The Art of a MacBook Pro Crash

I was watching this video, listening to Hank Green talk about how he appreciated art (even if he didn't always understand it of feel comfortable with it and how it is often presented) and was grateful for the largely unnoticed things in our lives.

He had just said

Sometimes it seems like everything is broken and nothing works at all. But when things work we don't tend to notice. There is nothing quite like knowing, as I have my entire life, that there will be food at the corner store. I don't spend enough time being grateful for that...

And then the playback of the video went crazy and my first thought was oh isn't that a neat artistic touch to show how we take for granted how amazing it is we can watch this video he shot himself and uploaded online and billions of people across the globe have instant access to it...

But instead, my MacBook Pro was crashing again :-/

When I restarted my computer his continued words continued his very worthwhile thoughts.

and not just grateful that I can always get food. But grateful that so many people come together to work hard to make sure that all of the people in New York City can continue eating and drinking and everything can continue to function. Thats not something that just happens. Thats something that people do.

Related: Appreciating Health - Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - Quitting, Habits and the Examined Life - Synchronicity

As soon as I posted this the MacBook Pro crashed again. It has been crashing a lot but this is the first time it did it within 10 minutes.

Utopia (Dreamland in the USA) is an Amazing TV Program

Dreamland (USA name) is an Australian TV show (called Utopia in Australia) that is available on Netflix. It is completely awesome. It is an amazing, biting, satirical look at modern office life at the Nation Building Authority of Australia.



Even after a second tweet to my followers emphasizing how awesome this show is they failed to appreciate the importance of going to watch this show immediately. I am very disappointed in them.

Go watch this show. It is on the level of the British version of the Office (and Dilbert - the comic strip not the TV show) for sheer greatness. And while I enjoyed that a great deal I think Utopia is a significantly superior experience. As far as a TV comedy goes the only thing I can think of in this class is Seinfeld and the level the Simpson's has reached at times. But Utopia has been universally awesome from what I have seen so far, without lots of the less compelling Simpson's shows.

Better off Ted, also available on Netflix, is also quite excellent and somewhat similar Utopia.



Utopia is something no one who works in an office should miss.

The embedded videos unfortunately barely give any indication of how special this show is.

Once you watch this, if you haven't seen Better off Ted go watch that.

Related: Curious Cat Management blog - Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work

Buying Freedom by Buying Less Stuff

Comment on: Less Is More: Is All Your "Stuff" The Reason You Can't Travel? I really think the idea you captured with

"debt is a good motivator for two things: First, you will work hard; And secondly, you probably won’t leave."

is an important lesson for people. I know travel isn't for everyone, though I enjoy it. And if "3 snowboards" makes someone happy when they understand all the implications for their life, that is fine with me.

What makes me sad is too few people understand the impact the choices they make has on their life.

Related: Too Much Stuff (2007) - Freelance Lifestyle, Finance and Entreprenuership Blog (design your life) - Trying to Keep up with the Joneses (2008) - Can I Afford That?

Black Swans Body Surfing

Great video showing black swans body surfing in Gold Coast, Australia.

One way the internet has succeeded is with lots of fun videos showing the wide range of activities animals enjoy :-)

More awesome animal videos: Crow Skiing (sledding) - Friday Fun: Gibbon Plays with Tiger Cubs - Bird Using Bread as Bait to Catch Fish - Kitten’s Curiosity Gets it Stuck and Mom Comes to Help - Capuchin Monkeys Don’t Like Being Paid Less - Friday Fun: Monkey and Kitten Playing - Video of Kittens Being Rescued by Their Mother After Taking a Slide - Backyard Wildlife: Mountain Lion - Nice Interaction with a Group of Wild Mountain Gorillas Strolling Through Camp

Appreciating Health

I agree that your health is at the very top of what is most important (perhaps the health of a loved one and the like can vie for the top spot) factors in your life. However, it gets old saying to yourself that you should appreciate what you have instead of being frustrated by events.

I am extremely lucky health-wise. I have always been very healthy, had next to no problems really my whole life. And not just avoiding really bad stuff, actually being healthy all the time. And I do appreciate it. I do try to eat fairly decently and exercise but even so much of my health is due to luck (probably pretty good genes, maybe some nice contributing bacteria, either avoiding bad breaks or diseases or my immune system fighting off those that tried to take hold, etc.).

But the last 18 months I have had a couple big, long running, bothersome problems that end up getting me very frustrated for long periods of time. The current one is big problems with my rental properties. First I had all sorts of trouble with property managers. Then I had what I thought I had bad runs of expenses (worst in 15 years by far). Then I had those followed by much worse run of larger expenses, while the problems with property managers continued.

