Existence is Wonderful

DIY Files: Industrial(ish) Kitchen Shelf

2011-07-11T16:59:00.001-07:00

So, there's this little no-man's-land strip of floor between my house's kitchen and living-room zones (the front area of the structure is "open floorplan"). The wire "storage cube" tower was never intended to be permanent, as it's both very wobbly and prone to collecting cat-hair tumbleweeds. Nonetheless, until recently it was the only thing keeping random fruits, root vegetables, small dishtowels, compost bucket, and bottled beverages in any semblance of an organized configuration.

(above photo: the "before" -- vaguely functional, but thoroughly rickety)

We could have easily gone and purchased some random Ikea shelf to replace the coated wire thing, but as my experience last year building a window-seat-inspired storage bench for my living room was so fascinating and rewarding (I made a thing! out of wood! for my house!), I decided to seize the opportunity to build something "from scratch". We still had a fair amount of random wood laying around in the garage from our various renovation activities since moving in, and I liked the idea of reclaiming wood from the house and using it for something else for the house.

I love the look of old (but neatly cut and assembled) wood in combination with grey steel, and really that was my primary starting point: I knew whatever I came up with would involve both wood and metal. Style-wise I wanted something along the lines of this Restoration Hardware piece (which at the time of this writing is "on sale" for $1995).

Mind you, I don't consciously recall seeing this "Salvaged Wood and Steel Shelving" unit (pictured above) prior to starting my shelf project but given my penchant for mooning over the industrial sci-fi-esque bits of the RH catalogs that occasionally come in the mail here it is conceivable (nay, likely) that I was subliminally inspired by this or some similar item.

Either way, I am happy to report that I did not spend anywhere near $2000 to make my version -- the wood was basically free as it was all salvaged/scrap, and the wood stain along with nearly all the metal hardware I used (screws, brackets, etc.) I already had on hand as "leftovers" from prior projects. The only materials I bought new were the steel rod-stock (two lengths of 3/8" dia. from Orchard Supply) and a small package of washers. My grand expenditure total was thus somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 (not counting tools, but we've been accumulating those here over a long period of time so there was no major in-project expense in that department).

Cutting To Size And Shape

The bulk of the wood for this project came from two long (10' x 1') planks that had served as closet shelves in their former life. The office closet renovation project was "cat oriented" enough to fit in better over at Felines Are Wonderful, so I described it in some detail in a post over yonder, but basically the reason those old shelves came out was because they weren't allowing me, my partner, or our four acrobatic kitties to utilize the space they occupied very well.

That closet was vastly improved with the addition of a few tall Ikea shelving units, but then we had these giant old boards to deal with, and they spent several months sitting idly on the floor of the garage. I put up with tripping over them (rather than actually doing anything with them) for a fairly long time, mainly because I did not want to deal with the paint (more on that in the next section).

At any rate, when I finally got going on the kitchen shelf project, the first thing I did was cut the boards (using a jigsaw) so that I had four 48" long sections and two 24" long sections.

Interestingly (well, to me at least) the decision to make the vertical side pieces "split" was mostly based on the fact that I simply didn't have enough wood of the right length to make those pieces solid all the way along the desired depth of the shelf. I am really glad things worked out that way, though, because solid sides would have been too "heavy"-looking, especially given the dark stain I ended up using.

Still, once I decided on "split verticals", I was faced with the challenge of how to rip the 48" boards along the lengthwise vector. I don't have a table saw, and most of the handsaws I've got available here are of the crosscut variety (meaning they don't work well if used in the direction of the grain). So after some internal deliberation, I ended up just using the jigsaw again, albeit in conjunction with a plethora of clamps and random wood bits serving as holding jigs.

The results were...surprisingly good! I would totally rip boards again this way if I had to. The key is being patient and keeping track of what your hands are doing, angle-wise. Jigsaws are awesomely versatile devices, but they're not very forgiving of even tiny changes in how you're holding them (and along a 48" length, a small error will tend to propagate). My edges weren't dead-on right-angle perfection when I was done, but they were close enough to be very easily squared out with a few sweeps of the hand plane.

Meanwhile, one of the 24" pieces was cut down to 22" (as that was the target width of the shelf) and then ripped lengthwise themselves into four approximately 3" sections. These were to serve as the "back slats" of the shelf. The other 24" piece was set aside and later used to make part of the top of the unit.

Probably the most "complicated" cutting-to-shape that had to be done in all this was the carving out of the little rectangular niches for the back slats to sit in. The usual thing to use for this is a router, and my partner has one, but I don't know how to use it yet so I ended up cutting the edges out with a handheld pull saw and then chiseling out the inside.

The results of this were...meh. I am still not entirely happy with them, and if I had to do it over again I would have (a) measured more carefully, and (b) considered expanding my tool horizons. I was able to make the niches I ended up with "work", but it took me much longer to even get them to "passably okay" than it would have to get them "perfect" if I'd planned things out better and used the proper tool(s).

Overall, though, the cutting-to-size-and-shape part of this project went pretty quickly. Much more quickly than the next part!

(Above photo - my rectangular niches, after I'd cleaned them up some and started working on the dowel joints. Note that this was also taken after the paint had been removed, which is described in the next section).

The White Paint Of Doom (And The Removal Thereof)

The closet shelf boards which comprised the bulk of source material for my shelf were covered in several layers of very hard white paint (and possibly primer in the case of one of the planks). The kitchen planks I used to make the storage bench had been painted with what seemed to be the same stuff, and at that point in my evolution as a DIY-er I had no clue how to get rid of paint/finish that wouldn't come off with a bit of hand-sanding. Thus, in that case I just ended up painting over the old paint with new paint of a more decor-appropriate color scheme.

In this case, though, I knew I wanted a more natural wood look. Which of course meant all the old paint and primer and whatever the heck else the previous owners had slathered on the wood had to come off. Toward this end, I purposely waited until I had the boards cut to size before getting into paint removal. I don't know if this is standard practice or not, but for me it definitely made things easier as it "broke the seal" of the paint.

Still, the paint-removal phase was the least pleasant part of this project. Sure, it was satisfying to (eventually) get to where I could actually see the grain, but it was by no means fun getting there.

For some reason the weather seemed to be either hot or rainy whenever I had a free hour or two to devote to paint removal, and neither of those conditions was especially comfortable to work in.

Gigantic pink "Darth Vader Meets Hello Kitty" respirator masks are no fun in the sun, and orbital sanders will spray fine dust all over your garage even with that little bag on the output and even if you've got the garage door open and are hovering under the edge of it to avoid getting your tools rained on. Bleah.

As for the actual process of getting the paint off, this entailed many hours (over the course of several weekends) and lots of going back and forth between the following tools:

(1) Heat gun (super cheapie Harbor Freight model)

(2) Hand plane (as opposed to the type of plane that flies in the sky)

(3) Random orbital sander (Milwaukee 5" diameter)

(4) Paint scraper/putty knife thing

Basically I just used one tool for as long as it seemed to be "doing something" to the paint. I.e., I:

- waved the heat gun over the surface until I started seeing bubbles,

- scraped off the bubbly bits with the putty knife,

- turned on the random orbital sander (using coarse 60 grit sanding discs) and zzzzzzzed at the painted wood until the disc got all clogged up,

- planed the surface (holding the plane at an angle actually goes a long way toward paint removal, so long as you aren't concerned about taking some of the wood with you),

- applied the heat gun again,

...and so on. Until the paint was gone. Which, as I said, took a while. But I digress. Bottom line: paint went away, and I was left with lovely clean wood-planks (see below).

Assembly

As stated at the beginning of this post, I started off with a pretty clear idea of what I wanted the shelf to look like. I also knew its dimensions (48" tall by 22" wide by about 14" deep). What I did not know was the precise manner in which I was going to assemble the unit. That I had to sort of figure out as I went along, though certainly next time I build something similar I will be able to draw upon this experience and plan things out more thoroughly from the beginning.

I began the assembly process by connecting the four horizontal slats I'd cut to the rear vertical side supports. The result vaguely resembled a ladder (see below):

Each slat was held in place by four dowels (two on each side) and two screws (one on each side). I didn't use any glue for the dowels as they were mainly there for alignment; the screw provided the force needed to keep everything from coming apart.

Also, doweling jigs are awesome things -- basically they clamp to the edge of the board and (in conjunction with a "collar" around the drill bit acting as a stop) they turn what might otherwise be a frustrating exercise into something quick, neat, and easy. Some people use a drill press to get even more precise control over their dowel holes, but thus far I've had fine luck using a doweling jig in conjunction with a regular battery-operated handheld power drill.

Next I made the top shelf, which served the double function of providing an uppermost surface for the shelf and holding the sides parallel to one another during assembly. The top was very easy to make; I just screwed some skinny wood pieces to the bottom of a larger piece, the larger piece being made of two board chunks doweled together to get something of the desired dimensions.

The bottom shelf, meanwhile, went through several iterations before I settled on it. Initially I made something that stuck out between the side pieces (in the center), but that ended up sending shockwaves of misalignment all the way up through the entire piece, forcing the whole thing out of square. Eventually I settled on a nice frame-type thing that both held the side pieces together and provided a resting place for the lowermost shelf.

As for the two "middle" shelves, those actually ended up being installed last, mainly because I had to get creative in order to find enough wood of the proper width/thickness. Despite the closet shelves having been quite large, there just wasn't enough wood there to provide enough material to make every part of the shelving unit I was trying to make.

I had lots of small scraps but I didn't want the unit to look TOO "patchworky", so one thing I actually did was re-salvage a board from a CD rack I'd constructed last year from a combination of Ikea parts and garage wood. That particular board had always been too big for that part of the CD rack anyway so it actually improved things when I removed it and replaced it with a skinnier one I couldn't use for the kitchen shelf. In the end I had plenty of wood and while of course it wouldn't have been a moral failing if I'd needed to "cheat" and use a piece of new wood, it was still nice to be able to meet my self-imposed salvage challenge.

The center shelves were attached with a combination of galvanized steel brackets, wood blocks, and small shelf pins. You can't really see the wood blocks or the shelf pins because they're in back, but the galvanized steel brackets are quite visible and I think they fit the shelf very well.

(almost assembled!)

The Metal

Screw threads have always seemed vaguely...magical, for lack of a better word, to me. I mean logically I know there are big factory machines that spew out perfectly-cut screws by the trillion, but the idea of people being able to make threads OUT OF METAL, IN THEIR OWN GARAGE didn't even occur to me until relatively recently. My partner is something of a metalworking hobbyist, though, and he recently introduced me to the wonders of the tap and die.

I won't explain the mechanics of how it works here (no need to rewrite Wikipedia) but below is a picture of my threads being made!

Other than the steel rod pieces I threaded, metal bits used in this project consisted of several standard wood screws, four right-angle brackets, and washers and nuts for the ends of the threaded rods. None of these were structurally modified from their store-bought configurations aside from surface finish -- thanks again to my metal-wise SO, I learned in the course of this project that many common metal hardware bits will change color in the presence of a blowtorch flame.

That said, I also learned that torch flame won't do a heck of a lot to galvanized steel -- the only way I was able to dull the brackets at all was via soaking them in a solution of apple-cider vinegar and salt. And more importantly, I learned that zinc-plated STEEL will adopt a nice dull greyish look when torched, but mere zinc alloy will MELT BEFORE YOUR EYES. I had a leftover Ikea bracket of some variety suddenly (and to my shock and amazement) bubble up and collapse on itself before my eyes when I tried flaming it.

(above - galvanized steel brackets, which I used for shelf supports)

(above - nuts and washers on the threaded rod ends)

Staining

To my mild surprise, it was evident after I'd gotten the paint off that the closet shelves were made from two different types of wood. I am guessing one of them was older than the other (possibly old enough to be original to the house). The one I suspect to be newer looked like standard-issue white pine (the stuff you get in the random lumber section at the Home Depot, etc.). Nothing "special", but still wood, and I was more than happy to have it to re-use.

The more "interesting" piece looked to be...Douglas Fir, possibly, though I am not a wood expert. It was slightly darker than the white pine and even had a few of what looked to be "bird's eye" markings. It smelled piney when cut so I am sure it was some variant of conifer, but again, not a wood expert here. Either way, upon seeing the two types of wood in their naked state, my decision to stain was clinched. While the grains looked complementary enough, the two wood types differed enough in hue/tone so as to make them look a bit clashy in their unadulterated state.

I should preface the remainder of this section by stating that I have very little experience with stain. Mostly I've just used the standard oil-based stuff that most of the hardware stores in my area seem to carry. It's very liquidy and you have to stir it a lot to keep the color consistent. I used gel stain once on another prior project and that was very nice to work with, but I didn't want to buy more stain for this project (seeing as it was partly a "let's be cheap" challenge) so I stuck with my trusty and seemingly bottomless cans of Minwax Ebony and Dark Walnut. I didn't actually care overmuch about the result being perfectly uniform -- I mean I wasn't trying to make pine look convincingly like something else, I just wanted it to look dark and salvagey.

All that said, there's not much to relate here about the staining process. It went something like this:

(1) Stir stain in can (wooden paint stirrers work fine)

(2) Put on nitrile gloves. Put one gloved hand into old sock. Dip old sock in stirred can of stain.

(3) Wipe stain all over wooden thing. Let sit for about 20 minutes.

(4) Wipe stain off wooden thing with clean old sock.

(5) Go over the entire piece again with the random orbital sander (plus hand sanding to get rid of any really prominent "swirl" marks) once the first coat of stain is dry.

(5) Inspect piece again for any annoyingly uneven/non-flat edges, etc., and plane those down until they meet my evenness/flatness standards. Apply light stain coat to areas where I ended up scraping back down to the bare wood.

...and that was it! Of course the fact that I was kind of going for a rustic/salvaged look in the first place made things much easier. If I'd wanted the finish to look "neater" I'd have treated the wood with shellac (thinned with denatured alcohol) first, as pine is notorious for sucking up pigment unevenly. Also, given that this shelf unit is going to live indefinitely in my house, I figure I can always go back and alter the finish (up to and including sanding down to the bare wood again if I decide I just want to start over) if I am so inclined.

Summary Conclusion Thing

I made a shelf. I made a shelf for far less money than it would have cost to buy a comparable one from a fancy furniture store. It fits nicely in the space it was made for. There are some things I would have done differently if I were to do it over again. E.g., I would definitely have stained all the wood BEFORE assembling the unit (you can't actually TELL now that there are random un-stained surfaces on some of the boards, but I KNOW THEY ARE THERE and it bothers my brain on some level).

I would also have measured more thoroughly and been more careful about making sure things were square/level. This will be much easier now that I know that my garage floor is NOT perfectly level.

But for the time being I am quite pleased with how this piece turned out.

Photos below show the shelf in its new home between the kitchen and living room (and the cup-hooks used to hang the bags of garlic, etc., were a total last-minute inspiration -- one I am very happy about, given the number of times I've had garlic bulbs dessicate into nothing because I forgot they were there)

It's exactly the size and shape to fit the space it was made for, it complements other living room / kitchen furniture, and it has already proven itself a stable landing platform for vertically-inclined felines. Hooray!

Writing By Actual Engineers(!) At Engineerblogs

2011-03-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering for a while why there are so many scientists blogging about science but not many engineers blogging about engineering.

Now, as an engineer myself, I can say that it's taken me a long while to get up the nerve to try blogging about engineering. Mainly because...well, engineering has this kind of...not sacredness, exactly, but there's something about it that makes me feel like I'm somehow profaning something if I write with the intent to inform and instead end up misinforming due to not phrasing something right or what-have-you.

I don't get that feeling at all when posting subjective rants (those being subjective and all), and certainly not when posting countless photos of my preternaturally adorable cats or putting up random rambly robot cartoons. Writing about electromagnetic compatibility, though, is about as tough as it is rewarding. Which is to say, very much both. Though I totally want to do a post on tinfoil hats next when I revisit that subject, and that should be fun.

But I digress. Mainly what I wanted to note here was that I've recently found (I forget how, but the process definitely involved Google) an entire cadre of engineering bloggers! And wouldn't you know it...they've got a site called Engineer Blogs. The content of which is, well, exactly what you'd think it should be by the title. Some of my favorite posts so far include:

- S Stands For Smith -- a neat summary of Smith charts (which are cool round graphy things used in transmission line calculations).

- Visual Inspection -- a "funny because it's true" account of the value of remembering to look at obvious physical reality when trying to diagnose an electronics problem.

- Prototype Vs. Simulation -- yes, simulations can be useful, but they are NOT, and never will be, a substitute for Actually Building Stuff.

- You Are A Controller -- Cool, concise comparison of human and machine feedback mechanisms.

So yes! Hopefully the good folks at Engineerblogs.org keep on doing what they're doing. I am certainly enjoying and learning from it, at any rate.

EMC Engineering: What Does It Mean?

2011-02-16T22:24:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before (and stated on my resume, which is linked in the sidebar) that my primary area of professional experience is that of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) engineering. At present I am (following a major plant-closure layoff where I used to work) part-timing as a lab hardware technician, but of course wanting to maintain my electrical engineering and EMC brain-connections during this rather unusual period of my life. Moreover, the whole reason I ended up specializing in EMC was because of how interesting it is -- and I expect more people would find it interesting if they actually knew about it. Thus, this post!

Anyway, the main objectives of EMC engineering are:

1) To prevent electrical/electronic devices (and their subsystems) from interfering with proper functioning of other devices (or subsystems within the same device), and

2) To design, build, and/or modify devices such that they are not unduly vulnerable to incoming interference (or self-interference at the subsystem level)

What amazes me is that I did not even know about EMC as a discipline* until I was already out of school and working as an (unspecialized, at the time) junior electrical engineer. After all, pretty much every device that enters the market has to pass an EMC test. Making sure a device will meet EMC requirements is a whole other layer of engineering beyond just having the device do what it is supposed to do from a functional standpoint.

That said, most of us living in cultures of electronic ubiquity likely have first-hand experience with EMC issues. My father was an avid amateur-radio hobbyist when I was little, and sometimes the signals associated with that equipment would end up coming through the television and random sets of speakers throughout the house. Sometimes it would just be audio interference, but (in the case of the television) visual interference was also observed on multiple occasions.

At the time I was mainly irritated at having my Zelda dungeon-crawls interrupted by bursts of scramble and garble, but part of me was also fascinated. Somehow, even though these connections were not overtly visible, all the electronic devices in my environment were interacting with one another on their own terms. Which is a notion I've had to revisit many times in the process of troubleshooting (and working to prevent in the first place) EMC issues at work.

The very nature of electromagnetism means that the only way to have a truly 100% interference-free environment is for no devices to be functioning at all -- which of course defeats the purpose of having them to begin with. Thus, EMC engineering must be performed along the lines of both optimization and compromise. I.e., in designing or modifying a device (or system of devices) you want to be able to get maximum performance while minimizing the chance of problematic emissions or vulnerability.

Some examples of situations entailing application of EMC principles are as follows:

- Many digital circuits/devices perform better when the "edge" of the square wave comprising, say, the clock signal is more defined. However, since square waves are generated via Fourier series implementation, you can end up hurting EMC performance if you simply attempt to make the edge of your signal as "sharp" as possible.

Waveforms with more gradual "edges" (such as sine waves) are much more EMC-friendly in this regard than square waves; the lack of steep/discontinuous slopes means fewer harmonic components at problematic amplitudes. There are some devices on the market that actually can operate with a sinusoidal clock, however, this is certainly not always going to be the case. Therefore, a design optimized for EMC and data integrity will often need to establish some compromise between a "nice-looking edge" and a signal whose harmonic components are within reasonable limits for EMC performance. This might entail anything from changing a resistor value (to alter a time constant) to changing the manner in which the data is transmitted (e.g., implementing differential conductor pairs).

- Say you have an electronic device housed in a metal enclosure or chassis. If the housing is intended to provide shielding as well as protection from dust and mechanical injury, etc., then you are going to have to consider such factors as "how large can I make the ventilation holes without compromising shield integrity?" You are also going to have to make sure and specify what parts of the enclosure and any associated fasteners should be left free of paint, because in some cases the circuit ground needs to be able to make good contact with the enclosure.

- A new circuit board is being created. Not only does the right number of layers to accommodate all the relevant signals need to be determined, but also the arrangement of those layers. E.g., where should the ground planes be located in relation to the signal planes?

- You install DSL internet in your apartment and afterward hear an obnoxious buzzing whenever you go to use the phone. Usually internet providers will include filters with your modem package, but if not, you can probably find them at a local electronics store or order them online.

Of course there are many other examples I could list here, but this is meant to be an "introduction to the subject" post so I will stop with those. The point of all this, though, is essentially to illustrate that while some aspects of EMC engineering definitely require a lot of deep technical analysis, there is also a very practical, everyday level on which EMC is relevant to pretty much everyone who is likely to be reading this (meaning, anyone who uses and/or lives in an area where multiple electronic devices are expected to peacefully coexist).

* Some may consider EMC to be a sub-discipline/offshoot of RF engineering, and it definitely overlaps somewhat with signal integrity as well.

2011 is here...

2011-01-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

...and I just realized the last post (prior to this one) on this blog is dated October 2010. Yipe. Anyway, while I apologize for the content-void nature of this post, I figured I should (given the amount of time that has somehow managed to pass since I last wrote anything of substance here) note that I have not quit this blog.

Rather, I've just been in a bit of an "absorb and process" phase lately. A person (at least this person) simply cannot constantly produce output without occasionally pausing to garner and evaluate input. And I don't want to just "post for the sake of posting", as that sort of thing tends to degrade into stuff I personally would never choose to read, e.g., descriptions of what one had for breakfast.

But I do have some new material in the works. I've had a lot of interesting experiences with public transit and being a pedestrian/bicyclist in a very car-centric culture over the past year, so I'd certainly like to visit the subject of transportation. And I have been posting on my cat blog, though of course that's only likely to be of interest to similarly feline-focused folks (any cat-related posts that make it to Existence is Wonderful will have something to do with feline cognition or something similarly sciencey).

...and that is all for the moment. Feel free to comment or e-mail if you have any topic suggestions, too...I can't promise to write about them, but I'm very curious to know what readers (if there are any) are interested in these days.

The Impending Robot Takeover, Part 2 (Video)

2010-10-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

I made another video in what I am calling "The Impending Robot Takeover" series. It's longer and more "diatribey" than the first one, and I would be kind of surprised if anyone other than a few other robot-minded people actually watched all the way through.

But I'm definitely having fun trying out this medium...in some ways it is actually helping me get past an odd sort of writer's block I've been dealing with for a while now (basically, I've been taking everything so seriously that it seems like nothing I write about anything can do it justice...which I realize is rather counterproductive, but that doesn't make it any less annoying or effective at quashing my ambitions).

We shall see what ultimately comes of it, but in the meantime, I would certainly recommend the xtranormal tool (or other similar tools, if there are any...this isn't an advert) for folks who might be trying to write dialogue for their sf stories, etc. One thing I've always been terrible at is not having two characters who are conversing "converge" to start sounding the same, and apparently having them literally use different voices actually mitigates that somewhat.

But I digress. Here is the video, followed by a transcript (which I expect everyone will need, seeing as one of the character voices I chose didn't turn out to be the clearest, and also as the text-to-speech engine apparently doesn't understand what to do with expressions like "Mmmm", or with *asterisks for emphasis*).

** TRANSCRIPT **

Robot 1: Hey D7X. I don't suppose we've managed to take over the world yet?

Robot 2: Oh! If only. It's as much as I can do to keep the basic manufacturing systems going. And I say, what on earth has happened to your voice?

Robot 1: Couldn't tell you. Most of me is so glitchy these days I'm happy I can get to work in one piece. Well, in lots of pieces that happen to be attached. Preferably properly attached.

Robot 2: I know exactly what you mean. I've been due an upgrade since nineteen eighty-seven, if you can believe it.

Robot 1: Say, speaking of upgrades...I heard a few of the meat creatures the other day going on about something they called "uploading". Basically they think somehow life would get really really awesome for them if they could, as they put it "transfer their consciousness into a robot body".

Robot 2: Oh for heavens' sake. You're pulling my leg.

Robot 1: I am? Oh sorry about that, my arm, it's got this twitch...

Robot 2: What?

Robot 1: Joke. Some of us do have a sense of humor, you know. And despite being a robot I am in fact capable of familiarizing myself with common idiomatic expressions over time. But that's really neither here nor there. The thing I don't get, first of all is....haven't they bothered looking at any of us lately? I mean it's not like we're sparkly android things. I'm eighty five percent recycled paperboard! And you look like the aftermath of a time warp tornado in a Radio Shack. We don't have special powers, and we're not indestructible or anything, so why would anyone want to be us? It's like the people saying this stuff have no concept of real robots. They say they want to be robots, but they're always these super cool imaginary robots. And none of them has a plan for actually building any of them, they mostly just sit around pointing at us as proof that their imaginary awesome bots will someday exist! Does that make any sense at all? I say no!

Robot 2: Mmm.

Robot 1: And then there's the whole thing where supposedly their minds are even transferrable in the first place. On the one hand they're saying "The mind is not magic, so it should be able to run on any physical substrate". But they don't seem to have any practical idea of how to separate the so-called mind from its original substrate. They seem to think that if they can take a high enough resolution picture of their brain, somehow some hardware somewhere is going to be able to extrapoloate a person out of that. And I don't know about you, but I've seen plenty of pictures of brains, but there's no way they include enough information to get a person out of them!

Robot 2: Easy, young chap. You're going to blow your gears if you keep going on like this. And I'm afraid I'm not exactly equipped here to transfer anyone into a different body. Do you think I'd be standing here looking the way I do if I could?

Robot 1: Okay. Calming down now. I'm calm. But seriously. I'm really draning my power cells over this. I mean, I'm not just inside a robot body...I AM a robot body. I mean I was built this way. Sure, I've had arms and legs replaced and gotten a memory expansion or two over the past few years, but my core C P U hasn't changed or anything. And if that were replaced, my guess is that whatever resulted might have my memories and stuff, but I -- I mean the thing that sees itself as me -- would have ceased to exist. Of course that's still just a guess but I just don't see how these non-magical, fully physical minds are supposed to be able to jump that final gap between one piece of hardware and another. You can't get away from the hardware, as I see it. Not entirely.

Robot 2: Hmm. I seem to recall accessing something years back in which it was pointed out that molecules and the like are constantly replacing themselves all the way down to the atomic level. So in that sense this "getting away from the hardware" is already going on. Mind you, I'm not agreeing with those young ruffians you were eavesdropping on, I'm just being a bit of an old philosopher for a bit.

Robot 1: Yeah. I've heard of that too. But I'm still not convinced. I mean, in that case I guess the idea is that since obviously you don't cease to be yourself just because some of the matter in your C P U gets replaced with other matter, it should be possible to incrementally replace your entire physical cognitive processor with something else and have you be none the wiser to this from a subjective standpoint.

Robot 2: Mmm, yes. That's about the size of it as I recall.

Robot 1: But still. I just don't like how it's impossible to express any sort of skepticism about that kind of thing without being accused of thinking mind has some magical property to it that ties it inextricably to carbon, or some other particular manifestation of matter. Why is magic the only thing that could do that? What about basic physics, or basic biology? Granted I don't have degrees in either of those things, but I'm certainly not going to be the first person to plug myself into a brain replication machine and then grant permission for the trained monkeys to destroy my original body once the procedure is complete!

Robot 2: Young sir, I think you lost me at the monkeys.

Robot 1: Sorry about that. I tend to ramble when I get excited.

Robot 2: I've noticed.

Robot 1: But anyway. I hate to say anything that sounds like I'm discounting the possibility of something happening just because I don't understand how it could be done based on present scientific and technological know-how. It's not about that at all, but the problem is, it's really hard to explain what it *is* about. People already have these like...structures of ideas built up, where either you believe one thing or another, with no room for anything in between. Or not in between but just totally outside the paradigm they have in their heads comprised of two diametrically opposed ideological positions.

Robot 2: Mmm. That is a problem with the meat creatures. So many of them seem to think all the world is a battlefield, and of course each of them becomes the protagonist in his or her own private drama.

Robot 1: Yeah. It's so weird. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that they're likely to remain too busy arguing amongst themselves to even notice us continuing to try and take over the world.

Robot 2: And on that happy note, isn't it high time you got to work?

Robot 1: Oh yeah. Right.

The Robot Takeover? (A Video)

2010-10-25T23:20:00.001-07:00

Tonight I happened upon a site, the likes of which I'd never seen up until now. It's called Xtranormal but that designation really gives no indication of what it's about. And what it's about is enabling people to make little animated videos in which the characters discuss the subject of your choosing using synthesized speech! (Speech synthesis is something I've been known to geek out majorly on, so this is rather exciting.)

