I am not a "PR friendly blogger"

What are the chances I'm going to follow a twitter user whose bio says she's a "PR friendly blogger." That sounds like a synonym for "content free" to me.

In the key of debutante

Having recently read the autobiography of a debutante who joined the circus and generally transgressed the social mores of her upbringing (Still Swinging in Wonderland), this comment about the recently deceased Jean S. Harris struck a chord with me:

The New York Daily News reporter Theo Wilson wrote that she took the stand looking as if she could not “pick up the wrong fork, much less a loaded gun.”
- Lesley Dormen, NYTimes, 1/4/2013

Primitive twig

My favorite thing I saw Sugarloaf craft fair at Montgomery County Fairgrounds last Saturday were these figures by Primitive Twig. Their website didn't really represent the stuff I saw, so I lifted this photo from a google search:

I don't know that I'd want one in my home, but I was entranced.

geometric silver rings

The Artsilver booth at the Sugarloaf craft fair at Montgomery County Fairgrounds (last Saturday) had tons of rings and other jewelry. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't my taste, but I really like the overall sensibility. They have a bunch of rings that can be split in two and flipped, changing the shape.

fine-line printed shirts

I saw these at the Sugarloaf craft fair at Montgomery County Fairgrounds last Saturday. The print designs are really nice. The fabric is soft. It's not as extremely thin as some, but it's still thinner that I would wear without wearing a second shirt under it.

Olympic photography

I was struck by this photo of Olympic show jumping by Alex Livesey. It turns out he's taken quite a few striking pictures of horses, including some skikjoring:

Some other excellent professional photos from the Olympics are being taken with an iPhone.

Olympic fashion - south korea vs norway

I love the fun hats on the female South Korean archers, and the rest of the shooting ladies aren't doing too bad in the fashion department. I'm not sure they're in the same league with the Norweigan curling guys of Vancouver 2010 though.

NIH plays Peck and Bartok

The NIH Philharmonia performed two Concerti for Orchestra by modern composers last night. There was lots to intrigue me: one of my doctors was performing in the orchestra, the distribution of the age of performers (mostly 50+, next largest group was <30), the way my friend and I started itching like mad around the same time, wondering whether performers worry about the effect of peckzicatto on their instruments and the entertaining Nancia D'Alimonte's introductions to the pieces. She was riveting -- she would be a great host for a TV series about classical music. I was curious to what extent she scripted her introductions, because they were very well crafted, and when she lost her place, she seemed to pick up a precise thread, not a fuzzy one. Although they were certainly carefully planned,  the wooden quality nearly always found in scripted speech was absent, making me think they might not be completely scripted.

The first piece was Mozart Escapes the Museum (Peck), and the final piece was Bartok's unnamed Concerto for Orchestra. I enjoyed it and Signs of Life II much less than the first Peck piece, but that may have been due to the itchiness rather than the music. I'd hate to think I'm unable to appreciate the work of someone with the hair in this picture. 

More strange birds

The eastern rivers of Virginia are apparently a gathering place for funny-headed birds. After yesterday's kingfishers, today I saw two types of mergansers. The flock of 14 red-breasted mergansers dove for long times and distances. I only saw one pair of hooded mergansers, but they are even stranger looking to me. The bright white on the side of the male's head is quite striking, and the halo of brown on the female's is also intriguing.

The red-breasted merganser:

by Hilary Chambers via Flickr

The hooded merganser:

by Mr. T in DC via Flickr

Slate breaks my brain

I caught earworms from Slate podcasts today.

Vulture capitalist - It's catchy. Having spent so much time hearing about venture capitalists in silly valley, I am particularly entertained. And, according to the first definition I could find (Investopedia), that's the genesis of the term. I wonder if its application to "agents of creative destruction" signals the breakdown of the support of conservative poor for the financial agenda of the conservative rich (i.e. if presidential candidate Rick Perry believes that breakdown is possible and wants to exploit it by criticizing Mit Romney of being an ally of the wealthy and not the poor).

Brainsicles - A brain on a stick, someone who is unaware or indifferent to their body.

Female belted kingfisher

I saw a belted kingfisher in the late afternoon today on the Chesapeake Bay. I didn't get a photo, but she was kind enough to stay in place for a while. Apparently only the females have the brown on the chest. The mohawk on the one I saw was pretty dramatic, and her head was black all over. Very cool. Photo by Len Blumin

Surprised by fowl longevity

Banding studies show that many species of ducks and geese live to be twenty years old.

http://www.maine.gov/ifw/wildlife/species/waterfowl/index.htm

When yarn attacks

That's aversion therapy, not advertising.

