It’s New Year’s Eve, although it’s very early in the morning.
At the end of one year and the beginning of a new we often think of new year’s resolutions: things we will do better, things we will start, things we will stop. I’m thinking of something to start, and I’m going to call it “now-ness.”
I am horrible at living now. At enjoying today, experiencing the present.
I have always lived in the future tense. Working towards something. Looking forward to a coming state. Dreaming of a better tomorrow.
Enough!
I want to live now. I want to love now. I want to see now. I want to touch now. I want to speak now. I want to work now. I want to create now. I want to serve now. I want to learn now. I want to live now. I want to be now.
God has blessed me with a wonderful wife. Three absolutely amazing children. An intriguing job. A home and vehicles. A strong and close family. Super coworkers, and too many more things to count.
It’s time to change.
Resolved: Today before tomorrow.
Resolved: People before things.
Resolved: Mission before margin.
A few days ago we had Christmas dinner for 25: two turkeys, one extra-large ham, a massive pot of applesauce, and much, much more.
It was at my sister Renee and her husband Jeroen’s house. That’s Jeroen at the end of the table(s) …
Jeroen is an artist who has created many beautiful paintings (including the 5′ x 8′ painting in the background of this pic of my iPod).
Here’s one he’s working on right now:
Jeroen has done work in other media as well, including furniture design. Here’s a concrete and steel table he constructed this summer:
One of my favorite pieces in his house is a massive multi-ton stone sculpture by Jeroen’s sister, Lika Mutal:
(Lika is an internationally renowned sculptor.)
Teresa and I took our sons Ethan and Aidan to Science World yesterday after some furniture shopping in Yaletown.
One thing that caught my eye was an amazing plasma display. I’ve been looking a little at large flatscreen TVs lately. I almost certainly won’t get one this year, but it’s always fun to look.
But I haven’t seen anything in stores that approached this screen’s clarity. Most, if not all of the LCD and Plasma and LCD projection TVs I’ve seen in stores have numerous “marching ants” imperfections around words onscreen, or around other sharply delineated objects.
Not this screen – it was amazingly clean and clear.
I couldn’t see the manufacturer’s name – it was hidden by a protective enclosure – but could see the model number on the back. Thanks to the wonders of Google, I now know the product type (TH50PHD5UY), and that it’s available for a little more than $2500 US.
… and the Koetsier family gathered for a family photo …
… before heading off for family gift-giving. What a wonderful night!
A very merry Christmas to all our friends and acquaintances, and anyone who happens to see these words, and a wonderful, blessed new year.
Oddly, very few optical illusions actually work, at least for me. Perhaps my eyes are different than others – or maybe my brain is wired up a little differently.
However, here’s one that I saw the other day that actually does.
It’s not too often you see someone opening a bottle of wine with a hammer.
However, that’s precisely what I had to do on Tuesday this week. We had a pizza lunch at our Langley, BC office to celebrate Christmas, and someone had a bottle of wine.
The first corkscrew just broke as we tried to pull the cork out. The second – a small portable model, just separated. The handle pulled out and the metal screw part stayed embedded, with the first one, in the cork.
Desperate measures were called for. Not finding a pair of pliers in the office toolbox, I used a hammer to bend the exposed metal part of the corkscrew, and then grabbed it in the claw and, over the course of about 2 minutes, pulled out the cork.
Having gone to such extreme lengths for a glass (read: styrofoam cup) of wine, we had to capture the moment for posterity. Here’s Rastin re-creating the scenario:
The results of the process, perhaps less than salubrious for some:
A screenpic from an amazing photoset on Flicker:
Next up: toe of newt …
. . .
. . .
(BTW, here’s one of my insect shots. Not nearly as close-up, or as quality.)
I recently had the oddest experience – picking up a book and reading it, and having the strangest sensation that it was very similar to another book that I was very familiar with.
The book was There and back again, by Pat Murphy, and the book it is similar to is The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, of course.
Murphy’s taken the historical/mythical feeling Hobbit and transformed it into a science fiction story. Gandalf is a mysterious half cyborg woman. The dwarves are also female, and are all clones. Odd, that.
I admit I was taken in with it at first, and enjoying it, but frankly, There and back again falls short, way short, of Tolkien’s masterpiece.
It’s far shorter, to start with, as Murphy seemingly does not have the patience to develop his characters through plot and conversation. And it’s very definitely not readable as a children’s story, with various more or less nasty cyberpunk-type elements thrown in – for spice, I presume.
