and and and and

History of the Bento boxed lunch.

Crazy lunches featuring Hello Kitty, Keropi, and the Power Puff Girls.

Fluidtime » "Increasingly, people live and work with a new set of habits regarding time, such as the increased use of the mobile phone to quickly schedule or change appointments. However, aside from the phone, few tools or services exist that support this new way of life, especially when people interact with public or private services."

In other words, if information about the availability of people and resources is made easier to access and interpret, we can live more efficiently. (More thoughts on this later.)

Marcello Falco's SW3D is a 3d implementation of sodaplay-style spring physics. The extra dimension allows for some incredible new forms, like bipedal walkers and inchworms. Fantastic work.

Aging Octopus Finds Love at Last

"It looks like J-1 is in love. After meeting the very fetching and slightly younger Aurora, he changed color and his eight arms became intertwined with hers. Then, the two retreated to a secluded corner to get to know each other better."

(Thanks, Beth.)

A list of rare words

• gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you
• krukolibidinous - The act of staring at someone's crotch
• oculoplania - Letting one's eyes wander while assessing someone's charms
• quomodocunquize - To make money by any means possible
• dephlogisticate - To make something fireproof

Last night I took a huge but very worthwhile step out of character and went to Wild Country, a massive country bar combining elements of a dance hall, sports bar, and club. The local CBS affiliate tapes the dancers on Thursday nights. I did my best, but had to sit out the line dances.

A random guy in the bathroom starts speaking at me: "My girl, she got eight brothers and a daddy ... lotta guns in that family ... and I'da probly been shot by now, 'cept I murried hur!"

I feel like I've been hit by lightning: excited, full of potential, but needing an emergency nap.

Try the Windows screensaver version of my Pollen ex 5 applet. Written by Trigen.

"The size of an avalanche is unrelated to the grain of sand that triggers it. The same tiny grain of sand may unleash a tiny avalanche or the largest avalanche of the century. Big and little events can be triggered by the same kind of tiny cause. Poised systems need no massive mover to move massively."

The Blaschka Marine Invertebrates

"...the highly detailed ocean invertebrates, including octopus, squid, pelagic snail, and sea cucumber, were made of glass. Altogether, 570 creatures had been-well, how had they been?-fashioned by someone, for some purpose. But why? And when?"

Sunday — geekout.
The nerdiest day possible, minus tight jean shorts and a cape. I spent the afternoon trying to breathe life into my laptop, but gave up and went to the coffeeshop to speculate on nanotech and AI with Jack. Keil and I watched Van Helsing; it was a fun movie, which was all I expected. After that, we headed over to Micah's place, where the topic suddenly turned to comic books and trading cards. It felt like sixth grade again: "Foils are cool, but Fleer's got to knock it off with this hologram crap."

Saturday — a perfect night.
My girlfriend and I went to the Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Erato wine bar. Beautiful weather, sangria, piñata, good friends and conversation. We laughed our way through Shop 'n Save; string cheese was thrown. Saw Moulin Rouge! for the first time and loved it.

There was a funny moment at Erato, when I referenced part of how we met that I thought she'd already heard about. In December, a friend and I were poking around the Onion personals hoping to see someone we recognized or at least something funny. But between the hookup people, boring people, and crazy people there was hers: she sounded like exactly who I was looking for.

So after a couple of days I wrote my profile, bought some credits, and swallowed my bite-sized pride. I sent a message:

Fig. 1 — my lame message

...but her account was never accessed again. I took my profile down, left the remaining 24 of 25 credits, and forgot all about it. Months later, I came across her picture in a local newspaper I was reading with Amy, who by chance was a friend of hers. We were introduced a couple of months after that, and the rest is happy recent history.

Thursday — massive barbeque.
This was a great time. Something like 50-75 people at its peak, I think. The party had something to offer for everyone: movie in the garage, final episode of Friends inside, kiddie pool of beer, and five minutes of jig on the patio. My girlfriend was a great hostess and kept everything going; she wore three vintage dresses over the course of the night, a la Victorian gala. And the friends of mine who showed up actually got into the party.

A preview of the first applet in the panoply series. The initial idea was to make Proce55ing act more like Flash, by maintaining a list of active objects that are executed for each frame. Each object has a finite lifetime, can spawn new objects, and is responsible for drawing itself. At this stage, Panoply_Forest only has a Stem object; it will soon have Blossom, Seed, and Leaf. Possibly Mushroom, Mycea, Spore, Hive, and Bee also.

This is my first attempt at interactive design that is primarily aesthetic rather than scientific.

I'm turning into my dad. There's an old moped for sale along my commute, and every day I crane my neck as if my line of sight might grapple it. Before long I'll be stopping by every weekend to poke at it, too.

"The scientist does not study Nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If Nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if Nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living."