Chris.Weekly.org - A Web Space

For those who might not know this about me, I spent much of my childhood and early adolescence hoping and even preparing, via flight lessons and study, to make a career of military aviation. This was simply for the chance to fly the world’s most amazing machines, rather than out of a desire for military life — far from it (more on that in a bit). But late in high school I was bitterly disappointed when my eyesight started to deteriorate, immediately precluding me from flight school and sending me on a completely different trajectory. In retrospect, I’m very, very glad that’s not the direction my life took — my passion for independent thought and action, and anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-dogma outlook on life has only deepened with age and there is no way I could serve in any capacity in a Bush/Cheney military under any circumstances other than literal direct home defense… but my love of flight has never waned, and this kind of video will always resonate. To someone who hasn’t spent their formative years dreaming of piloting a supersonic aircraft this video may come across as merely cheesy propoganda… but for me, especially when coupled w/ the old-school poetry, it brought me way, way back. Thanks to Boing Boing and Dailymotion.com for stirring all those old emotions.

I am a long-time supporter of Amnesty International and am posting this to support their campaign to ensure one Troy Davis is not executed without further review of his case. There is no hard evidence against him, and 7 out of 9 witnesses in his case have recanted or changed their story since his trial — there are even indications that one of the remaining two witnesses may in fact be the guilty one. Whatever your feelings on capital punishment, I think we can all agree that no government has the right to execute a citizen without a fair trial, and in this case there is serious doubt about his guilt.

Please join me in taking action and send this link to your politically conscious friends.

The Amnesty USA site has more details and instructions for taking action.

Thanks.

Last weekend my very good old friend Jason and his lovely wife Sarah and their adorable daughter Claire came to visit. Jason has a high-end DSLR and took some photos I really like down by the Plymouth waterfront. This one in particular came out just right. Abi’s the kid equivalent of about 20 feet in the air, and in typical Abi fashion is delighted by it. This is the first pic of the four of us (me, Shawna, Abi and Harper), too bad Layla couldn’t join us this time but I’m glad to have this one. Thanks again Jason for the company and the photos (and the phenomenal single-malt scotch which won’t last much longer).

"Abi's Flying!" she said as we tugged her back to earth once more...

This is an older video but I just got my NAS set up (finally) and now that I have a real media server, I’m starting to collect the videos and other digital artifacts spread over my network’s drives and put them in one place. I may actually serve them from there later but for now I put this up on youtube:

I know I’m biased but I think she’s pretty rhythmic for an 8 month old.

A small team of coworkers and I have been working around the clock (literally) to get a huge release — a project we’ve been working on for over a year — out the door. A few of the late-night email threads have generated a bit of profanity; not the kind directed AT a coworker, but the kind that emphasizes something’s importance or severity. At one point I apologized for using the acronym “WTF” in an email subject line, after the issue had been resolved. But no one had been offended, and a few other folks pointed out that they’d used stronger language (e.g. sans acronym). That conversation in turn caused some jokes and chuckles, and was a good stress-reliever. There was clearly camaraderie at play. So this 37signals blog entry I just now read really resonates.

David writes:

I’m a big fan of swearing. Not in the derogatory, directed-at-you kind of way (“hey, fuck you!”), but as verbal marker to underline key concepts, create emphasis, and express passion. It certainly doesn’t work in every environment nor should it, but there are plenty were it does.

