts Boys. Alumni reunion, SWEET! Should be fun. I'm a little nervous about running around in bare feet (with my ankle / heel / knee fun-ness), but we'll see how it works out; if it's painful I'll just quit and watch. Regardless, 'twill be a good time on the beach, and good to see the E-men.

And on that note, I should go take care of laundry / packing type tasks...

(addendum - beck put us through Hamlet 2 last night. And while the first 20 minutes were okay, the remainder was a front runner for worst movie ever. Just so, so BAD. I don't even know where to start. Just a painfully unfunny, half-assed comedy).

Breathe: Breathe in the Air

Primary purpose of this post: check out the smog over downtown Phoenix as captured from Beck's hike the other day. Egads!

Secondary reason for posting: I've put up a few links to tilt-shift photography, and now there's a site that will do a sort of hack-job fakery of tilt-shift on any photo you supply. Check out how miniaturized the other hikers' cars look when the effect is applied to the above photo:

Tertiary reason: the weather here is getting beautiful. Check out the abstract art of our pool pumping yesterday:

Quaternary: Nabbed a nice shot of the WD yesterday, too. Here ya go:

Bears are our friends

Here at the Clarion Content our Gaian principles dictate that we respond to non-violent, non-threatening animals in the same manner. We are firm believers that the Golden Rule extends to all the creatures on this Earth. Of course, we recognize that even if you are vegan, you are going to eat some plants that had life (and possibly sentience.) No waste, no unnecessary cruelty, no eating the very old or the very young are our eating guidelines.

Here is a fascinating story in that vein from the LA Times of Mammoth, California's "bear whisperer," a leader who shares our ethic. He is a self-taught volunteer who recognized the inherent cruelty and unfairness in killing bears who interacted with humans. If people leave their trash outside unsecured in bear habitat, bears are going to come and investigate. Who's fault is that? And should bears be killed for their curiosity? Of course, it took California's State Fish and Game officials quite some time to accept Steve Searles methods. For a time, they even had their one of their officers surveilling the "bear whisperer' in an attempt to deny his techniques and accomplishments. Over the years, Searles has had great success educating the bears and the locals on how to live together peacefully.

Addendum

Let Freedom reign

An 140 year old lobster was freed from a restaurant holding tank where it spent ten days this month. City Crab and Seafood of New York City made the decision this week to release rather than cook the lobster. Hooray for the dignity of our fellow creatures! The lobster, who was captured off the coast of Newfoundland, is to be released near Kennebunkport, Maine, in an area where lobster trapping is forbidden. Read more here from the Associated Press.

Wrigley & the Pea

This may be tough to see, but I stacked the dog beds and blanket the other day to do some vacuuming - and in about three seconds, Wrigley had laid claim to the BEST BED EVER:

You May Run Like Mays, But You Catch Like Nyet

I decided stick figure theater was the best way to convey my catch in last night's softball game¹. I've now made two of the best softball catches of my life in the Scottsdale Friday Night C League². Crazy. Just note that this catch was backhanded, made on a full sprint after about 100 feet, past horizontal and I landed on my face without hurting myself. Or, something like this:

¹My shoulder is not quite 100%, but no significant pain last night while swinging last night in a 5-7, 3 2b, 1 3b effort. Huzzah.

²These two, a homerun robbing layout over my shoulder grab at Rice while on Paul's team (Paul & John Doll both commented that the plays on Sportscenter's Top 10 the next day were weak by comparison), a layout line drive stab at shortstop for an unassisted triple play in Arlington, and a 50 yard sprint layout into a pile of branches catch of a towering foul ball at Rice. You know, if you're keeping track.