The rental mess isn't fixed yet, expenses continue. And the house is actually not rented for what is about to be the second month (in 15 years) I have had a total of 1 month vacant until now. The location is very good, the property is nice...

I am not very good at coping with ongoing problems that I don't solve. I am good at solving them so I don't have to put up with them any longer. And good at designing around those I can't solve to avoid dealing with them. But those that I can't avoid bother me and I have trouble just accepting that I have to sit and accept it. It is better if you can do this, I know this, but still am lousy at doing so.

I know that while this situation is super annoying for me it really isn't horrible. I had a few other financial setbacks which made me count more psychologically (financially too, but really that is secondary, I am confident, having examined everything now) on the rental income. Huge numbers of people have many worse problems to deal with. And I have tried the last couple of months to stop being so annoyed by appreciating what I have, including health. I do appreciate it but it doesn't do much to make it less annoying.

And when I examine my situation I have to say I am super lucky. I have a great situation. The problems are really fairly minor compared to what billions of people have had to deal with the whole time I am bothered by my issues.

I finally decided I just needed to nearly completely remove myself and just pay someone else to deal with the properties (I would have hoped hiring a property manager should do that but it has been a succession of that not working the last couple years). It seems you need to pay someone to deal with the property manager (and get them to do their job) or just not be a bozo, like I seem to be and avoid letting it bug you. I managed the rental myself for years and then had 2 others do so for me for about 8 years without any real problems (I always think things should be better but essentially without big problems).

It isn't quick to get out from the current mess, and it will again reduce the income but I have decided (given how much hassle it is for me - others I think could deal with it fine, I just get very annoyed by things that are not done well... and can't stop trying to fix what should be fixed). And when that fails (rare, but sometimes the case) it is best to just reorder things so I don't have to keep being reminded about the poor results.

John Hunter - Thailand

I do hope once I can get the current mess fixed and off my plate (hopefully in a month or so) I will be better off. I will appreciate what I have, more. And I will have a better sense of what I need to be doing now. For me a big objective is travel in SE Asia. The last year I have failed to do nearly as much as I should while I live in Malaysia. I have let other distractions stop me from doing what I want to be near the top of my priority list. I hope that I will make a change.

As I tried to explore why I was letting frustration take much more control of my emotional state than it should that I think part of that is due to my failure to focus on travel. It is also related to some of my other attempts not turning out as well as I would like, but I am really not that worried about it. Looking back, I am much more annoyed that I used the excuse of those efforts to push my travel efforts down my priority list. I hope I will now appreciate what I have and put a better focus onto making sure I actually am doing what I want to be doing with my time (instead of getting distracted by what is seemingly urgent and seemingly items I could just clear away and then get to...).

Part of appreciating health to me, is valuing life. We don't have that long to take advantage of being healthy to do what we want. I have to make sure I am doing that, and not letting distractions sidetrack me.

Related: Curious Cat Travel Destinations - Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog

Curious, Joyful, Happy Kids Grow Up: Unfortunately

I must admit I find the wonder kids have amazingly refreshing. When I was a kid I just took it for granted. Now, unfortunately surrounded by way too many incurious, blasé, dreary adults I realize the kids really have a much better idea how to live than we adults do.

Have some fun. Have some fun with a cardboard box and a stick. Or a plastic dinosaur and a small firetruck. Or just reading a book, for the 56th time this year, about how some cat goes to the store.



Meanwhile I think an alien could appear on the subway and most of my fellow passengers would only be concerned if it was taking up too much space or blocked their exit, and if not, maybe not even notice it.

Hey, maybe this is why my parents always asked me "what did you do today?"
Me: [Jeez stop hounding me, Dad] "Nothing"
Actually what I did: played in a puddle; landed on the moon with Rachel and Dan and brought some moon rocks back to play with; learned that we named the people in North America, Indians, when Christopher Columbus came because we were completely wrong about who they actually were and somehow never got around to fixing that error (another strike against you crazy adults); and decided that really chocolate ice cream is better than spinach and adults don't have any idea what they are talking about.]

Me: [Why the heck do I want to talk about that stuff, you are an adult you must have done much cooler stuff. You get to do whatever you want, you are not trapped all day being ordered around by big adults who can make you do whatever they want :-(]. "Yuck, spinach" :-( [I can't wait until I get to just eat chocolate ice cream and no spinach]

Well maybe I now finally figured out why adults want to know what kids did every day - they might get some vicarious joy (having nearly forgotten how to find a falling leaf, or cool green shoe joyful). Now why people want to know what their spouse did, I still don't understand that :-)

Just watching the faces of adults and kids is amazing. Adults, by and large show no joy. A kid's face will show more joy when they see their Mom for the 8th time today than an adult will in the entire month. I just have to believe that is not a good sign.