I’d like to say nice try, but I’m not sure that even that faint praise is deserved.
Last week I finished Eighth Army, by Robin Neillands.
It’s a history of the “British” Eighth Army, which fought most famously in northern Africa during WWII, and then in the Italian campaign with the US 5th Army.
The Desert Rats, as they referred to themeselves, consisted of British, Aussi, Kiwi, Canadian, Indian, and even some Polish units. Successful in the extreme in the early months of the desert war against the Italians, they retreated for almost a year before the better-equipped and better-led German Afrika Korps, General Erwin Rommel’s (the Desert Fox) most-famous command.
Only after Bernard Law Montgomery (Monty) was sent to lead the Eighth and gave the Rommel his first serious defeat at El Alamein did the tides of the WWII turn, and he lead them from victory to victory (mostly) through Africa, until they joined up with the Americans who landed in Morroco and Algeria in Operation Torch.
(My wife’s grandfather was with those Americans in Torch.)
The Eighth Army finished out the war after another two years of battle clearing the Germans out of Sicily and Italy, and a nasty, bloody business it was. But they will always be known as the Desert Rats for their African campaigns.
I enjoyed the book, particularly because the author went to great pains to let the men speak – it’s a rare few pages that don’t have at least one lengthy quote from veterans of the Eighth.
Saw this on Boingboing just a few minutes ago: a photo tour of Volkswagen’s Phaeton factory in Dresden, Germany.
Unbelievable. This is no factory, it’s a work of engineering and aesthetic art. I’d work in it any day.
Glass, steel, laminated wood flooring: it’s a modernist dream factory made real.
. . .
. . .
Of course, I think the car is a gas guzzling brute, even if it is somewhat better than a lot of SUVs, and incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully beautiful. However, it can be purchased in a much more efficient V6 turbo diesel TDi version.
I need a backup solution for my home computer (an iMac G5), and I’m considering these products:
– Deja Vu, for backup and cloning software
– Iomega 250 GB USB 2.0 external drive, for actual disk space
(That’s a pretty cheap 250 gigs, btw … about $100 USD, after rebates.)
How do you passionately articulate what you know and believe while remaining calm, professional, and pleasant?
This can be a huge challenge for me.
Today Bernie, Rastin, and I had a 90-minute conversation about an aspect of our websites. Bernie and I felt one thing, Rastin probably agreed, but we differed on how to address it.
A couple times throughout the conversation I stated my position fairly forcefully – too forcefully. Not blowing up, or anything like that, but not exactly cool like a cucumber, either. I later apologized to Rastin, but it’s still bugging me.
I would like to train myself to disengage my ego, disengage my competitive drive, disengage my emotions, and discuss pressing issues calmly and professionally.
OK, this is cool. It’s a new way to experience what’s new and hot and interesting online on a daily basis (which is one of the things I visit delicious for).
What is it?
“Phylotaxis”, created for Seed by artist Jonathan Harris, illustrates the delicate balance between science and culture in our world.
Without the randomness of culture, science becomes dry and predictable, imprisoned in a strict square grid. Without the rational thinking of science, culture quickly teeters towards chaos. Only when science and culture act as peers can harmony be achieved, expressed through the astonishing Phylotaxis shape.
The individual beads of the Phylotaxis represent an ever-changing zeitgeist of science news in our world, populated automatically every few hours by a computer program that scours a slew of online news sources and blogs that focus on science. The Phylotaxis is therefore beyond human control, autonomously composing its own new identity, based on what’s happening in the world of science.
The miniature Phylotaxis atop this page is the Seed insignia, quivering slightly with Brownian motion, its color composition changing every few hours, each dot taking on the average color of its corresponding Phylotaxis photograph. In this way, the identity of Seed constantly reflects the identity of science.
OK, funny break: check out thisisbroken.com.
I particularly like the Mount St. Helens volcano cam being blocked – by a fly!
Very good post on corporate blogging on Alan Gutierrez’ blog.
Here’s a key bit from the section I liked best:
Does your firm do anything that makes for good television? Anything that is steeped in technical lingo, particulars?
Give a blog to the team that crash tests your automobiles, or conducts the taste testing of your snack foods, or the people create and record the voices of your cartoon ducks. Set them up like English Cut, or the new Horse Bliss. Create a blog where your employees can regale readers with stories of the know-how and history that makes your firm special.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
