unmarked nuclear warheads travel these roads

Moving blog

2007-04-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided to take up blogging again, but to move over to Livejournal. I'm doing this because I no longer feel like making the majority of even slightly personal posts public, but in a long blog hiatus I've realised that I miss the group conversations it sometimes triggers, and that it's useful to have a way of notifying many people at once of general 'me news', so that when I speak to someone I don't end up spending the whole conversation catching up on the past 6 months.

To view the majority of my posts, you'll need a livejournal account, and I'll need to add you to my 'friends list'. So if you have an account already, or decide to create one, and you're not on my friends list, drop me an email and I'll add you.

My blog's new home is eldan.livejournal.com.

Still an alien, still a legal alien

2007-02-15T16:57:00.000-08:00

My application for US permanent residency was approved today. The interview ran smoothly and didn't even take very long, and I should get the green card in the mail in about 10 days.

This blog is so 2003

2007-01-25T18:42:00.000-08:00

The more astute among my 5 readers may have noticed that I don't write very much here any more. It's not that I've lost my compulsion to put loads of information up on the web; just that I haven't felt like writing general updates very much lately, and on the rare occasions when I have had the urge I've decided to email a friend instead of blogging. I'll probably keep doing that, because I'm horribly behind with even replying to peoples' emails, let alone writing to those who I haven't heard from in a while.

But anyway, if you've missed me you may be better off following things other than this blog. I post a huge number of photos regularly, and these days I'm not taking much time between taking photos and putting them online, so the Flickr stream is kind of serving the purpose that this blog originally did - it's now where I document all the interesting places I get to visit. Meanwhile, I'm trying to update my work blog every working day, and write posts in a way that will be intelligible to people who aren't closely involved in my or related work. I realise it still won't be of interest to all that many people, but hopefully it will now be relevant to more people than just my academic advisors.

Of course, writing a post like this usually means that tomorrow I'll be gripped by the urge to blog about 15 different things, but it's been some time since I've actually updated this blog regularly.

In which I say things that make me feel old

2007-01-23T20:08:00.000-08:00

Can someone please explain to me what the point of myspace is? I get the impression that essentially anyone younger than me feels a compulsion to have a myspace page, but all myspace means to me is grotesquely ugly pages that take forever to load. What about it is good?

How I spent my Friday night

2006-12-16T00:18:00.000-08:00

Watching motorsports on an ice rink in Everett.

UPDATE: Gina has posted photos

In better news

2006-11-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

I had a colonoscopy last week. No, that's not the good news, but don't worry - I will spare my delicate flower readers any description of the process beyond it was not my idea of fun. The good news is that the doctor found a lot less inflammation than last time. The upper two thirds of my gut are apparently now normal-looking, so next week we'll try some changes to the medication and see if I can take less and/or reduce the symptoms further, by targeting better.

29

2006-11-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

Is not very exciting. All this birthday has really done is rub in quite how irritatingly slow my progress towards finishing my PhD is, and make me that much more sad about not being as cool as this guy, considering that I'm now twelve years older than him. I mean, it's one thing watching Wayne Rooney, when I never really had any ambition to be an athlete, but man! Nuclear fusion! And here I am, 12 years older than him, still struggling to get a few computers to work reliably.

Pah.

Update: the day did get better. Still not impressed with the milestone though.

The lessons of Vietnam

2006-11-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

The lessons of Vietnam

There's ups and there's downs

2006-11-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

Work continues to grind me down, because my experiments are taking forever (where forever means as long as 4 weeks in some cases) with a very poor success rate (though at least I have one! run doing something good). I'm finding myself wondering how to tell the difference between temporary setback and time I abandoned this project and found something else to write a thesis about.

The computers on my wall are being more unreliable than before, but still failing infrequently enough to make finding the problem an annoyingly slow task.

