Glen Raphael's Journal
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Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in
Glen Raphael's LiveJournal:
| Wednesday, March 31st, 2004 | | 7:53 pm |
blogjack
I don't know if anybody still looks here for anything, but I do my blogging now elsewhere. I've started a blog focused on blackjack (with a side dish of economics) here: http://blogjack.netUPDATE: Lost the .org address, switched to .net instead. | | Friday, August 29th, 2003 | | 4:46 pm |
blinded me with science
I found employment at Beatnik in San Mateo. The company was founded by musician Thomas Dolby and currently does polyphonic sound synthesis for cellphones. Thus, I'm surrounded by programmers who are also musicians, some of them pretty hard-core. The fact that I wrote a music program for the Newton and can do QA "with a musician's ear" is what got me in the door. San Mateo has a very cool downtown. I take the train to work most days; my office is 250 steps from the platform. There are a hundred decent restaurants in a 4-block radius, including a half-dozen sushi places. I was sad to hear about Gibraltar. Here's hoping everybody lands on their feet! | | Friday, May 9th, 2003 | | 9:40 am |
Salaam Pax is BACK!
I was getting worried about the poor Iraqi blogger, but he seems to be fine and has posted a flood of back entries to describe what the war was like for locals on the ground. | | 7:36 am |
The job-hunting thing
For my next act, I'm looking primarily at jobs related to handheld devices such as the Palm Pilot and the Apple iPod. I put the word out on the street and various prospects are filtering back. The resume has gone through a lot of changes. Here's the latest pretty PDF version; here's a more straightforward text version. In the meantime, I've resumed going to Vegas. Last weekend I stayed too long at the double-deck and got barred at the Venetian, but other than that it was a pretty decent trip. | | 7:35 am |
| | Friday, March 28th, 2003 | | 5:08 pm |
Why Japanese cartoons are better
The best episodic series (Bebop, Neon Genesis) have an overall story arc - a beginning, a middle, and an end. People learn. They change. Some new characters appear. Others leave. Sometimes good people fail, and they might even die. I don't think I've seen an american cartoon that followed this pattern. Most are stateless - nobody ever ages, or changes, or learns anything, so the next episode always starts out with the same set of characters and the same blank slate. Kenny is always alive again the following week. No matter how many times the ghost turns out to be a guy wearing a rubber mask, Shaggy never catches on. Mr. Burns will have his life or career ruined or saved by Bart or Homer, but next week it's back to the same old: "Who is that man?" Why, I believe that's Homer Simpson, sir." Why is this? I suspect it's has a lot to do with syndication. If your characters never change or learn anything, an audience can appreciate the episodes in any order. So once you accumulate enough episodes, your series can go on making money indefinitely, recycling and reshuffling the same set of episodes with a new one thrown into the mix now and again. We're used to the stateless protocol. We come to expect it. But if we know in advance our hero will succeed, his struggle is less compelling. Finding out that failure was possible suddenly makes the conflict seem real. All of which boils down to: Real drama needs tragedy. And not just in the opening act. They need to have it in the middle and at the end as well. Not all the time, but often enough. And if most of the stories you see end happily, the rare one that doesn't seems hugely more powerful. I guess that's also why I like Terry Gilliam movies -- there's a man who loves an unhappy ending! Of course, one could take this too far. I suppose if everybody directed like Terry Gilliam then the occasional rare happy endings would start to seem gripping, intense, and unusually true-to-life. | | Thursday, March 27th, 2003 | | 5:34 pm |
My name is Glen, and I'm a netflix-aholic
I've upped my dose to the "8 movies out" plan and my backlog is up to 200. Did some anime recently - Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion were surprisingly good. Now that I've got a treadmill I can work out while watching a movie. This makes movie-watching feel more virtuous, less slug-like. More in keeping with the "get back in shape" motif that's been prominent in my life as of late. My weight has been on a downward trend for the last two months, and I hope to continue that for a while. If I have to suffer through some great movies to do it, so be it! "A pound a week, that's all we ask." Latest Glen-weight: 178. | | 5:17 pm |
So long Dvorak, hello QWERTY!