Ill-timed bad news

Is 20 minutes after New Year the time you want to be telling your customers you're likely to decrease the quality of their service?

felted arm warmers

This lady made these excellent arm warmers. Her color and pattern selection is a perfect match with my tastes.

Bicycle tire tube bag

Vaya bags are awesome.

Future Ramen

I can see Ren's Ramen in my future.

A galaxy far, far away

It's been 15 years since I spent fall on the east coast; fall colors seem pretty exotic.

The iceberg of discontent

I came across this clunker of a metaphor referring to American political sentiments. It inexorably reminds me of my favorite metaphor: Salman Rushdie's lyrically dissonant "station wagon of discontent."

http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/141031346/activists-press-obama-to-renew-progressive-stand

I heart enthusiasts

The website seatguru is a great example of the benefits to the non-enthusiast of the enthusiast-based data dump. It tells me that I'm likely to have to put my rollaboard in the hold (which is what I wanted to know) and so much more:

The CRJ is a smaller regional aircraft.

The tray tables are small, making it difficult to use laptops. Overhead storage bins cannot accommodate 18 or 22 inch roll-aboards which will require their airside check-in. The curvature of the plane limits shoulder room for all window seats, taller passengers are advised to sit at aisle seats.

Coveting a pretty handlebar bag

From Po Campo Via design milk

Deviled Egg accessories

Yesterday I made deviled eggs for some guests. I don't have a tray for holding eggs, so I just cut off some of the bottom so they laid flat. The cutting was imprecise, but worked well.

Still, I'd like to have a deviled egg tray eventually. Here are some options:

Vintage Japanese:

















Fiesta egg tray:

















Canonsburg Temporama egg plate:






















Lovely teak:














I love the Canonsburg Temporama one, and I'd love a Franciscan Oasis one more, but I'd have to hunt for the first and the second doesn't even exist.

Telephone anachronisms

It's even more jarring now than 20 years ago to have the phone banged down on the receiver (in this recent case, it was due to callousness rather than ire). It hadn't occurred to me that nearly every telephone conversation I have is ended by software, whether functioning or malfunctioning.

alpha consumer magnet

Mini Steel Earpick and Ear Cleaners Keychain (4-Piece Set)
from Deal To World

Oops.

Tucked my scissors into my windshield wipers yesterday (I was cutting some tape off moving boxes i had brought outside was selling)

Folded paper jewelry

I went to the smithsonian craft show. One of the artists whose work i saw was Francesca Viatali

http://fruccidesign.com/

Here's a picture of one of her pieces:

you know, i have a little prepared speech

so begins veronica's tirade in the movie Heathers. i'm working on a prepared response to craigslist responses like this one:

where is glenmont? is it near germantown?

to the effect of "who do you think i am, google?" in other words, why are you bothering me with questions you can answer yourself. i'd like the response not to be mean, but to basically say,

Lucky you! You are the recipient of my canned response to questions that can easily be answered by a Google search. Like most people who sell things on Craigslist, I am less likely to respond to people who ask questions I've essentially already answered. The ad includes the information you need. Please query Google, and when you find out the answer to your question, or if I have misunderstood your question, I hope to hear from you again.

alternately,

google knows.

The faucet I covet

This faucet turns on and off by touch. Most of the time I use the same water temp and pressure, so I expect I wouldn't need to use the handle much. Why would I spend 10x more on a faucet than nearly anything else in my kitchen? It delights me. And if it delights me daily, I'm in.

(via centennial plumbing)

If I get one, it will live in a less glamorous context, more like this:

(via daily home reno tips)

An entertaining artifact of ownership: universal reports of absent-mindedly touching other faucets and expecting them to respond. That phenomenon reminds me of the effect of tv-time shifting (e.g. pressing pause and rewind while watching recorded or live tv mediated by a DVR): I want to apply that technology to other parts of my life as well and unconsciously expect to be able to.

i bet the texture is great

The fully loaded chair from Alexander Reh (via stylecrave)



It looks like the shells are fixed in place, but it would be cool if they could freely move in a frame, like a pinscreen.

designer of things lovely

sara paculdo

this is a chair that can be shipped flat.

App store purchases

How can you get information about what apps you have and what you've spent on them?

• Look at the files in the "Mobile Applications" folder.

• Print from the Apps view in iTunes (use the Song listing option to get the most information).

• Use Spentonapps (I'm sure you're very enthusiastic about giving them your email and password so they can comb through your email account.)

• Look at your purchase history via iTunes 20 purchases at a time.

• Do some tedious email-mining.

Naturally, I choose the most tedious method.

