The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
We visited our Christmas Tree, Fiona over Memorial Day weekend. Fiona will return to us in December courtesy of Patrick and Laura of Forever Green Christmas Tree. They worked hard to help make this, our very first camping trip, a lot of fun!
Megan, Abigail and I at King Park on a beautiful day!
The patent just expired on the MP3 file format (did you know that MP3 wasn’t an open format??). The people that built it, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits is letting it go.
This article says “the German research body that owns the rights to MP3, has decided to no longer renew its patents on the technology–effectively killing the format for good.” I don’t think the format is “dead” but the long tail has certainly already begun. How often do you listen to MP3’s vs streamed audio content these days?
My very long time friend Travis has written his science fiction book series. Dive back into hard SF!
Tagline: Science fiction about antigravity, lunar colonization, open source software, genetically modified dogs, AI…and really really big guns.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tjic/powers-of-the-earth-sf-with-spaceships-dogs-and-bi
Some friends of mine at San Jose State University are running a research project related to sensory processing and sleep quality. If you or someone you know are at least 60 years old and living in the United States, please consider participating by completing the survey below:
Sensory Processing and Sleep Quality Among Older Adults
The survey is anonymous and takes about 25-30 minutes to complete.
Seen in a school I am serving at:
It’s not about bathrooms… as it was never about the water fountains.
My friend Vickie just died. She’d often say with feeling in her voice, “It’s all about the journey!” Sometimes that was an excuse for why bad things happened, sometimes it was a joyous call to celebrate the universe we live in. She was right on both accounts.
Pancreatic cancer took her at age 51. Death is coming with increasing frequency. The first contemporary of mine to die was JTF when we were both in our 30’s. My dad has been telling me about my parents’ friends dying more often: the parents of my childhood friends, their bridge partners, neighbors. I am trying to describe the feeling I have regarding this and it is difficult. Right now it feels like a sad, dark void.
Considering presidential politics? Listen to NPR’s Marketplace!
Hint: destabilizing factors are looked upon with suspicion on the world stage.
Megan and I had a really fun Valentines Day. Emmy came over to watch Abigail for our outing. Abigail shrieked with delight when she was at the door and demanded, DEMANDED that Emily come into her bed room. It was awesome. Went out to Kiru Sushi near home for a spectacular dinner and then off to see Hand to God at the Berkeley Rep Theatre.
Best moments in the show:
Bad puppet Tyrone and Carolina’s bad puppet doing nasty sex positions while their “owners” sit a hand’s distance away, quietly and entirely embarrassed for what they have to endure.
Jason/Tyrone goes full crazy on Tim and the way we are sitting in the theatre, we have Tim’s view and Tyrone is completely intimidating!
How am I supposed to get any work done when every time I log on to Facebook to do real work (like contact a potential job reference) I am graphically shown that the world, is in fact, ending?