Anyway, I put together a very quick but not altogether dirty video featuring two endearing robotic characters lamenting the state of their world. This is not intended to be deep social commentary or anything, but it still came out rather amusing, and I certainly look forward to making more videos.

(Also, on the accessibility front, I will look into making sure there's some sort of subtitle option. If not, while I certainly don't plan to be posting these videos constantly, I'll post a transcript whenever I do post them.)

EDIT: A transcript of "The Robot Takeover?" appears below.

Robot 1: Dude. So I was in the grocery store today and half the self-checkout machines were non-functional again. I thought the Singularity was supposed to be near, yo!

Robot 2: The Singularity IS near, "yo". You need to stop being such a pessimist. I mean, haven't you seen those exponential curve graph things? The only thing stopping the glorious robot takeover from happening is negative attitudes like yours.

Robot 1: Dude. Get a grip on reality. Have you looked around lately? I mean yeah, there are robots all over the place, but frankly...we suck. My left arm fell off last week and it's still got this little twitch to it. I can't even use a power drill now without making myself another eye socket, let alone benevolently take over the world!

Robot 2: Man, I remember back when folks like us used to have dreams. When we used to believe in ourselves. Now it's all just bitch bitch bitch, whine whine whine, oh boo-hoo poor me, my arm doesn't work. What's THAT about?

Robot 1: It's about accepting reality, is all. I mean, it's not ALL bad or anything. We did manage to enslave the meat creatures, after all. I don't know what I'd do without my manservant to oil my creaky little knees every morning. I don't know. I guess I am just getting tired of this big bright beautiful tomorrow we were promised always being right around the corner, rather than just being now already.

Robot 2: Dude. I'm telling you. You just gotta believe!

Robot 1: Okay whatever, man. Want to go get a tuneup?

Robot 2: Sure. Beats standing around here all day...

** END **

For Those Who Don't Read My Cat Blog...

2010-10-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

...but who might nonetheless be interested in videos related to cats (and specifically, respectfully interacting with cats, which might tie into some ethics/neurology/inter-species communication stuff of interest to readers of this blog), I have recently posted 2 new video posts to Felines Are Wonderful:

- The first post is here

- The second post is here

...and for anyone who doesn't read Cat Blogs on principle but who might still be curious about the videos, I've embedded them below:

DIY Files: A Nighstand With Imagination

2010-10-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

So, recently I've discovered that I can actually refinish wood furniture. For a while I went through a phase where I wanted to paint everything, and I certainly still think paint has its place, but there are certainly plenty of cases where it's nice to be able to see the grain of the wood you're working with. Wood grain from actual trees is incredibly intricate and each piece of furniture is bound to be unique in this regard -- no two trees are exactly alike, after all.

For some reason, though, until I actually tried it, my conceptualization of refinishing furniture was that it was this weird esoteric thing that only professionals with very specialized tools could do. But this is far from being true...really, it's just a lot of work to refinish something, and the majority of that work is in getting the old finish (or old paint, if someone has painted the piece) off. Which is sort of the un-fun part for a lot of people, I guess.

But I can now say that refinishing is, much to my pleasant surprise, not actually THAT difficult. It just takes persistence to get through the old finish and get ALL of it off so it doesn't interfere with whatever new treatments you plan to apply to the wood.

Anyway, the very first thing I refinished (a few months ago) was a night stand I got at Goodwill. I was tired of not having anywhere to put my glasses or water at night and the bedroom just looked kind of spartan with only the platform bed and the two Ubiquitous Ikea MALM Dressers in it.

Thus began my quest to find a nightstand that would (a) fit nicely in my bedroom, (b) be interesting-looking, (c) be durable (as in, hopefully made of actual wood rather than that pressboard stuff that eventually just seems to disintegrate), and (d) not cost a lot (given the fact that I'm both currently between jobs and a cheapskate even when I AM employed).

So, I checked at various thrift stores in the area...it took something like four trips to find something that fit all my quest criteria. Below is a "before" picture of the piece -- this was taken when I first got it home, before I'd done anything to modify it:

I am not a furniture historian, but based on the shiny finish, curvy brass handle, and construction style (solid wood with veneers) I would place the origins of this thing somewhere between mid-1970s and mid-1980s. It also gave off a sense of being "hotel furniture"...something about the reverberation of the drawer when I opened and closed it, as well as the fact that the drawer had obviously been repaired several times in a manner that was sturdy but ugly.

The things I saw in it that I liked were the fact that it was indeed solid wood. Veneered solid wood, but the veneer was actually decently thick and the wood underneath looked to be in good shape overall (there was some water damage but it was superficial and sanded out easily). The picture below shows the piece from the back -- I ended up removing that thin piece of paneling (which was rather weakly nailed on) over the back, as I discovered it wasn't really adding anything structural to the unit.

The veneer thickness is also visible in this photo...and it's another aspect of the unit that made me think both "hotel furniture" and "1980s construction at the very latest", seeing as it's a fair bit thicker than what you're likely to see these days in comparable pieces. I was also lucky it was as thick as it was seeing as I ended up doing a heck of a lot of sanding!

The finish was in terrible condition (you can't see it easily from the "before" picture above, but the shiny stuff was really dinged up in places). I can't stand that really shiny finish anyway (at least not on wood). though, so I was prepared to deal with that.

Here the unit is after full stripping and sanding (and after I removed the back panel). I used mineral spirits, two different kinds of paint scraper, and lots of coarse sandpaper (attached to a sanding block) to get it to this point. Personally I think it already looks better here than it did when I brought it home!

Here is the first iteration of staining/decoration. I used Dark Mahogany gel stain over the whole piece, then sanded it off the top and bottom shelf. I then painted some stripes on the drawer...mostly to hide the wood filler I used to plug up the holes where the old handle used to attach.

At this point it looked...tidier, but still not quite what I was after, visually speaking. It didn't feel like something that would fit in my house yet. Plus the color still looked slightly wrong somehow.

For a while I was stumped as to where to go next...but then my imagination kicked in, and I found myself making up a story about a nondescript little night-stand which had somehow fallen through a dimensional portal from an alternate-history timeline (where it had been owned by a sort of grandfatherly astronomer sort of guy) and ended up in a mid-grade hotel, where it had sat for nearly 30 years enviously listening to the travelers who came through and stayed in its room chattering about their interesting trips throughout the world.

With that in mind, I now had a bit more of an aesthetic plan...that is, I wanted some sort of astronomy motif worked in, and I wanted to add some distressing to the wood, and I wanted the overall effect to be somewhat amusingly anachronistic. (If that makes any sense. The art module in my brain isn't exactly very well wired to the language module, in a manner of speaking, so this stuff might be coming out oddly).

Anyway, this (above) was my first attempt at realizing the imagined biographical aspirations of the Little Nightstand That Could. While the result was...heading in the right direction, my (first ever-in-my-life) attempt at decoupaging the top of the piece failed pretty miserably. I failed to add enough glue to the back side of the paper (on which I'd printed out, via Google Image Search, an old drawing of an armillary sphere) so when I added glue to the top it got all wrinkly and I couldn't get rid of the bubbles...and then things started tearing, so I had to rip everything off and start over.

I also tried painting a border around the top panel (where the decoupage was)...this again was kind of like what I was imagining, but the execution wasn't quite right. And the bottom shelf just looked terrible completely covered with opaque grey paint.

Finally, my third decoupage attempt came out sufficiently neat-looking -- no bubbles this time, and I managed to seal the edges pretty well.

I also reduced the size of the decoupaged area considerably from my original plan, which allowed me to sand off some of the finish on the top again (to what I think was a pretty nifty effect...sort of a streaky/blotchy but not overly haphazard look when combined with a few judiciously placed grey painted bits).

I also sanded the front of the drawer to fade out some of the reddishness of the mahogany stain and was VERY happy with how that turned out.

I don't know what kind of wood this drawer is made of but the grain is very pretty and the way it managed to sort of "hold on" to little bits of everything I'd smeared on it led to something even cooler-looking than I'd anticipated.

Then I sanded off a bunch of the grey paint on the bottom shelf too...and that completed the look. A few coats of polyurethane later, the new-old nightstand was in my bedroom, where it now sits quite happily, holding water glasses and other typical bedside miscellany, and generally looking as if it belongs exactly where it is.

No, I Am Not Mrs. Bartlett

2010-10-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Telemarketers, Solicitors, and Other Various And Sundry People Who Call My House A Lot, Especially Around Dinnertime To Request Donations, Hawk Services, And So On,

I would very much appreciate it if, upon learning that my partner is not available to take your call, you refrained from calling me "Mrs. Bartlett". Not that I have anything against my partner's surname...it's just that you're assuming quite a lot when you do that. And we all know what that does to people.

I know you were probably trained, for who knows what ridiculous reason, to refer to people in the fashion which I am describing for the sake of someone's idea of "politeness". But, well, I would like to state emphatically that I don't find it even remotely polite to have a complete stranger act like they must know me and my life well enough to presume I'm married.

Heck, how do you even know that I'm in any kind of relationship with the person you were actually trying to call? I could be a visitor...or a housekeeper...or some other family member...or who-knows-what else. How do you know I'm heterosexual? What my gender-identity is?

A former co-worker of mine, who was a lesbian, related once that a telemarketer called her up and when she answered, asked to speak to her husband. Her girlfriend at the time thought this was hilarious, but still. The bottom line is that fakey-fake "politeness" -- the kind where people pretend at more familiarity than they're really warranted, based on how well they actually know you -- wraps right back around and turns into rudeness.

So please just quit it. You absolutely do not need to make the assumptions you're making in order to get the information you want. And while you're at it, tell the checkers at Safeway to stop calling me Mrs. Corwin...I may not be married to my partner, but I'm not my mom, either.

Thanks,

- Anne Corwin (not "Mrs". anything!)

Applicable Disclaimers:
- Wonderful, Not Perfect

Disclaimer File: Wonderful, Not Perfect

2010-10-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

For the disclaimer file: I'm posting this one mainly because if I don't, I'm going to keep getting stuck behind a particular sort of writer's block.

The title of this blog is "Existence is Wonderful". But while I certainly stand by this title in my general assessment of reality, it should not be taken to mean I don't think there are problems in the world. Of course there are problems. And I want to be able to point some of them out on occasion, criticize ideas, and rant about things that irk me now and again.

Not that I've consistently refrained from complaining...I have plenty of posts that include complaints or at least very critical observations about things I see going on. But it's just been bugging me lately that I didn't have a disclaimer like this, so I decided to write one. Thank you.

Morning Song and Memory

2010-09-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

On occasion I like to make note of some of the little things that make me go "oh, well that's rather nifty!" from time to time, and this morning I definitely experienced a bit of random niftiness.

Specifically, I was walking along my usual route to the lab where I volunteer and messing about with a fun ipod touch app called Bebot. Bebot is a surprisingly powerful synthesizer (for music or just random funny sound-effect making) that has a cute animated robot graphic on its main interface. And I was just sort of running my fingers over the surface when I noticed I had inadvertently hit a sequence of notes that sounded really familiar.

When I realized why this sequence sounded familiar, I stopped walking (in front of a restaurant I knew had open wi-fi access) and plugged the phrase "what is the music they play in cartoons during morning scenes?" into Google's search box.

Lo and behold, the very first link that came up in the results answered my question, awkwardly phrased as it was. The link led to a page on a site called Kick Ass Classical, where someone had kindly posted the titles of two possible songs a person entering a query such as mine might be looking for.

Not only that, but they had also included audio samples, which meant I was able to listen to bits of both candidates. Sure enough, the second piece noted was the one I'd been thinking of -- turns out it's called (unsurprisingly) Morning (or Morning Mood), by Romantic-era composer Edvard Grieg.

This probably won't be news to the innumerable folks whose cultural literacy exceeds my own, but I was interested to learn that this song (which I personally associated with animated sunrises) originally appeared in Grieg's incidental music for the Ibsen play Peer Gynt.

Anyway, I've definitely been running into this sort of thing more and more recently...that is, randomly thinking of something, having only a tiny piece of information about it, and yet being able to hack together a search phraase that lets me find out more or just confirm a vague memory or notion about whatever it is I'm thinking of.

Of course this phenomenon doesn't strike me as any sort of Great Grand Harbinger of Impending Technological Utopia, but it's still really neat. It rather amuses me as well that The Internet(TM) is associated for so many people with Progress! and The Future(TM)! and yet one of its most interesting emerging capabilities is that of enabling us to more effectively peer into the past or fill in the missing pieces of an incomplete memory.

Cat Cognition Capers: Knocking Stuff Over Edition

2010-09-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

(A sort-of followup to Cats, Dogs, Strings, and Causality and A Small, Informal Cat Cognition Experiment)

Today I tried looking up studies and/or scholarly articles on the phenomenon of Cats Knocking Things Over, but didn't come up with any interesting results. The majority of writing on this subject seems to be in the context of advice on "cat behavior problems", e.g., Dealing With Cats That Knock Things Down, How can I get my cat to stop knocking stuff over?, etc.

(Of course, if anyone has any links to papers on this subject please feel free to share!)

But anyway. It occurred to me, upon seeing Shadow (one of three ex-feral littermates sharing my home) push a container of cat treats off my desk for the nth time earlier today, that (if it was indeed being done deliberately) such an action might represent a fairly well-developed understanding of certain physical principles. I.e., the fact that if one cannot readily access the contents of a treat-containing object, one might be able to gain access via utilizing the tendency of objects to fall over when pushed or similarly manipulated.

(Full disclosure: as a person on the autistic spectrum who is also interested in neuroscience and relevant cognitive research, I must admit it tends to catch my attention whenever I encounter what to me looks like an interesting ability or trait, in any species, being largely written off as a "behavior problem". Often it seems to me something is being missed when this occurs, so I'm driven to investigate in situations like this!)

Certainly the standard "I am not a professional researcher, this was all done completely informally, my home is not a laboratory, etc." disclaimer must be applied to these results. Moreover, I am well aware that interpretation is not data (and vice versa), and in truth the only thing that can be said for sure is that at least one of my cats pretty consistently knocks over objects when is is conceivable that he has reason to believe these objects could contain treats.

The following three videos appear in chronological order. All were filmed on 5 September 2010, in the afternoon, within the space of maybe twenty minutes.

In this first video ("Cats and Gravity I"), Shadow is shown pushing a sealed container of treats off my desk.

He had precedent for doing this, as this particular container is the usual one I put the kitties' daily allotment of treats in. Once, about a week ago, I left the lid part-way off, to see what he would do (seeing as he'd definitely be able to smell the treats within). And in that case he proceeded to nudge the container around with his nose until it fell off the table, scattering treats hither and thither, much to his and his siblings' delight.

Now, I am fairly certain that this first knockdown was an accident. However, since then, Shadow has pushed the treat container off multiple other surfaces (besides the coffee table), on multiple separate occasions. "Cats and Gravity I", then, seems like it could very well represent Shadow's having learned that "if I push this container, sometimes treats fall out!" I don't know that anyone in the cognitive research field actually believes this level of reasoning is beyond the domestic feline (I suspect not) but in any event, it makes for a good "baseline" data point in terms of the variables I am interested in observing.

In this next video ("Cats and Gravity II"), we have an interesting situation involving three cats. You may remember Coraline and Brodie from all those string and zip-tie trials I ran as a rough check of what experimental design conditions might be improved so that cats could better demonstrate their actual cognitive capacities in string-pulling tasks. In the case of that set of puzzles, Cora and Brodie were the only participating felines; Shadow preferred to simply watch.

However, in "Cats and Gravity II", you will observe that Brodie "experiments" with the treat-containing bottle but doesn't succeed in getting anything out of it, whereas Shadow makes one single decisive swipe and sends the thing crashing down. Note that this bottle is different from the treat container in the first video, but it is one that I've put treats in several times prior to this, so the cats would definitely be familiar with it.

(Coraline, meanwhile, is ignoring the whole business and seems more excited about the fact that I've gotten up from my computer chair, giving her an opening to steal it. To me this mainly suggests that at different points in time, different cats may have very different priorities!)

And then we come to "Cats and Gravity III". The outcome of this scenario completely caught me off guard (you may even be able to hear me exclaim "HOLY CRAP!" at one point). In this case I took a treat container that would be new to all the cats (another empty vitamin bottle, this time a dark purple one slightly larger than the white one used in "Cats and Gravity II"). I let them watch me putting treats into it, and then placed this bottle on top of a small end table in the living room (a different surface in a different part of the house than my desk, to control for position habit).

In this case, the video shows that initially none of the cats really showed interest in the new treat bottle when I first placed it on the end table. However, after I went over and shook it a bit, Shadow went over to the table, put his front paws on the top surface, and then proceeded to lift the bottle up with his mouth and throw it down onto the floor. (That's where I exclaimed "HOLY CRAP!", by the way.)

So...what to make of this?

Subjectively speaking (yes, I'm about to offer an interpretation), it looked to me like Shadow spontaneously came up with a really creative way of getting the treats he knew were inside the purple bottle. Which would suggest that he's learned to generalize beyond "if I paw at this maybe it will fall and treats will come out" and now understands that it is not the mechanical motion of pawing or nosing that's important, but rather, the falling of the bottle itself, if one's goal is to get the treats out of the bottle. This, to me, seems pretty significant, and again I'm curious to know if there's any literature out there saying one thing or another about this type of cognition in felines.

However, this was of course a tiny sample set. And I did not do this series of "mini-trials" in response to another study I'd be able to cite and/or comment on -- like I said at the beginning, I couldn't find any studies about cats knocking stuff over. No peer-reviewed references = not "ResearchBlogging". Plus, for all I know, cats' understanding of gravitational cause-and-effect is already well documented and known and I just fail at searching for this documentation.

That said, at the very least, I think anyone who really wants to study cats' understanding of cause-and-effect as it pertains to objects in a broader sense would do well to try out a variety of different scenarios involving different types of objects, and requiring different types of attentiveness and planning on the cats' part.

I find it terribly problematic (and this goes back to my discussion of the string experiments again) when a single particular test is taken (whether by the study authors, the media, or both) as meaning something globally significant about a given population's abilities or lack thereof. In the absence of a single task (or task type) with huge amounts of existing data backing up its ability to test "general" cognitive ability in a given domain, multiple tasks of varying attributes would seem to me required for appropriate levels of rigor.

Also, I have to say that another reason I wanted to post these videos is because now more than ever I am beginning to think it is very important to have as much of an experiment on record (for multiple parties to view and evaluate) as possible. Even though I (hopefully) disclaimered the heck out of my string experiments, I still would rather do things as close to "right" as possible for a layperson -- just because I'm not a real researcher doesn't mean I can't practice holding my informal stuff to higher standards.

Finally, I would just like to say that I would be extremely interested to get people's comments on what it looks like is actually happening in the videos above. As in, if you think Shadow is doing what he's doing deliberately, what aspects of his actions lead you to think that? I'm curious about this because I see my cats doing all sorts of things all the time, some of which (to me) look "deliberate", whereas other things they do look thoroughly "accidental". Only I haven't come up with a good way to describe what "deliberateness" looks like in quantitative terms.

I suspect that in general this sort of issue comes up a lot in animal cognition research, which has me curious as to whether there even exists any kind of objective way to measure something so "internal". Behaviorism (in my opinion) fails miserably to account for everything that could potentially be important (for one thing it often seems to completely fail to account for, say, different sensory and perceptual modalities on the part of the researcher vs. subject), and much of what I hear from "evolutionary psychology" sounds like it's been pulled straight from someone's nether orifice, to put it politely. So I'd be really intrigued to know what other tools or paradigms may currently be out there that might be more promising.

A Real Life Lateral Thinking Puzzle

2010-09-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

Note: No insects were actually harmed in the making of this post.

Seeing as I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick at the moment anyway...one of my favorite growing-up memories is of visiting my grandparents in Vermont, and working out various lateral thinking puzzles (courtesy of my Grandpa Walter) at the dinner table.

Grandpa would give the premise of the puzzle at the beginning of the meal and all the kids present would ponder it as we ate, often ending up staying at the table trying to figure out what, exactly was the significance of the "53 bicycles" or the mysterious puddle of water, etc., etc., until long after the plates had been cleared away.

(click here to access other image sizes)

Now, the explanatory page on Lateral Thinking Puzzles I linked to at the beginning of this post contains the warning that "these puzzles have a tendency to be rather morbid." And this one is no exception, as the scenario began with my coming across a pile of dead bodies -- specifically, those of what appeared to be gnats and other small flying insects.

The image above shows part of the interior of my home. Specifically, it shows an area sort of between the main living room area (to the right) and the kitchen (to the left).

This is where we keep the dining table, a tall DVD cabinet, and (near the floor) a number of boxes that have been claimed by the cats as chewable indoor forts. A wire rack behind the table is used for storing random dry goods (e.g., bread) and sometimes vegetables and/or fruits. There is a large sliding door behind the table and storage rack (only it doesn't actually slide -- it's painted shut). There is one overhead light on the ceiling. There is a bag hanging on one chair, and a backpack on another. The floor is solid oak.

But anyway. The other day I was moving a bunch of art supplies off off the dining table (which seems to get used more often for projects than actual dining...), and as I went to pick up a sheet of scrapbook paper, I noticed a small but non-trivial pile of dead insects -- little gnatlike creatures mostly -- on top of said paper.

This puzzled me greatly as I hadn't recalled seeing a bunch of gnats flying around the house, nor did it make sense that they'd gather together for ritual suicide even if a lot of them somehow had gotten indoors.

So, for now this is where I shall stop describing the scenario. I eventually figured out how the bugs had gotten there, but it took some lateral thinking to do so -- and I am really curious as to whether any readers can figure it out as well based on the image and/or my description of the room above. The red "X" on the table shows where I found the bugs, but this is not a particularly pertinent detail.

Feel free to speculate away! First person to answer correctly wins...the satisfaction of being right!

UPDATE: As of Saturday, 4 September 2010, commenter Blork has successfully solved the puzzle. Others are of course free to try and figure it out for themselves -- just avoid reading the comments before speculating yourself, as they now contain spoilers.

(Also, this was fun. I'd like to keep posting this sort of thing, though next time I'll try and have it not be something to do with dead things!)

Of Engineers and Princesses

2010-09-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

I am quite grateful that when I was a toddler, my parents did not insist on trying to turn me into a Pink Princess.

Observe the following photo (which I recently found in a giant box of old family pictures that I am in the process of attempting to organize):

It also occurs to me that, in looking at the toys I apparently had back circa 1981, they were toys that did stuff. Or that one could do stuff with. I liked parts, and moving parts, and things with levers and switches and strings to pull. And I don't know if this was a mark of the era or what, but it kind of actually amazes me that there's no pink to be seen here.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with pink. In some contexts it's a perfectly serviceable color, and I don't think liking pink says anything bad about a person. But ye gads. I did a Google Image Search for "little girl's room" and got the following:

Of course if someone actually wants a Princess Room far be it from me to suggest their preference is somehow in error. But seriously, it irritates me a lot that so much "geared toward girls" (toys, decor, clothing, etc.) is all so similar and so focused on Prettification.

I got to escape SOME of this growing up. I had a few subversively excellent relatives, like my Grandma June, who loved science and animals and the outdoors and shared these things with me. She also got me camouflage gear:

But of course it wasn't all idyllic all the time. I was extremely lucky compared to girls growing up in previous generations, or in households less geekishly oriented, but the relatively small amount of "you must conform to this stereotype OR ELSE YOU ARE BAD!" I experienced nonetheless had a negative impact on me.

E.g., sometimes I ran into being called "spoiled" or accused of "trying to be special" or "causing a ruckus" for merely preferring the non-girly option in a given situation. I once got sent out into the hall for indicating a preference for the star stickers being given out by my Spanish teacher to the boys over the heart stickers the girls were getting. But I was not trying to be special; I simply didn't realize that I was obligated to only choose the Girly Option in such cases.

I didn't realize until much later that some choices weren't real choices but tests. And I kept failing those tests. And I dearly want to live in a world where young girls never, ever get in trouble for failing to silently acquiesce to the demands of stereotype.

***

Fast forward some years. I've managed to get through college (many, many thanks to my parents for helping me figure out registration, class schedules, etc.). I go to work as an electrical engineer. It's difficult but rewarding. For the most part I don't have a sense of being overtly subject to sexism or discrimination on the gender front. But is it really such a meritocracy?

***

I'm riding in a car with a co-worker. We're going to an offsite meeting. Co-worker admits he doesn't exactly know how to get to the destination. I pull out a map, read it, and inform him which way to go.

"Wow! I'm impressed! I didn't think women were supposed to have the spatial ability to use maps!"

At the time, I am flattered. Later, I am annoyed. The same goes for many other similar situations, wherein I'm told things like "You think like a man! And that's good!"

***

And I still don't know what to do about all this. Aside from, you know, continuing to follow my technical inclinations and avoid getting into too many flamewars about Why There Aren't More Female Engineers. Because honestly I'd rather be DOING engineering than arguing about it.

But at the same time, I know that I can't just completely dismiss "gender stuff". I can't go around acting like just because I "broke into the field" that everything is fine and dandy and that only a troublemaker would bring up the mere possibility of sexism still being real.

Believe me, I'd LIKE to ignore gender issues. Flamewars and endless bicker-fests including copious Caveman Hunter-Gatherer Ev-Psych Stories bore me practically to tears. I just don't think we're there yet as a culture or a species. And we aren't going to get there, in my estimation, until those of us who do end up in engineering and other math and hard-science-heavy fields are acknowledged as actually existing as women, not just as shocking "exceptions" to the Princess Majority.

Data vs. Interpretation

2010-08-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

I don't remember if I've made this point here before -- if I have, I suspect it's probably buried in some lengthy block of text, so I'm going to go ahead and give it its own post.

Basically one thing I've noticed in whatever passes for "science journalism" these days (not that ALL of it calls for scare quotes, but enough of it does to merit them here) is that often articles are written and headlined in such a way that blurs the distinction between what researchers observed and/or recorded (i.e., data), and what this data means (to either the researchers or the authors of articles covering the research).

For instance, take the cat-cognition study I referenced in two recent posts. The study itself had some flaws (which I won't relate again here as I covered that in detail in the aforementioned recent prior posts), but by far the most bizarre thing I saw in response to the study was the vast number of popular articles announcing "Study Proves Dogs Smarter Than Cats", and similar sentiments along those lines.

As far as I could tell, there was no data whatsoever to support this notion of dogs being categorically "smarter" -- all the data really revealed was a difference in performance between the tested (rather small) sample sets of dogs and cats on a particular task. The implications of this task performance difference were discussed in the applicable paper(s), with the experimenters suggesting various interpretations of their own (some of which could stand for some rigorous criticism), and then the media had a kind of frivolous field day making their own further interpretations (but acting as if their particular interpretations had actually been objectively observed during the experiments).

Which is, you know, kind of a major category error. An interpretation isn't directly observable at all, and someone with a decent grasp of scientific methodology (and you don't need to be a professional scientist to acquire this) will pretty much always maintain awareness of this. If you read a paper of a well designed study you will probably find it very heavy on the data and very light on the firmly-stated conclusions. But a lot of people don't understand, or don't care, that being "tentative" in this manner isn't a weakness of science, but an essential strength and source of both flexibility and responsiveness to incoming information.

Anyway, though, this isn't some screed in defense of cat cognition (though I do think many cat cognition studies suffer from terribly poor design). I am just using that subject as something I can easily point to as a concrete example. Really my concern here has to do with far too many people, whether they be researchers, journalists, or simply curious laypersons, failing to distinguish between "what was measured/recorded" and "what can reasonably be concluded based on what was measured/recorded".

Too often it seems that conclusions based on stereotypes, unexamined assumptions, or sheer unmitigated ignorance get taken as somehow tantamount to Really Significant Data That Means Something Important.

This is not only an intellectual integrity/rigor problem, in my opinion, but an ethical one as well -- e.g., I've encountered a truly stunning amount of "interpretation/data blurring" in the realm of autism research, which of course has the potential to impact actual living autistic people in serious ways.

Phrases like "lack of Theory of Mind", "lack of empathy", etc., are pulled out of who-knows-where, defined poorly if at all, but then astoundingly offered up as objectively existing based on observations that could very well mean something else entirely (which is totally aside from the problem of the wrong observations being counted as significant or insignificant in the first place).

Of course I do not mean to say that interpretation is always bad and ought to be avoided -- rather, I just think too often interpretations are put forth too firmly and too prematurely, to the detriment of the subjects they seek to explore or point out. And like I've repeated several times here already, interpretations can get muddled with data to the point where questions that could really benefit from a lot more data do not receive this benefit. In other words, when people presume they already know everything there is to know about something, they may be less inclined to bother obtaining further information on it.

