Ron’s Blog

What Oz did on his summer vacation

September 6, 2008

Not that anybody cares, but it’s been a good summer for Oz.

He learned to ride a bike pretty well; we’re now going out and doing 10-mile rides a couple of times a week.
He learned to play guitar; he can churn out pretty recognizable versions of “Born to be wild”, “Satisfaction”, “Smoke on the water”, and “I love rock ‘n roll”, among others.
He learned to swim, more or less.
He got really comfortable with reading pretty long books with no pictures, and logged about 4000 pages or so.

And he started school this week without significant anxiety or hand wringing on either his part or that of his parents.

There’s no punch line. Just being a dad, here.

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Generations

August 12, 2008

My favorite moment of recent wish-I-had-video real-life generational absurdity happened at dinner last night: My 8-year-old son explaining to my 83-year-old mom the difference between U2 and YouTube.

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Whenever it is, it’s now

August 10, 2008

It was getting late the other evening, and my wife said to Oz, "it’s almost tomorrow".

He responded: "It’s never tomorrow. And it’s never yesterday."

If I were a non-philosopher, I’d likely think either "WTF?" or "ooh, deep". Unfortunately, my occupation just leaves me wondering if this makes him a presentist about time, or just means he doesn’t understand the logical of indexicals.

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My boy Hal

July 17, 2008

As I’ve mentioned, Oz is a bit of a road savant. And not just in that he knows the routes of our local area well; he’s also better than I am at looking over a map and both internalizing the paths and converting them to actual directions, roads, and turns on the ground.

So we rely on him as a bit of a wetware-based GPS system. Let him look at the map of a new place, and then let him tell you where to turn and how to get places. And although he might very occasionally make a mistake, he’s way better than I am. hal Every once in a while I think "no, that’s wrong, I think we need to go this way instead"; but 80-90% of the time he’s the one who’s right. So, on our recent vacation to Acadia National Park in Maine, he was totally useful. "How do we get to X, Oz?" "Where do I need to turn for Y?" I don’t even bother with the map.

And then, on the way home, he went Hal on us. We asked him to direct us home by a particular route. But after a while, we realized he was taking us another way. We said "No Oz, we want to go by route X". He replied "I’m sorry Dad, but I’m afraid I can’t do that." OK, not those exact words. But still.

By that time, we were far enough along his route that it would have been a big hassle to backtrack. So we let the autopilot continue. Result: 10 miles shaved off the return route.

I swear he was humming "Bicycle built for two" under his breath.

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False shadows

July 1, 2008

Here’s a small gallery of 4 pictures of an artwork from MassMoCA that I saw on a recent trip there. The artist painted the floor and wall to make it look just as if there were a complex shadow falling on the wall. The pictures evoke it decently, but the effect in person is really striking.

[Show as slideshow]

I’m also testing out the new photo gallery plugin here, along with a couple of other new plugins (like the Share/Save one at the bottom of each post allowing easy linking to the post via the standard social bookmarking sites).

Posted in albany-ny, personal, tech | No Comments »

Cuomo and Time-Warner put an end to child pornography!

June 24, 2008

Being an old-school kind of guy who remembers when the internets were made of tin cans and string, I still like my usenet binary newsgroups.

So I was a bit bugged when NYS Attorney General Andrew “pre-whore Spitzer” Cuomo made threats about shutting down the newsgroups by threatening to prosecute ISPs on child porn charges for the illegal stuff — which in my view is like threatening to shut down the phone company because people sometimes use the phone to set up drug deals. But hey, you can kill anything if you paint it as a threat to children, or a help to pedophiles. Sure enough, the major ISPs — including Time-Warner’s Road Runner, mine — just bailed, shutting down their usenet news servers as of today. So no usenet for me — and, presumably, none for those using it for evil.

Oh, except that I (and those using it for evil) can buy usenet newsgroup access for about $5/month from a third party provider, and get and post exactly the same things as before.

I know as a parent that I feel like my son is so much safer from the pedophiles now; don’t you?

Update: Interestingly, Time-Warner is lying about why they did this; here’s the bit from their FAQ, that says it’s because of “low subscriber usage”:

Posted in albany-ny, society, tech | 1 Comment »

George Carlin dies

June 23, 2008

Groundbreaking comic and awesomely outspoken critic of the bullshit of religion and religious thinking George Carlin is dead of a heart attack at 71. A huge loss to fans of calling out the invisible-daddy bullshit everywhere.

I’d say “R.I.P.”, but George and I both know that’s the only option.

Here’s his wonderful “Religion is bullshit” bit:

And while I’m at it, the classic “Seven Words”:

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Instructions inside

June 16, 2008

I added an “About/WTF/FAQ” page to the menu at the top, since I guess things weren’t obvious to everyone. Read it if you’re new, or if you’re confused somehow.

Posted in Me, Me, Me | No Comments »