inbetween

And yet, I'm still bored with August. Let go of me you bastard! Stupid month.

Evening, the Zeroth
Friday, September 3, 2004 23:36:20 -0700

The Transformers is a terrible movie, but holds so much fascination for both of us. Ben's always had a bit of a crush on one of the Autobots. It is much more of a childhood reminiscence for me. Why else would we watch it?

Right, Ben is trying to write a novel, that's why.

Ben is trying to write a novel in three days.

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Midnight, the First:
Saturday, September 4, 2004 00:01:20 -0700

The laptop makes its first appearance during the movie. Clickey clickey, typey typey, kissy kissy, typey typey. Every third word involves kisses, or tickles, or commenting on the terrible cartoon-movie before us.

False starts. Zombies, chickens, kisses. Select-All, Delete.
More false starts: Mary White and the Seven Yiddish Yams. Select-All, Delete.

When the movie ended, he had a page and a half. Not bad for an hour and a half really. I think he might even keep it.

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Breakfast, the First
Saturday, September 4, 2004 11:08:50 -0700

We arrived at brunch with Natasha a half hour late. Cheese, fruit, arguments about how to make croissants. She didn't sleep well last night. The excitement is starting to get to her. One hundred pages in three days. There very very long, exasperating pages.

"I think you should use lots of simple dialog"
"Is simple dialog easy to write?"
"Yes, and it takes a lot of space on the page."
"Ooh, I should use some simple dialog."
"Yes, simple dialog is good, so it expository prose"
"I did that. There's lots of description of the school, the appartment, and the job"
"Good good."
"You think that's good then?"
"Yes."
"Me too."

Note: I hate small children, and elevator music.

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Afternoon The First, or What Happens After Two Hours in a Coffee Shoppe
Saturday, September 4, 2004 14:13:27 -0700

Ben leads with 15 Pages (4041 words), to Natasha's 12 Pages (3000 words).

Two cups of coffee, a trip to the parking meter, and tonnes of elevator music. I'm begining to wonder if I'm going to loose my mind. When the batteries on the iPod and laptop run out, I'm leaving to recharge them for a few hours. I just can't take it much longer.

Procrastinating Rythym, You've Got Me on The Go: Ben's been tapping his foot. Natasha has found an open wireless network. There's lots of typing, but I don't think there are many new words on the pages.

NOTE TO SELF: find a metaphor for writing and driving down the road, or symbolism for a car eating up the road and words appearing on the page.

TYPEY TYPEY TYPEY.

Kiss kiss kiss.

If I have another cup of coffee, I might just explode.

I want more of a charge for the iPod. How much longer will it hold out? How much longer will I hold out? That might be the important question. Watching people write a novel in three days isn't nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. In fact, if it wasn't for the really terrible, inescapable music blaring over head, I'd be bored to the point of tears.

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Saturday, September 4, 2004 14:11:12 -0700
No Doubt -- The only song by No Doubt that I can reckognize -- Blaring

More coffee? Icky, I'll be jittery for a long time. That doesn't seem right to me. Jittery Me! Woot.

"Don't Speak, Don't Speak, Don't Speak"

In the background, behind my, there is a lovely old couple

"It's so nice to see you two... out."

looking at the three of us with our laptops.

Fred: "Do you want a laptop"
Ethel: "I don' know what I'd do with a laptop"
Fred: "You'd type away on it like those young kids are doing"
Ethel: "There too expensive."
Fred: "We can afford it"
Ethel: "What would I type? I don't have anything to type"
Fred: "You used to type at work. You could do that again."
Ethel: "You just don't understand me."

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Third Cup of Coffee, Jittery, Cold
Saturday, September 4, 2004 15:09:11 -0700
"...Think About Loving Me..."

Shoot me. Shoot the Speakers. I don't really care which. The iPod is almost dead. I'm going to loose it with the terrible music.

Ben is still in the lead with 18 pages, but Natasha is slowly gaining ground at 16. I, however, and bored. Ben, however, is kissy.

"...Whoa-ah Yea-ah..."

More generic soft rock blares. I'll soon loose my mind.