I searched my gmail for iTunes receipt messages and applied a label to them. I don't usually store my email locally, so I set up gmail and apple's mail client to IMAP sync only one of my gmail labels (it would take way too long to download all messages). I figured out how to do this thanks to a comment by Matt at StackExchange:

if you have a lot of email, turn on the "Advanced IMAP Controls" Labs feature, then, under "Manage Labels", turn off IMAP access for all the folders except the one you want to download.

Thanks Matt! Once I had searched for the iTunes receipt messages, I applied a label to them and downloaded only those messages.

Next, I selected all the messages and saved them as plain text in a file called "receiptPlainText.txt". Then, some nasty bash:

cat receiptPlainText.txt | grep -v "Order Total:" | grep -B1 -A1 "Report a Problem" >purchasesOnly.txt

b=`cat purchasesOnly.txt | grep -v "Report a Problem"| sed 's/^Free/\$0.00/' | sed 's/, v[^,]*//' | tr -d ","`

echo $b | tr -d "*" | sed 's/ -- /\*/g' | tr "*" "\n" | grep "Seller"| sed 's/ Seller:/HBPH/' | sed 's/ \$\([0-9\.]\{4\}\)/, \1/g' | sed 's/HBPH/,/g' | sed 's/^/\"/' | sed 's/$/\"/' | sed 's/, /\", \"/g' >appPurchases.csv

The breakdown:

grep -v "Order Total:"

• remove prices that are totals

grep -B1 -A1 "Report a Problem"

• identify regions of text that are individual purchases

b=`

• remove newlines by saving the text as a variable

grep -v "Report a Problem"|

• remove unneeded line

sed 's/^Free/\$0.00/'

• make line structures comparable

sed 's/, v[^,]*//'

• remove version info

tr -d ","`

• remove commas

tr -d "*"

• remove any asterisks in app names

sed 's/ -- /\*/g'

• put a marker between records

tr "*" "\n"

• replace marker with newline

grep "Seller"

• remove records that aren't apps (all apps have sellers)

sed 's/ Seller:/HBPH/'

• replace Seller with marker for comma insertion

sed 's/ \$\([0-9\.]\{4\}\)/, \1/g'

• insert comma before price; remove $

sed 's/HBPH/,/g'

• replace marker with comma

sed 's/^/\"/' | sed 's/$/\"/' | sed 's/, /\", \"/g'

• put quotes around each field

As a side note, people get huffy about using cat before a command that can simply take a file name as an argument (the "Useless Use of Cat" award). However, I find it useful when I'm working on commands in a modular way. If I need to move the first grep statement around, I don't need to move the file name too.

I analyzed my data, and wow, I've bought a lot of apps. I couldn't bear to leave the left axis on, sorry.

It would be nice to have the date purchased too.

Law school:predatory lending ?=science training:pyramid scheme?

The New York Times profiles some unemployed, debt-encumbered lawyers and discusses how law schools report the status of their graduates in a misleading way. These reports promote the perception that going to law school is a good investment.

Catchy quote:

“Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm...Every time I look at this data, I feel dirty.” - law school professor William Henderson of Indiana University

The article reminds me of several recent articles pointing out the crummy conditions for people with science PhDs and how there too the interests of the educating institutions are at odds with those of the applicants and trainees. In the case of science, this is the result of how our academic science research and training is organized: a structure not infrequently called a pyramid scheme.

A faculty person who leads a lab is high on the pyramid, and the majority of the work is done by trainees (postdocs and graduate students) who are lower on the pyramid and mostly want to eventually lead their own lab. This structure was better suited to the expansive early days of civilian science (mid-1900s to 1970ish), because the the whole pyramid was growing, and trainees were relatively more likely to be able to move up the pyramid. When academic research expansion slowed, there were fewer new jobs created. For existing labs to continue, they needed a steady supply of trainees, but there was less demand for those people after they were trained.

What is the outcome? Between 1973 and 1996, the percent of scientists NOT working in permanent, full-time positions rose from 7% to 21%. This measurement was made among scientists who earned their PhDs 9-10 years previously, the assumption being they should no longer be in short-term training positions like a postdoctoral fellow positions.

(This statistic is based on figure 3.12 "Fraction of US life-science PhDs not holding permanent full-time jobs in science or engineering, 1973, 1985, and 1995" in Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists. National Research Council (US) Committee on Dimensions, Causes, and Implications of Recent Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists.

Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1998.)

While this seems like an unsustainable system, at least PhD scientists usually don't accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars in graduate school debt . Faint praise indeed.

Good girl dinette

I ate at Good girl dinette tonight with KC and MM. Yummy Vietnamese food, simple and delicious. House-made sodas, very good spring rolls, good mushroom sandwich. Crummy but friendly service.