I spent most of two days this week playing travel agent, because I found out that I had been poorly advised about the Green Card process, and it will interfere more with my travels than I had expected. To cut a long story short, it is in my interest to start the process as soon as possible (as soon as we have spoken to a second lawyer, because there were a few things the first didn't mention, and that worries me), and after I start the process, I won't be able to leave the country for n months, where n varies but is typically around 6 for here and now. Trouble is I had two trips to Canada planned for that time; one was very expensive and had a large non-refundable deposit, the other involved several family members all meeting up in one place, so I've been scrambling to organise a satisfactory plan B for it. I think I managed, and I at least am looking forward to plan B, but if the lawyer's office had given me correct advice back in August I wouldn't have had this mad scramble, and this week would have been far more pleasant.

I've also managed to render one of my bikes temporarily unusable by attempting to install fenders. The intention is to only need waterproofs when it's actually raining, not when there's just water on the road from recent rain, but right now the effect is to permanently apply the brakes because getting the positioning right is unexpectedly difficult, so there's a fender constantly pushing on the tyre.

All this has been weighing on me a great deal. I've been quite deeply down for the past couple of weeks; the combination of these things, a few other stress sources that are at least over, and a general wave of pessimism about things has me over-reacting to each part, as the whole becomes something overpowering.

So it's time for some more propaganda-to-myself, in which I remind myself once again that there are good things going on too. This one will be about Dorkbot.

Dorkbot was something I started going to shortly after arriving in Seattle. Actually it was before that—when we visited Seattle for Melinda's job interview Ella brought me along to People Doing Strange Things With Electricity II which was a great introduction—but very shortly after arriving in town we went to one of their monthly meetings, at which Bill Beaty's unwise microwave oven experiments made a particular impression. I was hooked, and kept going to the meetings. In the process, I noticed that the curator sounded like a Londoner, so at one of the social meets I cornered her and got her life story.

Anyway, a few months later it transpired that Kate, the original curator, was going to move out of town and needed to hand over administration of Dorkbot-Seattle. She handed it over to a committee of 'overlords' (and I must say that having had a hand in this I'm extremely impressed that she managed to keep it going for three years solo), and for some reason entrusted me with a seat at that table. I say for some reason because although I love the idea of being involved, I had no prior experience with anything like this. That's also why I jumped at the chance: I'm not an artist, I can't afford to be an impressario in the traditional sense, and I didn't know many people in the arts scene, but I really wanted some way of participating in this thing that I enjoyed so much as a spectator.

The primary way the overlords share work is that we take turns 'curating' the monthly meetings, which in practice is as much an organisational job as it is curating in the traditional sense of inviting and selecting exhibitors. I avoided taking this on before the wedding, because I was busy enough, but after the honeymoon it was time to step up. Nervously, because I still don't know enough potential speakers, and was still worried about my lack of experience.

In the end, finding speakers was the easy part. I'm lucky enough to be doing this in a city with a large community of people who do things that fit the broad description of technological art, two pairs of speakers were suggested to me by other overlords, and I found a third via his website. So the lineup was fixed within a few days of starting to work on it, and only required the sending of a handful of emails. Getting talk outlines and bios from the speakers required one reminder email, but no more chasing than that, so rather less hassle than I expected. The snag turned out to be the venue, because our usual venue doesn't have enough space for us right now because the exhibits fill up the volume of its gallery more than usual. I only found this out by chance (one of the other overlords happened to have a chat with one of the exhibitors, who happened to mention that her installation was rather large) last week. Cue a scramble (yes, I've had too many of these lately) to find an alternate venue at the last minute.

On the night, it all turned out rather well. The alternate venue worked out very well; well enough that I took up one of my fellow overlords's suggestion to open a discussion at the end about whether we should move there in the long term. The speakers were all great—highly entertaining and at the same time informative enough to really help anyone who might want to build similar things to those presented—and having a 7-foot stunt blimp fly around inside the room and a helium balloon tethered to a borgesque golf cart on the street added just the right dose of circus. And everything ran smoothly enough that I was able to enjoy it myself.

