lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

On hipsters

The difference between a hipster and a geek

This is the major difference between a hipster and a geek: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”

Hipsters On Food Stamps, Part 1 has a line that precisely captures what I think about obsessively posting pictures of food

There's plenty of attention to style, to identity, and regression to our most primitive instinct: eating, fetishized.

On buying

An Interview With Craigslist's Notorious Google Glass Hater

I hate commodity fetishization. I don't mean that in the Marxist sense. I mean the process of deriving of pleasure from the purchase of commercial goods above and beyond the actual value or utility of the product.

"You can see that our real problem is another thing entirely. The machines only do figuring for us in a few minutes that eventually we could do for our own selves. They’re our servants, tools. Not some sort of gods in a temple which we go and pray to. Not oracles who can see into the future for us. They don’t see into the future. They only make statistical predictions—not prophecies. There’s a big difference there, but Reinhart doesn’t understand it. Reinhart and his kind have made such things as the SRB machines into gods. But I have no gods. At least, not any I can see."

— The Variable Man, by Philip K. Dick

Came across a an interview with Kurt Cobain, that was published in Rolling Stones magazine in January, 1994.

About himself,

"I just hope," Cobain adds, grinning, "I don't become so blissful I become boring. I think I'll always be neurotic enough to do something weird."

On "Teen Spirit"

But I think there are so many other songs that I've written that are as good, if not better, than that song, like "Drain You." That's definitely as good as "Teen Spirit." I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it. Maybe if it was as big as "Teen Spirit," I wouldn't like it as much. .
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"Teen Spirit" was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or "Louie, Louie."

Where did the line "Here we are now, entertain us" come from?

That came from something I used to say every time I used to walk into a party to break the ice. A lot of times, when you're standing around with people in a room, it's really boring and uncomfortable. So it was "Well, here we are, entertain us. You invited us here."

On Axl Rose (this just makes me smile)

A few years ago, we were in Detroit, playing at this club, and about 10 people showed up. And next door, there was this bar, and Axl Rose came in with 10 or 15 bodyguards. It was this huge extravaganza; all these people were fawning over him. If he'd just walked in by himself, it would have been no big deal. But he wanted that. You create attention to attract attention.

About the band's music

We have failed in showing the lighter, more dynamic side of our band. The big guitar sound is what the kids want to hear. We like playing that stuff, but I don't know how much longer I can scream at the top of my lungs every night, for an entire year on tour. Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

About the future of his music

It's impossible for me to look into the future and say I'm going to be able to play Nirvana songs in 10 years. There's no way. I don't want to have to resort to doing the Eric Clapton thing. Not to put him down whatsoever; I have immense respect for him. But I don't want to have to change the songs to fit my age [laughs].

Link to original

An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. How does it apply to distributed systems?

I was lucky to come across Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum address. The speech has some interesting parts

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

About the founding fathers of America

Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition which had hitherto been considered at best no better than problematical-namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties, and cities, and rivers, and mountains; and to be revered and sung, toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves, and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten.

About ambitious people

But the game is caught; and I believe it is true that with the catching end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they too will seek a field.

It is to deny what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others have done before them.

Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never!

If you are one of those five people in the world who use Emacs' wanderlust for email and org-mode, then you might find this tip useful. To create TODO items from emails, use the org-capture template. Below is the template that I use

(setq org-capture-templates '(("t" "Todo" entry
                              (file+headline "~/org/mygtd.org" "Tasks")
  " TODO %^{Brief Description} %^g\n%?\nAdded: %U" :prepend t)
                             ("j" "Journal" entry
  (file+headline "~/dump/journal.org" "")
  "\n %^{topic} %T \n%i%?\n" :prepend t)
                             ("e" "Email Todo" entry
                              (file+headline "~/org/mygtd.org" "Tasks")
                              "* TODO %^{Brief Description}\n%a\n%?Added: %U\n" :prepend t)
      ))

When you are reading an email and you want to create a TODO item from it, just do M-x org-capture and select the Email Todo (e).

Some interesting thoughts from this blog post about women in technology

Most female researchers turn out to be working on User Experience or Human-Computer Interaction. Fields which I find rather woolly. I find the sort of projects they take up very fascinating, and they have a real impact on the world, but the ratio of actual output/impact to time spent by each researcher is rather low, in my opinion.