Some Boring Title

I woke up late today after refusing to go to sleep last night. I' bumped my head several times in the night by accident. We accidentally discovered a market on the way to Theremini, which was filled with cheap and beautiful goods. The quality of the jewelry is better here. The silver is really silver, the glass is really glass, and the design is beautiful. I got a vintage pendant and another amber pendant, a necklace made out of the inside of some shell, and a ceramic Roman-style necklace. I nearly bought some beads. I also got a plastic swatch which is about to become the new "fad", methinks, for extremely cheap because it is waterproof. A couple of the guys gave me discounts.

Most of the sellers were Indian. In fact, most of the people peddling goods are either east Asian or Indian. Apparently there is a large Indian population here, and a decent population of East Asians and African-Italians. I'm just reporting from the streets, not statistics, though, and that is skewed by the tourists.

The subway in Rome is only decent. It really needs more stops, and the maps of the subway/busses aren't free. What? I have to assume this is due to tourist season.

We were going to the Colosseum and the middle of Rome. The line was HUGE. Buy a Roma pass or reserve tickets. I cannot stress this enough. I got a parasol to deal with the burning sun. After a couple of mishaps my dad and I waited in line to go into the middle of Rome, and our faces nearly melted off. A single ticketwoman was dealing with more than two hundred people in a line which was constantly growing. By the end of the line I was almost too exhausted to walk inside. The forum, pallecento, etc was inside, and we saw them. But mostly both of us were struck by how sad the crumbling buildings that blended together were. Hints remained about how beautiful the buildings must have once been. Even though Rome was a corrupt tyranny at the end, the art should not have suffered. We half joked that ghosts must wander the streets because of the violence that happened there. It's obvious how great Rome must once have been. I've really come to appreciate their skill and finese. and it's amazing that their buildings still stand as well as they do.

We met my mom and aunt by a restraunt, where I ordered a seafood risotto that had whole baby squid in it. I was scarred, pretty much. I think I'll stop eating squid for the most part, as they are very intelligent. Also, scars.

Mom and I went into the Colloseum. What a work of architecture. This was much better organized than the other tourist-wise, and even had an elevator. I learned a lot about the history and organization of the structure inside the museum, which included many statues from its better days. The wooden floor has been removed so that the underchambers are visible. One of the things I learned is that the ruling emperor, who had pacificed Judea after its rebellion, declared himself emperor by force, but de-privitised many of the areas Nero had made so arbitrarily and built it as a public area on top of the artifical private lake Nero had created.

We're going to go out again tonight. Wheee.

My Day, Featuring Cats

Top: Snuggles, my kitty
Left: Kittens sleeping on each other

Some days, most days these days in fact, I quantify and solve and logic out the puzzle. Today I drift away with the music of the piano keys to a world both dark and demure, childish and fraught, beautiful and perilous.

Yesterday I came back to Los Angeles after finals and a day full of hectic movement. On the freeway I did stuff with my compy, took pictures of the sunset, and played music. The kittens were there to great us when we came home and rocked themselves to sleep in a bundle on the patio swing. They also like to come in the house and explore tenatively. Kittens are extremely distracting. I imaged some movies(I own) and chatted, etc.

Today Andrea came to visit, which was nice. We visited a Peruvian restraunt and went to the mall. I got the coolest jacket ever and mom gave me a pair of boots of hers that I have always liked. We talked and ate and shopped. I hope Andrea had fun. She's probably reading this. Hi, Andrea!

We just finished "Finding Neverland". I really liked it.

So, what I was going to talk about yesterday. I spent some time when younger attempting to make things "my space", but I've realized that I don't really mind the touches of mom's decorating inherent in my appartment(due to the fact that a lot of my things are taken from home). This has become a blank canvas that I project onto. My thoughts feel able to roam in a variety of directions, wheras if my appartment was themed I would feel as though they were being forced down a certain path. Though, I'm willing to bet as time goes on I will metamorphose my room into a style I don't know exists yet. At the moment, my decorating style is "put books everywhere and maybe some clothes". I predict it will involve a lot of plants.

Yesterday is Today is Yesterday

Significant Objects is a site dedicated to people buying thrift store items and writing a fictional history for them then selling them on Ebay. Yes, the descriptions are marked as fake. At first I was a little skeeved about this concept but then realized that what's really being marketed is the author's talent as a writer. Fictional history is fun.

Here is an interesting story of a roleplaying game revolving mostly around story and not around
winning.

"To call Slobbovia a Diplomacy variant is, however, misleading; the game purposefully had no victory conditions, and the formal game itself served as little more than a framework for structuring a written roleplaying game. The postal Diplomacy hobby has a tradition of "press," whereby a player may, each turn, include a written statement that is published with the turn's results (e.g., "The Office of the Kaiser today announced..."). In Slobbovia, press was the focus of the game, rather than a minor adjunct."

And here is a game which reminds of what Risk is trying to be.

Will someone browse the freeware on that site?

I really want to enter reburbia but feel as though I am automatically outmatched by architect students and don't have the time to engage in such a project. Also, I think I'm going to enjoy the magazine that's sponsoring the competition, Inhabitant, very much. Here is the newest entry:

"Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!"

The problem with capitalism is that people speak so glibly of the market punishing and rewarding businesses. What if the business is so large that a lot of other businesses rely on it? What about all of the jobs lost when that company goes out of business?

USAspending.gov makes United States spending open-source for viewing. On one hand, this makes me happy. On the other, don't look, countries with grudges against us!

Apparently visa overcharged some unlucky people to the tune of $23 quadrillion dollars. Nope, not a joke, just a glitch. The author of Freaknomics pointed out that this is a good point against those who favor an all-digital currency. A quote of a comment from the blog:

"It’s a technical glitch. The interesting part of this is not that it happened, but rather, how those involved dealt with it.

