Miles went “Hobo Classic” this Halloween – every kid has to do it at least once (rite of passage?) Here’s the mean-face version.
Only a hobo…
Thoughts on Our Political 50/50
Election night, and Obama has just won his second term. While he trounced it in the electoral vote, the popular vote was nearly dead even. Which, when you think about it, is a really strange thing.
How is it that our nation has become so *perfectly* divided across tens of millions of votes, statistically speaking? Why not 48/52 (in either direction)? Or 40/60?. The perfect numbers split feels like the mathematical settling of a great pendulum, like Forces in Motion no longer in motion, like two bodies of water connected by a channel, finding their natural level. As if the system of checks and balances has counter-checked itself into submission. Like a left brain and a right brain connected by a corpus collosum. Both sides watch the red/blue map and wonder “Who are all these people who don’t see it my way? What drives them, what makes them tick?,” while really we’re just synapses in a global brain that’s finding its natural level. Not that that’s how I want it to be – of course I wish we didn’t have to fight for the environment, wish we didn’t have to fight for gay marriage, wish we didn’t have to fight to have a modicum of civilized health care, wish we didn’t have to fight to keep the middle class from vanishing. But regardless how I wish things were, just think it’s astonishing – almost magical – that we have settled into this perfect mathematical split. Feels like something deep and weird in the statistical nature of the world.
Einstein on the Beach
Notes and thoughts on last night’s performance of Phillip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach.” Includes a “Listening experience flow-chart” by my lovely wife.
“Her head shook rapidly from side to side, vibrating  like a bobble-head doll, as if stuck in a permanent speed-reading trance.”
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Einstein on the Beach | Stuck Between Stations
Listening to a Phillip Glass piece is more like studying a stained glass window than listening to music in the conventional sense – a passing glance would only tell part of the story, while the full p…
Predicting the Election with Twitter
The California News Service (associated with the Berkeley J-School) is running an ambitious data-mining experiment to see if they can predict the outcome of the election based on twitter traffic. This is the kind of project I really miss being involved in…
Comparing Javascript frameworks
It’s almost bewildering to see how many different (contrasting) opinions there are out there. After reading the post, check out the comments.
There are disagreements on which approach is the most performant, on whether using a custom collection of libraries (more flexible but more work) or a more complete framework (less flexible but less work) makes mores sense. There is disagreement over whether a whole site should be a Single Page Application, or just a section of a site. In fact, there’s disagreement over what constitutes the difference between a “site” and an “application” to begin with. There’s disagreement on whether client-side or server-side DOM-building is faster.
But the thing that struck me the most was this: The article starts with the premise:
“It’s no longer good enough to build web apps around full page loads and then “progressively enhance†them to behave more dynamically.”
but as one commenter astutely points out:
“… unless you happen to be github or 37signals, in which case you can easily build apps and progressively enhance to be fast and responsive ….”
I’m personally in the latter camp – it may just be a matter of habit, but I see the most logic in building traditional server-side DOM and then using “sprinkle on top” JS to enhance functionality where needed. I know I’m part of a slowly shrinking group of developers who haven’t bought into the 100% Javascript thing, but the “server first” approach does seem (to me) to give the best combination of  ease of development, graceful degradation, SEO, and performance.
But I’m ready and willing to have my philosophy tweaked on this – all I need is an example of how JS-based DOM creation can be as fast, easy, and performant as it is in Django, while still giving easy access to deep data traversals, model methods, and permissions (without jumping through time-costing hoops).
Today I begin my exploration of Rails in ernest. It’s becoming apparent that Rails has evolved in this direction more quickly than Django by building REST directly into the framework (Django is more about extremely DRY data modeling and it’s awesome auto-generated internal API).
So much to think about, so much cool stuff to explore.
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DjangoCon videos posted
Missed DjangoCon this year? Videos of all talks are now online.
Now just need to find time to dive in. Adrian’s teasing of PJAX in the keynote sounds really promising.
Makey Makey
Piano Banana? Play-doh Mario controller? Such an awesome follow-on from the inventors of Scratch.
MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone (Official Site)
MaKey MaKey: Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future. MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone
Q
I’ve been been wracking my brain trying to figure who played Jane the Junkie’s dad on Breaking Bad. Looked so familiar but couldn’t put a finger on the actor. Turns out it was Q all along (TNG):
John de Lancie
John de Lancie was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Kent State University where he won a scholarship to Juilliard. John’s father was a professional oboist with the Philadelphia Sympho…
Perhaps You Are Made of Glass? Laurie Anderson @ Zellerbach
“Of all the things that ever could have happened… most of them didn’t.â€
Notes from last night’s amazing Laurie Anderson performance – at 65 she’s mellower, more focused on storytelling than on avante garde gimmicks, but still puts on a fantastic show. Notes on the show at Stuck Between Stations:
Perhaps You Are Made of Glass? Laurie Anderson, Zellerbach
It’s been 26 years since I last watched Laurie Anderson perform (“Big Scienceâ€). I was much younger, and so was she. The audience at the time was composed mostly of new wave/punkers with a literary be…
Paper Wasp Nest
Found yesterday in Miles’ fort. If I can find a good way to remove the wasps safely without getting stung, planning to take it down and turn it into a night light.
Hornet nest (?) found in Miles’ fort!