Laziness Update

Turns out it *is* exactly a $10 delivery charge to order things from Safeway. I guess I should never bother to fact-check myself and just keep making stuff up.

Future Music

In the end, every complicated scheme will fail. All music will be free. Musicians will make money from live shows. It's so boring it must be true! You heard it here probably about a thousandth.

Also see Mr. Long Tail going on about this.

Small Things Rising

I'm making lunch and it's naturally hard to focus on it when you could be thinking about physics.

As a non-experienced food maker I stick to the method of, you throw a bunch of ingredients in a pan and heat it up and then it magically semantically changes from "ingredients" into "food". I have moved up a notch in the cooking world after realizing not all ingredients behave in the same way. Notably, zucchini and spinach.

Turns out there's a whole spectrum of how long you should cook something so it is neither raw nor burnt. Inconveniently, ingredients have been designed to different ranges of cooking time. Also inconvenient is my lack of a staff, so my overall annoyance is roughly proportional to the number of dishes used.

I need to cook everything in one pan, and lacking any sort of useful experience I constantly find myself with the problem of a pan full of pretty well-cooked stuff, and one new raw-ish ingredient. If only I could layer the bottom of the pan with the next thing I'm adding!

Fortunately, if you just cook your bigger things first, you can just shake and everything works out fine. This is called the "Brazil nut effect" for unknown reasons. When you shake a container full of a bunch of stuff, the biggest objects rise to the top. Unintuitive when our gut tells us "big equals heavy." Intuitive when you think about little bits falling through the cracks left by the big bits.

Reminds me of fixing televisions by kicking them. I routinely try this whenever possible, the astonishment on the rare times when it works is worth it.

Gold Rushes Leave Ghost Towns

It would be pretty nice if I could order groceries online.

I don't understand why it wouldn't be cheaper. Right now I hate going to Safeway because the prices in the city aren't competitive with the Chinese markets, which I also hate going to because they don't have the exact selection I want.

Seems like the efficiency of combining the models would pay for the $10 delivery charge. Especially with a few roommates, sharing a queue Netflix-style.

Tennis Instructors

The guy teaching tennis at the Y plays all day every day. But he's not really a good tennis player, compared to J. Random Pro.

"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine."

- Picasso

The most famous blogger blogging about your favorite subject quite possibly sucks at it. I'm sure he's good at blogging though.

In summary, you should listen to me instead because I am an un-famous blogger.

Meta

If I'm sitting here and Dan is in a quiet mood but willing to listen, it's not like I have any trouble filling up the space with talk. But sitting in front of a blank blogger screen is different.

I feel banal hammering away at what must be the most written about subject. Why it's hard to write things. I have nothing to say, but want as many people to hear it as possible. Anthem of the digital media era? I'm pretty sure I'm plagiarizing that from somewhere.

I'm not even entirely sure what "banal" means, but I'm reluctant to break what little flow I have going here. I would write clichéd but it's pretty annoying to get the accents right. Some minor errors I can stand and even love, some drive me crazy. Spelling is unacceptable. Commas randomly scattered about are fine. Words that mean the wrong thing are fine.

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.

Stealing lines also doesn't bother me. Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

(I just made that up.)

The Chevy HHR

I met a friend of a friend of a friend last night. He loved cars - I asked some boring question to stay in the conversation and he went on and on, had some nickname for 4-cylinders. Today he picked up the rental car, came back and we took off. He pegged it at exactly the speed limit. I was a bit surprised.

I never heard of a Chevy HHR before. Kind of like a Honda Element but apparently it sucks or else I would know about it. The sort of car you only ever see at a rental agency. A cruel joke on GM shareholders - that shouldn't count as "real people" buying Chevrolets.

Good Songs For Friends

I only have one good musical trick, which is to listen to The World At Large immediately followed by Float On (both by Modest Mouse). I desperately need more pairs of songs that are particularly good when you play one after the other! Please comment with your ideas.

The Thor and Igor Story

A classic parable about why people invented math. Back in the day I heard it with somewhat less philosophical discussion and somewhat more embellishment of how Igor was stealing Thor's cattle.

No Google respect

Well, at least nobody else has taken the name "Lacker Style". I get

Did you mean: locker style

when I search for [lacker style].

I vow to one day rise to more than the level of "apparent misspelling". ;-)