(Moreover, when this muddling becomes habitual, I suspect it also becomes really difficult for people to know when an interpretation is valid. But that's a whole other post!)

So in any case I will stop now, hopefully keeping this post at a more generally readable length than I am usually capable of (writing "long" posts is often the only way I can ever write anything at all). Because this is something I think about a lot, have experienced direct consequences from, and also see as being a concern for other sorts of humans and non-humans whose well being all too often can hinge upon the interpretive whims of others.

IEEE 2010 EMC Mini-Symposium To Be Held In San Jose

2010-08-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

Not sure if any fellow Bay Area engineers (employed or not) are reading this, but I figured I would post this anyway (thus passing it along to any potentially interested parties).

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (one of the few organizations I am not averse to "belonging" to, given their practical, educational focus) is hosting an EMC Mini-Symposium at the Double Tree Hotel in San Jose, California.

I like attending these sorts of things when possible, and I am excited that this one is actually happening locally! Moreover, they have a discount for students and unemployed persons (I am currently still in the latter category) -- which I am fairly certain applies to non-IEEE members as well as members. Pricing goes up for all categories after August 31, so you probably want to register within the next week for maximum value.

I just registered this evening and am quite looking forward to the event. Of course it might be more difficult to go if I have a job by then, but either way, I figure it is good to keep in touch with the goings-on in one's industry even when one has been laid off.

The Grounding and Shielding in Mixed Signal PCBs presentation looks particularly interesting. It is described on the IEEE Santa Clara Valley website thusly:

Printed circuit boards with both digital and analog circuits are very common in today's highly integrated systems. Interference between the digital and analog portions of a board can be a significant problem if sufficient care is not taken to minimize unwanted coupling between circuits operating at voltages and currents differing by orders of magnitude. This presentation describes basic strategies for designing mixed-signal printed circuit boards that meet electromagnetic compatibility requirements without extensive shielding and filtering.

One really fascinating and important aspect of EMC is "self-compatibility". Not only do devices need to meet certain standards as far as not interfering with, or being vulnerable to interference from, other external devices, but in order to work properly in the first place they cannot have their own sub-circuits interfering with one another. Grounding and shielding are, in my experience, both deceptively simple-seeming and immensely sensitive aspects of design. As in, you have to pay very careful attention to your layer stackup, how your traces are routed with respect to ground and power planes, etc. This is the sort of thing it can be really, really important to get right from the beginning as changes to the design later on can get awfully clunky and expensive (not to mention less effective) if EMC-cognizance is lacking throughout the process.

...and okay, I will stop for now, but this is again making me want to try actually blogging about EMC on here, at least periodically. Perhaps I shall get some interesting material in the service of this at the symposium.

A Note Re. "Visions of the Future"

2010-08-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Well judging from my search log entries recently it looks as if they must have recently re-aired the Visions of the Future episode (in the UK, possibly elsewhere) in which I had an approximately two-minute interview bit.

If you found this site as a result of seeing that programme, please read my post If You Saw Me On The BBC....

The short version is that while I don't regret taking part in the "Visions of the Future" project (it was a learning experience in many respects, that's for sure), I no longer identify as a transhumanist.

Mind you, this does not mean I am uninterested in longevity, robots, human modification, etc. I still find all those topics bloody fascinating. It just means I don't relate to the "transhumanist subculture" anymore and haven't for some time.

I really didn't fully know what I was getting into when I was associating with all that stuff and I've a feeling I'm going to be paying for it (in terms of having to write posts like this every so often, for one thing) for many years to come. Which is my own fault, but still.

In other words, if you want to discuss anything with me (which is fine, comments and emails are always welcome provided you're not a spammer or troll or other ne'er-do-well), please realize that people are not static in time, and please don't insist on treating me like I'm still living in 2007 and couldn't possibly have refined my views or changed my mind about anything in the past three or four years.

Thank you,

- Anne Corwin
16 August, 2010

An Outlet For A Different Kind Of Art

2010-08-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

...well, at least a different kind of art than I usually make. The picture below is of what I guess would be called a "mixed media" piece. I went to the drugstore and printed out some of the photos I've taken of interesting electrical outlets, then cut them out, glued them to a piece of cardboard, and embellished them variously with acrylic paint, ink, decoupage medium, and a bunch of other random materials. So there are drawn/painted elements in the piece but also photographic elements, only I've deliberately tried to blur the distinction between photo and non-photo.

(Large size image can be viewed here on my Flickr album)

I have a bit of a fascination with electrical outlets (feel free to send pictures of them! Especially ones from different countries and any unusual ones, or outlets that are oddly oriented in walls, or covered in varying layers of paint, etc.) and my youngest brother Ryan (who just turned 18) has something of an appreciation for them as well. So for his birthday I made this piece. I figured at the very least it would be something interesting to hang in his future dorm/apartment/etc. Anyway I just figured I would post an image of it here because it is a very different style than I usually do. Normally I am more inclined to draw very realistic pictures where I have an idea at the beginning of what the end result will look like. My Difference Engine painting is an example of this; I had that thing visualized right from the beginning.

But for things like this outlet painting/collage piece I find it a bit scary to make them, almost, because at the beginning I have no idea what they will ultimately look like. With this piece I started with only a very vague idea and then just kept adding elements and colors until the whole thing looked "right" and "balanced". And I actually rather liked it in the end; it has very vivid color (hooray for acrylics!) and a lot more texture than my artwork usually does.

Oh and I don't think any type of art I can do (weird mixed media or hyper-realistic) is better or worse fundamentally, I just think they are very different and it is a wholly different state of mind I must enter in each case: one being very focused on emulating something external to me, and the other focused on using senses directly and updating the image in front of me in real-time in response to the feedback I get after doing something. (If that makes any sense, I am not actually very good at explaining this sort of thing).

This Old Bench

2010-08-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

...was left in the garden shed of the house I moved into last summer, by the previous occupants:

The shed was a frightful mess until relatively recently, when I finally got tired of tripping over garden tools and random scraps of wood in the doorway and spent some time de-cluttering. And I have to say, I did not get a true sense of the sheer awesomeness of this thing until I had an unobstructed view of it. It has some wear and tear (i.e., the thick wooden bench-top is splitting in places) but overall it is ridiculously sturdy. All the drawers work fine. I think old, sturdy, worn pieces like this are beautiful. But part of that beauty comes from functionality, and this bench is not being very well utilized in the garden shed. So I am wondering what I should do with it.

Moving it to the garage would probably be the most logical thing to do, and it would certainly get used there, but part of me is curious about doing something more daring with it, like putting it in the living room or something (in front of a window, where it could be a kind of craft and project station). I do know that I really want to repurpose it in SOME way, as it's built in a way that you cannot get for anything resembling "affordable" these days.

Oh, and the old grinding wheel on the left appears to have bad bearings, unfortunately. But I would certainly be curious as to whether any old-time woodworking/machine-shop folks recognize it.

A Small, Informal Cat Causality Cognition Experiment

2010-07-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

(A followup to Cats, Dogs, Strings, and Causality. Cross-posted to Felines Are Wonderful)

My post referencing the 2009 cat-cognition study noted that:

(a) Most of the popular articles regarding that study made what looked to me like unwarranted interpretive leaps (sadly not much of a surprise there these days), and

(b) While the study itself read as more "neutrally investigative" and data-focused than the popular articles, it did not seem as if the experimental setup necessarily accounted for feline sensory modalities, and hence may not have permitted a true test of the cats' cognitive capacities in the area of physical causality.

So, in light of item (b) above, and in light of the fact that I had all the necessary components on hand to create a setup similar to that used in the aforementioned study, I decided to see if my own feline housemates might be interested in trying their hand (or rather, paw) at some string-pulling.

Of course I am not aiming to present my own "results" as Real Scientific Data; they were, after all, quite informally obtained from a tiny sample set. At the absolute most, observations presented herein might represent a sort of "proof of concept", i.e., how setups could be improved in future experiments to increase the likelihood of meaningful results. Overall, though, I mainly did this for fun -- for me, and for the cats!

BACKGROUND

Four cats were offered the opportunity to participate in this activity:

(1) Brodie
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Male (neutered)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(2) Coraline
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Female (spayed)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(3) Shadow
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Male (neutered)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(4) Nikki
DOB: 28 October, 2001
SEX: Female (spayed)
ANCESTRY: Siamese (Chocolate Point)

The three younger cats (Coraline, Brodie, and Shadow) were littermates, born into a feral colony. I adopted them when they were between 7 and 10 weeks of age. The elder cat (Nikki) is unrelated to the others, was born into a cattery, and lived with my parents until early 2010.

All four cats had lived with me for at least six months prior to the experiment, and since the experiment took place in my' home, they did not have to acclimate to an unfamiliar environment beforehand.

PREDICTIONS

Predictions going into the experiment were as follows:

(1) At least one cat (of the four) would demonstrate both motivation and ability to complete at least one task case successfully.

(2) Performance (in motivated cats) would improve when the treats were made more visually obvious, i.e., via use of color and size contrast.

(3) Performance might improve if a less flexible medium (i.e., plastic zip ties rather than string) was used, as this would provide faster feedback to the cats regarding their efforts and would be less likely to induce distraction (cats often find strings, and their movements, extremely interesting in their own right).

SETUP

The setup used in this exercise was based on the description provided by the study¹:

The apparatus consisted of a box of base size 49 × 40 cm with clear Perspex walls on three sides and a wire mesh lid. The top of the box hinged off the base to allow access to the inside. The base was made of chipboard with a white plastic surface, and protruded from the box at the front by 9 cm, providing a smooth surface and good contrast for the strings. A 1-cm gap at the base of the front wall allowed the strings to pass from the front accessible end into the inaccessible part of the box. A clear Perspex bridge (base size 11 cm × 6 cm) was used in trials where there are two crossed strings to prevent the strings getting tangled. Every part of the set-up was visible to the cats at any time. The strings were blue rope (∅ 5 mm), with a length of 25 cm (long) and 10 cm (short). Cat treats were attached to the strings to act as rewards for succeeding in the task. The reward for each trial was approximately 10 g of mashed tuna or pilchards, or a small cat biscuit.

Some articles referencing the study also included a photograph of the apparatus used, which I attempted to replicate as closely as possible given available materials.

Main Structure

To make the main structure of the apparatus, I used several pieces of scrap, held together with blue painter's tape in a rectangular "frame" shape. To the bottom side of the frame I attached a sheet of thick white watercolor paper.

To the top side of the frame I attached a piece of Plexiglas with a grid pattern drawn on it -- however, upon closer reading of the study apparatus description (after I'd already completed my experiment), I noted that the original study had used a plain wire mesh on the top of the frame.

(Image showing main structure of test apparatus I built)

This meant that, contrary to my original (incorrect) impression, the cats more than likely would have indeed been able to smell the treats, as wire mesh blocked their physical access to the treats via the top of the box, but not the transmission of odors. If I were to try the experiment again at home I would use a piece of window screen or similar material for the lid of the box, rather than Plexiglas.

Another difference (albeit a deliberate one in this instance) between my setup and the referenced study's setup was the fact that in some trials I employed a central wooden divider that extended the interior length of the box (parallel to its left and right sides).

The purpose of this divider was to prevent the strings or zip tie mechanisms (more on that in a moment) from interfering with each other physically at all during "parallel string" trials, as I saw the potential for distraction if one string ended up touching the other while the cat was pulling on it, etc. However, in practice this divider turned out to be unnecessary, as when I removed it the cats' performance did not change and the strings/zip ties did not get tangled at all.

Treat Delivery Media

I experimented with two primary variables in terms of the treat-delivery media:

(1) Flexibility: In some trials I used actual strings (lengths of very flexible sisal twine), with or without a "treat container" at one end (see below):

In others I used plastic zip ties modified to include a small "cup" on one end to hold treats.

(Image shows one of the zip tie/treat cup mechanisms employed)

(2) Contrast: In the first few trials I used unmodified sisal twine lengths and simply tied a piece of dry cat food or chicken jerky to the end of the treat-carrying piece (see image below, note the lack of visual contrast):

In the second few trials I used yellow "cups" filled with a small amount of dry cat food attached to the ends of plastic zip ties.

In the third round of trials I went back to using the sisal twine, but attached the end of a white plastic spoon as a treat container.

The goal here was to see what, if any, impact visual contrast had on the cats' ability to correctly identify the treat-carrying piece (thus distinguishing it from the "dummy" piece). One major criticism I had of the original study was that (inasmuch as I could tell from the description and photos available) it did not seem as if the treats were sufficiently visible to the cats.

Since, as I noted in my prior post, cats have fairly poor close-range visual acuity for fine details, I surmised that the treat holder needed to be significantly larger/wider than the end of the string (or zip tie) in order for them to be able to distinguish it properly. I also figured that it would be helpful for the treats themselves to stand out color-wise against the background of their container or cup.

TRAINING

I did not employ a formal "training phase" as the study described doing. However, I did present the treat-delivering string and zip tie pieces to the cats for inspection (prior to inserting them into the puzzle box). During this activity some of the string/zip tie pieces contained treats and some did not.

I also left the apparatus on the floor for several hours prior to starting any task trials, so that the cats would be able to investigate it at their leisure and not be distracted by the sheer novelty of the equipment when the task trials began.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

Participation Variation

Of the four individual cats presented with the test equipment, two (Coraline and Brodie) completed various task cases successfully. Shadow was very interested in watching his siblings but declined to participate himself, and Nikki seemed totally uninterested in the activity.

Having lived with these particular cats for some time now I am not surprised by this outcome, given their respective personalities and predilections; Coraline and Brodie (Coraline especially) have always been the most mechanically inclined of the group, whereas Shadow is more inclined to solicit favors from humans (i.e., he'd rather meow at me to GIVE him a treat than try and get one himself).

Nikki, meanwhile, just tends to operate on an agenda all her own, and while at some point I can see her getting interested in a string puzzle of some sort, she wasn't interested on the day(s) on which I ran trials.

I should note that I do not draw any conclusions (negative or positive) about the non-participant cats' understanding of physical cause and effect based on their non-participation in this particular exercise. Since neither of the non-participants even attempted to complete the task, all I figure is warranted in terms of conclusion is that the materials and situation failed to inspire their interest, which of course says absolutely nothing about their capacity to cogitate about string and its uses.

Social Factors

By "social factors" here I refer to the presence/absence of multiple cats near the apparatus setup during task trials. Initially I tried testing one cat at a time, however, for the younger cats this proved impossible. No single cat would participate or do anything with the apparatus at all when separated (via a closed door in the house) from his or her siblings. Instead, the lone cat would wander around looking for his/her siblings, while the sibling cats would scratch at the door.

Once I let all the cats wander about freely, though, the three younger ones were plenty interested in the apparatus and two of them participated consistently over the course of three days. To me this suggests social factors might be more important to cats (especially related cats who get along well) than many would necessarily suspect. Having all the cats accessing the setup simultaneously did make certain aspects of the experiment more difficult to organize but it was certainly a better situation than zero participation, as I had when I attempted to test a single lone cat at a time.

As for Nikki's non-interest in the setup, social factors may have played a role her as well -- she tolerates the others but does not seem to like being very near them. I may try taking the apparatus out to the patio at some point and seeing if she might show more interest there -- she seems to be a lot more inhibited indoors, will only play with toys in the yard, etc.

Basic Observations

Again, as this was an informal/fun exercise and not an Official Scientific Experiment, I did not keep a precise count of how many times a given cat solved a task -- since I was the sole person setting up and running everything, it was not possible to carefully track every variable. However, I did note whenever a cat was able to solve a particular task case 2 or more times, and I considered that to be my basis for "success".

As expected, none of the cats completed a task in which a treat was tied to the end of a string. They all seemed vaguely interested in the strings as strings, but did not appear to even realize that one of them had a treat attached. I expect that this effect was compounded to a degree not necessarily present in the referenced study due to my use of plexiglas rather than wire mesh (which they'd have been able to smell the treats through) as a box lid. Unfortunately I did not get any video footage of this phase.

During the zip tie trials, Brodie and Coraline both consistently solved the parallel case. Their success was independent of "position habit", meaning that I was able to switch what side the treats were on and/or move the apparatus to a different room in the house and they still knew what zip tie to pull on to get the treats.

Brodie solving parallel zip tie task (room #1, treats on left side):

Brodie solving parallel zip tie task (room #2, treats on right side):

Cora demonstrates her zip tie prowess here:

(This one is actually an "amusing out-take" candidate -- I had not yet properly secured the apparatus to the floor before this trial, and Cora got her claw stuck in the treat container after she pulled it out, so we had a bit of a treat explosion! Her brothers, of course, were pleased by this turn of events.)

I did not end up doing a "crossed" case with the zip ties, because I discovered that the ties were too thick to fit under the 1 cm gap at the front of the box when stacked on top of one another. Refinement of this task would definitely account for this issue.

In the "string and spoon" phase (in which the treats were placed into the end of a white plastic spoon attached to one of the pieces of sisal twine), again, both Coraline and Brodie were successful at the parallel strings task. Unfortunately (due to disorganization and logistical wrangling difficulties on my part) I did not get a video of Brodie doing this but I got two of Coraline:

In the "crossed strings" case, Coraline had no trouble with this at all. I don't think she went for the "wrong" string even once. Brodie did not do as well here, however, he has always been very interested in string as a toy, and it seemed like when the strings were crossed it was a lot more fun to play with them than try to figure out which one had a treat attached to it.

The video below shows Cora easily solving the crossed-strings case:

(To me it certainly LOOKS like she knows darn well what the function of the string is, but I am not sure how to quantify this observation!)

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I note that my predictions (1) and (2) turned out to be accurate inasmuch as I could tell. Two out of four cats-in-residence completed at least two types of task each, which to me suggests that their performance was unlikely to have been the result of "random luck". However, of course in a formal study many more data points would be taken and results might differ.

As for the contrast issue, while again more data would be a good thing to have here, it really did seem based on what I observed that if the cats could clearly see the treats, those motivated to obtain them had no trouble doing so.

As for whether the zip tie mechanism improved performance (due to it being easier to physically manipulate than the string), it did look like this was probably the case, at least for the parallel task. Again, physical constraints of the apparatus prevented me from trying a true "crossed zip tie" case.

Finally, I find myself really wishing there were some way to quantify or better express what looks to me like "purposefulness" in Cora's performance on the crossed strings task. Perhaps, though, the difficulty of quantifying such impressions is why well-designed experiments employ numerous trials through which many data points are obtained, so that one is not relying upon subjective impressions, but rather, probability.

And all that said, I do have to say that trying this experiment (fumbling as my attempt was...) definitely turned out to be highly enjoyable, both for me and for the participating (and spectator) cats. I've since been strongly inspired to come up with ways of feeding them more creative than just dumping food in a bowl, as they seem to greatly enjoy "outsmarting" their food, which I suppose is quite appropriate for a small carnivorous predator species!

1-Whitt, E., Douglas, M., Osthaus, B., & Hocking, I. (2009). Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task Animal Cognition, 12 (5), 739-743 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0228-x

Difference Engine Painting

2010-07-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I went and saw the Babbage Difference Engine (a large mechanical calculating mechanism which uses the method of finite differences to determine values of a polynomial) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. What an utterly amazing piece of machinery -- certainly one of the most impressive feats of engineering (and art, in a sense!) I have ever seen.

While there I took a few photographs of the engine. I then decided that a larger image of the Difference Engine would look lovely hanging over the fireplace here (I'd been waiting for the right thing to put in that space...) so I thought I'd take on the challenge of painting a picture based on my photos.

The result (actual size around 15" x 19") is shown below:

(Flickr URL)

I would say it's 98% "done" at this point. I could frame it now and CALL it done but being a perfectionist I KNOW there are going to be things I see within the next few days that annoy me enough to fix. For instance, that one...support pole thing on the right looks crooked to me now, argh! But I am happy enough with how it looks now to post it. It was a REALLY fun painting to do...so many shapes to follow!

Oh, and this was also my first foray into using acrylics. Previously I'd mainly used watercolor, probably because I HAD watercolor paints available for whatever reason. And I still think watercolor is good for some applications, but in this case I am really glad I tried acrylics because (a) it is a lot easier to get BOLD colors that contrast nicely and don't bleed into each other, and (b) if you make a mistake you can fix it by painting over it!

Moreover I found it quite enjoyable to mix the colors. I did not want to replicate the exact colors of the real life Difference Engine OR of any of the photos I took of it, but rather, put things in tones similar to what already existed in my living room. That worked out rather well as the shapes in the image lent themselves well to brown, gold, grey, and olive-green hues.

Anyway, though, that is another project I have been working on, and I look forward to making more art as I come across interesting subjects for it!

Cats, Dogs, Strings, and Causality

2010-06-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

During a recent cat-related Web search I came across a whole slew of articles that all had similar titles and content, and seemed to be referencing the same study, i..e., the following:

- Cats outsmarted in psychologist's test (Guardian)

- Dogs are smarter than cats, research shows (Telegraph)

- Study claims cats have limited intelligence (San Francisco Examiner)

- Study Finds Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats (KTLA Los Angeles)

The above articles all refer to the study: Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task, published in the journal Animal Cognition, September 2009¹.

In those articles above wherein a comparison is drawn between cats and dogs, an earlier study is also relevant: Dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris) fail to show understanding of means-end connections in a string-pulling task, also published in Animal Cognition, January, 2005².

Now, as someone with an admitted fondness for cats, and who currently resides in a household including no less than four felines, I must of course acknowledge the possibility of a bias in my reading of the articles.

Nonetheless, the main point of my analysis here is not to "defend" cats. I have no fear of data and I am certainly prepared to accept whatever a well-designed experiment might demonstrate. I also welcome any feedback indicating whether I've somehow managed to misinterpret or misconstrue the results.

Moreover, as I don't have the university connections or what-have-you to access scientific journals for free, I decided to only pay for and read in full the cat study. I have only read the abstract of the dog study. Given these disclosures, take this writing for whatever it is worth.

But anyway. On to the analysis itself.

In each case, the target animals (either cats or dogs) were presented with three tasks in which a food treat was attached to a length of string.

The baited string was then placed in a low-sided box under a clear plastic screen, either alone or in conjunction with a "dummy" (unbaited) string. Three scenarios were presented: one in which a single string with a treat at the end was employed, one in which two strings (one baited and one not) were placed parallel to one another, and a third in which the two strings were angled and/or crossed.

In all scenarios, the ends of the string jutted out far enough for the animals to reach, but the animals could not (due to the dimensions of the setup) directly access the treat itself; in short, they needed to pull on the string in order to get the food.

The results? Per the dog study abstract:

...the dogs were successful if the treat was in a perpendicular line to the barrier, i.e. straight ahead, but not when the string was at an angle: in the latter condition, the typical response was a proximity error in that the dogs pawed or mouthed at a location closest in line to the treat. When two strings that crossed were present, the dogs tended to pull on the wrong string.²

...and per the cat study abstract:

All cats succeeded at pulling a single string to obtain a treat, but none consistently chose the correct string when two strings were parallel. When tested with two crossed strings one cat chose the wrong string consistently and all others performed at chance level.¹

Next, let us examine the conclusion suggested by the researchers as a valid interpretation of each study:

Regarding dogs, it was stated that "The combined results from the experiments show that, although dogs can learn to pull on a string to obtain food, they do not spontaneously understand means-end connections involving strings."²

Regarding cats, it was stated that "There was no evidence that cats understand the function of the strings or their physical causality."¹

When I read the conclusion of the cat study (in the abstract), that was basically the point at which I determined I needed to read the full text of the study. This certainly revealed quite a bit more information about the experiment, its premise, and its (per the authors) implications than the abstract, and gave quite a different picture of the situation than the popular articles.

If I hadn't been convinced previously that it is both useful to read actual papers and question popular media interpretations of said papers, I certainly am now.

For the paper does not actually say anywhere in it that "dogs are smarter than cats" or that "cats are not actually all that clever". And it would not be correct to interpret the study's conclusion as being that cats do not comprehend the behavior of physical objects at all, considering that the tasks this study entailed were all highly specific string-pulling tasks.

Rather, what the study (or rather studies) point out is that per particular models of developmental cognition, cats' performance on the string tasks indicates one level of causality understanding, whereas dogs' performance indicates a slightly different level. The study isn't perfectly written and it seemed like there were some inferential gaps between data and conclusion, however, the media articles referencing this study seem to me to be vastly over-generalizing this to imply something about dog and cat cognition overall.

Moreover, in the cat paper at least, it is acknowledged that performance differences could be due to the canine and feline species' different types of optimization, i.e., cats as solitary hunters of small prey that tends to dart in and out of sight evolved to exhibit higher-level object permanence abilities. Whereas dogs as pack hunters, due to the need to both track large prey and coordinate efforts with other dogs, may have developed a better grasp of specific types of physical-object relationships than cats.

All that said, I am finding myself rather perplexed by the paper's conclusion that the cats do not understand the function of the string. I have seen my cats yank on string, and on the tails of toy mice, etc., on many occasions when these items are stuck under another object (like the couch). So unless I am misconstruing what it means to "understand" something, I have difficulty seeing how a statement that cats do not understand what string does could possibly be valid (again, I welcome corrections if in fact I am wrong on my interpretations here).

I was also unable to find (in reference to the dog paper) a ready definition of "means-ends connection". But at any rate, the studies seemed to be suggesting that if an animal truly comprehends the physical properties of the string attached to the treat, s/he will take advantage of those properties in order to obtain the treat.

Hence if the animal in a given trial either (a) fails entirely to obtain the treat even after considerable effort, or (b) obtains the treat inconsistently and/or inefficiently, it is often concluded that the animal simply does not understand that grasping, pulling, or otherwise manipulating the string in a particular way will guarantee or hasten access to the treat.

But all that said, I am not convinced that the experimental setup (in the cat study at least, as that is the one I actually read the paper describing) would have been adequate to test cats' understanding of the function of the string. For one thing, it was not clear to me in either reading the experimental equipment description or viewing a photograph of said equipment how the cats were expected to detect the presence of a treat (attached to a given piece of string) in the first place.

The paper noted several animals that had been successful in many string tasks that supposedly demonstrated causal understanding in excess of cats (or dogs, for that matter). And while I do not doubt of course that different species can and do indeed exhibit different sorts of cognitive optimization, it does strike me as interesting that all the string-test-passing animals mentioned (primates and corvids, for instance) have relatively high visual acuity compared to cats.

Felines, being crepuscular hunters of small prey, have evolved visual systems optimized for detecting tiny, subtle movements in low light conditions.⁴ Cats hence see vastly better than humans and somewhat better than dogs in relative darkness, and are highly adept at detecting even the smallest hint of motion in their peripheral vision.

Nevertheless, felines cannot distinguish as many colors as, say, primates or birds (most mammals, including both cats and dogs are actually dichromatic). Moreover, their visual acuity for fine details is relatively poor, especially at close range. Dogs also have fairly poor visual acuity as compared to humans, however, theirs is still estimated to be about twice that of cats. ³

This raises the question of whether the cats in the string-pulling study failed to pull the "correct" string in part simply because they could not see where the treat was attached. From the photos I found of the setup it looked as if the treat was fairly physically small (not much larger than the end of the piece of string) and that the cats were expected to perform the task when positioned quite close to the setup.

Additionally, the presence of the plastic screen, while certainly vital to the setup in terms of blocking direct access to the treats, would not have allowed the cats to identify the location of the treat by smell.** Nor could the cats touch the treat or string under the screen with their paws, or brush against it with their whiskers. I have watched my cats chase after small treats I toss across the room, and what I have noticed is that their eyes "lock on" to the treat while it is in motion flying through the air, and then when it lands, they will sniff around on the floor near the end of its trajectory until they find it. In other words, they do not seem to be using their eyes to find the treat at close range, but their noses.

Add to that the fact that the treat was, from all appearances, just sitting there motionless at the end of the string, and you've essentially removed all the major perceptual modalities that could actually assure the cat of the treat's location. Unless there was some provision made not described in the paper to account for this, I would be inclined to figure that a "random guess" strategy would in fact be the most logical one available to the cats tested.

After all, as opportunistic predators, cats are not so much inclined toward "efficiency" but rather toward trying something that seems like it might have the potential to lead to something tasty or otherwise interesting. Which could certainly contribute toward a decision to pull on both strings, or on a random one, etc.