There were mistakes I can learn from. Specifically, next time I'll make sure I get presenters' mobile phone numbers, when a venue says they can supply a projector I'll check what inputs it takes, and when we're not in our usual venue someone needs to put a sign up on the usual venue's door giving directions. But still, this was a first time for me, and unusual circumstances made it more work than usual, and it was still rewarding enough to have been well worth the effort. I have both the egotistical satisfaction of having my name and face attached to something cool that around 60 people came to see, and the more selfless satisfaction of having given something back to a community that's given me a lot over the past year-and-a-bit.

Dear Google,

2006-10-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

No, sorry. You don't get to control language. Language users collectively do that, and part of the beauty of language is that the only control is completely distributed. I realise that the Académie française has failed to learn this lesson over a much longer time than you've had, but I used to expect better of you.

My computers are laughing at me

2006-10-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

I tend a small flock of computers. Four of them hang on the wall, and on a good day they work for me. On a bad day, they crash. I'm having a hard time figuring out why they crash, because it's a relatively infrequent (every week or two) intermittent fault, and when one goes down somehow the whole group goes down. So I'm now running some stress tests in the hope that I can force a crash and figure out how it happened, only there's a catch: the damn things are refusing to crash.

I can almost hear them chattering amongst themselves.

That'll show him. He'll think twice before swearing at us next time.

Bloody ingrates the lot of them. I brought them into this world, toiled over them for hours, and this is all the thanks I get.

I do stuff, really

2006-10-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

Work's been a bit depressing lately. I thought I had some good, positive results in hand and was beginning to get excited about finally being able to write and defend a research proposal, but it all turned out to be rubbish. I went to Bloomington to meet my advisor, and within 10 minutes of us sitting down for the serious meeting he noticed a mistake I had made some months ago. I'm still working on figuring out quite how bad this really is, but it's possible that all the positive results were just a side-effect of the error, so... um... oh shit.

So to help take my mind off work, it's time I blogged about various fun things that are going on.

First of all, the trip to Bloomington was in all other respects enjoyable. From a work point of view, I'm making an effort to meet lots of people face to face, so that if I ever find myself approaching academics at Indiana, they actually know who I am. One of the nice things about that place is that there's actually a large department I fit into, unlike at Case (or most universities, to be fair). Obviously not living there reduces how much I can benefit from that, but I do my best to make the most of it. It also helps that I have a wonderful host there—a friend-of-a-friend who is fast becoming a friend in his own right—and that autumn is exactly the right time to be in the midwest. Oh, and the majority of the airport/airplane experiences were actually pleasant; Alaska Air/Horizon Air has the distinction of being the only airline I actually like for domestic flights.

It's lovely having free time, though I am still getting used to it, just like Melinda. On Friday I had a lovely evening doing very little; just sitting in our defiantly orange easy chair with a cat and book on my lap and the fire going. This was forced on me by having a cold and wanting to make sure I'd be up to hiking the next day, but it really was a nice way to spend an evening. Must get back into the habit of reading books that are not work... I was enjoying doing exactly that a year ago, but for a few months the wedding consumed our free time so I stopped.

On Saturday I refused to let a very minor illness stop me from hiking, not least because the weather was glorious. The stereotype about Seattle always raining is unfair, but it's less unfair in October than it is May-September, so from now till Easter we really have to take advantage of the nice days whenever they are. Stef, Ben, Melinda and I had a grand old time hiking up Squak Mountain in blue skies. And I do mean up. We intended to hike to a viewpoint that was not the highest point in the State Park, but missed our turning. So we ended up at the peak, then hiked down and back up to the vicinity of the viewpoint, but managed to completely miss it, so we did a lot more climbing than intended without actually getting anywhere that allowed us to see across the valley, but it was all fun anyway. And good exercise - I only recently realised that round here the lowland hiking season overlaps the upland ski season, and I think that realisation will help me start the ski season in better shape than before.

