[ Posted by kevin
Sat, 29 Oct 2005 14:40:13 GMT ]
The idea of a troll is older than the Internet.
My grandfather is a troll, and I doubt he’s ever been online for more than 5 minutes. It’s a certain grumpy personality – where saying mean grumpy things is a joking way to pass through the world. He doesn’t think he’s being mean, he thinks he’s being funny. It doesn’t bother me too much really, I’m good at playing along. But it drives my Mom nuts.
Social communication in our society sucks.
There needs to be a way of telling people you hate something about them without them hating you forever for it. Is this what “Honor” does, makes us hate people for brining up valid points? It’s one of those things, if we did it more often, it’d be easier to do. Because it’s so rare, it’s more difficult. We all like to think that we’re perfect.
Technorati Tags: family, trolls, social interaction
1 comment
[ Posted by kevin
Sat, 29 Oct 2005 14:22:03 GMT ]
I can’t wait until I get my blogging site online, because I will be it’s biggest user. You should able to say that about every project you do, Kevin.
I need a blog reminder, if I haven’t posted for two weeks.
Life is so busy! Even just to say what I’m busy with.
Diarying and blogging are two very different things though, I’m not sure if people realize that. I heard one person describing livejournal as a “what you’re doing right now” blog, but my impression is that’s just a social impression. How can we seperate the two? See the “interesting” posts someone adds, then drill down to see what they’re up to lately, which movies they’ve seen. Role models with more information. There’s a lot of things on the “good side” of stalking that add to a relationship.
Technorati Tags: blog, puppy
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[ Posted by kevin
Fri, 09 Sep 2005 03:18:00 GMT ]
Mostly in order. We read these out loud as a family.
- Treasure Island – Stevenson
- Tom Sawyer – Twain
- Huck Finn – Twain
- Robinson Crusoe – Dufoe
- A connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
- The time Machine – Wells
- Lost Horizon
- The Three musketeers – Dumas
- Red Badge of Courage – Crane
- Of Mice & Men – Steinbeck
- Shane – Schafer
- (tried) A tree grows in brooklyn
- Captain Courageous – Kipling
- (tried) House of the seven gables – Hawthorne
- Great Expectations – Dickens
- Ender’s Game, Speaker of the dead. Xenocide – Orson Scott Card
- 20,000 leagues under the sea – Verne
- Call of the Wild – London
- Brave New World – Huxley
- 1984
- Old Man & the Sea, Short Happy life of Francis Macomodon, Snows of Kilamanjaro
- A wrinkle in time – Madeline Llangle
- Alice in Wonderland, Through the looking glass
- (half) Pride & Prejudice
- (tried) Kim – Kipling
- Invisible Man – Wells
- Jayne Eyre
- A portrait of Dorian Gray
- Don Quixote
- One flew over the cookoo’s nest
- Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein
- Out of the Silent Planet – Lewis
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Animal Farm
- Grendel
- Farenheight 451
- Player Paino
- Dead Eye Dick
- Sherlock Holmes
- Poe
- Trustee from the Toolroom – Shute
Want to have successful children? Read to them! :)
Technorati Tags: family, reading
Posted in Ambitions, Society | 8 comments | 182 trackbacks
[ Posted by kevin
Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:42:12 GMT ]
An interesting insight into the mind of a good speaker
1. Introduce myself
2. Thank families and those who travelled
3. Story about Kevin & Cailean
4. Story about Kevin & Tara – 80% luck – right time, right place (Kevin’s note: I think 80% persistence)
5. Their capacity to love – Love is the life-spring of existence. The more you give, the happier you feel, and the more you have within to give.
6. Sum of parts is greater than parts alone
7. Toast – I love you both and it is wonderful to share this day with you. Congratulations and I wish you the best for the rest of your lives.
The wedding went wonderfully. Lots of happy people, and the ceremony was full of meaning and Kevin & Tara nuggets of philosophy. The party was a whirlwind, but fun. We could have had it go on forever, but our guests were probably not quite as entertained as we were :)
A wedding is so fast! After a year of planning, to have the whole thing over in 4 or 5 hours seems crazy. Sure, it lasts a lifetime. But I’m talking about the part we planned for :)
It was a lovely cultural experience, and I highly recommend it.
no comments
[ Posted by kevin
Mon, 15 Aug 2005 01:13:22 GMT ]
Well ladies, I’m sad to say I’m no longer available. Actually, it’s pretty exciting to say it :)
August 13th, 2005 was the big day, and it was wonderful. Tara planned most of it, and so deserves most of the credit, but I did a certain amount myself as well. The dress was beautiful, cake was beautiful and delicious (I’m eating it now), the ceremony meaningful (lots of little nuggets of Tara-and-Kevin philosophy, and I actually got her to agree to take my last name.
I’ve enjoyed being able to call her ‘my wife’ for a whole day now, and it’s great. And I’m actually wearing my ring!
We’re headed to Kauai for 10 days tomorrow, see you later!