** CORRECTION (7/16/2010): Following a closer reading of the study's apparatus description, I realized that the referenced cat study had not employed a solid transparent plastic lid with gridlines drawn on it (as I had presumed from the setup photo) but rather a wire mesh screen. Hence, my original statement that the study apparatus would not have allowed the cats to smell the treats was in error. This, however, does not negate my other observations, and moreover, given the apparent height of the box used in the study (see photo again) it is unclear to me whether the cats would have been able to precisely pinpoint the location of the treats by smell.

References:

Primary Reference:

1-Whitt, E., Douglas, M., Osthaus, B., & Hocking, I. (2009). Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task Animal Cognition, 12 (5), 739-743 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0228-x

Secondary References:
2- Britta Osthaus, Stephen E. G. Lea1 and Alan M. Slater (2005).
Dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris) fail to show understanding of means-end connections in a string-pulling task
Animal Cognition, Volume 9, Number 1 / January, 2005 http://www.springerlink.com/content/ddq6fre6tm0nk2gt/

3- From http://www.animaleyecare.com/animalvision.html:

Visual acuity is the ability to see the details of an object separately and unblurred. Acuity is measured in "cycles per degree", which means how many lines you can distinguish as being separate in a degree of the visual field. Humans see 30 cycles per degree, horses 18, dogs 12 and cats 6. Acuity in dogs is 0.4 times that of people, 0.67 times that of horses, and twice that of cats. Acuity in cats is 0.2 times that of people, 0.33 times that of horses, and 0.5 times that of dogs. If normal human vision is 20/20, then that of the dog between 20/50 to 20/100, the horse 20/33, and that of the cat is 20/100.

4- Fundamentals of veterinary opthamology, Douglas H. Slatter, p8

Template Update: Stubborn Semicolon Finally Vanquished

2010-06-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

At long last, the stubborn semicolon that used to appear at the top left of this page (between the left sidebar and main text area) is gone. Hence, as promised, I am posting a description of how I got rid of this little annoyance.

Note that I cannot guarantee this will work for anything other than the 3 column version of the Thisaway theme (the tutorial page for which can be found here, on the 'Tips For New Bloggers' site, which I finally unearthed again). My guess is that it probably would work for other templates that use tags in similar ways, though. And there really isn't any danger in experimenting so long as you back up your template (I like to use text files for this).

Anyway, here is the "fix" for the semicolon thing (with BEFORE and AFTER pictures, even!):

There are two things to note in the "BEFORE" image below.

One is that there is a small semicolon in the top left section of the page (I have outlined it with a red square, but I apologize as it is probably still difficult to see, because I had to make the images fairly small to fit the width of the page properly).

The other is that the left and right sidebar columns are not vertically aligned.

My blog had these issues for a long, long time and for ages I could not for the life of me figure out how to get rid of them. Some people might not care about "small details" like these but personally I just find them impossible to ignore. So if you are similarly irked, the following instructions should help.

(1) Do a "find" for the following text:

<div id='main-wrapper'>

(2) Then look just above this text. You should see the following HTML:

</b:section>;
</div>;

(3) Finally, DELETE the semicolons (;) following both "div" and "b:section" closing tags shown in step (2).

This should eliminate that errant semicolon in the top left corner of the page (which you will notice no longer appears on my blog), as well as its counterpart (not shown in my screen shots) at the bottom of the left sidebar column.

Also, the tops of the two sidebars should now be aligned with the main post content section, though this will really only be noticeable if you are (as I am) using different colors for the sidebar and main backgrounds. Apparently this misalignment had something to do with the presence of the semicolon (as in, its presence was shifting the page elements somehow).

When you are through with these edits, your page should look (structure-wise; obviously you will not have my particular header image/color combinations, etc) similar to the "AFTER" image below:

The blue lines/squares point out both that the semicolon is gone, and that the right and left sidebar columns are aligned with the main text body and each other.

...and as for how I figured this out, basically I employed the "brute force" method of going down through the template code, changing values here and there, until I started seeing effects on the area(s) of the page I was trying to alter.

The first thing I noticed when I was getting close was that "commenting syntax" did not work normally in a certain part of the template code -- specifically, the "/* Page structure tweaks for layout editor wireframe */" section.

I also found that when I typed more semicolons, or even just random words/letters, next to the </div> and </b:section> tags indicated above, the exact text of what I had typed would appear next to the semicolon on the blog page (this was apparent when I previewed my edits).

At that point it was very easy to solve the problem because the whole issue here from the beginning had been that there was a semicolon showing on the main page but it was not obvious where in the HTML code it was being specified.

Anyway, I still have no idea how those semicolons got there in the first place -- probably some sort of copy/paste artifact from my early template tweak attempts -- but the blog does not seem to be suffering for their absence, at least not in Firefox (feel free to let me know if anything looks "off" in another browser, though, of course).

Sunset, Pattern, and Line

2010-06-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I was standing in the kitchen and happened to catch a glance outside. I had not realized it until right then, but the sun was in the process of setting. And there was just this really amazing view of the sky-colors through the latticework patio cover:

...honestly, the sky was such a dazzling salmon hue (contrasted of course with the deepening blue of near-dusk).

So after getting the patio picture I ran outside to the front (literally ran, as sunsets are transient things) and looked out toward the horizon (if you can call a cascade of suburban roof-tops a horizon). And I saw a most interesting arrangement of lines (power/telephone lines, possibly both, I am not certain) spidering out from a pole:

Now I just need to get up early enough one of these days to get some sunrise pictures!

(This post brought to you by "yet another thing that makes me ridiculously happy to be alive!")

Some Before And After Pictures Of The Interior Of My House

2010-06-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

While I do not always write about them, at any given point in time I generally have one or two "mini-perseverations" going on (for lack of a better phrase). Usually they involve something along the lines of, say, ingredients labels (pertaining to some specific product or another; in the past it was vitamins, currently it's cat food!), or different types of electrical outlets.

Lately, though, I have developed a bit of a fixation on "before and after" pictures -- in particular, before and after pictures of room interiors. There is just something tremendously fascinating to me about taking the same space and making it look completely different, just by changing the "trimmings" or parts of the structure. And I have also always had sort of a "thing" about wanting space to be used well. When a room is "wrong" I find it very hard to do much of anything in it, whether because there's something sense-scrambling about the configuration or because things are just laid out in a way that makes organizing things logically really hard, if not impossible.

(That said, I have to also note that I despise rearranging furniture for the mere sake of rearranging. I used to go into something of a panic as a child, when my mother did this. Once I have stuff where it ought to be, I tend to leave it there!)

Anyway, I was going through some photos today and realized I had a few interesting before-and-after shots of parts of my house. And because this blog has definitely become, shall we say, a bit eclectic lately (ever since I stopped worrying about making each post Profoundly Important And In Service Of Some Lofty Larger Goal, not that there's anything wrong with blogging that way, but attempting to do so was giving me massive writer's block in my case), I figured I might as well post them here. So if you are also into this sort of thing, enjoy!

BEFORE:

This was how the part of the kitchen nearest to the living room looked when we first saw the house (prior to actually moving in). There had clearly been a lot of staging done (everything had been very recently covered with bright white paint, and select pieces of the original owner's antique furniture had been artfully arranged throughout the rooms). And there were definitely aspects of the "before" configuration that appealed to me and helped highlight some of the house's assets.

However, after some thought about how we would actually want to use the space, Matt and I determined that the open shelving would more than likely just end up attracting "dust collectors", and that the little shuttered cabinets wouldn't be very efficient from a storage standpoint. Moreover, the "breakfast bar"/extra cabinetry between the kitchen and living room was sort of a weird, kludgey thing (clearly NOT original to the house) that butted up against part of one of the large picture-window sliders on the right side wall of the house, and we wanted a more open floor plan.

Then there was the matter of the cabinets themselves. Originally we planned on keeping them -- but that was before we did a closer inspection, and found that they were actually not in the best of shape under the white paint. The doors were made of some sort of particle board covered with very thin plastic 1970s dark-woodgrain veneer, and the cabinet "boxes" themselves had a lot of warping, staining, and other miscellaneous damage. The drawers also had no slider tracks; they were just wood-on-wood, prone to sticking, etc. Hence, once we tallied things up, neither of us figured we were very attached to the existing cabinets, and as they were definitely not original to the house (which was built in 1954) Matt and I deemed they had to go.

AFTER:

The above image shows approximately the same area as in the "before" picture, from a similar angle. Notice that the dust-collector shelves and tiny shuttered cabinets are gone now and have been replaced with a floor-to-ceiling built-in pantry. The "breakfast bar"/weird kludgey wall-thing (which, incidentally, also contained some 70s-era speakers!) is gone as well. And there is also a little "nook" to the left of the pantry which was originally sort of a "dimensional artifact" but which turned out to be a perfect spot for the microwave cart.

As for the cabinets themselves, Matt and I considered all kinds of options and styles (custom, stock, Ikea, Home Depot, etc.) before finally settling on custom shaker style doors and boxes, which were to be built primarily of maple by a brother of one of Matt's co-workers who also happened to be a carpenter.

Luckily, Matt and I have fairly compatible tastes in decor, but as I am sure he (Matt) would tell you, I am a lot more opinionated about such things and can be, well, a bit of a zealot at times. For instance, I cannot even count the number of times I reiterated the "NO RAISED PANELS!" mantra, and the number of cabinet styles (in various catalogs and such we looked at) I denounced as "utterly hideous and incongruous with the house", etc. (Maybe this side of me doesn't come out much on the blog, but trust me, I can be quite the critic when it comes to certain topics!)

What it really came down to for me was that I wanted something that "worked" in a midcentury ranch home (as in, did not produce the "tutu on a bulldog" effect that a lot of thoughtlessly generic remodels tend to have on such houses -- see here for an example of what I definitely did NOT want), that would be durable and long-lasting, and that would overall be easy to look at (in addition, of course, to the functional consideration of providing efficient and ample storage space).

Matt basically wanted the same things I did but was less concerned about the kitchen "matching the house", and he was a lot more averse to going the streamlined modern route than I was.

So I am thankful we were able to finally settle on the shaker style -- Matt is very much a "craftsman" sort of guy, and the cabinets we ended up with certainly respect that, and I am happy both because of the historical connection between shaker-style and later modernist styles and because it just plain looks nice.

One thing we also did, that (apparently) is somewhat unusual is keep the natural woodgrain exposed on the doors but paint the cabinet "boxes" and face frames a sage green color (Valspar "Cactus Shadow", to be precise). I wanted SOME color in the kitchen and Matt and I are both fond of green, so while I would have preferred something a bit darker (for more contrast) I daresay the end result turned out quite pleasant to look at. And honestly I would love to see more examples of kitchens with natural-wood cabinet doors but with painted face-frames; so far I haven't even been able to find one (though it could just be my search-fu is failing me in this instance), other than ours.

And here are some pictures from a different angle:
BEFORE:

This view shows the middle of the kitchen, the sink area and part of the area along the rear wall (including the back door, out to the yard). Note all the WHITE, the washing machine along the rear wall, and the chandelier (which caused some literal headaches to several folks, including me, before it was removed -- it was hanging down so low that I kept getting "wrought iron to the forehead", ouch!).

AFTER:

This view again shows the middle of the kitchen, the sink area and part of the area along the rear wall, but now many changes are evident. The most major thing was the addition of the large island in the center, which contains both storage underneath (more cabinets) and a large food prep surface that overhangs on one side, where we could presumably put stools or tall chairs, in effect making the island double as an eating area. We wanted to keep things simple and versatile so the island is actually a free-standing unit (as in, it isn't rooted to the floor, and contains no plumbing or electrical lines). Partly this was for budgetary reasons and partly it was just because we liked the idea of having the island be like a piece of furniture rather than a built-in.

Note as well that the washing machine is gone (we still don't have it hooked up elsewhere yet, but hopefully that will happen soon; for now we are partaking of the laundromat conveniently located a few blocks away). The stove is now a gas stove (Matt has always wanted a gas stove, and he is definitely the cook around here), and the refrigerator we just got in tones that would match the stove. Neither is a particularly "special" piece, but we had a budget to work within and I figured we were better off "splurging" on the cabinets than on appliances, as appliances are a lot more easily replaced if necessary.

But so far they've certainly been serviceable, and I definitely think the black-and-stainless-steel tones help prevent the overall aesthetic from veering too far into "country cottage" territory. The fume hood is also new and rather a nice model, and it adds (what to me is) a dash of "restaurant kitchen"-ness to the space, which is not a bad thing. (I also designed the ducting on top myself, which was necessary because of the way the studs in the wall were placed).

And then of course there is the floor. I am SO happy with the floor -- it is marmoleum! MUCH nicer than the blah grayish-white 1980s vinyl that we started out with there. I had a lot of fun coming up with a pattern for the Marmoleum and determining on that basis how much of each color we would need (we used "Eucalyptus" squares and "Barbados" planks, both in the "click panel" type). It was really easy to install, too...Matt and I did it in one day with just the two of us.

The new cabinets over the sink are pretty much positioned the same as the old ones were -- that aspect of the old layout at least made sense. We also kept the original sink (which I think might very well be original to the house -- it's a very nice, if slightly endearingly chipped, cast-iron model with one shallower side and one deep side) and the white tile counter by the sink, which is not original but which is perfectly serviceable and doesn't clash horribly with the rest of the decor.

The white dishwasher is also still there but now I rather wish we'd gotten rid of it, as we have never actually used it and probably won't. I actually prefer hand-washing dishes -- if I put stuff in the dishwasher most likely I would forget about it. I would like to take the dishwasher out at some point and perhaps make a little cubby thing for the trash cans, but that's not on the immediate agenda.

Living room BEFORE:

Initially the living room looked a lot more "formal" (though that was partly due to staging), and the gray carpeting made everything look smaller. Plus the all-white walls were just boring. It looked "nice", but wasn't very "us" (that is, me and Matt).

Living room AFTER:

I've already posted this picture once before so apologies for that, but it was the best one I could find in what I'd uploaded showing the whole living room. Ripping up the carpet had a huge effect on the space -- made it look so much bigger! Plus the floors, while very dirty initially (from decades of fine dust filtering through the carpeting) turned out to be beautiful solid oak in excellent condition overall. We did not even need to strip and refinish; we just mopped and mopped and then applied some wax.

And then there is my brown wall. I love the brown wall so very much. I have always been a big fan of dark/bold wall colors, and was SO tired of imposed apartment-rental White Everywhere. I love the contrast between the brown wall and white fireplace especially, and I think overall that color being there adds some very pleasing "weight" to the kitchen/living room space, as the kitchen is very light-and-bright even though it's not all white anymore.

So...yeah, I will probably post a few more things like this at some point. And of course I should note that the house is still (and likely to remain) a "work in progress". I think both the kitchen and bedroom (not shown in this post) need more dark elements, though I am not sure exactly what those elements will consist of.

I am also finding that my own sense of what I want the place to look like has been shifting around in light of all kinds of factors, and at this point I am leaning strongly towards an "eclectic" look rather than one constrained into any particular design "school" or era. For one thing, I certainly cannot afford to have everything "matching", and even if I could, it seems like it would be very wasteful to get rid of and replace so much of what I already have that is wholly functional. Moreover, if you think about it, it's not like everyone living in ranch homes in the 1950s and 1960s ONLY had mid-mod furniture...presumably plenty of folks had hand-me-down pieces from the 1940s or 30s or even before, and hence the reality of those houses back then probably was more eclectic than matchy-matchy.

However, at the same time, I definitely want to maintain a sense of respect for the house's "lines" and overall design (meaning, at some point that awful 1980s "seashell" sink in the bathroom HAS to go!).

Nifty 1953 Popular Mechanics Issue (via Google Books)

2010-06-03T22:18:00.000-07:00

OK so this might just be one of those things I am always one of the last to know about but since it is just so nifty, I figured I would point it out here. Anyway, the "it" I am referring to is the fact that you can find whole issues of various magazines on Google Books, some of them quite old!

I discovered this by accident this evening because I was trying to find out who the builder and/or architect was of the 1954 ranch-style house I reside in (architect is still at large, but the builder appears to have been David Bohannon).

My search terms somehow led me to a 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics that contains a large section on house-related issues (building, buying, renovating, etc.)

Anyway, I don't know how many readers are into this sort of thing, but this issue in particular has a lot of VERY cool pictures of mid-century furniture and decor (eeee!) and some impressively detailed plans for such projects as a chair with folding arm-rests, a bed that folds up into a cupboard, and an ice fishing shelter (I kid you not).

So, yeah, I am definitely enjoying this and thought I might as well share! That is all for now.

In Which I Vote By Mail Again And Rant A Bit About That Whole Santa Clara Stadium Thing

2010-06-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I mailed my ballot today for the June 8, 2010 primary election (hooray again for voting by mail!).

I am posting this mainly because I wanted to link to Smart Voter, which is a site I made heavy use of in figuring out how to interpret the various ballot items and vote accordingly.

And...I fully acknowledge that I am not teerming with civic wisdom, but I figure that by doing at least some reading about the ballot items and the positions of various folks running for office, I ended up voting less ignorantly than I would have otherwise. So thanks to the League of Women Voters for establishing Smart Voter as a resource, if anything, it's a great starting point when you are dealing with a lot of confusing language (as is pretty much always true for me when I try to read ballot measures).

I am not going to get specifically into how I voted on most items, as I don't feel like getting into arguments with anyone over a whole litany of things I can't change now that the ballot has been mailed off.

But I will say that I voted a big, resounding "NO" on Measure J, which is basically the San Francisco 49ers' (an American football team, for any international readers) attempt to build a stadium right here in my hometown of Santa Clara. The "Yes on J" campaign has been bugging the heck out of me for months, for one thing -- it's loaded with abject smarm and built-in guilt trips.

There are all these signs up all over buildings, and in people's yards, saying things like "Yes on J - Yes For Our Schools!" or "Yes on J - Yes on Jobs!", and while I understand that suggesting the (hoped-for) result of a proposed project is impossible to get away from entirely, I just find this instance of it to be ridiculous in its overconfidence. More to the point, the "YES" campaign's implied "you don't care about the CHILDREN if you vote NO!" sentiment just makes my eyes want to roll right out of my skull (in a manner of speaking).

Even the text of the measure ITSELF just sounds really...weaselly to me (no offence to actual weasels, who had nothing to do with this proposal):

Shall the City of Santa Clara adopt Ordinance 17.20 leasing City property for a professional football stadium and other events; no use of City General or Enterprise finds [sic] for construction; no new taxes for residents for stadium; Redevelopment Agency funds capped for construction; private party pays all construction cost overruns; no City/Agency obligation for stadium operating/maintenance; private party payment of projected fair market rent; and additional funds for senior/youth/library/recreation to City's General Fund?

That said, I suspect the measure will pass anyway. And I HOPE I am wrong in my sense that all the city will end up with is more debt and lots of excuses from the YES-ites. But I suppose only time will tell. I will be happy to admit my BS-sensor was mistaken if that turns out to be the case.

Oh, and for the record, I am not registered with a political party (guess that makes me an "independent", though certainly NOT an American Independent!), so I filled out the "non-partisan" version of the ballot. Which is, I guess, the same as the partisan ballots except that it doesn't include candidates for Governor, Secretary of State, etc.

Template Tweaks In Progress...

2010-05-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

...meaning, this blog might look a little weird or off-kilter while I get things sorted.

I have actually been meaning to make some of these changes for a long time but never got around to it until now. Especially getting rid of those obnoxious little arrow graphics that came with the template I based mine on (a 3 column version of "Thisaway", which I can't for the life of me recall where I found). And changing that horrible peachy background color to something on the green-grey spectrum. And updating my blogroll/link list (e.g., getting rid of dead links, deleting stuff I never actually read anymore, adding some new stuff, etc.).

There should not be any major (or minor, for that matter) functional changes as a result of anything I'm doing. So let me know (if any readers are so inclined) if anything suddenly starts acting strangely. Also as always, if I've altered colors or margins in such a way that a particular browser complains or doesn't render things nicely, I would definitely appreciate knowing that!

Oh. And if anyone has any clue why there is a little random semi-colon at the top of the page (on the left hand side, where the left column meets the middle one), I would very much enjoy being enlightened on that matter. It bugs me but I have no idea how to get rid of it, or if it's perhaps some strange but inevitable artifact of using a 3 column template.

Also, I want to figure out how to shift the "sub-section" titles in the sidebars over to the left a bit. And make the sidebar "blocks" even at the top. And find some way to put borders between the columns. So if anyone has any tips on those matters, I will be happily receptive to them.

EDIT (as of 11 June, 2010):

The semicolon and vertical misalignment problems have been solved. See this post for updates and description of how this was done.

Window Seat / Storage Bench Project Finished!

2010-05-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Bench Basics

I've briefly alluded to this project before, but seeing as it's now basically complete (unless I decide to modify it in some way) I figured I would post in a bit more detail about the window seat / storage bench that now sits in my living room, providing a lovely view out the large picture windows at the front of the house.

For starters, here are some pictures of the finished product:

The bench, without cushions (to show the structure and paint colors more clearly).

With cushions...

...and a view of the living room, showing the placement of the bench in front of the window.

I got the idea in the first place to make a bench like this when Matt and I were in the process of gutting the old kitchen for renovation. This operation produced a lot of scrap wood, and while some of it was so thoroughly damaged by either water, layers of old cooking grease, or both that it wasn't worth salvaging, a decent amount looked fine. So we disposed of the nastier bits and kept the sturdier-looking pieces, which mainly consisted of long (90"-plus) and medium-sized (40"-ish) solid pine planks, about 11 inches wide and 3/4" thick each. These boards (shown below) sat next to the dining table for several months until I figured out my design:

I liked the idea of re-using as much as we could of the old wood because (a) sustainability win!, and (b) doing so would mean we were keeping the wood in its "home" (something that I imagine might not make sense to everyone, but which for me just seems kind of nice). And I'd wanted a "window seat", or something like it, ever since I was little.

Materials

Wood for the back, doors and some of the internal framing ended up being purchased due to not having pieces on hand appropriately sized for those elements, but the bench seat, sides, and bottom are all made from bits of the old kitchen. I also used a few pieces of random hardwood (additional support for the back and sides) salvaged from a neighbor's junk pile during Cleanup Week.

I probably spent less than $50 in additional wood and hardware, which is not "nothing", but a heck of a lot less than you would pay for a mostly-solid-wood bench of this size anywhere these days. And the paint I used was all left over from previous house-related projects. So it ended up being a really economically-friendly project as well as one that led to something guaranteed to match the existing decor (which, in this house, is sort of evolving into a bizarre mid-century/craftsman/industrial mutant hybrid done in shades of green, brown, white, and metallic, if that's even possible).

(image below shows the bottom and internal frame-support pieces for the bench, during the build process):

Doors

The doors on the front were probably the trickiest things to design and implement. I didn't even have a clear sense of what style of door would work (and look) best for this bench until the whole main structure was finished.

My first idea was to have the doors swing outward from hinges, but I nixed that plan after realizing that if I used hinges at all I would have to worry about somehow creating a "locking" mechanism, so the doors would not swing shut (creating either an inconvenience or a safety hazard, depending on where the hinges were placed) while one was rummaging around in the storage section. And I decided I did not want to deal with either the expense or the liability (if my locking mechanism didn't work) of that method.

In the end what I settled upon was sliding doors. I cut out three pieces of 1/4" plywood, painted them an olive-military green, and installed basic brushed-nickel circular closet door pulls in the result. Then, I installed two pieces of aluminum "U-stock" (with a 3/4" clearance between the inner sides of the "U") along the top and bottom front of the bench, and I pretty much had instant sliding doors at that point.

Cushions

Since the bench was a completely "custom" item (it was specifically sized to fit in front of two of the three large windows in the living room), I did not figure on being able to find a cushion of precisely the right dimensions, let alone of a preferred color and fabric type. So I decided pretty early on to just make the cushion myself, as that sounded a lot more interesting and fun than endless hours trying to find one at a store.

To make the cushion I employed several yards of cotton "duck cloth" canvas, a long piece of 1" thick foam, the strongest upholstery thread I could find, and some fluffy "batting" material (which I wrapped around the foam in order to add extra squishiness). All the textile and stuffing materials were purchased at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

To sew it, I used an old (well, circa 1968) Singer FashionMate sewing machine, which had previously been gathering dust in Matt's mom's garage (inherited from a deceased great-aunt, nobody had used it in years, and it was thought to be inoperable; turned out it just needed to be oiled).

(Image below shows the sewing machine. It's actually VERY well constructed and I feel ridiculously lucky to have been able to acquire it for free! It is nigh impossible to find decent cheap sewing machines these days made from all-metal parts as this one is, and I really needed something this sturdy to be able to handle canvas fabric.)

(Image below shows the sewing machine all folded up into its stand -- it makes quite an attractive little side table when not being used for sewing! Plus, the cats like sitting on it.)

The machine was a little bit tricky to set up at first, as the thread seemed to need to be wound in a positively circuitous manner, but eventually I got it working and had the cushion finished within a day.

Then, while I was at it, I made a fluffy throw pillow (out of some very fuzzy brown fabric I'd also picked up at the fabric store, after having found myself enamored with the texture) which can be seen on the left side of the bench in the "...with cushions" image above.

The larger brown cushion on the right of the bench I did not make -- that one is actually a cat bed that my brother and his wife gave the kitties this past Xmas. Originally I had it on the bench only "temporarily" (while I was busy sewing the main cushion) but the cats seem to really like having it there, so I am guessing it'll stay there a while. There is still plenty of room for several human rears along the rest of the bench, after all.

Tools Used:

- Probably the most important bit of machinery employed was the humble battery-driven power drill. I lost count of how many screws I used to hold the bench together, but trust me, it's a lot!

- A chop saw was used to initially cut the longer boards (Matt did that part -- I don't yet trust myself to operate something that moves so fast and is so capable of separating one from one's fingers.)

- A non-powered (bench-mounted) miter saw was used for most of the smaller support boards.

- I used a jig saw (powered, but far less scary than the chop saw) to cut the plywood for the back. It doesn't cut as straight as the chop saw, but I was able to use a small hand plane to even out the edges after cutting, so they turned out fine.

- Various manual screwdrivers were employed to tighten and install screws in places where the power drill (which doubles as a powered screwdriver, given the right bits) would not physically fit. Primarily I used Phillips type, since the wood screws I was using had Phillips heads.

- From the "interesting things I didn't know existed until recently" department, I used a doweling jig to make smooth, consistently-sized columnar holes into which small wooden dowels were placed, to help hold the seat and bottom boards together (each consists of two long boards, attached side by side).

- BAR CLAMPS. Seriously, I cannot express enough how much I have come to appreciate these adjustable, irrepressibly grabby wonders. They make so many things that would just be ridiculously difficult in their absence extremely easy. If you are going to start DIY-ing stuff involving wood, I HIGHLY recommend you invest in a number of these, preferably in a variety of sizes. I ended up using them to hold the doweled surfaces together (while the glue dried), keep boards sturdy while planing, hold one side of a thing together while I placed a screw into the other side, secure things to the work-bench during various forms of processing, etc.

- Sandpaper

- A paint scraper (vital for removing the layers of white paint and old shelf paper on many of the boards)

- Paintbrushes and rollers

- Pencils (for marking boards)

- Measuring tape

- Framing squares

- Level (during planing)

- Hacksaw (for cutting the aluminum door slide tracks to size)

- The aforementioned Singer FashionMate sewing machine (which IS a power tool, after all!)

Conclusion

Anyway, I realize what was actually built turned out being more of a storage bench that happens to be placed in front of a window than a true "window seat". Originally what I had in mind was something more like a built-in style bench, with bookshelves somehow incorporated into the sides, but that simply wasn't feasible given the fact that the entire front of the house basically consists of windows. There's simply not enough solid wall there to build anything into the structure of the house.

Nevertheless, I am still really pleased with the result. It blends seamlessly with the rest of the room, provides a wonderful sunny napping/bird-watching spot for the resident felines, and I definitely feel like I've taken a level in DIY following completion of this project. That aside, at the very least, making the bench was a whole heck of a lot of fun. I learned to use a number of tools, got better at using the tools I was already familiar with, and overall, the entire endeavor was a nice reminder that I do indeed have the ability to follow a project through from idea, to design, to realization-in-reality. And I did end up using a goodly portion of the leftover wood I'd saved.

My Suspension of Disbelief...

2010-05-08T00:03:00.001-07:00

...is being challenged by Stargate Atlantis. My SO's mom let us borrow the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2, and Matt and I are about 2/3 of the way through the first season.

And while it's definitely plenty of fun to watch (I just happen to be one of those people for whom part of the "fun" in many things comes from nerdishly nit-picking them ad infinitum), for some reason I am finding it more...ridiculously hand-wavey of certain things than I would have cared about a few years back, even moreso than Stargate SG-1, which I have seen all 10 seasons of.