Then there was curry last night, with the Seattle Expat Brit Meetup Group, which was lovely. I heard about this group a few months ago, but hadn't made it to any of their events yet because they always seem to clash with something else I'm doing (that group must think I have a much more exciting social life than I really do). I was also a bit hesitant because expat culture can be a bit of a sad bubble; on my travels through Asia I encountered a few clumps of British expats who were really disturbingly eager to pretend they were still in Britain, and I would never have left if that were how I wanted to live. But this lot don't seem that way. I wonder if it helps that there's no real language barrier in this country, so it is that much easier for a British expat to make local friends... anyway, whatever the cause I didn't see the things I have disliked about expat culture elsewhere, but did find a nice friendly group of people who do have lives and don't hide from local culture, but appreciate the chance to sometimes not sound different, and talk to people who know what Maltesers are.

And finally, there are a few things I'm involved in organising. I've had small roles in producing Seattle's Dorkbot gatherings for a while, but only since the wedding have I been willing to commit much time to this. I'm 'curator' for next week's meeting, which basically means that I'm doing most of the co-ordinating this month. It's been a bit stressful because we found out at rather short notice that our usual venue wouldn't be available, but I'm quite proud of what I've put together, I've enjoyed the majority of the work, and as long as we do find a backup venue (which tentatively we have found - I just need to confirm some details tomorrow) it will be a good night.

And finally finally, the Brits meetup inspired me to start a group of my own. All through last winter I was saddened by how few people I could go skiing with, and how few opportunities I had to ski without having to drive a 100+ mile round trip in a single-occupant car. Then I had a look around meetup.com, and noticed that there are 40 skiers and 27 snowboarders interested in meetups in the area, many of whom are looking for people to carpool with to the nearby mountains. So I decided to start a group of my own: the Seattle Skiing, Snowboarding and Snowsports Meetup Group. In half a day we're already up to 8 members, so I'm hoping that given a few days for people to notice it there will be enough of us to start organise reasonably frequent ride shares, and maybe the occasional charter bus trip.

So yeah. Though I'm working pretty hard, life is not all work work work right now, and that's a very good thing seeing as work is getting me down at the moment.

Hey, look over there!

2006-10-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

So, we're married, and we're back from our honeymoon. Actually we got back almost two weeks ago, and even after the killer jet lag we've been back into a normalish routine for about a week. I just haven't got around to blogging about any of it yet, because I've been preoccupied with photos. Speaking of which, there are a number of photo sets worth looking at.

First of all, thank you to all the contributors to the Flickr group we set up. It was lovely coming back from the honeymoon and having all those pictures to look at already.

Then there are the professional photographer's pictures, which we're very pleased with indeed. We're not completely finished with this process—there will ultimately be a printed album and a set of high-enough-resolution-to-print photos online—but there is a set of proofs online if you fancy a look.

And then on to the honeymoon. It was, of course, wonderful. Melinda has posted her whole set of honeymoon photos, and I'm working on mine. So far I have finished the sets for Iceland and İstanbul. Ephesus, my parents' house and an abandoned village are on their way soon.

I should make myself sit down and write about the wedding and honeymoon, if only because I know I'll appreciate having that to read in a few years' time, but for now I'm finding the photos much more appealing than blathering in text.

Update: And shortly after I made this post, Dunc uploaded a set of photos from the stag night.

Update 2: The Efes set is now complete.

Update 3: The last two sets are online: my parents' new house at Yalıkavak and the abandoned village at Sandıma, meaning the honeymoon pictures are now complete. If you prefer, you can view the whole lot as one oversized set.

Environmental optimism

2006-10-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

There's a post about environmentalism over on my work blog that I just thought I'd point to from here because it may interest people who don't want to wade through the majority of my work posts.