People calling their banks to ask about this, got a lot of runaround from folks at those banks who either did not realize there was anything wrong with massive transactions, or who realized they were erroneous but otherwise did not address all the attendant issues (e.g. NSF fees, etc.).

Also, although the problem has been figured out, it’s not because anyone working for a bank or Visa actually disclosed what it had been. It was, instead, “reverse engineered” by geeks who uncovered the cause on their own. Official response has been evasive at best, e.g. in this story:

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

As I said, the assorted dodging, swerving, evasiveness, and foot-dragging are interesting. What makes people so unwilling to deal with what is, in the end, a simple technical glitch?

Very revealing about human nature.

— PsiCop"

I think we've found out what Palin is up to: turning into the black goo of death. Am I mean? Maybe a little.

Also, apparently closing down a few roads is actually beneficial to traffic congestion as a whole, since people cannot selfishly optimize their routes.
Comic courtesy of xkcd

Boom! Boom!

Source

So I just realized that I sound very cool, calm, and relaxed on my blog.

This is a lie. I am actually dying of stress, but complaining is not going to help that, and I'd rather not talk about it. Instead I will run around my studio like a crazy person and proceed to collapse on the bed, weezing from the fact that I have way too many obligations.

Help?


Via Boing Boing

Part of the reason I think old film is so fascinating is because of how delicate it seems in its shaky and silent monochrome. Even though the picture is factual the world it presents seems to be remote.


Gravy Stress may waste your time if you like looking at random funny images. I am not going to click on it anymore. If your name is Chris or Frosty you may wish to check this website out.

I wonder how ridiculous our commercials look to foreigners?

In any case, here is an awesome quote from BLDBLOG:

"If you'll excuse the rambling nature of this post, meanwhile, my wife and I are actually staying in Potts Point, and we're located basically right across the street from a Saturday morning farmers' market where we got into a conversation early on our first morning here with a man selling gourmet mushrooms that were grown, he said, inside repurposed railroad tunnels south of the city in Mittagong. I would love to visit those tunnels!
Cockatoo Island, in fact, is actually honeycombed with old tunnels dug directly out of the site's bedrock – so perhaps some strange form of subterranean myco-agriculture might pop up in a few student designs over the next two weeks. Mushroom farming in the underworld. Or perhaps even the high-tech cultivation of pharmaceutical biocompounds by UV light in what used to be a submarine-repair facility (the island also houses a former submarine-repair facility!)..."

Geoff's post "The Thirteenth Room" is also rather fun, as is Reburbia. Reburbia falls directly into my sphere of interests. If you like architecture or imagining the things I do, CHECK THESE OUT.

Here is a quote from Mr. Ellis:

"The next movie I write will be Jurassic Park 4: ADAMZOIC, in which a group of committed Creationists sneak onto a dinosaur-infested Island in an attempt to prove that humans and slavering proto-avian carnivores can live in harmony, as in Eden. The film will be 3 hours long; will feature multiple variations on the theme of Cute Naked People being disembowelled while trying to sing hymns; will include at least one incidence of punning, based on the words “pray” and “prey”; and will end when the sole survivor realises the error of her ways, embraces the Power Of Darwin, and spontaneously evolves a set of wings to escape."

Soil bacteria injections make mice happy. This may explain a lot. I've always said that dirt was good, though now and as a kid I refused to eat it.

Here is an interesting article about personal transformation in the internet age. I could comment on it right now, but I don't want to.
Damn, I may have to get this novel:

Early Morning Thoughts on Mini-mansions n'Stuff

I am always considering how America could be more economical when it comes to housing. Of course, I have to think about how any measures taken would affect me personally, because my family lives in a 3200 square foot house. So let's take a trip into Marisa's past and see if it has any baring on the condition of American real estate in general.

Until I was twelve I lived in a 1500 square foot house. This was perfectly fine with me, and I fought tooth and nail to stay there. Sadly, by the end of my time there I was only a few inches shorter than my permanent height.

The first time I stepped into the model of our new house it seemed enormous. We bought the house before it was built, so I got to witness the laying of the wood, drywall, painting, etc.

After living there for a few years I visited my first house again, which seemed to have shrunk into a miniaturized version of what I remembered. Keep in mind that I had not gotten much bigger after moving, so the theory of this house being much bigger to a child does not apply.

What does this tell us? People are getting used to a standard of living. I'm going to pretend that a recession isn't happening right now for the purposes of this entry. This may not be a brilliant conclusion, but it is one that holds a lot of weight.

And there is definitely wasted space in our house. The front room has been turned into a decorative entryway, which is nice, but we don't entertain the pope very often. Granted, in another family this room may have been put to use differently. There is also a lot of unused floorspace. Looking at this differently, this helps to give the house a very open, friendly feeling which is conducive to mental health. Speaking of mental health, there is the "teen room", my savior during my, well, teen years. Basically, it is a loft with a spiffy name, but I took it over as soon as we moved in because of its name in the floor plan and it was given to me because of my sadness at moving. I am unsure what I would have done without it. At my old house I used to wander the backyard incessantly, but the backyard doesn't have electricity,wireless, or bookshelves. In fact, my parents often called that particular part of upstairs "my little apartment", and I spend a significant amount of time there when I go home.

So what is my conclusion from this diatribe? With some architectural finagling, mini-mansions could be re-designed much more efficiently with the added mental health benefits of extra space. Now I have to call and find out when my physical therapy appointment is, because I forgot.

Later Edit: Also, when the temperature in the house is 93 degrees or above and the outside temperature is even hotter, running a fan or opening the windows is not an option. The only solution during these times is to run an air conditioner. I don't really see a low-energy solution to that problems, as we already have tinted windows and special drapes. Cooling ourselves with tears is not an option.