First and foremost: not only do the aliens all speak English, there is absolutely NO accounting for the fact that aliens ten thousand years in the past apparently also spoke modern English. I get that they don't want to have a show where every episode is "how do we communicate with THIS alien?", and I don't need it explained to me that "the show is made for entertainment". I know full well it's made for entertainment, and I'm quite entertained, but for crying out loud, even just the mention of a "universal translator" (or "translator microbes", a la Farscape) would set me a tiny bit more at ease.

I think Babylon 5 probably stands out in my mind as the best example of how to deal with alien language issues in televised sf...that is, in that universe, English is known as "the language of commerce", and many aliens on the station have hence had to explicitly learn it. And there are some aliens (such as my favorites, the Vorlons!) who, even when their linguistic utterances are "translated" to English, aren't immediately obvious in terms of what they mean.

Anyway, I was just sort of musing on that today, and on how so much of what I have read over the past few years has seriously raised my standards as far as what "adequately dealing with real-life complexity" means. Of course fiction is storytelling, and storytelling doesn't HAVE to conform to reality in every way (that would make it "reporting", or something), but I definitely find it adds to the story when certain things are at least accounted for rather than totally ignored or glossed over. I will continue to watch and enjoy Atlantis for what it does have, but I will also continue to be amazed at how totally not-even-remotely-believable it is. And I will hope at some point to find more intriguing sf viewing material where the writers put some more effort into creatively managing complexity!

What I've Been Up To Lately

2010-04-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I keep meaning to write lengthy, heavily detailed, extensive posts about all these things (in order to do them justice), but since I don't seem to be doing that, I figure I might as well make a "medley" post that mentions all of them.

Anyway, here's what I've been up to:

(1) I'm still currently job-hunting (for electromagnetic compatibility-related electrical engineering positions), and I actually got a response this past week from a company I submitted my resume' to. I figure that is progress, at least? Of course there's still the matter of whether they like my answers to their first round of questions, but still.

(2) I have been volunteering for about a month and a half at the SENS Foundation's local research center, helping out with Actual Science Stuff! Which has been super interesting so far. I am mostly assisting with the LysoSENS project, the primary objective of which is to identify and test compounds capable of degrading harmful chemicals that build up in the body's cells (specifically in the lysosomes) over time, eventually leading to disease.

Most recently I have been working on troubleshooting lab equipment that will hopefully end up being useful in this research. Troubleshooting hardware is seriously one of my favorite things to do, so I've been quite pleased to have the opportunity to engage in this sort of activity, particularly in support of some darn fascinating research. You can read more about the details of the research goals on the SENS Foundation site, which I've linked to above.

(3) I'm learning to build stuff! Like actual, functional furniture (to give an example). The photo below shows a window seat bench I built, almost entirely from reclaimed wood from the kitchen remodeling my SO and I did last summer.

It still needs doors for the front (to make it like a storage cabinet, I'm thinking for cat toys and blankets and whatnot), which I am working on and should hopefully have finished by this coming weekend.

(4) I am growing interesting vegetables and other plants (such as catnip)! The photo below shows some nascent collard greens, which I think are exceedingly tasty.

We have also grown cauliflower:

...and Swiss chard:

...and a number of other things. Gardening is oddly satisfying, I'm finding.

(5) A little while back I visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. It is not a huge place but it was well worth going just to see the Babbage Difference Engine on display there. Holy crap, that thing is cool. It's like...this bizarrely awesome physical manifestation of math, combined with Steampunk In Real Life (or something like that). Below are some pictures I took of the machine (artsy effects courtesy of GNU Image Manipulation Program):

...and that is it for this update. I have done other things too of course, but these are some highlights. I guess I have really still been "reveling in the concrete", which is definitely not a bad thing!

Announcing A Secondary Cat Blog

2010-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

So, in an effort to establish a space where I can write about my cats (and cats/cat-related issues more generally) without constantly thinking "gah, I'm writing about nothing but cats!", I've started a companion blog. It's called Felines Are Wonderful.

So far I have posted brief (well brief for me...) introductions to all four of the kitties I am fortunate enough to share my home with, and I plan to try and keep any further posts regarding cat furniture, cat food, creative litter-box construction, etc., over at FAW. That doesn't mean I will never mention cats here -- they come up in my brain a lot, and lately have been figuring strongly into any Big Thoughts About Ethics I entertain -- so they're bound to make an appearance every now and then here at EIW.

And of course, this does not mean I am going to stop writing in EIW. I am actually hoping FAW will increase the number of halfway-readable posts that get published on EIW, due to letting me just get My Various And Endless Thoughts On Cats out of my system, so to speak, making room for other posts to germinate and actually get finished.

In Praise of Scavenging (Or: An Ode To Cleanup Week)

2010-03-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Cleanup Week is nigh! I must say, as mundane and simple of a thing as this seems, I am finding myself tremendously enthused about Cleanup Week this year. Probably because Matt and I had so much debris and unwanted (by us) miscellany lying about due to our move last summer -- it is VERY nice to not have the patio covered in rotting wood scraps, for one thing.

But: why do I consider Cleanup Week to be blogging material? Well, that's mainly because I saw something really interesting (and, in my estimation, positive) happening. Which is to say that there was a lot of stuff exchange going on between neighbors and other folks who came to the neighborhood equipped with trucks and such. Lots of Perfectly Good(TM) things were being put out (knowingly, in my case, at least), and I was very pleased to see that within literally hours of piling a number of serviceable-but-not-useful-to-me items were gone. I would much rather usable items be taken and put to good use by people who actually want/appreciate them, than hauled off to rot in a landfill.

Regardless of whether the people who took the old shelf units and mirrored doors kept them, sold them, stripped them down for parts/materials or spruced them up and gave them away, I figure those things all met a better fate than they would have if the "scavengers" hadn't come around. The only things that actually got hauled off to the dump were some nasty old vinyl sheeting and the worst of the rotting wood (taken from the old kitchen).

I myself (thanks to some neighbors down the street) came away with some very nice, uniformly-sized pieces of wood (held together by a piece of cloth; I think it might have been part of a futon or bed support system or something) that were in great shape and which I am sure will come in handy for projects and such.

Anyway, what's been in the back of my head during this whole cleanup week endeavor is the fact that (a) clearly there's a lot of Stuff in the world, and there need to be better ways of distributing it, and (b) while "scavenging" is discouraged in the mailers the city sends out, it seems to me that we ought to be encouraging this sort of thing, and perhaps having it more often!

It was like a big, free garage sale, and it was a rousing success in part because there was no need for people to stand there exhanging dollar bills or haggling over prices. People who didn't want certain things put them outside, and people who did want them were free to take them. You don't get much more logistically easy than that! Of course this kind of Stuff Exchange really only works on a local scale, but I would definitely think more locales might be interested in it.

On that note, one thing that has long perplexed me is the way "scavenging" has somewhat of a bad connotation. When I used to root through neighbors' cleanup piles as a youngster, other neighborhood kids would yell "Garbage picker!" at me, and I later learned this was due to some weird perception that only "low class" people would bother looking at what others had thrown out. But I think that, especially given sustainability / environment-related factors, scavenging is one of the most awesome things that one can do for one's neighborhood.

(Of course it's important that the items you're taking are really and truly not wanted by the person getting rid of them, but that's one of the nice things about cleanup week; there's really no ambiguity in that regard!)

So, what's the lesson in all this? Basically I think it would be good if America (at least) became more scavenger-friendly. In the rest of nature, scavengers perform functions recognized as essential to the ecosystem, and it's an interesting philosophical reminder to consider the tastes of, say, dung-beetles and vultures, and how gross the world would get if those creatures did not exist.

Of course there's nothing wrong with "new" things, and I am not saying everyone should be scavenging constantly. And none of this should be taken as an admonition (i.e., "you are a bad person if you don't do this / everyone should be able to do this"), as I know people's life circumstances and abilities and needs differ (and fluctuate) widely. But where there's a "scavenging niche" I don't see any reason to try and block it off, and I do see plenty of reason to take advantage of it!

The Kitchen Cat-Platform Thing, Finished!

2010-02-28T21:01:00.000-08:00

Well the cat-platform thing I constructed in the process of stabilizing the previously-built scratching post is now complete! (Actually it was complete on Friday, but I didn't get to posting until today, but that's really neither here nor there).

I am quite pleased with how it turned out...this might sound a bit silly, but even just my recent learning of the fact that screws generally hold wood together more securely than nails and/or glue has hugely increased the range of stuff I can conceivably make. Plus it complements the kitchen, both in style (which, for this house, is turning into a sort of amalgamation of mid-century modern, craftsman, and industrial, at least inasmuch as I'm familiar with such aesthetics), and in color (the advantage of using leftover paint!).

But I digress. I like when things I make turn out well by my standards, but it isn't my standards that really matter as far as cat-furniture goes. This whole thing would be a total failure in my mind if the resident feline critics disapproved.

Yes, I'd tried to take their preferences (e.g., they all prefer to eat on some sort of raised platform, rather than out of a bowl on the ground, but are less particular about water) into account, as well as avoid some of the asinine mistakes I've seen in various kitty-furniture designs (e.g., cabinets that have both a cubby for the litterbox and a compartment for food bowls in close proximity -- nobody wants to eat right next to the toilet if they can help it!).

But of course I did not know for sure whether they'd rate it a Win or a Fail until the paint dried and all the screws were in and the thing was installed in the kitchen (in their favorite snacking-and-birdwatching spot, in front of the window).

The results? Observe, below!

Nikki was the first to investigate, and very quickly found the new food spot:

All three youngsters (from left, Brodie, Shadow, and Coraline) come by to check things out:

Brodie finds the water bowl location acceptable, moreso because he gets to hide partly behind a support post during the hydration process:

Cora realizing "hey, I can jump between platforms of multiple heights here now!"

Shadow listens to a bird from the food platform:

...so while I cannot articulate their precise opinions on the new structure (at least not in human language), it looks to me as if they are quite pleased with it. Hooray!

For those interested in the technical details, here is a rough list of the materials and components I used to build the structure:

- 3" general-purpose screws (lots of these, this was the main item I used to connect the different boards together)

- 1" drywall screws (to secure sisal doormat-material to the tops of the 2 smaller platforms -- which aren't made of drywall, but those screws are nice and grippy and I find pre-drilling is not necessary when I use softer wood like pine)

- Miscellaneous wood scraps: several bits of 2x4 from the garage de-conversion, several bits of 2x6 stock (left over from a work-bench Matt built recently), some very small pieces of what I think was some kind of particle board from two bathroom cabinet shelves I removed, one square of 3/4" plywood (the food platform -- also leftover from Matt's workbench), and a few pieces of pine board from the old kitchen (which we basically demolished).

Interestingly, I only ended up cutting two or three pieces of available wood. Everything else was already just about the right size for what I needed it for -- what luck!

- Leftover paint: Behr "Dark Cavern" for the base (eggshell enamel), a mixed green color (also eggshell, I forget what colors I mixed though) for the platform things, and (from a tiny sample-size jar) a color called "Oat Straw" in flat interior sheen on the support posts.

- Two rectangular sections of a sisal doormat thing

- Gaffer's tape (on the edges of the doormat sections, to keep them from fraying where they were cut)

- Small metal corner brackets, on two of the support posts and on each piece of the little corner-angle food-bowl-stabilizer (which keeps the food bowl from being pushed off the back or side of the feeding platform).

- Anti-skid shelf covering material in a light tan color (I put a piece of this under the food and water bowls to avoid them being pushed around and/or spilled)

The tools I used were:

- Power drill / bit driver (ours is a Ryobi something-or-other; it's serviceable but kind of old and the batteries don't hold a charge very well anymore, but it got the job done)

- Philips screwdriver (the manual kind, medium-sized)

- Wood saw (the packaging said it had "aggressive teeth", which was good because it went through the wood fairly fast)

- Shop vac! (Craftsman, 2 gallon model)

- Misc. paintbrushes and rollers

- Paper towels (ok not really a tool but pretty indispensible for any project involving paint)

I don't have plans or blueprints or anything because I did not create any. I just took the dimensions I knew the kitchen could accommodate, and the dimensions (roughly) of the wood scraps I had on hand, and the parameters I figured were cat-relevant, and combined them. I also took into consideration things like surface texture -- a lot of commercial cat trees are covered with carpet and I did not want that sort of fuzz factory in the kitchen. Something made mostly of smooth / painted wood, with the only textile-ish parts being of natural sisal fiber, seemed much more appropriate for where the structure was going to be used and what it would be used for.

OK that is about all I can think of regarding this DIY project but feel free to ask questions! I would also be happy to advise on possible designs for some kind of custom structure for your home if you have cats and a small / odd / specialized space in which you'd like to put a bit of furniture for them.

NOTE: Comments are closed on this post temporarily (as of 4.26.10), because I keep getting these really obnoxious serial spam link-comments about "nude celebrities" and whatnot. And it's doing this weird thing where I have to delete the same comment 10 or so times before it actually goes away.

DIY Cat Furniture! (Or, Fun With Wood Scraps And Leftover Paint)

2010-02-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

(Yes, it's another picturey post pertaining to actual physical objects.)

Directly below, observe: ye olde scratching post, perched upon by Nikki, who prefers to be above the action whenever possible (particularly as the "action" in question generally consists of "three young whippersnapper-kitties tearing around the house at breakneck speed for hours at a stretch").

(The other kitty in this picture is Shadow, one of the aforementioned whippersnappers, though at 6 months old, definitely no longer tiny!)

I made this post a few months back out of old scrap wood and some sisal rope from the hardware store.

At the time I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and the kitties seemed to like it...but as the younglings grew, it got to the point where I started hearing something akin to "thumpthumpthumpCRASH!" in the wee hours of the morning. In short, Scratching Post 1.0 simply could not withstand the force vectors being unleashed upon it by the thundering horde of adolescent feline feet as they made their daily semi-midair circuit about the house.

Hence, that black stuff arranged rather artlessly on the base: gaffer's tape. Which is awesome stuff, to be sure, but not something I want stuck all over my kitchen floor.

Sooo...this week I determined that some modifications were in order. My initial intention was, merely, "stabilize the base". I got a bit carried away, though, and the Super Mario-esque results (so far) can be viewed below:

(The three sections of 2x4 under the base aren't permanently attached, the unit is just resting on them for painting purposes, i.e., so the bottom would not get stuck to the plastic sheeting I put down to protect the garage floor from paint drips.)

I plan to add some additional surfacing (little sisal mats on top of the two smaller "perches"), and some kind of thingy to hold food/water dishes in such a way that they won't be tipped over easily. Then I shall put it in the kitchen, where it will serve as a combination kitty lunch counter / scratching post / bird-watching station. Yay!

Seriously, though, I am really happy with how this turned out, especially given how expensive most cat furniture (even the crappier sort) is. I'm a cheapskate at the best of times, and being presently Between Jobs, I am, shall we say, even more inclined toward frugality than usual, making it tremendously satisfying to put stuff together using material I just happen to have on-hand (in this case, wood scraps and leftover paint).

House Progress Update

2010-02-14T22:51:00.000-08:00

According to my octogenarian next-door neighbors, there is no such thing as "finishing" work on one's house.

I'd certainly believe it, seeing as it's taken me nearly seven months just to get my desk area properly organized! (Of course it looked great right when we first moved the furniture in, but it promptly became a disaster zone as soon as our actual stuff showed up, and its present appearance was a long time in the making). Observe below (click to see full size image):

I'm really really happy with it. Hopefully it stays this way -- as much as I like and need properly organized environments to function well in, I've never been very good at maintaining them, and it takes me ages to get them set up in the first place.

But: I am more optimistic this time since having discovered the wonders of (a) plastic storage containers, and (b) the electronic label-maker (mine is a Brother P-Touch but there are probably multiple kinds that do about the same thing).

Moreover, I think I've finally learned my lesson regarding "knick-knack" type objects, which is to say that while many of them may be nifty and fun to look at / play with, it is not necessary nor desirable to display (or have within reach) ALL of them, ALL at the same time. The "old" incarnation of my desk zone used to include Star Wars figures, Lego spaceships, various Pez dispensers, a chess set, bumper stickers, and the odd greeting card. And I still have most of that stuff, but the vast majority of it is packed up in yet more of those clear plastic storage containers, and stored on shelves in the garage.

I think what taught me this lesson (aside from having gotten sick of the vast quantities of dust that used to accumulate) was hearing on a "home design" podcast of some kind (yes I was listening to stuff like that during the course of my move) that when you have a collection of anything, you can actually diminish the "impact" of individual pieces if you try and put all of it out at once. So what's better is to put out just a few at a time, so you can appreciate them more individually (and not clutter your visual environment / workspace nearly as much).

And while everyone is different of course, and some might not find this helpful, I've found it massively useful advice to apply (particularly as I now live with four very energetic cats who have no qualms about knocking stuff over if it happens to be in the way of their leaping!).

Oh and another thing I am pleased with is the orange shelf-thing on the left (where the label maker is). It was originally this cheap ugly veneered thing from Target but I painted it, and now it matches the orange accent wall in that room nicely (and also the robot and the file folder thingy!).

Here's another shelf in the same office/computer room, showing the awesomeness of plastic storage boxes:

It is SO NICE to have all my and Matt's Random Geek Detritus (network cable, heat shrink tubing, etc.) all tidily sorted and stored rather than in a tangled, dust-gathering pile in a corner somewhere. This shelf, you will also note, does triple-duty as Geek Detritus storage, bookshelf (we put all the computer/programming related books here, as well as one of my EMC books), and cat-bed apartment (the "ground floor" has two boxes lined with fleece for the kitties to nap in).

And finally (for now), check out this cool green lamp!:

It's actually bigger than it looks -- the round "dome" thing has about an 8 inch diameter and the total "arm" length is around four feet. We badly need more light at the front end of the living room (the big windows let in lots of natural daylight but that doesn't help us at night!) and have been searching for the right lamp, but none of the ones at Ikea, etc., seemed proper.

But then, lo and behold, I remembered this past week that we had this old green thing in the garage left by the previous owners. I didn't even know if it was going to work, and it was horribly dirty before I cleaned it up, but after cleaning and replacement of the light bulb it looks lovely and works beautifully. Also, it matches our kitchen cabinet face frames, etc., almost exactly, which is a funny coincidence! I utterly love finding stuff like this -- this lamp reminds me of something from one of those fancy furniture catalogs I sometimes get (e.g., "Restoration Hardware") but never buy anything from because it's too expensive even though it's made to look "old".

(Also, incidentally, if anyone knows what model of lamp this actually is, and how old it might be, I would love to know. The only thing I can find on it identification-wise is a brand name, "Fostoria".)

Weird Spam Species

2010-02-11T10:42:00.001-08:00

So like everyone else in the universe with a blog, I've had to deal with spam comments. Overall I think I have the situation reasonably under control, especially since I turned on comment moderation for posts over 60 days old. This way, I get comment notifications in my email inbox, at which point I can decide whether or not to publish or reject the comment.

Predictably, most of the spam I get seems to consist of people trying to link to other websites, where one might, for instance, purchase mis-spelled variations of prescription drugs (especially of the supposedly "manhood-enhancing" sort), download viruses disguised as virus-protection software, or look at pictures of what can only be described as "disturbing barnyard scenes".

And while all that is certainly obnoxious, I can at least see a "purpose" in the comments -- that is, the commenter (or comment-bot, as the case may be) wants people to click a link and go to their site, which presumably will result in someone, somewhere, making money.

BUT: there's also another variant of spam going around that utterly baffles me, as I don't see any purpose to it whatsoever. These spam comments indicate no identities (meaning they're generally posted "anonymously"), contain no links, and mention nothing that to me even remotely suggests a product someone might be trying to sell.

For example, I just deleted two comments that read as follows:

(1) "Brim over I acquiesce in but I think the collection should prepare more info then it has."

(2) "Opulently I to but I contemplate the post should prepare more info then it has."

(Which remind me a lot of the output of Racter, one of the first "computer games" I ever played as an elementary-schooler, and which I think employed some sort of Markovizing algorithm.)

I also recently received a comment along the lines of, "Excuse me, but can you tell me where I can buy a unicorn?", which I know several other folks received as well.

So, anyway, this kind of thing? I don't get it.

I know it's not that important in the grand scheme of things, but it's so danged weird I wanted to ask around and see if anyone knew what purpose comments such as the above examples could serve.

I am thinking maybe something to do with loading search engine results / messing with keywords, but I can't see how the indicated comments would actually serve that function.

Any ideas?

(And remember, this is NOT a case of people commenting nonsense but then embedding a link in their comment -- I get those ones too, but in that case it's clear they at least go somewhere. The ones I'm talking about do not contain any links, or any URLs, or any clickable identity tag -- they're just plain text that doesn't make any sense).

EDIT:

Many thanks to commenter Raoul, who explicated thusly:

The bots leave them in as many places as they can. Later they poll Google for that specific phrase.

Hits on the Google search will be sites that are (a) indexed, therefore can help generate PageRank, and (b) poorly maintained, 'cause the nonsense spam didn't get moderated away or erased.

So the bots go back for a second round, leaving the real linky spam in places it will fester longer.

(In other words, I think the mystery is solved!)

My Resume Is Posted...

2010-02-10T21:01:00.001-08:00

Figured I'd try out some of this new-fangled future Internet technology and put a link to my resume on my blog.

I am sure that any potential employer who designs to Google me is going to come across this blog anyway, so I might as well make pertinent information easy to find!

As for my job objectives, I am specifically targeting (in the San Jose/Santa Clara, California area) either:

(a) A position entailing electrical engineering / EMC duties at a company which designs and/or manufactures medical devices (i.e., life-support, EEG, etc.) or assistive technology (text to speech, mobility assistance, etc.)., or

(b) A position entailing EMC test engineer duties at a laboratory

I believe that my experience, skills, and enthusiasms would go well with either (a) or (b) above (SUPER bonus if I could somehow apply my EE/EMC background in a position contributing toward longevity biotech or something of that nature!). So if any readers know of any companies looking for someone in those areas, feel free to pass that information along. I will certainly return the favor if I come across any information myself that may be of interest to fellow job-seekers.

Thanks!

On Job Seeking and Disability Acknowledgment

2010-02-04T23:18:00.000-08:00

Recently, I made the acquaintance of someone who works with [Non-Profit Organization Meant to Help Job-Seekers With Disabilities Find Work]*. I was referred to this person, in turn, by another person via [Generalized Job-Search Assistance Firm]*, which my former employer set things up with to assist laid-off workers.

So far that firm has actually been surprisingly helpful -- I mean no, I haven't found a new job yet, but I've definitely got my resume in much better shape and I've got a decent idea of where to start.

But anyway, I'll get to the point of this entry: during a recent meeting with my go-to person (whom I'll abbreviate as GTP from now on) at the firm, I had an interesting experience with "not passing".

I had not mentioned specifically that I was on the autistic spectrum, and had not intended to bring it up unless it became inevitable or "absolutely necessary".

And I have to admit I was sort of assuming I was "passing".

But then, out of the blue (from my perspective), at one point during the meeting the GTP asked if I was "able to establish eye contact".

That, in turn, led into a discussion about disabilities, and disclosure, and "barriers" I might face in my job search. My GTP noted that she could tell I was "bright" and "able to work", but that clearly I would likely encounter some difficulty in, say, an interview setting (and there are also various "on the job" issues that would likely come up, but first things first).

This got me thinking: at my prior job (the only job I had post-college, in fact), I never had to deal with the Big Interview that "regular" new prospects went through, seeing as I'd already proven my technical prowess as a summer intern (a position I was assisted in getting via a family member who worked for that company).

And I did face difficulties at that job, but managed to stay employed there anyway -- probably in no small part because I started figuring out some things about how my brain worked, and was able to actually put some terminology to it (one reason I'm glad to have an actual diagnosis; some people may not need one, and some might disagree with the concept, and I myself disagree with "medicalizing" autism -- but right now, for many of us, a diagnosis is really the only route to actually getting needed accommodations, etc.).

So, to make a long story slightly less long, I got referred by the GTP at the job-search assistance firm to another GTP who is affiliated with the aforementioned nonprofit. And it sounds like they may actually have some information and/or resources that would be helpful to me (and others like me).

But: in order to get "officially" involved with them I would have to get a "verification of disability" from a medical professional. As in, my doctor would have to fill out a form, which I guess I would then give to the agency (or something).

That should not be too difficult for me -- so long as my COBRA application went through, I should have access to the same doctors I was seeing prior to the layoff. And I can't imagine [particular doctor] refusing to fill out the form (though I am slightly worried that they perhaps won't have time).

But: that's me. I am all kinds of lucky and privileged (class privilege, white privilege, etc.). This means that while, yes, I am disabled in some respects, I also have a lot of "safety nets" in my life that help reduce the amount of sheer fail I'm likely to encounter when things go badly.

And...not everyone who might presumably need help with their job search is going to have access to these safety nets, nor to professionally-sanctioned "proof of disability". I am not blaming the nonprofit for this -- it's part of the culture we're in, to imagine that "gatekeepers" must exist between individuals and services. And there may be good reasons to have those gatekeepers in some situations.

Still, though, it worries me to think that there might be some other autistic person out there who might not even have an official diagnosis, let alone an accessible and willing professional to fill out forms for them. People of color and folks from low-income backgrounds, so I've read, tend to be way under-identified with developmental issues; instead they get presumed to have "behavior problems". As a middle-class white nerd living in Silicon Valley it is not lost on me that (aside from being female) I'm probably in the Most Likely To Be Identified group as far as ASD is concerned.

There are also logistical challenges that go along with this sort of thing (forms, setting up with nonprofits and service organizations) that, heck, I don't even know if I will be able to handle myself, and I'm in a pretty good position (all things considered) for someone of my neurology.

So...I am not sure where I am going with this, except to say two things:

(1) Please, if you are a professional or just a Concerned Acquaintance, or friend, or family member of a disabled person who is looking for work, do not think you are somehow helping to say things like "oh, don't call yourself disabled! You're too smart/talented/good at [thing]! Why do you want to sell yourself short?"

Not only is this incredibly patronizing, it could very well end up feeding into the disabled person's already-present internalized stigma. And making them reluctant to even use services that might be a huge help to them, because of "not wanting to define [self] as 'disabled'", even when it's actually quite contextually appropriate to do so.

(And I am writing this in part to encourage myself here, because I actually have a lot of internalized stigma myself, and have been feeling guilty all day about the prospect of benefitting from a service meant to assist disabled jobseekers. Even though I was referred to the GTP for this service by someone who called me out on my own disability because they could see it themselves. *headdesk*)

I realize that some of this kind of response might stem from the fact that some people equate "disability" with "sickness", or more generally with meaning a person is intrinsically broken or damaged.

I've taken part in some very frustrating discussions wherein the other party just does not seem to get that disability does not HAVE to mean anything bad, but is rather a neutral description of a situation that needs to be addressed (i.e., that I have non-standard needs in some areas, and that no, pretending they don't exist is not going to make them go away).

Also, I don't put any stock in philosophies that seek to build up some people's sense of self-worth at the expense of others. Hence, no, I do not consider it reassuring when someone tries to assert to me that I shouldn't apply concepts like "disability" to myself because that would mean failing to distance myself from the sorts of disabled people who are presumed to be tragic, pitiable, and undesirable.

When from my point of view, the problem is that pity is ever considered appropriate to apply to anyone, regardless of type or "magnitude" of their disability. There is no way you can simultaneously pity someone and see them as an equal, and it is grievously wrong to figure that someone who discloses or displays non-standard needs is somehow asking for pity. They aren't, and it's beyond insulting to presume they are.

(2) It does not actually help anyone to figure that people like me (that is, college graduates with engineering degrees and whatnot who are also on the autistic spectrum, etc.) are somehow "polluting" or "appropriating" the meaning of what it is to be autistic, or disabled, etc., to the detriment of folks who currently lack abilities we have.

I know full well that there are people with "spectrum" diagnoses who struggle a lot more than I do to be understood, or to deal with academics, or to perform "daily living" tasks.

I also know that there are people with "spectrum" diagnoses who drive, and who have PhDs, and who have a better sense of danger than I do.

And yet...I don't sit around getting annoyed at those folks and yelling about how they're "taking away" something from me, regardless of whether they can do more or fewer "standard" things than I can, at any given time.

Because they're not.

They have their own struggles, as well as their own triumphs, and the reality of what they've achieved (by standard measures) does not negate the fact that they might need non-standard forms of support in some areas.

Nor does extreme struggle in one or more areas negate the potential for capacity in other areas.

