Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

Went to a psytrance party last night at Niaspace, which went straight through the night (11pm to 7am). My endurance is improving; I could dance for longer stretches than I expected myself to be able to, especially given the energy I often throw into my dancing. Additionally, though I still suck at dancing in the technical sense, a couple of people commented on how consistently energetic I was, which they found inspiring in some way.

In fact, at a couple of times during the night, I was pushing myself past exhaustion, just as a personal challenge, stretching my own expected boundaries. My mantra for the night was one of my favorite quotes from Gattaca.

You want to know how I did it?
This is how I did it, Anton:
I never saved anything for the swim back.

I even had ambitions of going to Bodychoir the next morning at 10, but un(?)fortunately I crashed at around 9.

Unfortunately, a common mistake I've begun to make since going vegan happened here like it did at Flipside: I didn't eat enough before a long stretch of physical exertion. I did have enough forethought to bring some fruit with me, but the proper strategy would have been to stop for breakfast at around 2 or 3am, or eat much more heavily during the preceding afternoon. It feels like my appetite is still 'miscalibrated' to vegetarian eating patterns, which just don't work as well now.

As part of learning to be a vegan, I have been improving my basic cooking skills. As part of improving those skills, I have been investigating staple dry goods as a starting point: grains, legumes, and the like.

My conclusions so far:

Rolled oats are victorious.
Brown rice is satisfactory (the trick: turn the heat way down).
Black beans and pinto beans are full of fail.

Not that beans aren't tasty, and in a sense they are very easy to prepare. But soaking for 8 hours and then cooking for 2 more is far too methodical for my compulsion-based cooking and scheduling habits. I max out at an hour, which is about what brown rice takes, since that's about the time interval required to lazily prepare the accompanying components of a dish.

So oats, rice, lentils, and possibly amaranth have a place in my culinary future. But from here on out, my beans will be canned.

I spent the weekend (from Thursday afternoon to Monday afternoon) at Flipside, in a camp with pfiddy, ikarpov, pa3be, and about seven other people. Our camp was advertised as the "Sanctuary of No Drama", and with very few exceptions it did indeed have that atmosphere, though that was easy to maintain since we were on the edge of the camps area and had very few visitors.

For those of you unfamiliar with Flipside, it's a regional burner event in Austin, similar to Burning Man but on a smaller scale and in Texas hill country instead of in the desert. (For those of you unfamiliar with Burning Man, go Google it.)

The logistics of the camp were kind of a pain in the ass. Though everything ended up coming together just fine, we were continually troubled by intermittent rain turning the ground to mud and dripping into our tents. I actually abandoned my tent for sleeping purposes in a matter of hours, since the door seams and opposite window seams weren't adequately weatherproof. Instead, I just nestled my van near the camp space, stuck my air mattress in it, and used it as a big metal tent; all of the back seats had already come out to haul large cargo (like our shade structure and some lumber). By the second night, we had successfully set up the generator and the lights, and things got more tolerable from there on (the weather also improved on average).

I will also admit to being kind of sensitive to these troubles since I have very little camping experience, and my recent change in diet made it harder for me to share meals. However, I've accumulated a number of good ideas about how to camp more effectively next year, and at other similar events: put tent under larger shade/rain structure (like a pavillion), learn how to build a geodesic dome, bring disposable dishes and utensils, look for more food in those boxes with the foil bags that store at room temperature. (I've got my eye on some ready-to-eat Indian food if that brand is still available next year.) Also, water bottles are awesome and 2.5 gal water jugs with spouts are awesome, but 1 gal jugs are useless.

Also, there are never enough chairs.

I learned a whole lot this weekend. Some of the learning experiences were uncomfortable, but they were all worthwhile. I can't go into much more detail in the context of livejournal; talk to me in person if you care and don't already know.

I feel, despite the admonition "no spectators", that I really was a spectator this time. There was lots of crazy awesome shit going on almost all the time, and my particular approach to taking it in was to stay with my friends and drift as a group between points of immediate interest, such as dance camps and trampolines. I didn't do much solo exploration, didn't set my own agenda, and didn't really consult the list of activities to cherry-pick what I might be interested in. Furthermore, I don't really feel like I actively participated in the festivities, other than to enjoy them. However, I still feel like I had a legitimate good time, and that I understand the burner culture better than I used to. I know that there are completely different ways of approaching the event, and I wonder whether I will actively try to approach it from a different angle if I go next year.

Crush this person!
Get your own ThisCrush.com CrushTag!

I'll post a real entry one of these days. Really I will.