I used Dvorak for several months and it was tolerable but never particularly comfortable. I don't think my typing speed ever exceeded my QWERTY speed, but what brought me back was the "vi" editor (actually vim). I've been doing perl programming lately and trying to use vim under DVORAK is a nightmare. So back we go... Current Mood:  amused | | Wednesday, August 28th, 2002 | | 4:38 pm |
so light and fluffy!
I decided to learn to cook and signed up for the "essentials" 12-class set at HomeChef. The current series is almost over so my first class was souffles - sweet and/or savory. It turns out cooking souffles is surprisingly easy. So far I've made a spinach & cheese one and a couple chocolate ones. I'll probably try rasberry next. So far, the class is great fun; I recommend it entirely. Don't buy all your paraphernalia there though - it's good quality but often overpriced. They must make a mint selling people $25 whisks. I did buy a copper mixing bowl and some omelet molds. | | Monday, August 26th, 2002 | | 3:31 pm |
The Dvorak experiment seems to be a success. I switched my keyboard layout from qwerty to Dvorak at work and at home about a month ago. At first it was pretty painful, but now the arrangement seems natural to me. Every day I get a bit more confident with it and I expect in another month or so my typing speed will exceed what it was. It just plain feels better. Although I still think the "i" and "u" keys should have been switched, and having "gh" on the same finger is a bit iffy. Nonetheless, it's good enough that I'll probably stick with it for the next six months. Why I switched: * my friend Virginia started having serious RSI issues, and it seemed odd to recommend she try Dvorak when I'd never tried it myself * at a net-cafe in Paris I had to use an international keyboard and it didn't take long to adjust to the (relatively minor) changes * that /.-featured article where the guy used a genetic algorithm to evolve an efficient layout and got something pretty similar to Dvorak. It's preventative medicine more than anything else. Plus, it further establishes my "hopeless geek" credentials. :-) | | 3:14 pm |
Watched Calamity Jane last night. The chief redeeming song in this one is Doris Day's "Secret Love", which was a huge radio hit for her after the movie came out. Lyrics: ===== Once I had a secret love That lived within the heart of me All too soon my secret love Became impatient to be free So I told a friendly star The way that dreamers often do Just how wonderful you are And why I'm so in love with you Now I shout it from the highest hills Even told the golden daffodils Now my heart's an open door And my secret love's no secret any more. | | Wednesday, June 5th, 2002 | | 2:31 am |
picture-perfect
At home with iPhoto, just made my first batch of reasonable icons. Here's a little guy we all know and love from the lake across the street from work. Current Mood: artistic | | Tuesday, June 4th, 2002 | | 4:06 pm |
Some enchanted evening
When I first got Netflix I figured I'd just plow through my backlog of "movies I'd been meaning to see" and cancel but it turns out Netflix is a lifestyle choice rather than a short-term project. My rental queue is up to 120 movies and climbing -- whenever I watch a good movie it prompts me to add others by the same director or starring the same actors or in the same genre. For instance, seeing "Gods and Monsters" prompted me to add a few old horror films such as Bride of Frankenstein. Watched South Pacific last night. Every classic musical is cheesy in its own way but there are always at least two redeeming songs. Annie Get Your Gun had "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun" and "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better". South Pacific had "Some Enchanted Evening", which I replayed a half-dozen times until I had it mostly memorized so I can serenade Lisa with it. I also rather enjoyed "Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair". Here are the lyrics for The Big Song, while still fresh in my mind: ===== Some Enchanted Evening (by Rodgers & Hammerstein) Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger You may see a stranger, across a crowded room And somehow you know You know there and then That somewhere you'll see her again and again... Some enchanted evening, someone will be laughing You may hear her laughing, across a crowded room Then night after night As strange as it seems Her laughter will sing in your dreams How can you explain it, who can tell you why? Fools may give you reasons, wise men never try. Some enchanted evening, when you find your true love When you hear her call you, across a crowded room Then fly to her side And make her your own! Or all of your life you may dream all alone. Once you have found her, never let her go! Once you have found her, never let her go! Current Mood:  contemplative | | 2:59 pm |
Out of the loop
Started a LiveJournal page because that's what all the cool dudes and babes around here are up to these days, and I aspire to be cool by association. "Everybody's doin' it, man!" |
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