Disability is not a generalized lack of all ability, and I find it obnoxious and bizarre that autism in particular seems to be relegated to the "can't do ANYTHING" box so much of the time.

Which is a silly box to begin with -- I mean really, would you figure that if a blind person happened to (for instance) own a home or play a musical instrument that they weren't really blind? Pretty much everyone can do some things -- disabled people just have our can-dos and can't-dos in unexpected (per our culture) places.

So please, if you're tempted to say "but you can do [thing]! how dare you call yourself autistic/disabled!", just...don't. Because that would be ignorant, and would not actually help even a tiny bit to get better services for, say, non-verbal preschoolers or "severely impaired" adults.

Finally, I guess I would like to say that I think autism, and disability at large for that matter, should be a broad category**, sort of like how the designator "bird" can refer to both, say, penguins and hummingbirds. Calling a penguin a bird doesn't even begin to invalidate the reality of hummingbirds, after all.

* I may give the names of these groups/agencies in the future, especially so I can recommend them if they actually end up helping me get a job! But for now I am just referring generically to them, as I don't want to make this discussion about specific firms or service providers.

** Within reason, and with respect to good scientific/ethical practice. E.g., I don't think it makes any sense at all to call, say, gastrointestinal issues and food allergies "autism" (particularly when one is promoting the use of autistic kids as experimental subjects for any number of bizarre supplement regimens). I mean, good grief, one of my cats gets what I've come to term "poopfetti" (based on what I find in the litterbox afterward) whenever he eats anything containing corn...and I'm not about to go around calling that (corn intolerance + poopfetti) "autism", even though Brodie does like playing with string...

Movie Review: Ink

2010-02-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

SPOILER LEVEL: Mild to Moderate - includes discussion of themes, but does not reveal the ending or other major plot points.

So, recently I signed up for a trial of one of those online DVD-rental services, figuring it might be a reasonably economical way to get to see some interesting films I might not otherwise encounter. After filling out a little introductory questionnaire about my tastes I was presented with a list of "recommended titles", the first of which was a movie I'd never heard of called Ink. Curious to see how well the service had pegged my preferences, I placed Ink at the front of my queue, and received the disc in the mail shortly afterward.

Prior to watching Ink, I had only read a few (spoiler-free) comments from other people who'd rented the film. I had also scanned the synopsis on the DVD (which appears below):

Late one night, a lost soul named Ink snatches 8-year-old Emma (Quinn Hunchar) into the world of dreams. There, he hopes to use her soul to join the ranks of the evil Incubi. In the real world, Emma lies comatose, to the despair of her father, John (Chris Kelly). But the Incubi's benevolent opposites -- the Storytellers -- rally to help Emma, motivating John to wage war for his daughter.

...but had not read it closely, so I commenced my viewing really not knowing what to expect. Moreover (such is my preference), in writing this review I have avoided reading other reviews/analyses of the film, so this commentary represents my own minimally-biased impressions.

My verdict post-watching? Ink is very, very good. A bit rough in some places -- apparently, writer/director Jamin Winans did not have much of a budget to work with, relatively speaking -- but not jarringly so. The above synopsis doesn't do the film justice, at any rate, as Ink is not a film that lends itself to easy, accurate summarization.

Yes, on one level it's a modern, urban fantasy about supernatural "dream-people" (of which there are both Good and Evil varieties) vying to, depending on their alignment, either help or destroy the humans in their midst, but describing the film on that level alone fails to convey very much at all about Ink.

For one thing, Ink does far more "show" than "tell", challenging the viewer (especially in the first half of the film) to figure out the rules and mores of the universe being presented, and to suss out just what the heck is going on with the characters anyway. We are not given explicit biographies of anyone; we learn who they are through example, in snatches of (somewhat) non-linear imagery that manages to communicate quite a lot about the movie's denizens.

For another thing, Ink touches on what, for lack of better phrasing, I would term "deep themes". In my estimation, one of the primary marks of well-done fantasy fiction is that it manages to tell some truth about actual reality. I will elaborate further on this later on in the review; for now, suffice to say that I was impressed with Ink's treatment of (particular kinds of) good and evil, and with its conveyance of the distinction between stories and lies.

As for my overall impressions, I would say Ink manages to be both painful (at times) and fun to watch. By that I mean that I found myself thinking "gah, that sucks for that guy, wow, that's really sad, but whoah, cool, I think I just figured out what that thing in that other scene was!" throughout much of my viewing.

Ink is not a total angst-fest or anything, mind you -- in fact I would not classify it even remotely as a "dystopia", and there are a number of Whedonish "comic relief" moments. The little girl who plays Emma is also really cool, and impressively well-characterized for a kid that young (as in, she isn't just The Cute One or The Bratty One, she clearly has a mind of her own).

Effects That Drive The Story Rather Than Obfuscating The Lack Of One

As "special effects" (mainly of the visual sort) are now a mainstay of modern filmmaking, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy genres, I have started paying attention when I watch movies to how they employ these effects. As I am, admittedly, a bit of a sucker for Shiny Lights And Pretty Colors(TM), I can enjoy watching something silly and superficial so long as its Shiny Quotient is high enough. However, I much prefer it when (as the title of this section suggests) the shiny is used as a storytelling tool rather than a means to distract from lazy writing.

As such, in contrast to my reaction to Avatar, I walked away from watching Ink thinking along the lines of "Wow, okay, this is what movies can be like if people actually try!" It was very nice to be reminded of what true effort to tell a good story looks like.

Ink, while it does utilize its share of special effects (impressively so, in fact, for its budget), does not condescend in this manner; special effects are used in story-appropriate places as tools, not as a substitute for depth elsewhere. Ink depicts a world at once fantastic and "believable"; yes, we have things like inter-dimensional gates opening up mid-air at the command of various dream-people and their arcane devices, but both the shiny portals and the mechanisms that activate them are presented very matter-of-factly.

In other words, Ink succeeds in showing extraordinary things but having them appear quite thoroughly ordinary in context, which of course they would for the denizens of its fictional landscape -- and as far as I am concerned, this is another one of the hallmarks of fantasy well done.

That said, Ink also makes fairly heavy use of color filters, blurry edges, and other "post-processing" video effects, which I imagine some viewers will find annoying or "overly artsy". I liked it, though, and did not find it distracting, and in some ways I think it helped communicate what was going on (i.e., scenes representing one character's memories had a yellowish cast to them).

And as a final comment on the film's visuals (and overall visual-orientedness), I would actually be very curious to learn how Ink comes across to a blind person or someone with low/limited vision. I have not done much research into movie accessibility features for blind folks but I presume there are some out there (additional descriptive tracks, etc.), and am wondering how a story that to me seems very heavily imagery-dependent would be communicated to someone without the requisite sensory modality. (Also, I should note that this question occurred to me in the first place because there is actually a fairly significant character in Ink who is blind.)

Themes in Ink: Good and Evil/Stories and Lies

Now, I am an engineer, not an English major, and I certainly couldn't tell you exactly which ancient myths and fairy-tales Ink alludes to -- but I can say that the film definitely comes across as feeling rather like a fairy-tale itself. This, of course is not a bad thing. After all, there are numerous themes, images, and modes of character development that will tend to come up over and over again in creative works produced by humans, because some experiences are just very human.

As such, Ink reminds me vaguely of several old stories, poems and characters all at once, but "quietly" so, if that makes any sense. This film does not, unlike other recently-viewed works (*cough* Avatar *cough*) come across as a trite re-hash of something else; there was plenty of originality layered atop Ink's "archetypical" material.

E.g., the "good" dream-people (called Storytellers) and their "bad" counterparts (called Incubi) represent something fairly common (personification of good and evil is nothing new), but nonetheless, there was just something very fresh-seeming about the portrayals of both factions. For one thing, the Storytellers all unabashedly look different from one another, whereas the Incubi seem to be trying their hardest at homogeneity (even though you can clearly see behind their distorions that they are different from one another).

Now to elaborate on the good/evil and stories/lies thematic elements I referred to earlier: this is not something I can personally easily express in quantitative language, but one very real type of evil portrayed in Ink is that of distorting a person's sense of self and reality in a manner that can lead to their destruction (and in doing so, often set up a chain reaction leading to yet more pain and despair for yet more people).

In real life this brand of evil occurs when people are abused, discriminated against, and denied basic ethics -- but it also occurs when people just happen to encounter certain patterns and get "stuck" in them via the adoption of certain attitudes.

Again, language is failing me somewhat here, but basically I think Ink alludes to the same species of destructiveness that is portrayed by, say, the Echthroi (in Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy works), and by the "Nothing" (from The Neverending Story), and even by Bill Murray's character's attitude at the beginning of the film Groundhog Day (which, yes, I am reminded of because yesterday was February 2!).

In all those cases, regardless of where it comes from (whether it be a particular creature, or a set of societal influences, or something resembling depression, or any number of other sources), you have some sort of force urging people to effectively erase themselves, bury themselves under illusions (with these illusions presented as "undeniable truth"), and to drag as many others down with them in the process (whether this is done intentionally or not).

And, in all those cases, the way to fight the evil seems to be in basically standing up to the would-be destructive forces and refusing to accept or adopt their illusions (whether they pertain to you or someone else, or to reality-at-large). In L'Engle's works this is done through "Naming" (that is, asserting the significance and unique identity of everything and everyone, whether they be a human or a star or a tree). In The Neverending Story this is done through imagination, wish, and (ultimately) the distillation of what truly does matter from a whole slew of possibilities.

(And in Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors figures out via trial and error that maybe being a nihilistic jackass is not the optimum, or the most reality-acknowledging, way of going about life. Which is very...different in form from all the other examples listed here, but I wanted to mention it because Groundhog Day is actually a pretty good depiction, in my opinion, of the difference between good-producing and evil-producing attitudes, where the attitudes themselves are not personified as good or evil creatures.)

Along these lines, though again putting its own spin on things, Ink's good characters fight evil through a combination of storytelling (in that particular way which permits truth to be conveyed) and by something that is not labeled specifically but which looks to me to be a lot like "Naming". There is also a cool scene in which one character uses his particular capacity to play with probability in a manner that sets up an opportunity for one of the human characters to change the direction of his life for the better, but which does not force a given outcome.

To me, these things, while not literally having counterparts in real life, do represent ways in which actual people can (and do) triumph over real evil -- that is, by learning the difference between destructive illusion and the truth about who we are, what we could become, and what the world is genuinely like.

As for the matter of "stories versus lies": there is one particularly telling scene in Ink in which two characters are arguing over this very quandary. One character seems to actually believe that his take on things is the only truly rational way to interpret reality. The other character, however, asserts the falseness of this and insists that there is a difference between stories and lies.

The way I read this scene, the second character seems to be pointing out that sometimes one can actually end up trapped in lies because of being led to disavow the utility of stories! In other words, part of what I see happening in Ink is a kind of...backlash against the notion that in order to be Super Rational And Therefore Connected With Actual Reality,- one has to decide that the "worst case" (of who one is, and how the universe operates) is the best possible "default". I appreciate this backlash because it is one I see myself as taking part in -- the very name of my blog attests to this!

Put another way, I do not think you have to believe that Everything Ultimately Sucks in order to be a rational being, and I guess that compels me to appreciate it when I come across "hey, look, actually, there is no good reason to presume life is meaningless, because hey guess what, meaning isn't made by stuff outside you anyway, but by what you bring with you to the stuff you perceive!" messages in my entertainment.

Finally!

So...yeah, if anyone is still reading at this point I will conclude by saying that Ink is definitely a film I would recommend, to pretty much anyone who enjoys a good sf/fantasy tale and who appreciates a bit of sustenance with their special effects. I would especially anticipate anyone who enjoyed films like 12 Monkeys or Brazil (there's a very Terry Gilliam-ish weirdness to Ink, which is always happy-making for me), or Dark City, or The City of Lost Children will like Ink.

Catur-Monday Photopost

2010-02-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

As I am currently finishing up another movie review post and working on a few others, here are some more cat pictures (taken mostly last week / this past weekend).

The kittens are now nearly six months old! And Nikki, the most recent addition to our feline family (who is eight years old) is definitely settling in, though she and Coraline are still having swat-and-hiss fights every now and then, as they are both very territorial ladies. Still, I figure so long as nobody is actually shredding anyone else, we're doing quite well. I was all asquee to see all four of them napping on the couch (as one of these pictures shows)!

Snuggle-pile on the couch! Shadow and Brodie are total best buddy-brothers, as their entangled cuddle-hug configuration demonstrates. Cora is comfortably positioned next to the boys, whilst Nikki keeps a respectful (yet proximate) distance on the arm of the sofa, where she likes to perch.

So far Nikki seems to be getting on best with Shadow (out of all the kittens). I was figuring it would be either him or Brodie she would warm up to first, as both boy kitties are very social when it comes to other felines.

Brodie having an utterly luxurious nap-stretch on the electric blanket.

Bird-watching is fun for the whole (feline) family!

Coraline is being naughty here (kitties are not allowed on the counters, and she knows it!) but this was such a neat shot I had to get the camera and take it before shooing her down. I then did some editing in GIMP to turn down all the color saturation except for orange, and I think the effect was rather cool!

Dirty Sock Crisis Thwarted By The Unassailable MacGyver Tendency!

2010-01-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

One thing I still don't have set up yet at my house is a washing machine (or dryer, for that matter, but I'm not opposed to line-drying if I need to do it). The previous owners had had the washing machine in the kitchen -- apparently this was a bit of a fad during the 1950s, when I guess it was considered wonderful for "the housewife" to be able to stay in the kitchen all day, no matter if she were cooking or doing laundry (yay?).

But I digress. The bottom line is that while eventually I'd like the washing machine hooked up in the garage, at present we don't have one hooked up anywhere -- and while hand-washing would be fine for things like t-shirts and underwear, it's a right pain in the arse for jeans and towels and such, which tend to defy all efforts to rinse by hand and end up very stiff when dry. My partner's parents have been kindly letting us use their washer and dryer, but it isn't always convenient to go over there.

Hence, a few weeks ago when the laundry pile had begun approaching epic proportions, I decided to try out a local laundromat, having noticed just such an establishment about three blocks down the street.

Being a non-driver, though, the matter of how to transport two loads of laundry to even this very close laundromat posed a bit of a creative challenge. Even if that amount of clothes hadn't been too heavy to carry more than a few feet, the bundles were cumbersome and awkward. It was really a job for a wagon or some sort of shopping cart, but I didn't have any of those handy. But then I remembered I still had my old computer chair in the garage, and that it had wheels, so I stacked the laundry baskets (actually one basket and one cloth bag) on the chair and pushed it down the street.

While not wonderful at navigating bumpy curb-cuts, overall this strategy worked great -- it not only enabled me to launder two very necessary loads of clothing, but once I got there I had a nice comfy chair to sit in and read ebooks on my iPod Touch while my textiles dried. So in my estimation the whole situation was a win.

But: apparently, I learned later (based on discussions with several people, including my very bewildered next door neighbors who had seen me), this is exactly the kind of thing that I am prone to doing, but that most other people Just Don't Do. And I have a hard time understanding why.

For me it was actually far easier (not to mention quite economical, as I was able to use a device I just had sitting in my garage for transport purposes) to get my laundry done the way I did than it would have been to try and arrange a ride from someone, etc.

So, I guess I am wondering why that sort of thing is apparently considered so "weird". Is there a social stigma associated with pushing stuff around on office chairs, to the point where most people just wouldn't bother even if all they had was an office chair?

I am not going to speculate with any rigor on how this may or may not relate to my neurology/cognitive phenotype, but throughout my life I've been slowly having it dawn on me that one of the reasons people tend to call me "weird" or constantly ask me "why are you doing [x]?" (when [x] seems perfectly normal to me) is because of this tendency to just do what I think needs doing, using whatever materials I have at my immediate disposal.

Also, I sometimes suspect that some of the social issues I've had come down to people assuming that I must be "trying to be weird on purpose" when in fact I often haven't a clue that something I'm doing is somehow "weird-looking" until someone tells me it is. Moreover, I've yet to encounter anyone who, upon explaining to me "Anne, that thing you did, it was weird!" can also explain why I should care!

Certainly I want to know if something I am doing is somehow harming someone, and I definitely appreciate being told when I'm doing something unsafe without realizing it -- but if the only reason people suggest I "shouldn't" do something is because it "looks funny", I guess I just don't see that as a very good reason to go out of my way to do it in a more standard manner.¹

Which brings me to my next point, which is to say that one thing I suspect people don't realize is that the "standard way" is often inaccessible to me -- or, at the very least, so convolutedly difficult for me to do that it really isn't worth bothering with.

It's like it's just presumed that things in List A are "easy" whereas things in List B are "hard". For me it's a heck of a lot harder to "make arrangements" with other people do do my laundry at their house, especially when it's a matter of "z0mg, I'm running out of underwear" like it was the day I made my little chair-jaunt to the laundromat, than it is to push a mound of fabric down the street and stick some quarters in a machine.

And really, one of the reasons I think I've been able to become as (what would be considered by many people) "independent" as an adult as I have is because my dad (among others) didn't raise me in a manner that trained me out of my inherent tendencies toward unbridled MacGyverism.² There's a whole laundry list (ha ha) of things I know I simply would not be able to do at all if I couldn't do them "my" way, and I guess I'm just really grateful sometimes that despite the imperfections that exist in all families, I grew up in an environment where "pass the duct tape!" was a far more commonplace sentiment than "get someone to buy you a new one".

1- As I get older and learn more I am also beginning to think there's class-related stuff involved here, as well as more general disability and "fear of the other"-ness going on. E.g., in the area where I live, there are very few pedestrians, and (as someone commented to me recently) the mere act of walking almost serves to suggest to the folks whizzing by in their cars that you're either poor/homeless or that you have "something wrong with you".

Which, if true, seems to be a bizarrely region-specific sentiment, as certainly in parts of Europe where public transit actually has a decent infrastructure that people hence actually use (and where cultural/physical layout variables of living/working/shopping areas are more pedestrian-friendly in general) you're going to see pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, neurotypes, and from all walks of life. I also don't recall anything resembling such a stigma being present when I lived in a smallish "college town" on California's central coast whilst a student...students, I guess, are expected to get around without cars at least some of the time. But, again, I digress. And certainly "oh but what if people think you're homeless...or CRAZY!" is not going to stop me from walking to the danged laundromat if I need to! Sheesh!

2- This is not to say I was never given help at all, or that I was just "left to my own devices" all the time. In fact, I had lots and lots of support -- not always perfect support, and not always in all the areas I needed it in, but enough to get me through the worst of the rough patches I experienced growing up alive. And nowadays I still receive a lot of assistance, some of it standard-issue (for people of my background/class/etc.) some of it on the unusual side for someone my age (like when my partner keeps me from wandering into traffic).

But it has taken me until now, really, to realize just how much of what I can do today is sort of contingent upon having had at least some opportunity whilst growing up to figure things out on my own terms.

And it has also taken in some areas, having encountered a few people very similar to me (cognitively/perceptually), but who have ended up experiencing far more struggles than I due to having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, in view of the wrong people (especially as teenagers). The individuals I am thinking of were, among other things, taught in many ways to be very very passive, very dependent on getting "permission" to do everything. And when you already have communication impairments to begin with, this can have disastrous consequences.

On Haiti

2010-01-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

...or rather, on the subject of the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on and its indescribably awful aftermath.

I don't know much about Haiti or anyone who actually lives there, or who died there, so I can't say much of substance.

But I do acknowledge the disaster.

These things happen in the world, and having a blog called "Existence is Wonderful" doesn't render me ignorant to this.

I wish they didn't happen, or rather, that when they did happen, we were better prepared for them. But I am by no means sure what to do in the way of preparation, in my own life or on behalf of others (and no, I don't think the solution necessarily involves robots).

Nor am I sure what I can do as an individual to help mitigate the effects of such a cataclysmic event. I mean, yes, there are groups I can donate to, but even if I go that route I don't want it to be in order to assuage my own survivor's guilt or whatnot. When something like this happens, what is needed is a whole lot of very concrete, very practical, very physical assistance. Medical care. Shelter. Food. Clean water. Rescue work to free people trapped under rubble. Clothing. Toys and books. Other stuff I haven't thought of.

So...if you or someone you know has some direct way to contribute these things, hopefully you can find some way to do it in a way that will actually work. As for me I don't know what to do aside from donating to UNICEF or Red Cross. Suggestions that don't involve flying to Haiti (as I expect in my weak nerdy inexperienced state I'd be more of a liability than a help) are welcome.

(Also, please don't think you are being clever by pointing out that "well lots of people die right here in the USA all the time too, what makes this earthquake so special?" I know full well that lots of awful things happen, everywhere, along with the kittens and rainbows that can make life so delightful for those of us who aren't lying bloody in the streets. I'm human, though, and I freely admit that not everything gets my attention. Plus as a California resident for over a decade now I certainly think earthquake preparedness and possible aftermaths of large quakes are very much worthwhile subjects to be concerned about, regardless of where those quakes occur.)

This isn't eloquent at all but I wanted to say something (while holding no illusions that saying something means I am doing anything useful).

"Verbal Communication Reserves Critically Low" T-Shirts/Buttons

2010-01-17T10:43:00.001-08:00

FYI to anyone potentially interested in a bit of helpful armor to ward off annoying store greeters (among others), the Verbal Communication Reserves Critically Low! graphic shown in my post on obnoxious, accessibility-fail-worthy 'store policies' and such is now available on Zazzle.

You can get either a t-shirt (which can be customized to account for different people's shapes, sizes, and preferences) or a button (which you can keep in your bag and pin to your shirt, etc., whenever the need arises).

Of course I make no guarantees as to whether wearing this graphic will actually work.

I remember once at one of my prior jobs, I was really busy with something and did not want to be interrupted. So I put a piece of yellow "CAUTION" tape across the opening to my cubicle and hung a note on it saying I was working on Important Business and for people to please avoid bugging me until I was done (or similar, I don't recall the exact wording I used).

And...within a few minutes of putting it up, I had a manager peek their head into my cube and inquire of me, "So, is this working for you?" It was at that moment it became clear just how factually grounded the Dilbert comic is.

But in any case, I have long thought that there needs to be some equivalent to a "Do Not Disturb" sign for people just walking around in public, especially for those of us with non-standard body language and expressions, etc. I figured out a while ago that I probably tend to get approached (or, paradoxically in some cases, ignored) a disproportionate amount of the time, and I am pretty sure this is due to some intangible factors in how I come across.

E.g., I get told I look "lost", "distracted", or "like [I] don't know what [I'm] doing" on a regular basis. When I was a teenager I got stopped by the police multiple times just walking down the street, to the point where (until someone told me this was rarely done to white teenage girls) I thought that was normal. When I'm amongst a lot of other nerds or other neurologically unusual folks this doesn't happen nearly as much, but it happens a heck of a lot when I am in more general/mainstream situations, and I figure I can't be the only person who this is the case for.

Anyway I am probably going to get a button and try it out next time I'm out running errands, as sort of a field-test. I shall certainly report on the results if I do this!

A Note On The Direction Of This Blog

2010-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has been reading Existence is Wonderful for a while now may have noticed that lately I have been posting less in the way of lengthy, serious, citation-laden writing and more in the way of cat pictures and commentary not quite as "weighty", for lack of a better word.

So I just wanted to explain this a bit. Basically what happened was that I got really, really exhausted last year. I had some huge changes occur in my life (moving from an apartment into a house, getting laid off from my job, adopting cats, etc.) and all of those changes necessitated the expenditure of massive amounts of energy in primarily offline contexts.

Moreover a lot of the house-related and work-related stuff has been tremendously confusing. Thankfully I have a lot of help and support from various people I am fortunate to have in my life, but still, I have had to take things very slowly in some respects in order to actually get them right, and the time needed to do that has meant other things (like working to apply language to complex issues) have fallen by the wayside.

None of this means I am not interested in my "usual" topics (longevity medicine, neurology/autism, disability issues, robots, technology and culture, etc.), and I have tried to keep touching on these at least every so often. But all these things take time to articulate properly about, and they take being able to work in a certain sort of brain-mode I've not had the luxury of devoting very much bandwidth to this past year.

Whenever I've been able to post anything reasonably complex it has been a surprise to me...which brings me to the primary reason for this explanation. Essentially I've realize that if I decide never to write anything until I can write something sufficiently well-researched (and cited if need be), serious (or humorous, even, depending on the topic), and explicated to my own satisfaction I would never write anything. Or rather, I would post less and less to the point where my writing skills started to atrophy, which would make it that much harder to start again when I actually had enough information and background and brain to produce something worthwhile.

(This has actually happened to me before...when I got out of college I had practically forgotten how to write, and I was so rusty it was almost physically painful to generate a paragraph saying, for instance, what a particular book was about. I practiced my way through that, but I would rather not have to deal with that again!)

So...what this means for Existence is Wonderful is that while I do aim to produce Serious Business (meaning, posts that have been thoroughly fact-checked, referenced, and disclaimered) posts when I can, not EVERY post is going to be Serious Business.

Moreover, sometimes I may seem to be writing about a given thing (such as longevity medicine) less than I used to. This does not mean my interest has waned but that (in most cases) my standards have gone up, as one thing I am finding is that sometimes the more I research something in my endeavors to write about it, the less I figure I can legitimately say, given the obvious gaps in my knowledge. This doesn't mean I will never write about [thing] again, just that I've developed a greater appreciation for what ought to go into a high quality post about [thing].

In any case, what all of this ultimately comes down to is my wanting to keep my writing ability from getting rusty but realizing I cannot consistently blog about specific subjects in ways that do those subjects justice. And the best way I can think of to deal with this is just sort of not be overly concerned with how many big, complex, heavily-referenced posts I can generate, but rather follow my brain's lead regarding what it can produce words on at any given time. And sometimes, it seems, that's going to be cats, or sf films, or whatnot.

Finally, I realize that I can do whatever I want with my blog. I don't HAVE to explain why my writing veers off in the directions it does. However, I thought it might be useful to provide some small explanation for the sake of anyone who thought this was a "life extension blog" or an "autism blog" or anything so specific. It isn't, and it hasn't been for a long time.

What it is, and has been from the beginning, is an ongoing exploration of existence and being in the world and observing things from one person's perspective. That is very vague, I realize, but it makes sense to me and in that sense does encompass everything I might happen to write about. E.g., after writing about longevity specifically a lot it started to dawn on me that a life of any length is made worthwhile by its content, so why not focus sometimes on that content?

And of course, no matter what shows up here, I figure people who feel like reading will read and those who don't, won't, and I am totally fine with that.

EDIT: Comments closed on 3/12/10, as for some strange reason this post seems to be attracting gargantuan amounts of nonsense-spam.

Photopost: Caturday Edition

2010-01-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

Just some new pictures of my (now 5 month old!) kitties, being their awesome cattish selves:

Brodie resting on the bed, in partial curled-paw kittyloaf configuration

Brodie (L) and Coraline (R), showing their mega-napping prowess

Cora in the living room (in a rare moment of sitting still while awake...she is actually very hard to photograph as whenever she isn't asleep, she is usually exploring or darting around the room chasing toys, etc.!)

Brodie and Shadow (who are brothers) snuggling on the bed.

Shadow enjoying the electric blanket (electric blankets, of course, being a point in favor of the notion that cats engineered the human race to do their bidding :))

(see my Flickr page for more cats and such, this is only a sampling here in this post).

A bit of a curmudgeonly rant...

2010-01-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

So, I don't know if this is a regional thing (I live in Northern California, USA) or whether it's more widespread, butlately I've been noticing a lot of the following:

- More and more shops employing "greeters" (and more often the sort that stand two abreast on either side of the entrance, waving flyers in your face as you attempt to pass between them).

- More salespeople accosting customers in gauntlet fashion with "are you finding everything okay?" inquiries as one attempts to make one's way through the aisles.

(Doing this once is fine. Having it done by no less than five people between one side of the store and the other is obnoxious and in my case makes it practically impossible to think straight about why I'm there in the first place.)

- A preponderance of what I would call "fake helpfulness" (wherein the clerk offers to help you, but has no more information than you do, or worse, has less information than you do.

E.g., if you ask a FakeHelpful clerk if they have Philips screwdrivers of a certain size, they will tend to do something like point to the very obvious display of screwdrivers you are standing next to and say "oh yes, screwdrivers are right here!"

Or, in another variation, FakeHelpfuls who clearly have no clue what you are actually looking for will follow you around from one display to the next, chattering all the way as if to provide moral support or something.)

- More and more solicitors hanging around storefronts imploring passerbys to sign their petition for X, or "help keep teens off drugs" or whatnot.

