| Friday, November 20th, 2009 |
| 9:24 am |
Acrogymnastics report
The class I call "acrogymnastics", which the instructor calls "acrobalance", has been mostly gymnastics for the last few weeks and less of the partner acrobatics tricks. I've gone along with that and spent extra time working on my basics like handstands and building up towards a front handspring. I think it has been working and I've been seeing improvements. On Sunday I did an unassisted balk walkover off a 14" block. This was new and exciting. What usually happened when I tried to do this was that I stalled out halfway through the move and my arms buckled and I crumpled to the ground. On Sunday my arms were feeling much stronger and I was able to kick off harder and get over. Last night this was going so well that I moved down to an 8" block and did a couple from there. I don't expect to keep up a 6-inch-per-4-day rate of improvement, but it's still neat progress. Other fun things last night included an assisted front flip (landed on one foot too hard and my ankle hurts. boo). I based while ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) flexagon did airplane and A stood on her back. And I picked up J and R in a double-piggy-back. |
| Sunday, November 15th, 2009 |
| 4:50 pm |
Victorious Shopping!
Thanks to keyne (and seconded by kerya) my shopping trip was successful at Mill Stores from whence I ordered the table that is 95% of the style I want, in the color I want, at a good price. It should come in about two weeks. Clearly I should have slacked less and bought it N weeks ago, oh well. It's done. |
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 |
| 7:07 pm |
Shopping is hard, let's do math
I have a quest to get a new dining table and chairs. This has been on the to-do list for some time, but it's an annoying kind of shopping and so I've been putting it off. I've decided it's time to act. My old furniture is suboptimal and I'm done with it. There's always the furniture store of last resort which would have something immediately available and pretty much good enough. By web I ruled out a handful of nearby furniture stores. I saw Crate&Barrel a while ago, and, eh, expensive and not my taste. Today I went by Boston Interiors and they have something good enough but not stunning. By web site I ruled out Circle Furniture and Bob's Furniture. Jordan's Furniture doesn't look promising, but I think I'll have to zip-suv over there tomorrow and see what they have in person. Part of the problem is that my taste in furniture seems to be unfashionable at most of these places. I want light colored wood, and mostly they offer dark. So, tomorrow I'm taking a zip-suv out shopping. Jordan's in Reading. Home Depot.* Sears.* And maybe down south to Ikea. Uf. (* There are some other projects afoot too.) |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 |
| 1:22 am |
I'm a dance instructor now
Monday night for the first time ever I taught a swing dance class and was paid for it. It's like I'm a real instructor now. The next time someone asks me if I teach (it happens every now and then) I can say yes. All thanks go to omegabeth who coordinated the whole thing, getting me a venue and participants. Also my wonderful girlfriend and dance partner was awesome and did at least as much talking as I and I think she really took to helping out the dancers, watching and giving tips. What did we do? Week one of a six week course. Weeks 1 and 2 will be "East Coast" style. 3 and 4 Lindy Hop. 5 and 6 mixing it all up and adding more. The only down side is the commute. It took us 1.5 hours to drive from Kendall Sq to Mosaic Commons. If anyone knows a better way other than Memorial Drive -> Western Ave -> 90 -> 495, I'd like to hear it. |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 |
| 8:32 am |
medical study notes
A year ago I had a Tuesday-night through Thursday-morning medical study visit, and last week I had another. Then I had a 'V O2 max' score of 47.2, this year I got 52. This is an improvement, but the techs were visibly worried about the calibration of the machine this year, so maybe I should accept that as within the margin of error for the test for now. But it's also reasonable to think that I've gotten somewhat fitter in the last year, lots of climbing and gymnastics to thank for that. I found out that my 'resting metabolic rate' is about 1900 calories per day (and last year it was about the same, maybe 1800) which means that just lying in bed all day will consume 1900 calories. This makes me feel less bad about the 3000+ calorie days I've been estimating recently, but I could still be a perfectly healthy(er) 10 pounds lighter. |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 |
| 8:18 am |
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| Saturday, October 17th, 2009 |
| 4:38 pm |
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| 4:31 pm |
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| Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 |
| 11:48 am |
AmericanApparel++
I ordered some shirts, they sent me some shirts, one with defects in the stitching. I emailed them a photo, they emailed me back the next day saying they'd send me a new shirt, which they did. Nice customer service. |
| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 |
| 9:16 am |
I am jealous of academia, its respect and prestige. I make myself feel better about not being in it by thinking about its negatives. Not being in academia is probably still actually the right choice for me. |
| Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 |
| 9:12 am |
Costume helps the character
I got some black tights for part of an acrobatic Halloween costume I'm planning. This morning I decided to put them on and do a handstand and take a picture: ( here it is )For bonus goodness, doing it randomly, one-off, first thing in the morning, I had my best kick-up-into-the-wall ever, hitting the momentum and balance just right. |
| Thursday, September 24th, 2009 |
| 10:49 am |
How not to overachieve
1. Stay at the office until Monday night until 00:30. 2. Then stay up until 03:00 on nerves and caffeine. 3. Come in to work Tuesday with a mild sniffle, hoping it will pass. 4. Be out sick and good for very little Wednesday. 5. Still too sick to go in to work Thursday. |
| Monday, September 21st, 2009 |
| 12:03 am |
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009 |
| 3:42 pm |
Coffee shop art
 Scarves, with sticks through them so that you can't wear them. It's Art because it's useless. In my mind this sounds like how the Buffy character Anyanka makes awkward observations about absurd things. (Seen at TrueGrounds, Ball Sq, Somerville, MA) |
| 10:08 am |
I just freed up 9GB on my computer by deleting WoW |
| Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 |
| 11:19 am |
Cheese weasel day + 5 months
On April 3, the cheese weasel left a slice of american cheese under my keyboard. Five months later (without refrigeration), it is just dried out and hard:  |
| Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 |
| 9:02 am |
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| Friday, September 4th, 2009 |
| 8:58 am |
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| 12:48 am |
Is your browser's Javascript a supercomputer?
Back in the mid nineties I got a C file I got from my dad who got it from someone who ported a FORTRAN program that people had been using to test the math functions of new supercomputers (Cray, etc.). It doesn't do any clever system benchmarking, it just tests how fast a CPU can do math, in Millions of FLOating Point OPerations per Second, or Mega-FLOPS. I've since ported it to Java, which with a good 1.6+ JVM runs around 95% of the speed of C compiled '-02 -m64' with gcc on x86_64. Most recently I've ported it to create a MegaFLOPS benchmark in Javascript. This gets 1-4% of the speed of the C program, but that means between browsers on the same machine there's a 1-4x speed difference. Oh, and javascript on my current desktop at work can run this faster than native code on my home computer of 12-15 years ago, which in turn compared favorably to the supercomputers of a few years before it. |
| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 |
| 10:16 am |
Things to do tonight
Health Care Town Hall with Sen. John Kerry Somerville High School Auditorium 81 Highland Avenue Somerville, MA 02143 Today, Wednesday, September 2nd Arrival Time: 6:30 p.m. Start Time: 7:30 p.m. Maybe there will be some crazy people there to have shouting matches with. Bonus points for bringing a sign. You don't have to wait in line for a microphone to hold up a sign. (I'm not sure if I'll be there, might be working late.) |