As a kid I didn't think adults had much of a clue or very good reasons for why things had to be certain ways. Of course, as a kid, I was "unreasonable" and had to "wait to grow up" and then I would understand. I have to say I think my kid self had most of it right.

I didn't get how trapped we become as adults into day to day lives that we don't mean to chose - I did get that wrong. But I am not sure I was wrong that we shouldn't do that. But it is harder than I thought to avoid it (especially since I didn't think it was even a risk that an adult would be stuck doing stuff about as fun as being stuck in a chair and being lectured to with a bunch of other people all day long about stuff you often couldn't care about at all).

What is exciting to me now? Refinancing my mortgage at 3.75%. Now that is great. But, I think most 7 year olds have much better things they are excited about.

Photo of my nephews by my brother.

Related: The freedom to act before you have been trained to follow convention, at all costs - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Letting Children Learn – Hole in the Wall Computers - Amy's Halloween Costume



Photo of my nephew at the Staten Island Children's Museum. We need to get back to that time when we spend through life in a blur of wonder and excitement.

Oregon, TCU, Boise State, Auburn...

Oregon, TCU and Boise State are all great college football teams. If Auburn wins their next 2 games they will be up there with those 3.

I hope we get TCU or Boise State in the championship game and the other versus Auburn, Oregon, LSU, Stanford or Alabama. Boise State v Oregon and TCU v. Auburn would be great. I think Boise State and TCU would beat most other teams badly - and probably would beat some of those teams above badly. On a good day one of the Big Ten schools might be able to be competitive but I think they would most likely be destroyed. I think even with a loss either TCU or Boise State are no worse than 5th. I am a long time Badger fan, we good this year but good about 15th, not good 7th...

Even though I think TCU and Boise State could be the best 2 teams I hope we don't get that as the title game. I really would rather see those 2 teams play and beat the best of the rest of the teams. Or fail to do so. Oregon might have a chance to beat them. Though I would favor TCU and Boise State against whatever team they play.

My ranking
1 - Oregon, TCU, Boise State
4 - Auburn
5 - LSU
6 - Stanford
7 - Wisconsin
8 - Michigan State
9 - Nebraska
10 - Iowa
11 - Arkansas
12 - Alabama
13 - Ohio State

I feel the teams from about 7 - 18 are very closely matched. The SEC is packed with very good teams. Unlike past years where schools that weren't that good were threatening to sneak by without deserving it. I think Boise State and TCU are clearly among the best few teams in the country.

Erica's Adventures In Saudi Arabia

Erica has some great adventures in Saudi Arabia, catching Spike the uromastyx (giant lizard), catching a Bufo dhufarensis (toad), and finding Cistanche flowers. Great stuff.








Related: kid in a claw game - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Backyard Wildlife: Great Spreadwing Damselfly

Hulu Desktop for Ubuntu

I have been having all sorts of trouble with Hulu on my new Ubuntu desktop. When it does work it has a great fullscreen display. But the fullscreen mode would not work quite often. And when it did work it would always choose the smaller of my two monitors no matter what I did. The Popout option was nice and I could move it to the monitor I wanted but the control (pause, restart etc.) wouldn't work.

In trying to find solutions to these bugs I stumbled across Hulu desktop for Linux (including an Ubuntu 64 bit option). It works very well. The interface for Hulu desktop is flashy and nice in some ways but in some ways it is not easy to navigate. For example, it is much easier to see a list of the episodes you have subscribed to and their expiration dates.

And I get to watch programs like Caprica that I couldn't otherwise, since I don't have cable TV.

Related: Embedded YouTube Videos Won't Play - Using Multiple Firefox Profiles at the Same Time in Ubuntu

Problem: Hulu full-screen mode fails on Ubuntu in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Hulu popout screen controls fail - Ubuntu 9.04, 64-bit. How to move a Hulu fullscreen to another monitor (using Hulu Desktop you can choose which monitor to use).

Lines of Confusion Illusion

Cool illusion. I like to remind myself that such examples show that what you think it true is not always true.

Related: Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid Image - Fooled by Randomness - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card is a novella and prelude to a forthcoming fantasy saga: Mithermages. I found it enjoyable and reminiscent of his previous fantasy work especially the Alvin Maker series. I don't read hardly any fantasy, other than that by Orson Scott Card.

Another recent publication (2008), Keeper of Dreams, collects 22 short stories and novellas by Orson Scott Card, not found in Maps in a Mirror:

The Elephants of Poznan
Atlantis
Geriatric Ward
Heal Thyself
Space Boy
Angles
Vessel
Dust
Homeless in Hell
In the Dragon's House
Inventing Lovers on the Phone
Waterbaby
Keeper of Lost Dreams
Missed
50 WPM
Feed the Baby of Love
Grinning Man
The Yazoo Queen
Christmas at Helaman's House
Neighbors
God Plays Fair Once Too Often
Worthy to Be One of Us

Both are well work reading in my opinion.