If I'm not sure where to put a post, I'll always put it there and point to it from here, so that the work blog remains a cohesive thing that I can show to prospective employers without having to direct them here.

Married!

2006-09-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

Melinda and I are now married. The past week has been great, though I must confess to also being glad we'll soon be alone together. Thank you to everyone who came, and everyone who couldn't come but sent good wishes anyway. Some of you came a long way to spend a few days with us; now I have another task for you: come back in ones and twos so we can spend more time with you, because there is that downside to having everyone visit at once....

In about half an hour our taxi will come and we'll be off on our honeymoon. For once I'm neither taking my laptop with me nor anticipating getting acquainted with the local internet cafes: unless something goes wrong we're going to be completely out of touch with the rest of the world for the next 10 days or so. It's just going to be my wife and I.

I can't wait.

On getting a free pass

2006-08-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

For me, the past 7 days have basically been a gradual reduction in stress levels, and moving of that mental energy to looking forward to the coming few weeks. I had pretty much resigned myself to only getting 5 or 6 of the 7 items on my work to-do list done, and while not best pleased about that, acceptance helps. Meanwhile on the positive side our first out-of-town wedding guests are now airborne, the number of things left to do for the wedding is well within what we can get done in the time, the cat hasn't pissed on a wall in over 2 weeks (I hope I'm not tempting fate), this week's dance classes have been a lot better for my confidence than last week's, and while that's not the whole list of what was causing me stress, the other half is pretty manageable on its own.

So I've been able to stop worrying and look forward to not only the wedding and honeymoon, but also entertaining guests I don't get to see very often and playing tour guide in a place I love. The one nagging downer was remembering that my set of goals for work, while self-imposed, was not arbitrary: it was all setting myself up so that I'd have enough time after the honeymoon to meet the October 15^th deadline for next year's Conference in Hawaii, and not having it all done would significantly reduce my chance of making that deadline.

I just got a free pass on that worry: the conference deadline has been pushed back by 16 days, and realistically I'm at most one week behind my intended work schedule.

Still busy

2006-08-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Though the last post does mark a genuine improvement, I do still have a lot to do in a few days. So please forgive me if I am particularly short with everyone on email and the phone this week, and don't get around to replying to emails that aren't about arrangements for the coming 4 weeks until after the honeymoon. It's not that I don't want to talk to you; it's just that I'm trying to keep as much of the time that wedding guests are in town free, so I can actually spend time with people who've taken the trouble to come all this way. Really it's just a matter of pushing myself hard for the next few days so I can relax afterwards, and I think reminding myself of that is the other thing that's helping me bring the stress back down to productive levels.

Psychological crutches that work

2006-08-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

I'm still a bit concerned about getting everything I want to do by Friday done, but nowhere near as tense about it as a week ago. A lot of the change is because of a simple self-manipulation trick that I've used to good effect before, but often forget about: writing a long, detailed to-do list in which most of the individual items are small, self-contained tasks. The reason I often don't think about doing this is that initially writing the to-do list can be a bit daunting; in this case, I had one too long to fit on my computer screen as of 48 hours ago. But once it's done, it does help me feel more organised, and not waste mental energy thinking about the tasks at the end of the list before the ones at the beginning are taken care of. And of course it's helpful to be able to watch the list shrink, as a reminder that I am actually getting things done and it is at least possible that I'll meet my targets.

Dear Hempfest attendees

2006-08-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Might I respectfully suggest that you might do a better job of persuading people to support a change in the law if you didn't act like such a bunch of wankers? I mean, I agree with your cause—I really do think the status quo with regard to marijuana is neither fair nor productive—but when you having your little party down the road from means that my building has to hire security guards to stop people from pissing in our garage, and my normally quiet Saturday afternoon is interrupted by a succession of silencerectomised cars revving in the parking lot and idiots pressing the car alarm button 15 times to keep their cars making noise for as long as possible.... yeah. It neither makes me want to go and join in the event nor proud to stand in the same political camp as you.