Going through a rough stretch right now.

OOPSLA submission deadline is in less than a week. I know that there's enough time to get this hunk of junk ready for submission, but it's difficult to summon the motivation to work on the project that I enjoy the least out of my entire spectrum of possible projects. This is a recurring theme: I have plenty of motivation and excitement to work on some potentially fruitful project, but I can't, because I'm too busy being saddled by "more important", or at least more immediate, obligations. The tyranny of the immediate strikes again.

In the meantime, in that spare time that I don't technically have any of, I still need to finish the host pairings for GradFest, send out announcements, and look for a couple more hosts to ease the squeeze. I do like being involved in GradFest, and it's important to me that this come together smoothly, but it's a nontrivial undertaking.

On the plus side, the weather has been wet, stormy, and wonderful for the past few days. Even got some lightning and a bit of hail earlier today. "Damp bright green" is among my most beloved colors; it's that vibrant green of wet leaves or wet grass cast against dark, damp dirt or wet tree bark. And there's a lot of it to be seen now, since many of the trees have their spring leaves now, and the landscape is drenched.

However, nice as all this rain is, I do hope the weather clears up and warms up for the GradFest trip to Zilker next Saturday. It really hurts the weekend festivities when it's too cold or wet for hiking or canoeing.

(edited)

I am coming to Pittsburgh for Carnival, arriving on Wednesday afternoon and leaving on Monday afternoon. It would appear that I am staying at aleffert's house. Awesome.

Macbook Pro arrived at my doorstep this morning. It is a wonderful silver bar of geek candy. Thus far everything seems to work quite smoothly; this is a huge step up from my years of linux usage, continually plagued by hardware problems. Though many of the usage conventions are alien to me (single button mouse, arrangement of applications, other user experience things), they seem to support a comfortable baseline of intuitive functionality. I move slowly in the direction of completely assimilating all the data and capibilities of my desktop. Next steps: music collection, Eclipse, set up both email accounts.

Ok, both email accounts set up with notifications. All too easy. :-)

I have been playing with the built-in camera, and have created a handful of new icons. Two obstacles presented themselves: I do not look good in photos to begin with, and I look especially bad now that I'm somewhat out of shape. Fortunately, the combined power of camera angles, creative use of filters, and my flowing hair seems to have solved these problems. I am especially proud of this new default icon: 'xray' (which appears to just be invert sepia) makes my hair glow white, and a lovely Wassily Kandinsky poster adds a neat haloesque background.

Using Mac OS has put me dangerously close to iTunes, specifically its Store. I dearly love music, compulsively and eclectically, and so it would seem I am soon destined to spend all of my lunch money. However, I am still a bit miffed by the legal foundations of Apple's business model here: buying music from them acts as an endorsement of distasteful limitations on intellectual property. I would like it to be the case that, should I purchase music from them, I retain the right to copy that music an indefinite number of times, or redownload it from them should I lose my existing copies or simply consider it inconvenient to transfer them. I wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee for their bandwidth and infrastructure, but I recoil at the idea that I should have to repurchase the music entirely just to get another download. I would like it to be the case that, legally speaking, I am buying the right to enjoy the music from its creator, and Apple is simply acting as a helpful intermediary in this regard. My treatment of my existing copies of that music should have no effect on my legal ownership of the rights to enjoy it. This becomes even more painful, as I would very much like to endorse part of Apple's scheme: to make music distribution digital. Little plastic discs are deprecated crap. I yearn to obtain music only via digital means. But I'm not comfortable with the way that Apple is handling that process.

Last night I went to ( Body Choir )


I also saw ( The Departed )


And today I saw ( Stranger Than Fiction )

I have seen some movies over the past few months. Ideally I would be posting about them just after I saw them, but I've been very infrequent with the livejournal updates (even moreso than usual).

I have made a substantial effort to avoid spoilers; these should all be safe.

( Lady in the Water )

( The Illusionist )

( Little Miss Sunshine )

( Fearless )

( The Science of Sleep )

( The Prestige )

Oh! Also. If you are ever in Eugene, Oregon, here are some things you should do:

Go to the Saturday Market. You might even accomplish what I could not muster the courage to do: buy the tie-dye underwear.

Go to Iraila. Specifically, you should order the baked feta and the melon soup. Or anything else! The melon soup had melon and celery and kiwi and cumin. It tasted. It was not distinctive just because it tasted good, but rather because it tasted a lot.

Edit: Also go to Steelhead and get a root beer float. The beer sampler also looked interesting, though I didn't try it.