Related: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Reading in 2006 - Create Your Own Book

I Love xkcd Animated Clip

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Awesome. The xkcd comic is great.

Related: What Makes Scientists Different :-) - Comic About Programming - Friday Fun: Correlation - Home Engineering: Reading in Bed

Still Young Contrary to Appearances

Great comic from the great xkcd comic. "I'm pretty sure I stopped growing up in my teens and have been faking it ever since"

Last Google Toolbar PageRank Update of 2008

Matt Cutts has confirmed that Google has again updated the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar. Looking at my blogs it seems to be effective approximately Dec 16th. I have some blog posts from the 15th and before with pagerank. On the 16th I have one post with a pagerank and several without. On the 17th none of my posts have pagerank. This means while the pagerank was displayed today, the data used is from about December 16th, I believe.

The displayed pagerank is more fun than a measure that can be relied on. But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(

Check the current pagerank on your sites using our related site: Multiple Site PageRank checker. Updates from our Google PageRank Update, July 2008:

Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog - 4 (July 2008), 4 (December 2008)
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog - 5, 5
curiouscat.com - 3, 3
externs.com - internship directory - 4, 4
Statistics for Experimenters - 3, 4
CSS 4 Free - 4, 5
Wordpress Themes for Free (new site from November) already a 3 Google pagerank.
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections (one of my most popular pages since 1997) - 3, 3
Multi Site PageRank Checker - 1, 3
John Hunter 4, 4
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father) ?, 4
Justin Hunter (my brother) ?, 2
Curious Cat Articles and Links (this blog) - 3, 3
Curious Cat Management Improvement (v.1) I started the blog on blogger and then moved it to my own domain using WordPress in 2006, still it retains a pagerank of 3
My Kiva page ?, 3
Reddit management (new in September) 0
Curious Cat Web Directory 3, 4
Rocky Mountain National Park photos ?, 2
Boston Museum of the Fine Arts, Glacier National Park Photos, Parfrey's Glen, Wisconsin Photos, The Cloisters Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky ? , 0 ( much of the Curious Cat Travels seems to be without pageranks - which seems odd to me but...)

The Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog has actually been a pagerank 6 before, but I think it is a high 5 (of course I may be biased and that is just wishful thinking). Many brand new posts for example have ranks of 4, likely because they were on the home page when the snapshot was taken - Bird Brain, Passion for Mechanical Engineering, High School Inventor Teams @ MIT...). Another thing this means is those pages are really not pagerank 4 even today. The toolbar snapshot from Dec 16th shows them that way but only because that was the value on Dec 16th.



Now, I would guess they are probably really pagerank 2 or so. If I just look back at say random posts in August 2008 (or really any month) they will be between 0 and 3. I really don't understand the differences between say 0 and 2. While there is some difference, most of those pages have 0 links from external sites. And then I will have a small number of posts that get significant external links that maybe be 3,4 and even 5 pageranks: The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer, Sep 2007, pr 3, Best Research University Rankings, Sep 2008, pr 4; Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership, Jul 2007, pr 4

In my experience it is often more telling how the pagerank of internal pages. I find it that there are many sites with say a pagerank of 3 or 4, or even 5, on the home page but almost no pagerank on internal pages. While other sites with a pagerank of 3 or 4 have many internal pages with pagranks of 1, 2, 3 and 4,

Related: Google's Displayed PageRank - Web Page Authority

Festivus

Festivus airing of the grievances.

Is The World Finaly Growing Wise

Related: Code Monkey - Dancing Around the World - Computer Speakers

To Do List

I think that is pretty funny. More funny political cartoons.

Related: Fun Rant on Arguments - Code Monkey - Kids on Scientists: Before and After - Quantum Teleportation

Monty Python on You Tube

Related: Ministry of Silly Walks

Dancing Around the World

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

About Matt:

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal.
...
Matt lives in Seattle, Washington with his girlfriend, Melissa, and dog, Sydney. He hasn't had a real job since Stride called him up. Matt doesn't mind working, but he doesn't much care for having to show up at the same place every day.

The internet is fun for all sorts of reasons including videos such as this.

Related: Company Culture (music video) - Water Buffaloes, Lions and Crocodiles Oh My - Toyota Robots

Garden Model of Paris

The Eiffel Flowers

Gerard Brion (in photo) shows off his model of Paris. He has spent 15 years (he is now 29) crafting a model of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, etc. out of old concrete blocks, baby food jars and soup tins. His garden in Vaissac in the South of France is now a tourist attraction.

Related: Curious Cat Paris photos - Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog France related posts