Big Chair In a Little Truck

I'm heading out of Austin this morning with my truck full of plastic bins! I keep singing the DaVinci's Notebook song that goes "I suck, I suck, I move the big chair in the little truck." This truck is 3' shorter than the one I brought out here so I think it was a successful excursion to shed stuff and reorganize. I have one big chair in there and a small table and a bed. No other furniture. Just boats and a bike and a lot of stuff, a particularly apt name in this circumstance.

Invasive species increase because of 9/11

This article link tweeted by Carolyn Porco has made me even more upset than the AT&T DSL bill I got this morning. Apparently after 9/11 Homeland Security repurposed agricultural inspectors to look for people instead of pathogens. I've already dealt with AT&T and I don't think I can handle another blood pressure increase today. I'm not going to delve too deeply. I recommend you read the article.

I got as far as this and started yelling at the computer.

Homeland Security officials acknowledge making mistakes and say they are now working to step up agricultural inspections at border checkpoints, airports and seaports.

While not as dire as terrorism, the threat is considerable and hard to contain.

What?! Not as dire? It's a LOT MORE DIRE! Terrorists try to kill a few people and destroy some man made objects to make a idealogical point. Invasive species are here to DOMINATE AND DESTROY ENTIRE ECOSYSTEMS! Well, I mean they are just surviving and possibly thriving, but the way life works that has to potential to really upset the balance. Humans depend on balanced ecosystems so much they don't even know about them. Take them utterly for granted. They can understand suicide jetliners and collapsing skyscrapers but entire forests of dead trees apparently mean nothing to people. Look, we built that building and we bred those people. We can make more. The forest was not our doing and we cannot fix it. We can only try not to fuck it up. And we are not trying. We are failing. Humans fail. Lady Longleaf is getting tense.

One agriculture inspector who defied authority was demoted, despite being credited with saving California's citrus industry from the potentially devastating effects of canker.

While working at an international mail center outside San Francisco, the inspector found a package destined for Ventura labeled "books and chocolates." Inside were 350 citrus cuttings from Japan that were infested with canker, which has killed more than 2 million trees across Florida but does not exist in California.

He showed it to a supervisor, who, according to the Congressional Record, replied: "Look, we are here to protect the country from acts of terrorism. What do you expect me to do?"

The inspector sidestepped the supervisor and called the USDA. The resulting investigation ended with arrests and the incineration of 4,000 potentially infected trees that had been growing at an unregistered nursery in a prime citrus region.

But within a month, the whistleblower was demoted to search through the dirty laundry of passengers returning from foreign trips.

Yep, that sounds about right for a science-minded individual who does the right thing for the planet instead of the right thing for their limited self-interest. Hey, Whistleblower, what's your superhero like? Don't a lot of citrus trees have really nasty thorns? I'm thinking some sort of blow gun for your take-down weapon and maybe a thump upside the head with a well-thrown grapefruit for somebody that just needs a reality check.

Pileated Woodpecker Animated GIF

I wanted to learn another new thing this week so I decided to make an animated GIF. I hadn't made one since 1994. Now that they're making them with photos the possibilities are greatly expanded!

Finding the photos I took of this woodpecker a few years ago and exporting them from iPhoto and wasting time researching how to do it in Preview took longer than actually making it. Once I remembered the stupid App Store it was cake. I searched GIF, found a free app called GIFQuickMaker, and I was set. I dragged the files to the obvious place to drag them. Clicked the obvious button to move the images to the next step, easily tweaked the time for each image and made the animation.

These images were shot using my camera's 40 frames per second burst mode. The app wouldn't let me do 0.025 seconds per frame, 0.03 was the closest. But that's too fast! You can't see how his little top knot flicks forward. I slowed it down to 0.1 seconds per frame. In real life he hangs out a few seconds between pecks so I let the resting frames go for 0.3 seconds, less than reality, but we have such short attention spans now....

I tried to get it to load in my Google+ stream and it didn't animate. I'm trying it here instead.

I like it. This is how it looks at 0.03 seconds per frame, close to actual speed. Those jokers are fast aren't they?!