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So Much Coffee, So Little Time
- Natasha's Crack Tower Appartment -
Saturday, September 4, 2004 18:09:32 -0700
Symphony No. 40 by W. A. Mozart, first movement

We've finally left the up-and-down music of the coffee shop for the the apartment amidst the plethora of crack monkeys and cat hair.

Natasha wants Ben to write her story for her. The main character will simply pull off her face to reveal the inner workings of her robot head. Things will take a turn for the different.

Ben is still winning. The ghost is straight/metro, but the zombie is a gay boy. I think they should have some hot ghost-on-zombie hoochie, but I'm not the one writing the story. I also think there should be a space alien for the bad guy, who shoots spaghetti out of his gun instead of bullets.

"Oh crap, wrong gun. Sorry dude, lemme get the death ray. I'll be right back."

Three classes:

Advanced Calculus: I think it'll be ok. The prof seems pretty cool.
History of Mathematics: Gah, I forgot how disorganized this one can be
Flim Studies: So much fun, but a lot of reading.

I'm told I don't need to do the reading in flim studies. I'd feel not right about that, somehow.

-m.

PS: The three day novel was a boring event for me to watch. Sure, there was crying, but not nearly as much violence or sex as I was promised. I lost interest and stopped writing about it.

Numerical Linear Algebra: Ouch. Two undergrads, a dozen grad students (some are Ph. D. students). What was I thinking?

I've found the wireless access on campus. Is this a good thing? I don't think it will be, I'll spend most of my time here, surfing craptastic time-wasting websites (cbc.ca, slashdot -- yes, I read slashdot. Is there a self-help group for that?)

And continued and continued... enough filler.

Listening to Music: Holy crap. Are these kids/children even old enough to be out of kiddie-school? You know the one where the boys go around pulling the girls ponie-tails and the girls all say "gross!" every chance they get?

It seems like it'll be an easy class. I have to do two concert reviews ("...pick a thesis statement, and back it up in two pages..."), identify some music and a few aspects of the music.

Oh, there's an in-class quiz.

History of Mathematics: Oh crap this sucks. Today we talked about Hypatia, the last Pythagorean. She got thirty seconds of air time, intermingled with a discussion of the origins of language, ice ages, homo erectus, homo habilis, neanderthals, and Jurassic Park. Most of the time was spent with two or three people speculating on what they had (maybe) read in a paper or magazine three or four years ago, but couldn't really remember.

"I don't remember where I read it, but language seems to affect the ability to do mathematics." -- some dumbass in the front row

Well duh! Perhaps it was Terry Pratchett: Men at Arms, page 132, footnote: "In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three...many..." Or it could have been the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or an article in New Scientist. It could even have been a little bit of trueism from any Psychology 101 course. I would like to think that the person had actually read an academic paper, but I won't hold my breath.

On second thought, it could be an interesting paper topic for the term.

Welcome http://www.photofriday.com/

Flim Studies tutorial: Fun & funny. dull & cow-eyed. A quick round of getting to know you (my summer was a porno film noir) and then a discussion. We spent a few minutes discussing the previous film, and some aspects of the film in particular. Then she just listed off the aspects of the film taht we apparently missed in our "discussion".

I'm really going to hate this class, with the first year students a decade (DECADE!) younger than me. They're mostly so simplistic, naive, and optimistic. Stupid fools.

Calculus: Limits scare me, not my own limits mind, the mathematical ones. Today we discussed limits of a multi-valued function of multiple values. That's rather a lot to keep together.

Photo Friday is a fun little photo-sharing website. They name a topic every Friday (Blossoms, Love, etc.) and people post links to their photos that capture that theme. I was hoping for a little more traffic to the blog from Photo Friday, and maybe a comment or two, but I'm dissapointed. Ah well, I'll keep it up.

September 13, 2004. The one year anniversary. The single most perfect day I've experienced.

I got to school early, took a piping (PIPING! It hurt!) coffee to class, met a cool engineering grad student with a wicked Indian accent, and had a great lecture.

Spent some time in the Office. It was good, I didn't do much, but started people on the road to understanding what my absence will really mean. They're beginning to understand just how much really needs to be done on a regular basis. Seems like things are looking up there. I think the successes we've had in the previous year will really be carried forward.

