May 14th, 2013 at 12:33AM

Onze helden zijn terug!

A really interesting attempt to bring art to life – in this case, the characters from a Rembrandt painting – to the people, instead of trying to get the people to the museum.

(via my sister)

May 12th, 2013 at 7:00PM

neil-gaiman:

rainydayquesting:

Nooooo. I just realized Neil Gaiman is having his last ever signing tour and the one in San Francisco is already sold out. Blargh.

Ah… but people in San Francisco have one thing that people in most other sold-out places do not have: they have the not-quite sold out Santa Rosa signing on July 6th coming up too. Santa Rosa isn’t Bay Area. But it’s only about an hour’s drive away, in good traffic…

http://www.copperfieldsbooks.com/event/neil-gaiman

That just means it would be another hour’s drive for me, coming up from the South Bay…

81 notes Source: rainydayquesting #neil gaiman#book tours
April 21st, 2013 at 9:57PM

I find the nice thing about my long bike rides is that it gives me time to think, just think. At least, when I’m not trying to kick some song out of my head.

I had something of a revelation – that a few regular activities of mine have ceased to bring me the enjoyment that they once did. I feel a lot better just having recognized that fact. The “oh, I should stop doing that, then” realization makes how I’ve been feeling over the past few weeks stupidly obvious in hindsight, and that I’ve been the one primarily responsible for beating myself up rather than work being mentally draining. Not that work hasn’t been mentally draining as well… Of course, the next trick will be figuring out what to do about those things, given the expectations of others.

On other topics…

Already ahead of last year’s pace in terms of bicycling. I surpassed 400 miles in March alone, which also says something about the weather and how little rain has come through the area.

I’ve been working on more RPG-related writing. I’ve nearly finished a rules adaptation that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Relatively simple in hindsight since there were not many rules covering much of the overlapping conceptual spaces in either system. I’ve been drafting outlines of adventure plot lines for my Epic Tier 4th Edition D&D game. I’ve been hampered by having my notes on what’s happened so far scattered across two different devices as well as handwritten during sessions.

I still haven’t gotten back into the story/fiction writing habit, here or otherwise. Just fits and starts. I really need to fix that.

#bicycling#introspection#writing
February 27th, 2013 at 5:35PM

I grew up in Scioto, now I live in Yerba Buena

There’s an interesting map floating around that redraws the 50 United States into 50 states with nearly equal populations. By that map, I grew up in the state of Scioto, attended college in Maumee, and now live in Yerba Buena.

It pretty clearly illustrates the population distribution of the country, how concentrated the population is in metropolitan areas and sparse in the rural areas. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia all get split into their own states. Consider that, even in redrawing states to have roughly equal populations, there are still cities that are as populous as an entire state.

Further analysis of the impact on such a map has been done on the FiveThirtyEight blog with respect to the 2012 election results. That’s somewhat based on a separate analysis done in The New Republic.

What this pretty effectively illustrates is that the Electoral College is really just a system to be gamed by politicians rather than an instrument of democracy.

#maps#elections#game theory
February 4th, 2013 at 11:49AM

William Gibson’s Theory of Celebrity

I got back from biking on Saturday to find this nugget of wisdom in my tweet-stream:

#William Gibson#Celebrity#collected tweets
December 31st, 2012 at 4:05PM

Merry Arbitrary-Delineation-of-Earth’s-Orbital-Period!

December Solstice was 10 days ago, Perihelion is a little over a day from now. Either seems more appropriate for marking a new beginning. Anyway…

Good enough for me!

(Yes, I’m recycling last year’s image. Your point?)

#new year#merry new year#calendar#UTC#Astronomy
December 25th, 2012 at 2:26PM
Merry Catnip-mas. Or, as the fluffmonster would say, “Give me the ‘nip or I cut you.”

Merry Catnip-mas. Or, as the fluffmonster would say, “Give me the ‘nip or I cut you.”

3 notes #fluffmonster fanservice#cats
November 21st, 2012 at 1:42AM
Best. Children’s Books. Ever.

Best. Children’s Books. Ever.

4 notes #cthulhu#mythos
November 16th, 2012 at 10:47AM
When did handlebar mustaches become a decorative motif?

When did handlebar mustaches become a decorative motif?

1 note #mustache#this is a thing now?#from my sister
August 26th, 2012 at 11:12PM

Mmmm, Beer.

Dinner in San Francisco at the Dark Horse Inn, a three course dinner with beer pairings.

I really wanted to like the Orange Kush, but there was something about it that never seemed to quite add up. The Mexi-Belgo sounded interesting… until they mentioned coffee as one of the flavors. I can’t stand the taste of coffee – it always seems to overwhelm any other flavors for me, which then ruins the flavors of everything else involved. It’s kind of like coconut in that way.

Dessert was very tasty though…

(Strawberry Shortcake and a Chocolate Stout)

#food#beer