OK, now back to packing.

Occupy Wall Street Needs More Plastic Bins

When I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1989 former UN Ambassador Andrew Young gave the graduation speech. I don't remember anything he said except, "You are now in the top 1% of the world population." And I had this tremendous sinking feeling. Great. That's fucking great. 99% of the world population is what? Less educated than me? Less capable? Less responsible? What does this mean? I have to take care of them now? I distinctly got the feeling that's what he was saying. It was up to us to be responsible for the other 99%. Like their parents or bosses.

So I guess that's related to this 99% campaign and the Occupy Wall Street protests. People telling their stories of woe as they try to convince Wall Street's 1% to... well they haven't decided, but they're organized as hell and they aren't going to take it anymore. They're going to camp out on Wall Street until they come up with some demands and then they demand them? I'm a little fuzzy on the plan. (Here's the website.)

Andy Young put me the 1% in 1989, but I'm pretty sure I'm not anymore. It could be that in the last 22 years it's become 99.4% and .6% and I fall in the rounding error. I definitely identify with the people occupying Wall Street, not the bankers. But I am incapable of participating in that kind of activity. I watched a video on that website and I got twitchy just imagining what it would be like to be in those crowds. It was nononono cat all over again. Their event planning skills are amazing though. I'm very impressed. But they have smokers there! I can't be around tobacco smoke. I will have to support them through in my own idiom -- something totally solo.

The protestors seem to be pretty sure about what they don't like but I think they're having a hard time coming up with any solutions. I made a little video about my personal solution for unemployment, bankruptcy, lack of health care, and the other myriad complications of modern life. I'm abandoning Austin to move back to my tiny house in the woods to be a hermit and here's how I cope with that transition. Plastic bins.

Steve Jobs

I was cried a little bit last night when I heard Steve Jobs died. I was sad when I read that he tried a naturopathic diet instead of having his tumor removed early. I mean, I might avoid surgery because I don't have money for it, but I think he probably could write a check for that. I didn't really know what to say about him though. I'm sure he had good and bad qualities. I appreciate that he stuck up for good design even if it costs more, if that's what he did.

There is a lot of sentimental stuff going around and I don't really go for that. But Randall Munroe's gif made me laugh. Eternal flame.

There's always the hope that if you sit and watch for long enough,
the beachball will vanish and the thing it interrupted will return.

UPDATE: Stephen Fry wrote about Steve Jobs and said just what I suspected was true. This is spot on.

I cannot claim he was a friend but over thirty year or so years I bumped into him from time to time and he was always warm, charming, funny and easy to talk to, yet I know... that he was a fearsome boss, often a tempestuous mixture of martinet, tyrant, bully and sulky child. His perfectionism, the absolute conviction and certainty in the rightness of his opinions... must have maddened his colleagues. But the charisma, passion, delight in detail, excitement and belief in the creation of a new future – the sheer magnetic force of the man made his many faults a forgivable and almost loveable part of his mystique and greatness.

The quality I especially revered in him was his refusal to show contempt for his customers by fobbing them off with something that was “good enough”. Whether it was the packaging, the cabling, the use of screen space, the human interfaces, the colours, the flow, the feel, the graphical or textural features, everything had to be improved upon and improved upon.... It had to feel good in the hand, look good to the eye and it had to change things. It changed things because it made users want to use the devices as they had never been used before. 

I use devices as other people don't. It is important to me what my computers look like from the back. I got an iMac for my tiny house in Beachton because I only have a 19" wide counter to work on. The back of the computer is right over the space where I prepare food. I can't have a bunch of wires there. I spin the computer around to do my YouYube workout videos on the kitchen mat, the only place big enough to do a sit-up. Here in Austin I put the computer on a table at the end of the bed. I have a chair to work in then I spin the monitor around to watch streaming video in bed when it's time to relax. No other TV or computer manufacturer seems to give a damn about what their product looks like from the back. People try to tell me I can get a TV so big for so little blah blah blah. I don't care. Besides, the idea of this gave me good material. My toast at my sister's wedding started "Beverly, your wedding on the beach was lovely. You looked really great from behind."