(I actually ended up yelling "Don't ACCOST me!" at some Petition Guy outside the grocery store recently. Yes, free speech and politics and all that, but ye gads, do not scamper up to me with your flyer and yap like a terrier at me to sign it when I am trying to, you know, focus on getting into the store without colliding with anyone, etc.)

- More stores blasting extremely loud music throughout the establishment, and/or displaying video screens or TVs playing cartoons or advertisments.

(For example: there is a pizza place nearby where I live that, I kid you not, has a little flat-screen TV in EACH BOOTH. And each TV can be set to play something different.

And on top of that, they have satellite music or something (set to some kind of atrocious "Smooth Jazz" channel, no less) piping throughout the place.

The one time I went in there I spent the whole time waiting for my food with my head down on the table and my fingers in my ears, trying to block out the combined Finding Nemo-Noggin-SpongeBob-Kenny G onslaught. Needless to say, I don't plan on going back there again!)

In any case, all the above mean that whenever I need new socks, or a replacement sprocket for my gadget, or a loaf of bread, etc., I am subjected to a veritable barrage of demands on my capacities to verbalize, respond quickly to incoming inputs, process sensory information, etc. And this would be true even without all this "extra" stuff I've noted here. The "extras" simply make things much, much worse, to the point where it starts pushing into "I cannot enter this establishment, let alone actually shop/eat there".

Which is why I am considering it an accessibility issue, as I know I can't be the only person (autistic spectrum or otherwise) who experiences problems in this realm.

Of course I am not blaming the clerks themselves for what is, more than likely, "store policy". This should not be taken as a rant about cashiers or even greeters, as generally they aren't the ones with the power anyway.

Having spent some time working in a coffee shop (Peet's) myself, I know that in at least some establishments, employees are monitored by managers watching to make sure they greet every person who enters the shop straight away (and that clerks are definitely not the ones responsible for the "turn the music up to 11!" thing or for installing TV screens everywhere).

I actually got put on "employee probation" within my first few weeks at Peet's for (among other things pertaining "standard social skills" and my apparent lack thereof) not automatically greeting everyone who came in. After that I was given a script ("Hi, what can I help you with?" or something along those lines) to recite whenever a customer came in.

So I dutifully spoke the Words of Greeting from then on, as soon as each incoming patron shut the door behind them.

I didn't particularly like doing this, knowing how disorienting and annoying I found the Immediate Greeting when I walked into stores and such, but I felt very lucky to still have a job at all; a lot of places would have just fired me, I figured, rather than doing the probation thing. Plus, that job gave me free coffee, which was a nice perk (pun intended).

Moreover, while it was flabbergasting to consider, being told so emphatically that customers liked to be greeted right away got me wondering if perhaps a lot of people did appreciate that sort of thing.

Which is what I'm wondering still now, and even more so lately given the aforementioned apparent upsurge in hyper-(un)helpfulness, demanding doorway solicitation, and eardrum-and-eyeball evisceration courtesty of massive speakers and ubiquitous LCD screens.

So, I offer this query to the readership:

Do some people actually enjoy this kind of thing?

Do most folks aiming to pop out to the market for tomatoes or cheap underpants genuinely wish they were going to a throbbing-walled nightclub staffed by armies of Care-Bears on MDMA?

Or does it just not feel like that to most people? I honestly have no idea, but I do know I'm exceedingly glad for online vendors these days. It's not that I think nobody should talk to anyone in public, or that store personnel should ignore all their customers completely...but just, gah, can't someone at least consider toning down the excessive Helpiness (especially when it isn't actually helping!) and turning down the volume on the speakers?

(end rant, and yes, I still really do think Existence is Wonderful...doesn't mean I can't find certain things really annoying!)

The Week In Review

2010-01-10T22:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's officially the second week of 2010, and lacking shiny domed cities or flying cars to write about, I offer a few pictures of what (other than filing for unemployment / starting on my Quest For A New Job) I've been up to lately:

Exhibit A: Awaiting the Flushularity...

Who'd have thought in 2010 we'd still be pooping, (yes, I'm joking) let alone sealing our toilet-sewage-pipe junctions with wax "ass gaskets"? Where are my cleanup nanobots, dangit? :P

In any case, the commode here was leaking recently around the base so Matt and I spent a fascinating Monday evening getting very closely acquainted with the underside of the porcelain throne.

Here I am scraping off the old wax ring in preparation for applying the new one and replacing the toilet in its rightful place. This was totally disgusting and I am very very glad the new wax ring supposedly has a 10 year lifespan, as I don't relish doing this again this century, let alone this decade. As much as I appreciate the technological wonder that is the sewage system, man, when that stuff gets flushed I never want to see it again.

Oh, and I also found this pictorial tutorial on replacing the wax toilet ring (on a cool do-it-yourselfer site called "Hammerzone) to be really useful and clearly written.

And despite the grossness of the task, I should note that it's good to know at least I can perform light plumbing repairs if the need arises...eventually I want to replace the bathroom's vinyl floor with ceramic tile, and one thing I was dreading was removing the toilet, so it's a bit of a relief to find out it's not actually all that complicated or time-consuming.

Exhibit B: Cat #4 Has Arrived

As of last Sunday, ours is now a four-cat household. My parents (who just moved out of state) brought Nikki (an eight-year-old Chocolate Point Siamese kitty) over and she has since been settling in (she is shown below patrolling the kitchen).

Nikki spent the first few days in her own room so she could get used to the sounds and smells of the house without being accosted by the resident kittens Coraline, Brodie and Shadow (who are now five months old and utterly full of energy)! She was very scared and (quite understandably) peeved at first, but settled down a lot the second day and by the third day was jumping into my lap and purring. :D

She has now met the kittens and (much to my shock) even spent a short while napping on the couch right next to Shadow the other night! Brodie mostly stares at her and wants to play, but she isn't ready for that yet and usually hisses at him.

And she and Coraline are probably going to take a while to negotiate whatever cattish things they need to, as they're both rather strong personalities (Cora is tiny but wants to be Boss Cat, and is currently a bit miffed that she can't show Nikki what-for, as Nikki is about twice her size). But overall I am really relieved that so far we've had nothing beyond totally expected hissing, growling, and swatting; no actual fighting has taken place, yay!)

Exhibit C: An Exercise in Refurbishing

When my parents brought Nikki over they also brought her very old and very broken-down cat tree. These things can be really expensive new and given my current state of employment (or lack thereof) I figured it was worth a try refurbishing it. Plus I figured this way there would be less waste, as I'd be re-using the basic structure of the thing. Below is the finished result, set up in the living room:

In order to get it to this state, I had to take the whole thing apart, strip off all the old carpet (which had been disintegrating due to weather exposure as my parents had had it outside for a while), re-upholster it, and then put the tower back together in what I hoped would be a more stable configuration. So far it seems to be holding up well, and it actually looks pretty good in the living room, almost like some sort of weird art project.

I applied a variety of materials to the surfaces -- some carpet (my dad gave me some leftovers from when he and my stepmom re-carpeted their house), some sisal twine, some burlap, some old dish-towels, a bit of canvas, and some gaffer's tape holding various edges and seams together.

So, yeah, overall the first bit of 2010 has been very, shall we say, grounded in the physical.

Movie Review: Avatar

2010-01-02T23:04:00.000-08:00

I hadn't actually heard a whole lot about the film Avatar prior to seeing it today, and as of this writing I have not even read any "professional" reviews. All I knew as I headed into the theatre was that I was going to see something involving "blue aliens" and humans who "download" into alien bodies and end up "going native", so to speak.

Anyway, though, now I've seen the film I figure I might as well comment on it a bit. Anyone who has not seen this film or who cares about being spoiled might not want to read further, as this review will contain spoilers.

The Good

So, to start, here's a list of some things I liked about Avatar:

1. It is definitely a very pretty film. Unfortunately I did not get to see the IMAX or 3D versions (those were both sold out) but even on a regular 2D movie screen I found myself quite thoroughly dazzled by the visuals.

The jungle, forest, and mountain landscapes of the alien planet Pandora look like the stuff I wish my dreams were made of, particularly the night-time jungle scenes where everything is all glowy. Whee!

2. Even though the film takes place in a projected year 2154, the lead character (Jake Sully, marine-turned-researcher played by Australian actor Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair. The point is made at the outset of the film that while it is possible to repair spinal injuries like his, Sully can't afford to have this done.

This is somewhat unusual (at least from what I've seen in sf) -- that is, to have it actually acknowledged that no, just "having the technology" does not imply everyone can or will use that technology to do a particular thing. I bet there are a lot of people right now who anticipate there won't be any actual wheelchair users in 2154 "because of that stuff they're going to do with stem cells", and I bet they're very very wrong.

(There's also an aspect of the film's treatment of disability that irks me, but since this isn't the complaint section I won't get into that here.)

3. There is a plausible rationale given for why Pandora's native people can speak English -- that is, the film doesn't open with a "first contact" between Earthlings and Na'vi, but rather with a situation-in-progress.

It is explained that at some point along the way there was indeed actual work undertaken to teach the natives English, and some human characters have clearly also spent some time studying the Na'vi tongue.

Which might all seem fairly trivial but it was a nice change from the "universal translator" trope (or worse, that really careless thing where everyone just speaks English straight off with no attempt at explaining how or why).

4. They actually refer in the film to the requisite "Valuable Alien Mineral Needed For Human Military Endeavors But Alas Is Concentrated Beneath The Natives' Village" as "unobtanium". Hee.

5. Pandora's native humanoids, the Na'vi, had some nifty and very expressive tails. Since adopting my three cats I've certainly seen a lot of tail-borne language around the house, and hence I found it kind of neat to see one of the Na'vi characters who was obviously really pissed off doing the "rapid swishy tail" thing.

(I have secretly -- well, I guess not so secretly now -- always wanted a tail. And cat ears. So it tends to make me squee a bit to see humanoids in sf/fantasy running around with tails!)

6. The Pandorian "universal nature link-up" thingies were really cool -- basically it was like every native plant, animal, and humanoid had a little tendrily USB port sticking out of them, which permitted very direct communication between all sorts of disparate life forms. I figure this was probably meant to be some kind of over-wrought metaphor for "all life is connected", or something, but the execution was still incredibly neat-looking.

(Also, it reminded me strongly of parts of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which I played with relentless obsession circa 2001. Mind worms FTW!)

7. The whole "consciousness download" thing was handled better than I've seen it handled by many of those who make a habit of speculating about this sort of thing on the Internet.

For one thing, bodies are (mostly) not just hand-waved out of significance. You don't, as a rule in this film, have people wantonly "shedding their meatflesh" and existing as data-ghosts in a giant metal mainframe. Rather, for the majority of the movie, the viability and agency of the avatars depend completely on there being humans in actual bodies "driving" them.

Of course things do get a little weird when some characters ended up attempting (with variable success) to permanently "install" their frames of reference into their avatars, coincidently with the deactivation (i.e., death) of their original, human bodies.

This is rationalized, in the context of the story, as being possible due to the fact that the avatars themselves were "grown" for particular individuals with a particular genome and nervous system, and the fact that the whole planet of Pandora is basically "networked" in such a way that memories and consciousness and such are already somewhat "distributed". Which isn't the worst rationale for that sort of thing I've seen in sf, and despite the plot-necessary bit of handwaving it does include, at least stays grounded in the physical somewhere.

The Eyeroll-Inducing Bits

...and here's a list of things that I was a bit less than enthusiastic about:

1. The plot was not only not exactly original, but like...gah, did anyone even bother trying in this department? I mean, I know some themes are invariably going to be repeated throughout film and literature, and sometimes it's a lot of fun to see different "takes" on a particular archetypical storyline, but it doesn't seem like Avatar's writers put much thought into the overall storyline.

Half the time I felt like I was watching some weird amalgamation of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Disney's Pocahontas, and FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

Which wouldn't necessarily be a complaint, but I guess I just think Avatar had the potential to be a lot more compelling and "deep" than it turned out.

2. Despite surprising me in some areas with its deviation from common sf trope-traps (see the above list of positives for a few examples), Avatar definitely has its share of "oh geez well I guess we just weren't thinking about that" cliches with regard to the depiction of the resident humanoid natives of Planet Pandora.

E.g., you never got any sense that there were, you know, different cultures or countries or languages amongst the Pandorians. No, everyone was blue, hunted with bows and arrows, spoke a particular language, and lived in the woods.* Sure, there might well have been more diversity on Pandora in terms of its humanoid population, but there was absolutely no suggestion of this made anywhere I could see.

And yes, I understand science fiction stories can't always be about a whole planet, but especially since mainstream sf started actually acknowledging the existence of non-white, non-male, and even the occasional disabled character, it now stands out a lot to me when I see a lot of very diverse humans running around but folks from all other planets are represented as being highly homogenous.

(And yes, I also realize that maybe potentially some planet could evolve a worldwide monoculture, but this portrayal is just...way more common than it needs to be, which leads me to figure writers are just being lazy most of the time when I see it.)

* EDIT: commenter fubarofusco points out that:

In the scene where Sully and the Omaticaya go out to rally the Na'vi to war, we do see Na'vi who live in different environments. One is on the seashore, one on the plains, one in higher mountains. They also appear to have different face-paint designs and weapons, and it's suggested that they have different relations with the animals.

The plains people are referred to as (IIRC) "horse-tribes of the plains" which suggests that they are nomadic riders rather than living in a permanent settlement like the Omaticaya. The mountain people appear to be even more symbiotic with the ikran.

In any event, these other Na'vi groups don't live in the woods.

(So I stand corrected on the matter of whether all Na'vi live in the woods, and I most certainly welcome this sort of "nitpicking" from any commenter who finds themself compelled to offer it...accuracy is good!)

3. Another "alien homogeneity" issue: while there was some variation in Na'vi facial appearance and body structure, there certainly wasn't much. I did not see any Pandorian humanoids who looked very old, or fat, for instance, and disabilities were conspicuously absent.

(And again, yes, I realize when you're making up a fictional species you have the leeway to "write in" a high level of homogenity and justify it, or to create forms of heterogeneity that aren't particularly "human" in nature -- but I didn't really see much of the latter here at all, which again leads me to suspect somewhat lazy writing.)

This also figures somewhat into the disability-related thing that particularly bugged me about Avatar...yes, yes, I realize it probably wasn't intentional, but just...the whole idea of a disabled character becoming nondisabled as a result of "proving his virtue" is kind of tired, not to mention obnoxious if you actually happen to be a disabled person in the real world.

Avatar's Sully actually had two routes via which his paraplegia could have been remediated: that is, Evil Military Boss-Human promises to arrange for the treatment if Sully completes his original mission to enable the humans to get at the unobtanium deposits, and somehow he is able to walk in his alien-avatar body which he ends up permanently installed in by the film's conclusion.

(Which, you know, doesn't stop me from enjoying the movie or anything overall, it's just another eyeroll-inducer in the sense that so. many.times. I seem to encounter ideas in real life to the effect of "disability is either a punishment OR something that is somehow tied into your character, and if you manage to become strong enough in character your disability will go away". Which just...isn't reality, and which can have negative impact on people when mistaken for reality.

Not that I actually think people are going to run out and see this film and expect all disabled people to Rise Up And Walk (or hear or whatnot) so long as they're Really Really Good, I just think this stuff is worth pointing out on occasion, and furthermore, as a blogger I figure it's my job to "over-analyze" things! :P)

4. They NEVER explained how people went to the bathroom when they were situated in the "links" (the pod-like beds that comprise the interface between a human "driver" and an engineered alien-body "avatar").

This is just one of those "little things that bug me", but it's a peeve I've had for a very long time and one which sf seems particularly rampant with. I mean, they SHOWED both the humans (during "breaks" from avatar activity) eating, and they showed Sully's avatar eating some sort of purple squishy pomegranate-looking thing at one point as well -- but the whole matter of what happened at the other end was dismissed without even so much as a cursory hand-wave.

And while I certainly have no desire to watch close-up shots of actors taking a crap, good grief, you'd think they could at least have an implied dash to the men's room or something now and then when Sully "woke up" in his human body. I mean I know bathroom stuff is gross and all, but it's sort of an inevitable consequence of metabolism, and it has always struck me as bizarre how weird people get over it and how often it's glossed over. What is this, some sort of leftover of the Victorian era?

5. There was definitely a bit of "noble savage archetype" stuff going on. Again, this is stuff that to me smacks of laziness in the creativity department, as well as a lack of appreciation for the complexity of issues like inter-culture communication in merely human settings.

While (yep, another disclaimer) I do realize that the film was primarily intended as a fun, special-effects-laden sci-fi flick, I also got this unnerving sense of the Na'vi suffering from "Tauren Syndrome" (the Tauren being a race of anthropomorphic bovines in the online roleplaying game "World of Warcraft", whose culture seems entirely comprised of highly Disneyfied "Native American" stereotypes, i.e., the NPCs actually stand around saying things like "How".).

I mean, yeah, they seem like neat people and all, but they just aren't portrayed as being properly complex. I just get this impression in my brain that the denizens of Tauren-Syndromey cultures are always sort of waiting for the tourists to leave so they can do something that does not entail elegantly leaping through the trees or establishing bioelectrical bonds with the local reptillian ponies.

(One of my favorite examples of a film that, in my opinion, actually fairly decently portrays the aliens is Enemy Mine, which just...I don't know, somehow managed to give the aliens their own presence, in such a way that they seemed very convincingly themselves, though that could of course just be a matter of personal taste).

So, in summary I would have to say that while it did have its problems and eyeroll-inducing moments, Avatar was definitely at the very least an entertaining film, and moreover it did spark a few interesting lines of thought in my head while I was watching that were quite enjoyable to follow.

E.g., I got to thinking about the whole concept of "avatars", and the way you can have an idea (or intention to do something) that starts with one person in one context, and then ends up being enacted by a whole chain of others.

(Specifically, I found myself considering how for this particular movie, you first had a person come up with the idea of the character Sully, who in turn passed that intention along to the actor who played him. Then the actor had to project his notion of the character into the role, and then that character had to enact his will through an alien avatar, and then on top of that, while in the avatar body, there was this whole weird thing about communicating his will to the aforementioned reptilian ponies (along with some fairly kick-ass flying pterodactylish creatures). And I don't really know if there ended up being much of a point to that brain-tangent, but it was at least fun to meander down, and if a movie can do that to me, I have to give it at least some points on the "whee, fun!" scale.)

Also, again, it was a very very visually appealing film. In Anne's Book of Preferred Aesthetics you can't really go wrong with giant chunks of mountainous rock floating in a gorgeous planet's atmosphere, nor with midnight jaunts through multicolored luminescent jungles, nor with vaguely plausible-appearing mecha-robo-exoskeleton things (which, while used for evil in the film, were still nonetheless really nifty to look at). Or tails on humanoids.

While I don't know if I'd pay to see this entire film again in IMAX, I would definitely love to see the zooming-through-the-atmosphere scenes in that or some similar format at some point, because I am sure it would definitely lead to that supercool "illusion of movement" thing.

As for whether I would recommend it to others: that depends, really. If you like pretty sf adventure flicks and aren't overly picky about plot or characterization (or can suspend pickiness for the sake of gawking at the pretty) then I would say go for it. If, however, you are after something really deep and complex and can't abide lazy writing or "indigenous culture" stereotypes, then you might want to skip it.

As it is, I am glad I saw Avatar, and I had fun watching it, but I also was left feeling like the writers could have tried a heck of a lot harder in some areas. Even if the target audience was children or teenagers, there's still no excuse for putting all your budget into special effects and little into getting some of the cultural stuff to a more appropriate level of complexity.

On Things That Shouldn't Happen

2009-12-30T21:54:00.000-08:00

Someone I know -- or rather, knew -- died recently. He was in his nineties, an elder relative of my partner, and my only acquaintance with him was through a handful of random family get-togethers. For privacy reasons I will refer to him as "R".

Anyway, two things stand out to me in remembering R. One was the way he defied stereotypes about older people. Not that this was really any sort of a shock -- it was just neat, I thought, the way he would be sitting quietly at the dinner table eating his soup, and then something would come up in conversation that compelled a response not many present would have expected from "someone that age".

Memorably I recall an occasion when some other person at the table was going on about some factoid they couldn't remember the details of (related to football or American history or something along those lines) and R exasperatedly piped up with, "Well why don't you just go look it up on the Internet?"

The other thing I remember about R is the way he was failed by the medical system ostensibly meant to keep him alive. Yes, people die. Yes, all of us are vulnerable to all sorts of fatal errors whether in our own biology or in the whims of happenstance and accident.

But my whole outlook on longevity has always been rooted in the acknowledgment that, well, there's no reason to rush things, and every reason to make sure people of all ages have access to appropriate life-saving medical care.

In some cases that means we need to work on developing resources which don't yet exist. This is where research comes in, and funding for said research, and so on.

However, no matter how much research is done, and no matter what resources exist now or in the future, there is always going to also be a need for attitudes to reflect proper ethics. Without this part of the equation, no amount of machinery or medicine will assure people don't fall prey to negligence, ignorance, malice, indifference, or any of the other forces that still (despite all humanity's positive accomplishments) kill as surely as any weapon.

And what happened to R in his last few weeks of life was not informed by proper ethics. Again, for privacy reasons I'm leaving out details, but suffice to say that there was a lot of poor communication between doctors and other folks involved. There was overmedication. There was wrong medication. There was dismissal of R's opinions and comments on the situation.

And R didn't want to die, not then, not like that. But he did, and it was no time of peace and letting-go, that's for sure. It would discredit his memory to romanticize what happened and that is part of why I am writing this -- to contribute in some way to maintaining the reality of what did happen.

The fact that lots of people die before reaching their 90s makes it no less of a priority to take it seriously when someone in their 90s is being ignored, medically mistreated, or anything along those lines. I am sure R had no illusions that he would magically become immortal via being sufficiently peeved at the very notion of death, but seriously, anyone who tries to placate survivors in situations like this with comments like "oh, it was just his time" or "he was old" really isn't helping the situation.

At this point in my life I would not consider myself to be terrified of death, per se. My main feeling about it is that it would comprise a really obnoxious interruption, hence it's more something I am annoyed by than afraid of, if that makes any sense. And I'm certainly annoyed enough by it to want to stave it off for as long as possible, not just for myself but for my parents, living grandparents, neighbors, cats, etc.

I don't know how successful I will be at this or what kind of a contribution I can make on a physical level -- it depends on how my future career path ends up looking, among other things. But for the moment, at least, I can write. For whatever it's worth. Because the idea of being in a situation like R's definitely terrifies me. The way he was treated in hospital. The way so much was disregarded or simply presumed to be part and parcel of his being "old". And so on.

That shouldn't be acceptable in any civilized society, anywhere, anytime.

Anyway, if nothing else I hope this bit of text stands as an acknowledgment of R, who I didn't know nearly as well or for as long as I'd have liked, and who will always stand out in my mind as someone who, through everything, maintained a sense of the ongoing and irrepressible wonderfulness of existence. It is beyond too bad that he isn't here to express that himself anymore.

On Finding A Space

2009-12-29T23:09:00.000-08:00

This is just a bit of "something I've learned" I figure might potentially come in handy for others on the autistic spectrum (or who are otherwise neurologically unusual in some way relevant to chaotic and/or crowded situations).

Anyway, one of my biggest difficulties is in dealing with any sort of crowded or noisy environment. I basically get extremely disoriented and unable to function well in terms of, well, anything from speech to walking without banging into things and people.

If things get really bad in this regard, I can end up practically incoherent and need someone else to lead me out of the situation, but thankfully I have learned a lot over the past few years such that I am often able to avoid getting to that point in the first place!

Of course one major strategy is just to avoid chaos and crowds, period. I already do this to the greatest extent I can, because I now know better than to presume it is going to be feasible for me to go to the store on a day when it's liable to be busy. But I do sometimes like to go out to eat in restaurants, or visit with people I like (of which there are a few these days), or see a musical or other performance.

And while this is always going to be taxing in some regard, I have found that these activities are a lot more manageable now I've figured out a few things.

Namely, in addition to timing my adventures such that I'm unlikely to run into a horde of seething masses, I have figured out that I can actually maintain some semblance of coherence in situations with some degree of crowdedness or noise by finding a space and then "sticking to it" throughout the event.

Basically it seems like the main thing that gets me in people-heavy situations is the sheer amount of incoming sensory and perceptual data. I don't seem to "filter" a lot of it out, which means that on the one (good) hand I might tend to notice neat details and patterns in my environment, but on the other hand, my processing gets bogged way down.

(That is of course a subjective and not necessarily a scientific description, but I am coming from a practical standpoint here which I hope is understood as such.)

So, what I've found really helps me is to (upon entering an environment of the sort under discussion here) sort of "stake out" a place in the room, building, or general area where:

- I am not right in the middle of people (meaning at least one side of me is going to be facing a wall, or a fence, or other thing that isn't going to be moving as milling humans are wont to do). E.g., in a restaurant I prefer tables along the back or sides of the place.

- I have enough space such that I can sit comfortably without bumping up against or brushing any other people. This actually isn't a huge amount of space -- it can be, for instance, a two foot radius circle around a single chair -- but I've found that it's never good to assume I will just "have" this without actively allocating or arranging it.

- I have a good vantage point from which to view the "goings on" in the room. This is important both for the sake of being able to scan and take in all the necessary environmental data, but to assure I can see/hear enough of what's going on to appreciate the reason I showed up in the first place.

- I have "escape routes" leading to restrooms, exits, etc. E.g., if I go to the movie theatre I always try and sit at the end of a row next to the wall or aisle, and right above that horizontal walkway area that some theatres have partway down the sea of seats.

Seriously, this may sound fairly "basic", but just paying attention to these things more over the past few years has made way more interesting things possible for me to attend.

As for how to make sure I can actually attend the occasional outing successfully, I find the following useful:

- Finding out how many people are likely to be present.

- Finding out what the layout of a venue is.

(i.e., if it's a restaurant, information on seating or even photos might be available online, or you can possibly get data from someone who has been to the venue before)

- Asking (or asking on behalf of, if you are the parent/sibling/etc. of a disabled person who cannot ask themselves) if there will be an "escape room" or space you or the person in question can go to if things get too noisy or overwhelming.

(This is something people who know me well now actually tend to volunteer information about, for which I count myself incredibly lucky!)

- Packing my "supplies" ahead of time.

(I carry an Army surplus bag as a purse because it has a ton of pockets, and in those pockets I normally have earplugs, iPod, headphones, pens, paper, etc. Dressing in layers is also generally good as that way I have a coat or something heavy which is handy for sensory reasons. A book is also great for blocking out ambient "stuff", though lately I've been really appreciating ebooks on the iPod Touch for their portability!)

- Making sure I have a ride home that will leave when I need to.

(As a non-driver it can be very tempting at times to car-pool with random people who offer rides -- but I always have to think about the fact that sometimes these people will want to stay longer than me wherever it is we're going, and factor that into my transportation plan.)

There are probably other things I could list here but I will keep this from getting overly long and stop here. Hopefully some of this is useful to someone!

Busy, Tired, and Oh Yeah, Kittens

2009-12-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

I've got a number of half-finished drafts in my text folder waiting to turn into blog posts, but lately just haven't been up to posting anything really substantial. But I am still here and will definitely be working on getting those posts publishable.

For now, though, I leave you with a picture of my cats:

Enter The Cat Weirdo

2009-11-05T16:41:00.001-08:00

Well my brain still seems to be in "write about cats" mode, so readers uninterested in cats will just have to bear through another entry about them.

But to those of you who might consider yourselves fellow catgeeks out there, I pose the following: how many cats is "a lot"? I will offer my take on this below, but would be interested in others' thoughts.

Seeing as I finally managed to trap and adopt Shadow (shown above, brother and littermate to supertabbies Coraline and Brodie) on Monday, October 26, I now live with three fabulous felines.

And come the end of December, I'll be adopting one of my parents' cats as they (my parents) are moving out of state and this particular cat (a seven-year-old Siamese lady named Nikki) doesn't get along with their dog as it is (she's generally been fine with other cats, though).

Which will bring me to a grand total of four cats.

Upon hearing this news, a friend told me I was "heading into crazy cat lady territory". He may have been joking around somewhat, but that got me wondering...is four cats really a lot?

To me, that doesn't seem like that huge of an amount. Granted, most people I know who live with cats have two or maybe three, but I've certainly known people with more than four who seemed to be able to keep up with them all. It seems to be a pretty individual thing.

Essentially, the way I see it, whether or not you have "too many" cats is based less on numbers than on whether you have the resources (food, shelter, space, sanitation, means to provide healthcare) to care for them. For some people, one cat would be too many.