Then some boring classes kicked in. Listening to Music was dull. We talked about pitch and timbre, dynamics and tempo... the musical lexicon goes on... and on... and on... In History of Mathematics, we discussed Ice Ages, Jurassic Park, and the Matrix (twice!). I wanted to jab a stir-stick in my eye for entertainment.

On my way home I found the (second) perfect present for my boyfriend, a beautiful, hand made paper lantern.

I met with Ben before dinner. We kissed, and exchanged presents. Then we kissed more. And we kissed, and then met up with some friends. We sat down to dinner early (early!) at a wonderful Tepan house. Watching someone cook food on a hot grill a foot from your face is just fascinating. Dinner was fabulous conversation, fantastic food, and amazing ambience. It was a little expensive, but I think worth it. I haven't been hungry all day.

And of course, Ben was sitting next to me the whole time. Yay.

About twenty people joined us for after dinner drinks at the pub. Lots of conversation, interesting people, and fun. And not too much drinking, just a great time. Nobody got hosed, there was no drama, no fighting. It was just great.

And then we walked home, just the two of us. We held hands down the street, under the sodium arc-lights. We talked, and analyzed, and talked some more. It was romantic. It was simple and uncomplicated. It was perfect.

I want more days like that. I want more anniversaries with you Ben.

There seems to be a bug in the Movabletype 2.661/MT-Blacklist 1.6.5 combination, whereby people posting comments are wrongly throttled.

There are lots of blogs on negativespace.net. The timezones for most of the blogs is set to UTC-8 (Pacific Time), but I forgot to do it on two of them. They were left in UTC+0 (Universal Time, or Grenwich Mean Time (with which I've probably committed another spelling atrocity)). As a result, blog entries and comments posted to the UTC+0 blogs would appear eight hours ahead of the actual local time.

MT-Blacklist checks that comments don't come from any particular IP address too often, but it doesn't take the timezone differences into account. If a reader posted a comment to a UTC+0 blog at noon, it would be "posted" at 8:00 PM Pacific Time. If that same reader wanted to post a comment on one of the UTC-8 blogs, MT-Blacklist throttles the comment, thinking that the comment on first blog just happened.

I think that the real problem is how comments are assumed to be coming from the same timezone as the blog author. I've got comments from around the world on negativespace.net, not all of them from the Pacific Timezone.

BBspot - Which OS Are You?

I'm
Which OS are You?

Swimming in syrup is as easy as water

It's a question that has taxed generations of the finest minds in physics: do humans swim slower in syrup than in water? And since you ask, the answer's no. Scientists have filled a swimming pool with a syrupy mixture and proved it

I thought so. I think it would have been fun to swim through all that syrup.

CBC News: Nova Scotia legalizes same-sex marriages

Nova Scotia legalizes same-sex marriages
Last Updated Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:52:21 EDT

HALIFAX - Same-sex marriages will be allowed in Nova Scotia following a ruling Friday morning that said banning them is unconstitutional.

Ha! But British Columbia did it before Nova Scotia. See:

Gays and lesbians win marriage appeal

WebPosted May 1 2003 01:15 PM PDT

VANCOUVER - The B.C. Court of Appeal has ruled that the laws prohibiting same-sex marriages are discriminatory, and has given the federal government until July 2004 to change the laws.

CBC News: Montreal team offers build-your-own solar scooters

Last Updated Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:24:23 EDT

MONTREAL - A couple of entrepreneurs in Montreal are teaching people how to build their own solar-powered scooters by making the instructions freely available on the internet.

And the news just gets better and better.

• Why do my fish hate each other?
• Why have all the fonts on my Mac changed? They look so much prettier now.
• Why are some friends so much easier to be around?
• What is the future of negativepsace.net?
• Anyone done a google for "electronic nipple" lately? You'll be surprised.
• Why is it so hard to get started on homework, yet so easy to complete once it's begun?
• How the hell does Arvo Pärt write such amazing music?
• Why is Thor suddenly the dominant fish in the tank? I've caught him beating up Dante three times today. Right now, Dante is hiding behind the plastic plant.

It has been a hell of a few weeks. I chided August for being dull and boring. I think that might have been a mistake. September has been anything but boring.

This entry brought to you by the letter "all over the map" and the number "calculus."