Since I Quit


The above is a PHP-generated dynamic image, which calculates the amount of time that has passed since the date you put in the image URL. This fun little coding idea, which I plan to steal, comes courtesy of Drew Myers, who has recently quit smoking, and was apparently looking for something to do with his hands…

Boundaries




Boundaries

Originally uploaded by rgdaniel

Patrick contemplates his role in a world where tulips can leave the garden, but gnomes cannot. (Merged to HDR in CS3 from two exposures, selective Lens Blur applied)

NOT impressed with my new Delta Table Saw (Update: FIXED)

I’ve been trying to stay positive as I assembled my new Delta Hybrid table saw but I’m just about out of patience now…
I was looking forward to the upgrade from my little Ryobi, but I’m beginning to wish I’d invested elsewhere. Anywho, here’s the deal:
(1) Cast iron extension wing could not be made flush with centre table, I had to bore out the holes by about 1/8″ to allow sufficient play to bring it up flush.
(2) The scale on the front wheel, showing the blade angle, is useless, since when the blade is at a perfect 90 degrees, the scale shows 2 degrees, even with the limited adjustment of the pointer all the way over.
(3) And now the final insult – the blade is not parallel to the miter slot, my first little test cuts (2×4 crosscut with miter gauge at 90) caused burning of the wood. The front of the blade is a full 1/16th” to the right compared to the rear. Apparently I’m supposed to loosen the 4 trunnion bolts (“in the rare event that this difficult adjustment should be neccessary”) only two of which are accessible enough to illustrate in the manual. And I’m not the most “flexible” person for this kind of work. 🙂
This is very disheartening. 🙁 I didn’t sign up to be a table saw repairman, I just want to make some sawdust, maybe a birdhouse or two. I wonder if Welbeck Sawmill will take it back, or whether I’ll just have similar grief with another brand.
Update: The local Delta authorized repair and warranty people, “Murray’s Sharpening and Tool Repair”, were able to take the thing apart in their shop, and re-assemble it the way it should have been assembled at the factory, i.e. in perfect alignment. Murray himself picked it up and dropped it off. So I’m a happy camper.

I have a beef with The Matrix

Okay, I know this is about as timely as Y2K, since the movie was released in 1999, but it’s on TV at this very moment, so it’s on my mind. To recap the premise of The Matrix, before I get to my beef: it seems like mankind has lost the War Against the Machines, circa 2199. The machines have (quite ungratefully) enslaved their makers, literally encapsulating all humans from birth in little pods, feeding us by tubes. This is so that we can serve as power sources, “batteries” in a massive thermal and electrical energy producing infrastructure. The Machines apparently were using solar power, but we messed that up for them in the War.
Now already I have a beef, but it gets worse… in order to keep us docile, the Machines created the Matrix, a neurally interconnected virtual reality simulation that they feed to the humans via a tube to the brain. This convinces us, in our stupor, that it’s still 1999, and all is well.
Right. Well, first of all, why would a human wired into a pod from birth even need to be kept docile? Surely this wouldn’t be a big issue, and even if we did become agitated, wouldn’t that just generate more energy? And even if worse occasionally did come to worst, the Machines could just open that little escape hatch and flush those occasional little troublemakers into the Hudson. So why go to all the trouble of feeding our brains this complex virtual reality? Makes no sense, machines wouldn’t do that.
But here’s my real beef: why use humans at all? Where are all the COWS?? For starters, they’re already docile. And even if they did need to be fed some kind of Matrix to keep them contented cows, all you’d really need would be a five minute loop of a nice day in the field, some white puffy clouds, maybe an occasional tourist in a passing car yelling “mooo” out the window… child’s play for a Machine VR programmer. Plus, think of all the methane they could harvest, must be a million things a Machine could do with methane.

Lost VALIS

Some LOST trivia:
Oceanic Flight 815 crashed (and the series debuted) on Sept. 22, 2004. This was my 50th birthday. Okay, interesting only to me I suppose. But consider this next bit of product placement.
In the episode that aired last night, John brings Ben some food, along with a book from Ben’s shelves. The book was “VALIS” by Philip K. Dick, one of his last books before his death in 1982, and the book that convinced me that he had either discovered the true underlying meaning of the universe, or that he was suffering from a psychotic break. Perhaps both. In the novel, “VALIS” is an acronym for “Vast Active Living Intelligence System” – a kind of living-yet-alien construct that shapes the realities of the people around it. Which is pretty much how John thinks of the island, yes? VALIS is also a kind of sci-fi metaphor for God, and John is after all the “Man of Faith”, vs. Jack’s “Man of Science”…
Layers inside layers…

What is Art?

Incredibly, experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet was the subject–perhaps due to his death in December 2007– of a recent YouTube “featured video”.

From Wikipedia:

“Stockhausen had dreams of flying throughout his life, and these dreams are reflected in the Helikopter-Streichquartett (the third scene of Mittwoch aus Licht), completed in 1993. In it, the four members of a string quartet perform in four helicopters flying independent flight-paths over the countryside near the concert hall. The sounds they play are mixed together with the sounds of the helicopters and played through speakers to the audience in the hall. Videos of the performers are also transmitted back to the concert hall. The performers are synchronized with the aid of a click-track.”

So, does this challenging piece of music qualify as art? Maybe, maybe not. Seriously, it’s a bit hard to listen to, but as an idea for a concert event, I think it was genius. It reminds me, in that sense, of the Harbour Symphony, a piece of music written for (and performed entirely on) ship’s horns in St. John’s Harbour, Newfoundland.
For me, the real art in this Stockhausen/YouTube “event” lies in the hilarious, yet disturbingly narrow-minded, even inappropriately angry comments by YouTube members and would-be art critics. Most of whom, I’m guessing, take their cues for artistic merit from record sales and American Idol.
So, if that’s where the art is, in the funny/sad parade of banal comments, then who is the artist? Maybe the guy who decided it should be a YouTube featured video… brilliant!!
(thanks Joshua for the heads-up on this video)