Idiots.

Things that are causing me stress at the moment

2006-08-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

The cat's recently acquired habit of urine-marking his territory.
Our lack of good ideas about why he does this or how to deal with it (we even took our cat to the damn shrink today).
The monotonically decreasing likelihood that I'll actually achieve my work goals for this month.
The amount of time that cleaning up cat urine, being paranoid about what the cat's up to, and having to chase people who ought to be competing for my business is taking away from work.
Watching my fitness decrease and my belly expand, because I've not been taking good enough care of myself, because of... well... all the above.
The time difference that makes it impossible for me to speak to anyone in Europe at a mutually convenient time, ever.
Attempting to overcome the deep-seated fear of dancing in public that has been instilled in me by teenage memories of oh you must come up and dance - you can't possibly be enjoying yourself otherwise and that's just not allowed at parties I'd have preferred not to be at. I've actually been quite shocked by how deep this aversion is. We're going to dance classes, and at the same time as enjoying the classes I find them emotionally draining in a way that is hard to explain.
When will you finish your PhD?
Stupid scare stories about the Green Card application process, because of course everyone else knows better than me and my lawyer.
The realisation that it's going to be at least another 6 months before I can spend any time in Britain, and that the Green Card process [based on real information from a good immigration lawyer, so everyone else can STFU] may double that.
The latest set of mechanical problems with the shitty bike I bought from the shitty shop in Cleveland and then proceeded to torture by riding it on Cleveland's shitty and salty roads through two winters (oh if only the lovely and dependable steed I brought back from NZ hadn't been stolen just weeks before I was going to take it to the US with me....)
Still having 't's to cross and 'i's to dot for the wedding - which wouldn't be stressful without all the above, to be fair.

Computer security warning

2006-08-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

There is a spammer or worm using my email address at the moment. My suspicion is that they are sending malware of some sort, and faking known 'from' addresses to fool people into clicking on attachments. For the next few days, as a result, I will not send anyone any email attachments - if I need to send a file I'll find another way of doing it that makes it obvious that it's real. Meanwhile, here are a few security precautions you should take; some specific and some general:

Have your mail client not automatically open attachments - automatic opening is the biggest risk for this sort of thing.

If mail appears to have been sent from you to yourself, but you don't recall sending such a message, assume it's something bad and delete it without looking at any attachments.

If mail appears to have come from me, and has an attachment, don't open the attachment without separately emailing me first to check that it's really from me - it probably isn't.

If mail has come from anything @ my domain that is not the address I normally use, assume it's bad.

If mail has an attachment that you weren't expecting—especially if it's from someone who doesn't usually send you that type of thing—take the time to check with the apparent sender that it's really from them before opening it.

Do they even want customers?

2006-07-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

For the most part, planning a wedding is fun. The amount of time it takes up can get a bit tiresome at times, but considering that the 'work' mostly consists of choosing nice things for our friends and family to enjoy with us on a day we're both looking forward to... yeah, it's not that bad.

There is, however, one thing that's driving me insane. It's that so many businesses completely ignore email and voicemail from potential customers. If only I could do everything by email (which I can with the photographer, making me like him very much) I wouldn't have to stop work during the day to phone around. If only a phone message would guarantee a reply, I wouldn't have to keep phoning; I could keep the interruptions to work brief. But no. It's just impossible to get anything done without phone call after phone call after phone call. If it were just the odd supplier I'd say screw them and go to competitors who actually respond to sales leads, but when it's entire industries I have no choice.

Come on people. It's not like we're the first couple ever to both have day jobs while engaged.

