I’m just going to have some fun with hip hop this morning. I can’t write knowledgeably about the genre, so instead here are a few of my favorite new school hip hop videos from my childhood. Remember when MTV had real mass appeal? Fact: The … Continue reading Saturday Jams: Why So Serious?
I thought that it might be a good thing to share a few of the things that I find around the Internet while I’m being distracted from running and writing in the morning – things that I like, things that I feel like I should share with my readers and that I don’t really know if I could do justice for in just one post. Hence we have the Surf Report: a roundup of things I have to share with all of my wonderful readers.
Yesterday morning I got a surfboard review in my YouTube email and I decided to watch it. Now, I don’t really know Thing1 about surfboards except that they’re boards you surf on, but after this video I realized that:
If you’re interested in learning a little bit about them then watch this:
Last night I read my email newsletter from the Oatmeal, a comic blogger that you may or may not have heard of (it’s likely you have seen some of his stuff around, if nothing else). It was just one epic comic in six parts about why he runs so much. I swear this comic is all about me in someone else’s hilarious words; please enjoy it and check out all six parts by using the next button at the bottom of each part or the supplied navigational index.
Well, it might be a little easier to get some readers now! But from the analog evolution to the digital revolution did we lose something else, like all the time we spend distracted, watching videos, answering emails, listening to the new Vampire Weekend album on Spotify? Possible. Quite possible.
Finally, I would feel remiss if I didn’t at least show these off:
I want to thank my friend Rachel Folk over at All Night Knits for giving me these blog awards, and for being such a wonderful reader. Readers really are the best award a blogger and writer can collect, and I hope to be able to increase my readership as time goes by; to this end I will do my best to bring something interesting to the table every day.
So I just read this article over at the Popular Science website about how software written to identify authorship has been used to determine that a novel written by Robert Galbraith was actually the work of J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author. Read the article real quick; I’ll wait for you.
First of all, I’m not sure that its very polite to conduct an experiment on unwilling participants. Did that reporter from The Times even bother to consider that Rowling might have penned that book under an assumed name for a reason? Maybe she wanted a readership untainted by Harry Potter fandom, or maybe she doesn’t want her work to be typecast. So shame on you, British reporters. You’re always sticking your noses where they don’t belong!
That being said, do we want to live in a world where authorship can be sussed out by the intelligent algorithms of digital heuristic hound dogs? Granted, the programmer admits that he can’t prove authorship and its more of a correlation-based deductive method; however, that’s just where it begins, right? Now we get to improve on this software until one day you won’t be able to tag a restroom wall without getting caught. Not that that’s the kind of thing I would do, but it seems that we’re not long from an age where anything and everything can be traced back to its origin, and the ones most interested outside of the humanities fields do not have our best interests in mind. I’m talking about the government, the CIA, the NSA, private investigators, not to mention slick criminals and petty crooks.
What do you think, is this type of technology a step toward living in the shadow of Big Brother himself? Or do you see it differently? Let us know in the comments!
Well, last night Karisa and I figured out what we would like to do for our Summer trip next year. We are going to drive through Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota on a loop that will take us through the Pacific Northwest. With any luck, I will have saved up two weeks’ worth of paid time off (PTO) and enough loot to pay for things like gas, food, and fun activities for ourselves and our one or more munchkins.
When I go a-travelin’, I like to see the sights – not just the landmarks, but the general environment. I like to go to the different specialized museums, shop in the different little stores, and eat the local foods (within reason). I actually like interacting with others outside of my familiar environment, too. We plan to see Glacier National Park and Lookout Pass; we’re going to shop at fruit stands in Walla Walla, Washington and in Seattle; we’re going to visit the, ocean and maybe I will even get to surf in Portland! If we can fit it in, it would be nice to see Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore as well.
What’s your favorite part of visiting new places? Do you have any sightseeing suggestions for our trip?
This post was inspired by today’s Daily Post prompt
What do other bloggers like about traveling?