Here’s the full post:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1214-profanity-works

Hi
If you’re reading this would you do me a huge favor and just email me? I have chosen not to implement user tracking on my blog and do not try to figure out who’s coming here by analyzing the web logs… but I’ve had a couple people mention reading my writings here and I’m very curious (and flattered) that anyone bothers. I write this stuff mostly for me, to get things off my chest or to clarify my thinking, and to have a record of thoughts and events years from now… but I am happy that anyone stops by, and very interested in knowing who visits chris.weekly.org, so please shoot me a quick email (chris at weekly.org) and let me know! Thanks

I haven’t gotten really excited about the Olympics since I was a little kid — and frankly I’m more interested in the NFL preseason than most of the events in China — but I have to say, the amount of high-quality footage available on http://www.nbcolympics.com/ is remarkable. There’s nothing on TV to compare to this (including on demand, Tivo/DVR, whatever), and it’s about time. This is what the web is all about: finding what you want when you want it, and finding interesting things you didn’t know you wanted. For example, with TV I never ever would have recorded — let alone sat through ads to watch — the men’s 4×100 free relay swim event. But watching this http://www.nbcolympics.com/swimming/news/newsid=194272.html#smashing+performance+u+s after reading the accompanying writeup sure got my adrenaline flowing.

In most contexts I dislike nationalism, it’s too fascistic, too easily used as a tool for harming people of other nations (see e.g. the etymology of the word “Nazi”) … but for these Olympics I’m temporarily putting aside my concerns about our Imperial ambitions and all that. Our kids are putting on a show and giving it everything they’ve got, and I’m psyched to be able to see it on my terms. So, go USA!

I spent a couple hours today helping restore, upgrade and secure a friend’s website. It was harder than it should have been, in part because of inconsistent configurations and undocumented changes his ISP made to partly restore the site before I go to it (though their customer support was surprisingly responsive and helpful) … but in all it went well and it feels good to have helped a friend. Reminder to all Wordpress users out there, WP is a huge target for attacks because of its popularity, you must stay on top of upgrades! Using Subversion to manage your WP install makes this really easy.

I am listening to Arcade Fire’s album “Funeral” right now for the third time in a row and feel like I’m finally grokking (and really enjoying!) this music. I’d listened to them some before — mostly “Neon Bible” — but without getting much out of it; they got such rave reviews from critics and fans I respect that I tried, and felt I’d given them a fair shake, but I just never got into it. Now, I think I was lacking a context. When I hear something new and don’t have a reference point I can’t really understand it. I know this intellectually, in the abstract, from studying cognitive psych and human perception in college, where I learned that absent the proper framework or paradigm humans can’t perceive even the most common objects (e.g. a Himalayan climber coming across a rocking chair at 20,000 feet would stare at it befuddled for a long time before recognizing it, because it’s so out of place) … but this is a good example of this principle in personal experience. Anyway I was listening and suddenly realized I was getting some old-school Bowie, maybe some Velvet Underground, and some vibes of Yo La Tengo and even some Pink Floyd … and it kind of fell into place. Now I’m paying rapt attention and it sounds perfect. Before these associations came (late) to mind, I had conscious and mixed reactions to the timbre of the singer’s voice, the key changes and mix of rock and alt and art and other styles, and any number of other characteristics of the music taken in isolation, and remained detached from the listening experience. But armed with these (invented — but hey, this is all an internal experience so indulge me — ) reference points, my resistance fell away and I started to really, really enjoy it. Anyway I am always interested in not just what I (and others) think and perceive, but also how, and why, and in this case I think I understand the transformation in my reaction to this work of art.

People tend to ask where we got the name “Harper” for our month-old daughter, so here’s the story. Shawna first mentioned it about three months into the pregnancy and it immediately resonated with me. I started thinking of her as Harper and was never really able to envision her with another name. In talking about its meaning to us we realized there were many positive connotations. Here are the ones we’re conscious of:
- My first date w/ Shawna was Oct. 26, 1996, when we saw Susan Tedeschi play at Harper’s Ferry
- I’m an amateur but passionate musician, so the musical connotation is meaningful
- Harper Lee wrote the all-time classic To Kill a Mockingbird (we both love to read and enjoyed this book)
- We wanted her to have a unique name
- We don’t mind the neutral association w/ the old magazine Harper’s Weekly, I kind of like it actually.

Anyway “Harper Elise” just rolls off our tongues, I love saying it, and now you know where it came from.