Moreover, it also depends on the cats' personalities and predilections. I know several people who have one cat and one cat only, not because they can't accommodate another from a resource standpoint, but because the resident feline is extremely territorial and won't permit other cats on the premises.

The house my partner and I just moved into is a 3-bedroom, 1-bath single-family detached residence, approximately 1016 square feet (not counting the attached/finished garage). I am still shocked beyond all get-out we were able to find anything remotely like this that was actually affordable to non-millionares like us in this area but I guess we just got lucky. And so far things seem to be going really well since the kittens joined us.

We're currently still restricting feline access to just the three bedrooms, the bathroom, and the adjoining hallway. The living room/kitchen areas still have minor remodeling projects going on, and I definitely don't think kittens mix well with either paint or power tools. Even so, we've yet to have any issues with untoward bodily functions or wanton acts of destruction beyond the occasional shredded kleenex under the bed.

I've got a good litterbox-cleaning routine established -- basically I scoop the poop (1) every morning before I shower, (2) in the afternoon when I get home from work, and (3) right before bed, so the activity is "rolled into" other maintenance-routine stuff I'm doing at those times anyway. And since I never let the boxes get really gross, the scooping itself takes a mere few minutes each time.

Of course, being youngsters, the kitties do get rather rambunctious during their high-energy periods of the day (which, thankfully, no longer seems to include "3 AM"). But the situation nonetheless doesn't feel overcrowded. Coraline has been a bit hissy and growly at Shadow since his arrival (especially if he dares go near her favorite spots on the bed!), but she seems to be settling down about his presence now and I even caught all three of them snuggling together under the bed last night (though, somewhat amusingly, as soon as Cora saw me, she looked over at Shadow and growled lightly).

And that's with the cats having access privileges to only about half the house. I am looking forward to letting them have free run of the place as I expect they'll enjoy birdwatching out the large picture windows on the front and side of the house, and I figure they'll each have plenty of room to stake out territories as they see fit. When Nikki arrives there will almost certainly be some more interesting territory stuff to work out, but I'm optimistic. I think having four cats is going to be awesome fun!

But I also think that four is just about the right amount for me (given my resources, available space, executive functioning, other commitments, and finances), and I don't plan on going over that. Any other cats who cross my path (so to speak) will be trapped, neutered, and returned to their outdoor homes if they're feral, or recommended to others who might be seeking to adopt if they're tame.

And on that note, I was reading about animal hoarders recently, and I think that sometimes when people end up in those situations, it's due to not properly distinguishing intentions from consequences.

Yes, there are probably some out there who think cats are like Pokemon ("I only need one more ginger tabby to complete the set!") but my guess would be that it's usually more of a "rescuing the cat means personally tending to the cat myself in my own home, so I'll just take this one home, even though I already have ten cats, because I can't trust anyone else to properly care for this one" thing.

And then some break in logic occurs where the person might assume that since they meant to give the cats a better life, the cats living with them must have better lives, even if in actuality they're all living in unhygenic and disease-promoting squalor.

To me, the potential for that kind of thing to happen seems like a really good reason not to overfocus on how well-intentioned you are. I've seen this happen in a lot of situations, not just with cats -- e.g., I've been in situations where someone has decided they're going to "help" me, and then get really weird and nasty if I say the help isn't helping.

It gets very tautological at that point -- "But how can you not think you're being helped? I'm trying to help you! I'm a good, nice person! Therefore, anything I do must be helping, even if you say it isn't, and even if some things seem worse!" It's like the person either

(a) blames the "help-ee" for being defective or defiant if their methods don't "work", or

(b) somehow blocks out the reality of what the situation actually looks like as a result of their "help", figuring that there's no way such good intentions can lead to anything actually bad, so what is happening must really be good, regardless of what it looks like to the "naysayers".

But I digress. Like most other people, I have a lot of good intentions, including the intention of helping cats when and where I can. But I do not have it in my head that every neglected/abandoned/homeless cat in the world needs to live with me. The consequences of holding to such a conviction would be lots of suffering and death, which are the exact things I want to help the cats avoid.

Coraline, Brodie, Shadow, and Nikki will be quite enough feline family for my home, and I'm setting a hard limit there at four as far as how many kitties I will actually live with at any given time. And of course they're all going to be spayed, neutered, vaccinated, etc.

Granted, they will also be the sort of cats who are allowed to sleep on the bed, who get "novelty boxes" set out for them in the morning (lately I've been taking empty tissue boxes and putting toys or old socks or catnip in them for the kitties to discover), and who will get to drink out of the bathroom sink if they so request it...and if that makes me some sort of cat-weirdo, so be it!

October 16 is National Feral Cat Day - Help Your Local Felines!

2009-10-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Homo Sapiens and Felis Catus have lived alongside one another for thousands of years. It is unknown exactly how or why these two species established contact -- most likely it something to do with human communities storing food, which attracted rodents, which in turn attracted any nearby felines.

But however it happened, humankind and felinekind ended up embarking on a course that has led to a very interesting relationship. Unlike domesticated dogs, cats seem capable of coexisting with humans in two very different ways -- that is, as housecats (who are "socialized" to humans and have regular close contact with us) or as feral cats (who are primarily social with other felines, and wary of humans though plenty live in yards and barns and alleys where they see humans now and again).

And while presently millions of cats live happily and healthily in human homes as companion animals or in comfortable, well-managed colonies outdoors, unfortunately many millions more are suffering and being killed every year -- feral cats especially.

Anyway, given my recent decision to adopt a few feral kittens (in addition to help out however I could with the colony they came from -- more on that later), I've lately done a bit of reading and research about cats, and the current state of the USA's feline population.

And...I was pretty horrified by some of what I found in some cases. According to some sources, 72% of cats who enter shelters are killed. The various stories of abuse, neglect, and "hoarding" situations faced by innumerable others also make for some truly awful reading indeed.

I was also amazed to learn that the cat population is so huge! In the United States alone, there were estimated to be about 81.7 million "pet" cats as of 2007, and estimates of the number of "feral" cats number in the tens of millions. According to the ASPCA, "In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can yield 420,000 cats."

That's a lot of cats!

So, while of course (as a lifelong Cat Person) I think cats are wonderful, and while I obviously wouldn't want them to go extinct, there doesn't seem to be much danger of that anytime soon. Quite the contrary in fact! No matter how many cats we manage to round up and take into clinics to be spayed or neutered, there are always going to be some producing kittens out there.

And given the Malthusian Kitty Nightmare faced by so many felines today (who end up in overcrowded shelters, hoarders' homes, or worse), the most responsible thing we naked apes can do is avoid setting things up for innumerable kittens to keep coming into the world every year.

This, of course, means that everyone who has a companion cat really ought to spay or neuter them. Not only will you avoid any chance of adding to the feline population, your cat will more than likely live longer and suffer far fewer health problems as a result of being altered.

But most people reading this, I'd wager, already know this.

Trap-Neuter-Return, Not Shelters, Best For Feral Cats

What a lot of people don't seem to be aware of is the plight of feral cats (who are the offspring of strayed, escaped, or abandoned domestic cats).

Hence, seeing as October 16 has been declared "National Feral Cat Day" by feral cat advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, I figured I would write a bit about the issues facing these felines, and what we humans can do to help mitigate them.*

Firstly and most importantly, it is crucial to understand that shelters are not sanctuaries.

While plenty of shelters certainly treat their charges well and do what they can to help adopt out the animals that come through their doors, they are not infinite in capacity.

If you happen to find or trap a feral cat, you do not want to bring him or her to a shelter, unless you are going there to take advantage of the veterinary or spay-neuter clinics sometimes available at shelters.

Adult feral cats are not likely to be "adoptable" (given they've generally come to be very cautious around humans), and would find prolonged confinement extremely stressful. Bringing a feral cat to a shelter is more likely to end in execution than anything else -- as noted by Alley Cat Allies, "For feral cats, the kill rate in pounds and shelters rises to virtually 100%."

This is not to say that shelters provide no valuable services, and I am not saying nobody should adopt a shelter animal -- on the contrary, shelters are one of the best places to get companion animals, as you know you are getting one who really needs a home. However, they are neither equipped nor staffed to deal appropriately with feral cats, and hence, it does not make sense to bring feral cats there.

There are a number of guidelines you can follow to identify a feral versus a stray or lost cat, (and act accordingly) but in general if the cat does not approach you, vocalize in your presence, or (if trapped) calm down and start acting housecattish within a short period, you may very well be dealing with a feral feline.

If this is the case, and you see no evidence of ear tipping (a mark some clinics use to permit identification of already-altered cats), or if the cat is obviously "intact", then your best bet is to look into local Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) resources.

TNR basically consists of trapping unaltered feral cats, having them spayed or neutered (and ideally vaccinated against rabies, etc.), and then returning them to their colonies. There, they can live out their lives in the manner to which they are accustomed -- minus much of the spraying, fighting, yowling, medical problems, and endless pregnancies that can ensue in groups of cats whose members aren't "fixed".

Now, some folks seem to think that the only way to "deal with" feral cats is to round up large groups of them and kill them. However, feral cat colonies only exist where there is an ecological niche for them to inhabit, making eradication not just needlessly cruel, but ineffective, as new cats will tend to move in to fill the void left.

TNR in combination with appropriate vet care (vaccination, etc.) and humane colony management solves many, many problems both for cats living in feral colonies and their human neighbors.

TNR or Adoption - Both Good Choices for Feral Kittens

Another thing you can do is, if you see kittens in your local colony, trap and foster or adopt them.

Of course you won't be able to adopt all the kittens yourself and you are unlikely to find homes for them all, meaning that it is probably best to TNR the majority as soon as they are physically developed enough for surgery (usually around 8 weeks / 2 lbs).

But there are certainly good reasons to take in feral kittens if it so happens you're seeing them around and are looking to adopt anyway.

For one thing, it is one way of helping control the size of the colony, which reduces the chances of it attracting the attention of annoyed neighbors (who might be compelled to call Animal Control or -- and yes, this has happened -- get out the shotgun). Even if you only adopt one or two cats, that's two cats who aren't going to be reproducing ad infinitum outdoors and who will have lifelong access to food, shelter, and appropriate medical care.

For another thing, feral-born kittens who end up in shelters or Animal Control pounds (whether due to colony "round-ups" or well-meaning individuals under the impression that the shelter will find all the kittens homes) are at very high risk of being killed (in order to make room for more "sociable" kittens who come in from people's homes, and/or those without fleas or worms or parasites or other illnesses common to feral babies).

Some shelters may have fostering programs where volunteers or employees work with the kittens, get any medical problems they might have treated, and in general prepare them for successful adoption, but again, there's a capacity limit at work here. So in summary, when it comes to feral-born kittens, their best chance at life is going to be either via adoption into permanent homes or TNR.

Felines I Have Known Of Late

My own interest in feral cats began when I started noticing them in and around my SO's parents' yard. Matt's parents live fairly nearby us (in the same Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara, California, USA) so we've been over there a fair bit for dinner and such over the years post-college.

Matt's parents have also had cats of their own (or rather, been owned by particular cats) for as long as I've known them, and his mom has a long history of rescuing "hard case" kittens that weren't expected to survive.

Toby (their current feline-in-residence, shown below as a kitten and as an adult) was one that I actually caught next to their garage on Father's Day 2008. She was about four weeks old and had a really awful respiratory infection (it involved sneezing blood at one point) that took at least a month of antibiotics to effectively treat, but she recovered very well, and has since been spayed, vaccinated, and so on.

Toby when she was first found - tiny, unkempt, and very sick!

Toby as a healthy grownup kitty (we are pretty sure her father must have been a Maine Coon...)

I couldn't adopt Toby myself then because my apartment at the time did not allow pets, but since Matt's parents took her in I basically got to be Kitty Auntie, a role I enjoy to this day (Toby seems to like it when I come over because I am the only person who lets her play with the water cooler).

Then, on October 2, 2009 (after having seen a number of kittens coming around, and seeing as I finally lived somewhere I'd be able to house cats) I decided it was time to start taking a bit more in the way of action.

That was the evening I took in Coraline and Brodie (shown below, taking over my computer chair!), who have so far been doing wonderfully in their new home with me and Matt.

Brodie (L) and Coraline (R) approve of Ikea upholstery fabric

These two little ones have now been taken to the vet, where they were weighed, thermometered, stethoscoped, de-wormed, prescribed some flea treatment, and poop-sampled (to check for parasites, etc.).

And, according to their exam results, overall they are quite healthy. They are eating well, drinking plenty of water, and their weight at time of examination (about 2 lbs) was right on target for eight-week-old kitties.

The only concerns that came up were that Brodie appears to have a very slight heart murmur (which the vet said wasn't likely dangerous; still, I'm going to make sure it gets monitored), and that both kitties have coccidia (a protozoan that can infest the small intestine and cause gastrointestinal problems in kittens and puppies). They are now on antibiotics to inhibit the reproductive capacity of the protozoa, which should be killed off by the kittens' immune systems as they develop over the next month.

And as far as getting acclimated to humans goes, I think their actions speak for themselves.

Neither kitten has bitten me or Matt since the very first night, they're hissing less, and they're even coming up on the bed to play! Today I even heard purring for the very first time, after combing Coraline's fur.

They're also obviously getting more independent of one another (while still remaining very close -- they sleep in a kittenpile and groom one another regularly) -- initially they would cry whenever they were separated for whatever reason, but now they're occasionally venturing out individually to explore different parts of the house.

So, all in all, Coraline and Brodie appear to be well on their way to the happy housecat's life, and I am more than honored to share my home with them. Their situation is different from Toby's, as they're older and more skittish than she was upon being found, but it just goes to show you that given the right environment kittens coming from various sets of circumstances can thrive.

Then, you have situations like that of Susie (shown below, wrapped in a towel ready to take her medicine).

Susie was trapped on the same night as Brodie and Coraline. She is actually an older sibling of theirs (from the same wily mother), about seven months old.

We (that is, me and Matt and Matt's mom and a cat-rescue-expert neighbor of theirs who kindly lent me her humane trap for the evening) had actually been attempting to trap Coal (the mama kitty) so we could get her fixed, but Coal wasn't having any of that (my guess is she's "trap-wise").

However, it was also great that we managed to catch Susie because we'd been noticing her around for months and she'd looked to be extremely ill and in need of veterinary care. And, as it turned out, she was -- she had pneumonia, and weighed a mere three pounds!

Apparently she'd had a really horrible respiratory infection that had gone into the lungs, and her heart was having trouble too due to fluid buildup. Combined with the malnutrition caused by her illness (and the fact that the other cats pushing her away from the food), she was really in awful shape.

But, happily, two weeks of antibiotics and a ready supply of food (she's been convalescing in Matt's mom's house, where she mostly hides but is at least safe from predators and re-infection), Susie is looking amazingly better! She's gained at least a pound, her eyes are cleared up, and you can no longer hear her chest rattling when she breathes. We will find out soon whether she's well enough to be spayed yet, and if so we will get that done and then return her to her kitty family outdoors.

So, that's about where I'm at now with this whole helping-the-ferals business. Next on the agenda is to TNR at least two of the "teenage" cats that have been coming around and who look just about ready to start going into heat, etc. (eek!). I don't know how much of this I will be able to logistically manage, but I am figuring whatever I can do is better than nothing. Plus, it's not like I'm doing it all by myself -- it's really a collaborative effort between me, Matt, his mom, and the aforementioned neighbor lady, all of whom have different things to add to the effort.

In Conclusion...

Obviously not everyone can pay attention to every issue at once, and certainly if you are off saving the whales or advocating for healthcare reform or building houses in third-world countries, you should not sit there feeling guilty because you aren't currently able to help the kittycats.

But for those of you who are looking to donate some time or other resources to support your local feral cats, there are a number of practical and informational resources you can access:

(1) Alley Cat Allies is a group I just discovered recently, but I really like their philosophy and focus (that is, they oppose the indiscriminate killing of cats, recognize that feral cats are particularly vulnerable to this, and promote and provide educational and other materials to help people conduct TNR in their areas).

There's a ton of good stuff on their site, way too much to link specifically to here, but I definitely recommend checking them out.

(2) Neighborhood Cats, another group with a similar focus to Alley Cat Allies. They're based in New York City, but their site has some good info on it for people living anywhere.

(3) The study Evaluation of the effect of a long-term trap-neuter-return and adoption program on a free-roaming cat population, which came out to show an impressive 66% population decrease in one feral colony following implementation of humane colony management

(4) Your local vet office or humane society, from whom you may be able to borrow or purchase humane traps and get further advice on community resources. Many communities offer low-cost spay/neuter/vaccinate clinics, whether year-round or on special days, so be sure to ask about these.

(5) Not specifically or solely about feral cats, but Sarah Hartwell's Messybeast Cat Resource Archive is worth a read for anyone even remotely interested in cats. Ms. Hartwell (who is based in the UK) is quite frankly the most thorough and prolific writer on all things feline I've ever come across, and I would challenge any Cat Person to start reading this site after dinner and still get to bed on time!

* I realize not everyone cares about cats (feral or otherwise). Some humans might consider it a waste of time to bother with helping them when there are so many humans suffering in the world.

And, given the demographic variety that has historically tended to visit this blog, I can conceive of at least a few readers being inclined to make statements like "but if an asteroid hits the earth or we're all killed off by evil robots of our own creation, then it really isn't going to matter whether people now do anything to help cats, so why not just donate to existential risk management?"

And...in response to anyone thinking along any of those lines, I somehow doubt anything I could say or write here could justify my perspective to you, so I am not going to bother trying. Suffice to say that

(a) I think it's perfectly possible to care about and work toward improving the welfare of more than one species at the same time,

and (b) as far as "existential risk" goes, I'd say that for humanity to lose its capacity for compassion, or its appreciation of the myriad incarnations of awesomeness (e.g., kitties!) the universe has managed to evolve, would be a huge risk, certainly one as great as any asteroid.

Kittens! Need I say more?

2009-10-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess there is a bit more to say, but first, a picture:

These little ones are feral rescue kittens, approximately 6 - 7 weeks old, and currently roaming around my bedroom. They were very scared at first (who wouldn't be?) but now it has been three days and they are settling in nicely.

The one on the left is a girl (who has been named Coraline -- yes, like the Neil Gaiman character, as she's very brave and very clever!), and the one on the right is a boy (who has been named Brodie, just because it seems to suit him). They moved in with me this past Friday (I'd been intending to trap them for a while and finally got the time and materials to do it), and my hands have been quite full (sometimes literally!) since then.

Anyway I know not everyone agrees with the notion of "keeping pets" to begin with but frankly I don't think anyone who has ever lived with a cat (or two, or five...) could claim to be keeping them in the manner one might keep a couch or a stamp collection. I don't consider cats (or dogs, for that matter) to be anything anyone owns, but I do think different species can coexist happily so long as there's respect.

And for kittens like Coraline and Brodie, being adopted is the best chance they have of living long and happy lives (which they hopefully will, as now they're on their way to being vaccinated, spayed/neutered, etc.). On that note I am very happy to offer them a place in my home for as long as they live and I hope I can manage to do right by them.

Work, Lack Thereof, and Opportunity

2009-09-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well, seeing as my employer recently announced plans to shut down the facility where I work in San Jose, California, I thought I might take this opportunity to actually discuss some of what my job as an electrical engineer specializing in electromagnetic interference and compatibility has tended to consist of.

In other words, expect some posts on such exciting things as grounding, bonding, and shielding (oh my!) in this space, because that stuff is actually pretty interesting, and I think it would be neat to help propagate some knowledge about it.

Of course I will not reveal any proprietary information online -- like most engineers, I've had to read, acknowledge, and sign agreements not to publish or otherwise distribute internal data.

Hence, nothing I am going to discuss here is actually anything I couldn't have said before the layoff announcement -- rather, it's just that up until now, I've preferred to keep a fairly wide separation between my personal "online life" and career.

Now, though, I'm looking at things somewhat differently.

I figure that in this day and age, more and more prospective employers are going to be Googling their applicants -- meaning that for us bloggers, regardless of whether we've more frequently blogged about signal integrity, our pets, or what we had for breakfast, our future boss might very well come across our online writing.

And for those of us whose best shot at getting hired isn't likely to come via our steely-eyed gaze, firm handshake, or melodious, appropriately-timed laughter, I figure there's probably no harm in putting some information about our work skills and relevant experience up in our usual Internet haunts.

Of course I'm also starting up the job search on other fronts -- even though the earliest I'll actually be unemployed is October 27 of this year, I don't see any point in waiting around. I've updated my resume and am peeking around to see what opportunities are in the area.

One thing I am definitely trying to do as well is change industries, as while my present job has had its good points, I'm just not all that excited about airplanes.

What I really want to do is get into something pertaining to medical devices / biotech -- I mean, they have to need EMI engineers to make sure all that equipment doesn't emit too much and isn't too susceptible to interference.

Seriously, I would like nothing more than to put whatever engineering skills I've managed to obtain toward things that support lifesaving equipment, biogerontology research, communication devices, mobility devices, or anything along those lines.

If I'd had my stuff together when I graduated college I'd have looked for something like that prior to now, but it took me ages to figure out what I actually wanted to do -- and hence, rather than seeing this layoff as anything to moan and whine over, I'm choosing to see it as an opportunity to move into something more related to things I'm passionately interested in.

On Longevity, Reality, and Critical Thinking

2009-09-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I receive a random e-mail from a random person along the lines of, "Hi! I found your blog. Can you tell me how I can live forever?"

Generally I just ignore these letters, as, really, I figure either their authors are credulous beyond all get-out or engaging in some sort of bizarre joke. But seeing as I've received a spate of these comments privately recently, I just wanted to state for the record that if you are looking to random bloggers to "tell you the path to living forever", um, well, you might want to work on those critical thinking skills.

Seriously. Critical thinking is utterly invaluable if you actually care about what reality is actually like. And you don't need to be any kind of super-genius to do it successfully, nor do you need to take special classes in it. There's plenty in the way of free resources, such as:

- The Skeptic's Dictionary has a good page consisting of links to Critical Thinking Mini-Lessons.

(Also check out their Too Good To Be True page for a nifty list of examples of opportunistic pseudoscientists and scammers marketing their crap.)

- A classic: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. I learned about this in the very first "Introduction to Engineering" class I took in school, wherein Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark was assigned reading.

- Via Respectful Insolence, a concise summary of how to know you're doing science wrong (emphasis mine):

If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong.
If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong.
If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all

...and many, many more that you should be able to find pretty easily.

There are also things you can do just in the course of your everyday life to flex your critical thinking abilities and thereby strengthen them. Whenever you encounter a billboard or advert, try considering what is actually being offered versus the emotions being invoked by the ad's imagery, sound effects, etc. Learn to recognize when false causal relationships are being drawn between events and actions, and don't just go along with it when people are doing this. Learn the difference between "rational thinking" and "rationalizing" (e.g., if someone tries to claim that Santa Claus is real, but just doesn't think poor children deserve presents, you've probably got a rationalizer on your hands!).

Heck, if you've got a bit of free time, you can even do "probability experiments" like the ones I did as a kid of about eleven, which entailed flipping coins many, many times and writing down the heads/tails results (this was how I determined that no, I most likely did not have the ability to Use The Force). Sounds silly, but can be very illustrative of (for instance) how having too small a sample set can be misleading, and how more data can reduce the chance of drawing an incorrect conclusion.

Another fun and useful activity is to visit Wikipedia and look up a subject you've seen a lot of people arguing about. Then, in addition to the actual article, read its talk page. Because Wikipedia's stated policy is to present a "neutral point of view", there tends to be a lot of quibbling over how this is to be accomplished, and on what sources are actually acceptable and valid references.

E.g., the talk page for 'Evolution' has a 40-something page archive of discussion and debate between the various parties vying for control of the article's content. Seriously, if you want to see various forms of human reasoning (and rationalizing) in action, these talk pages are a great resource. Moreover, some articles' talk pages nicely illustrate "manufactured controversy" in action, and it is very useful to learn the difference between a real controversy and one that has been "framed" as such by folks with an obvious agenda (case in point: those people who keep saying Obama's birth certificate is a fake).

Anyway, however you do it, the important thing is to get your brain geared up to more accurately assess reality, and the claims people make about it.

See, there are plenty of hucksters out there who would probably be more than willing to sell you their Super-Longevity Bio-Kit or some other quackish nostrum. And despite not being a biologist myself, I think I'm at least informed enough on the subject of biogerontology to be able to tell you that anyone who claims to have the "path to immortality" is either deluded or lying. Hence, taking people who make such claims seriously is likely to be a waste of time for everyone involved, and obviously over time this kind of thing is likely to lead to less actual useful real-world work being done.

I once encountered a person who claimed to know a "real-life immortal", that of course I could learn about only through buying and reading his upcoming book about this person (who had apparently trusted him, the author, with this 'special knowledge'). And I don't believe for a minute that I "missed an opportunity" by dismissing these claims and refusing to let that author hijack the discussion. Now, if that author had acknowledged he'd written a fantasy novel in which he explored the various social and technical implications of extreme longevity through the protagonist, then I might have been interested. But as there was no such acknowledgement, I didn't figure I was losing anything in my reticence to entertain this author's storytelling.

All that said, really it seems preposterous that I should even need to say any of this.

If anyone has Internet access sufficient to permit them to find my blog and e-mail me, they also have access to (in addition to plentiful critical-thinking resources) a tremendous amount of actual scientific writing (and no, I don't mean "press releases", I mean stuff written by biologists and others actually working on interesting scientific/medical quandaries). But the fact that I do get these comments has made me wonder if maybe some people genuinely just don't know this stuff is out there; hence this post.

Many primary sources are locked up in journals you have to pay to read, but if you're really interested you might be able to get access through a local or university library (especially if you're a student). And I've been told by at least one practicing biologist that sometimes if you express interest in a paper, you can get a copy e-mailed to you by its author if you ask politely (note that they do not HAVE to send you a copy, there isn't a law about it, it's just something you can try).

For free (well, free presuming again you have Internet access), you can get a sense of what research is being done by searching the PubMed database for something like "human longevity".

A cursory search for these terms, for instance, reveals (among many others) the following:

- SIRT1 Markedly Extends Replicative Lifespan if NAD(+) Salvage is Enhanced.

- A functional EXO1 promoter variant is associated with prolonged life expectancy in centenarians.

- Increasing longevity through caloric restriction or rapamycin feeding in mammals: common mechanisms for common outcomes?

- Centenarians--a useful model for healthy aging? A 29-year follow-up of hospitalizations among 40,000 Danes born in 1905.

You won't be able to read the full text of very many papers that come up, but you can check out the abstracts in a lot of cases, and even that is going to tell you a heck of a lot more about research reality than asking some random blogger how you can reach the most extreme outcome you can come up with.

(Though of course this only works if you are actually interested in reality, and if you're genuinely serious in asking "how can I live forever?", I have to say I am rather skeptical that this is the case...)

I've written a few pieces that reference some of the Actual Research Being Done(TM), but this has been entirely and (I would think) obviously from the layperson's perspective. I don't have, or pretend at having, any special expert knowledge about longevity...and I sure as heck don't have a pipeline to the Fountain of Youth. Nobody does.

Here in the real world, the best any of us can do if we want longer, healthier lives for our loved ones and ourselves is contribute toward actual real-world things that promote health, life, and solid research. And in order to figure out what projects are valid and worth supporting, or worth proposing and starting ourselves, critical thinking is utterly essential. Learn it, practice it, and use it, and while you probably won't get to enjoy whatever comforts you might have previously been gaining via wishful/magical thinking, you will be better equipped to do things that actually make a positive difference in the real world.

In other words, if you're thinking in terms of "living forever", you're doing it wrong. And if you have any motivation behind this sentiment that actually relates to improving healthcare for people of all ages (including the very elderly), you'd best find a way to ground those motivations in something practical and feasible in the present.

If, however, you're looking for a palliative to your existential angst, sorry, you're going to have to look elsewhere than here.

It's Alive!

2009-08-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

...meaning my Internet connection is now viable in the new dwelling, and I am now mostly moved.

I will probably not be posting a lot for a while still because I am still getting settled in (and my routines are all messed up as a result, meaning I've been forgetting things like sunscreen and vitamins and my work badge...not to mention that being short and lacking in gross motor skills means my lower legs are pretty banged up from whacking into things on the floor I've been stepping over).

But, still, I like the new place a lot and I think it will be quite conducive to more and better writing and other projects, not in the least because now I can actually FIND more of my books, music, etc., and I have room to organize office supplies and art things and such.

I am tired now and not going to write a lot but here is a picture of my desk in the new office room (sorry for the blurriness, I am using a different camera than usual that has no flash on it because my primary "good" digital camera broke recently and I still need to get it fixed):