4 comments
[ Posted by kevin
Fri, 05 Aug 2005 16:41:54 GMT ]
I’ll admit it: I’m one of those crazy semi-health conscious americans. I compulsively check the labels on anything I eat to make sure it’s not more than 1/3 fat, but I’ll each chocolate bars all day long without thinking twice.
Anyways, when the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal came out with a new 75% less sugar version, I was curious enough to try it.
<h1>What Were They Thinking?</h1>
It’s terrible – tastes like sawdust. It’s not like they replaced regular sugar with fake sugar or splenda, like I’d expected, but it’s just not sweet. Worse yet – it’s nearly the same number of calories as regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch. So they’ve traded yummy sugar for sawdust. Bleh.
I really don’t understand how some companies can make such big mistakes, or how they can even make enough money to pay all their $100,000/yr executives in the first place. I should go take an economics class, but I rather enjoy my confused perspective of the economy.
3 comments
[ Posted by kevin
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:33:55 GMT ]
Another in my series of irritating corporate decisions.
Do you think coke does any user-testing? If so, surely they’d realize that the last sip of EVERY pop, jumps over the oddly-designed hole in the top of the can, and throws itself upon the neck of your once-white shirt.
Add that to the fact they recently changed the production process to use crappier aluminum or something, so when you try to open it, your fingernail slips inside the seam on the metal tab, then it scratches/cuts deep into your fingernail. My parents have descended to using a knife to open their pop cans! Bad design!
Read more...
Posted in Society | no comments
[ Posted by kevin
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:10:32 GMT ]
I’ve been doing too much web-design lately. I’m in the part of the project when you start tweaking everything by 1 pixel, and get soooo pissed if it doesn’t line up just right.
Hopefully someone has a solution to this. Google couldn’t help me, as it’s too abstract.
In CSS, you set the spacing for your elements. So when I have a new first heading, I want 15 px of space above it, so it’s properly ‘set off’. But if that happens to be along the top of the page or a sub-element, then it’s 15 px down! Sometimes spacing is good, but in this case, it messes up the rest of the layout.
I was hoping to use one of the first_paragraph or first_element css elements, but they’re not supported by IE, and I couldn’t get them to work anyways.
Designing things ‘just right’ is hard, it’s always the last pixel that’s a killer. Or when people rescale the screen into really odd combinations and things run into each other. I have to say, designing with tables was far easier. I couldn’t do as much, but at least the paradigm was simple. CSS is wicked complicated.
Technorati Tags: css, web design
Posted in Coding | 1 comment
[ Posted by kevin
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:07:21 GMT ]
Group communication is one of those things that fascinates anyone involved in social networks.
I’ve always been fairly good at it. There’s a lot of interesting things in life, and when you look at the members involved in a small group of friends, bringing up something everyone feels passionate, but not too passionate, about, is a good bet. Sometimes it breaks down, or gets more complicated.
Humans make things complicated. You ever notice that? It’s rather strange, because it seems like they could be so much simpler. To go for an example:
Had dinner last night with two friends from college and one’s girlfriend. The love triangle is where it gets interesting. I was interested in both of them at various times, and here’s the kicker: they were interested in each other :) Who got who? They got each other. But meanwhile they eventually broke up, moved distant, and the three of us don’t see each other much.
Trying to make conversation, I realized that the situation is really complicated. I’ve always been a believer that you shouldn’t be good friends with ex’s because they are always somewhat attractive, etc.
It gets worse silghtly worse, in that my friend broke up with her girlfriend recently, so was in a bit of a funk. And my sister and her boyfriend broke up that day (not present, but still had me a little glum). So there’s not huge amounts of ecstatic energy.
What do you talk about when getting together with old friends? Talk about your good times back when. But we all have bad memory ability, and anyways, the point is to have a good time now, not realize how far from then now is.
Next stop? What has changed, what are you doing now, etc. But that’s more a take-turns thing than a group discussion.
Anyways, I thought it was interesting how my internal ‘algorithm’ broke down somewhat. It didn’t really bother me, I was quite at ease, but it’s just fascinating. Group relationships, complicated humans!
Technorati Tags: love triangle, conversation, social networks
Posted in Society | 2 comments
[ Posted by kevin
Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:35:59 GMT ]
Who is a wedding for? The bride and groom, or the family?
The system as we have it is very broken. Having a wedding is a nightmare of a full year of planning, stressing, shelling out money, designing invitations, announcements, websites, photographers, programs, games, and let’s not even mention registering.
Wedding showers are pretty fun – someone else plans them, you show up, there’s food, wild people, decorations, and games. It’s entertaining, and low stress, and properly delegated.
The problem is, the more you change the less you’ll really be getting ‘married’ – it will be something else. Tradition is evil and stupid like that. I’m still fleshing out my ideas on this, but
A focus on the ceremony. The bride and groom find tuxes and a dress and a priest and a place and vows and show up!
Combine the rehearsal dinner and the reception.
Someone else plans the reception (just like a shower). Family houses that are big are preferred. A potluck is perfectly delegated, and better than most catering.
Games for the reception, so it’s not just people that have never met sitting around. Two people, however glowing, can only be so entertaining.
1 comment