Testor unfurled his wings; this would be their first high-altitude test. He remembered the Old Russian expression Grandma would use: “Не пуха, не перя” – no feathers, no down – it means “good luck”. He jumped, flapped once, twice – Caught a draft and soared. … Continue reading DOWN: The origins of human flight
When I was a kid, it felt like I was in trouble non-stop; I was always doing something bad. And it wasn’t just in school, although that’s where my talent for being trouble tended to really shine. I remember getting in trouble for the following things:
Then there was that year we got up on Christmas morning and opened all of our presents, which was so very fun and exciting. Then we ran upstairs to thank Mom and Dad, who were still sleeping in bed, for all the cool stuff. I think it was probably my mom who flipped out about that one, but boy did we get in trouble for that! They took all our new stuff away, and we got grounded to boot.
But what about school, you ask? I indicated earlier that I got in trouble at school a lot. I got in trouble for talking, for swearing, for losing fights that I didn’t start, for refusing to eat at the lunch table, for refusing to cooperate with the teacher, and later on it was for skipping, for being late to classes, and for acts of petty theft. I was in trouble each and every week, and sometimes almost every day, before I got to junior high school. I was suspended thirty-six times in six years. Teachers heard horror stories about me in advance of my coming.
My fourth grade teacher was worse than anyone, though; he was physically abusive. He often got rough with me when I cut up. There were times he carried me out into the hall and slammed me up against the lockers. Sometimes he just shook me like a rag doll while berating me for this or that. At some point he came up with the wonderful idea of secluding me from the rest of the class in the teacher’s work room – he called it my “cubbyhole”, and I sometimes spent entire weeks in there, working on my lessons and causing what little mischief I could out of spite. I tried to figure out the weird copier with its huge, hot roller and smeary purple ink. I made copies of the teacher edition of my homework when I needed a little leg-up. In retrospect, I imagine that’s what it’s like being a prisoner. Mrs. Edsall, the fifth grade teacher, watched all of this happen and tried to reassure me that she would take care of me the following year; I think she just wanted to make sure I would keep hanging on, because nobody else in my class was treated anywhere near as poorly, and now I think my bad reputation was partly to blame, as well as my inability to follow the rules.
At any rate, that broke me. Defiance? Check. No respect for authority? Check. I was like that for a long time: nothing but trouble.
Then one day I woke up and said, “where the hell have I been?”
this post was inspired by the daily prompt at The One-Minute Writer
Today’s Daily Post prompt decrees that it is opposite day and claims that I have to post a photo because I normally write nonfiction. I found the perfect opportunity today when we stumbled across this impromptu product display at Target; afterward, Karisa changed it so … Continue reading Today is opposite day!
Yep, so a few weeks into this weekly feature I’ve come up with no idea, no unifying concept for the post. I could blame the fact that I haven’t been running so much lately due to the excessive amounts of holidays and celebrations and hoopla … Continue reading Saturday Jams: Drawing a Blank
I’m curious to know whether my life would make a very good story. I would probably never consider writing a biography myself; first of all, I just don’t have the kind of ego to want to do that in the first place, and also I’m … Continue reading Would you even read my biography?
Yesterday was our fourth wedding anniversary, and also my wife’s birthday. We enjoyed a nice dinner, beginning with a little conversation that started with her saying that if I ever lost my job, she would have no problem with us packing everything up, selling the house, and moving somewhere new. I was very pleased to hear this, and we had this discussion of East Coast vs. West Coast. Maybe Virginia or Massachusetts. Perhaps Portland OR.
The thing is, if that happened I think I would like to try to find a job writing – copywriting, or something. Or maybe I could write freelance. But the way I see it, if I’m not writing then I will never write and that’s why I’m glad I have this blog and that I work so hard to post on a (nearly) daily basis. If one life change were to result from writing my blog, that’s what I would want it to be.
What do other bloggers say?
Rob's Surf Report 