The past 8 days in brief

2006-07-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

last Saturday: Power Tool Races followed by a football local derby. The Power Tool Races were highly entertaining for a while, but once the novelty wore off the oppressive heat and lack of either shade or places to sit became gradually more annoying. They did generate some good pictures though, which I'm hoping to put up soon. The football was great; I'm glad we've recently started going to Sounders games, because I do enjoy proper football a lot more than the American game that inappropriately uses that name, and even though turnouts are pretty dismal it's still fun being at a sport that gets genuine crowd atmosphere, rather than the choreographed cheering-for-the-announcements that for me somewhat mars the experience of hockey and basketball.

Monday: Flew out to Indiana to meet with my lab. It was a wonderfully clear day and I could see more stratovolcanoes than ever before (I recognised Rainier, St.Helen's and Hood, and I'm guessing the other was Mount Adams).

Tuesday & Wednesday: Long days of meetings and discussions in the lab; very productive and very tiring. While not being the sort of place I'd like to live in (it's just too small for my taste), Bloomington is a lovely town to visit, and especially nice as a contrast with Seattle. It helps that eating well is considerably cheaper than in a big city, and that the BBC (no, not THAT BBC) is across the street from the lab. The only disappointments were that I didn't get to see Chad & Amanda, and barely saw Stu, my exceptionally generous host. Next time I should have a day or two longer, with less to do, Stu should be less busy and Chad & Amanda won't be in the process of moving house, so that should be better. A lot of the problem this time was that the visit was awkwardly short as a compromise because I didn't want to disappear out of town this close to the wedding, but there are a couple of people in Bloomington for the summer only, one of whom does work particularly closely related to mine, so I didn't want to miss the chance to talk to them.

Thursday: Flew home. Saw this very clearly through the window. It's pretty frightening really - South Dakota and/or Nebraska look exactly how I imagine the antecedents of the dust bowl would have done. There are also several big forest fires in Washington, the largest of which looks to be generating a smoke plume over 100 miles long (from the Cascades to the Columbia Gorge).

Friday 4pm: A man forced entry into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle's offices and shot six people in what seems to be being appropriately described as a hate crime (as opposed to terrorism). This is very close to my house; the first I knew about it was when I could hear at least two helicopters through the window.

Friday 5:30pm: I showed up at Westlake Plaza for Critical Mass. Meanwhile there was an anti-Israel demonstration going on at the Plaza, and the police were obviously both overstretched and concerned about possible interference between the three things that were going on. Pleasingly, everyone conducted themselves in an exemplary way: the police were pleasant to everyone present, the protesters avoided the annoyingly common conflation of "Israeli Army" with "Jews in general", and the cyclists complied with police requests to stay well clear of the shooting site.

Friday 8pm: Having left Critical Mass before the end so I could get home, wash, change and head out again, I picked Melinda up from work, joined John, Joanie and Ken for some delicious curry and to watch Clerks II. To my great surprise, Clerks II is just as good as the first one was.

this morning: Melinda & I rode our bikes to Golden Gardens Park, for a half day of volunteer work clearing up. I got to play in a marsh with hip-waders (which actually went up to my armpits, because they were apparently made for a giant) and fight the latest skirmish in my war on invasive European plants, while Melinda and various other volunteers sorted out some drainage and planted native species to hold the banks together. Like the Lake Union cleanup a couple of months ago, this was a fun way to do good. This one was even better because clearing litter necessitates spreading out and working mostly alone, whereas today's work was more co-operative and suited a bigger group.

PSA

2006-07-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

Six people were shot near where I live. I was not among them. I will write more tomorrow - I've just got back from riding with Critical Mass, and need to be back out the door in 10 minutes.

The Encyclopedia Spuria

2006-07-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

I can think of at least a few people who might appreciate the rampant nonsense-fest that is Spuripedia. It contains quality articles about such important and true matters as the oldest joke in the world, pih-rah-tees and the Not-Very-Dangerous-Sports Club of Great Britain. Based on that last article, which is my favourite, I think it's probably fair to say that as well as being a talented England defender, Rio Ferdinand must practice the sport of extreme lounging.