Just My Imagination

It's 2:30AM, I'm sick and I can't sleep so I'm looking up old music I heard when I was growing up. This one is called "Les Crapauds," or "the Toads." Not the loveliest of topics you'd think, but it's oddly one of the most beautiful songs I know.

A sample translation (part of the last verse):

When the moon plates varnished lacquer on the calm pools of the pale marshland
Then symbolic and melancolic, our slow hymn rises from the lilypads

That doesn't do it justice, though. In French it seems to be possible to be flowery without sounding cheesy.

I am way too young to be nostalgic about this. Oh well. :)

I wish I could remember exactly what my first computer was. This one looks the most familiar.

It can't be, though-- I remember using System 6, but I'm pretty sure the first one I had to myself used System 7.

I was no child hacker. I colored folders and found out how to change their icons and add little comments to their "info." I learned keyboard commands. I explored the file system and ran experiments like figuring out the distinction between "aliases" and "duplicates." I made a floorplan of the house with a drawing program, taking measurements by walking around the house with a 12-inch ruler. I methodically explored every possible "system preference" and changed all the default settings to make it really mine.

I was obsessed with a particular tutorial which ran through very basic tasks such as how to write a document and save it. What I liked was that it drew red circles around the actual menu items to show you exactly where to click. I found it so wonderful that I must have played it about a dozen times--more for entertainment than education.

I tried very hard to find the elusive "Desktop folder" and place it on the Desktop.

My dad sometimes took me to work with him. He introduced me to a web browser. I used it to read blogs about people's pet rabbits, possibly because of my obsession with the book Watership Down. I didn't know what a search engine was so I found things by inventing likely URLs and typing them in. I also looked for origami diagrams to fold--until I stumbled across "Origami Underground," a page apparently destined for fans of the more deviant side of papercrafts. I was thereafter more wary of the internet...and picked up the habit of clearing my browser history.

My first use of the command line was the command "date." After showing me, my dad wandered back to his terminal. I typed it over and over until I got bored. Then I tried to invent my own, but couldn't find anything that didn't return something along the lines of error: command not found. And honestly, I couldn't really see the point. I went back to the bunnies.

My dad brought one of these back from work for us to play with.

The "Apple Newton" sounded like a cookie, but I loved it. I systematically tried every feature. It recognized my handwriting and turned roundish squiggles into perfect circles. I didn't have any "contacts," so my sister and I invented phone numbers and addresses for rooms in the house. We tried to send infrared "messages" out her window and were disappointed to find no receivers. I really, really wanted one, but got a Tamagotchi instead.

Later (when I was 13?), I shared one of these with my sister.


It was my baby, but it was slow, and bits of it kept breaking off. It got to the point where the charger would only make contact when held at a particular angle. Unfazed, I carefully taped it to my desk whenever it needed powering and shrieked at anyone who disturbed the arrangement by, say, breathing too loudly.

So. You can mix teabags in a single drink: earl grey and peppermint with honey is delicious (I like how that sentence implies this was in question). I want to try that chili tea with something else, it's too licorice-y as is. The site I linked to uses Flash so I couldn't link directly, but the keywords are "feisty," "exotic," and "spicy." Cute.

LaTeX is lovely. I think I'll practice on my linear algebra homework, although by the time the program downloads I will probably have lost interest. 58%...hmm.

It's been a fun week, actually. I think it's partly because I've spent it flitting from topic to topic. I'm now reading Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick. I love the concept of self-similarity at every level; it's beautiful, and I like thinking of the universe as being that clever. (I mean that last word in a sense that doesn't denote intentionality, can it do that? Hey, my use of "it" as the subject just now was doing the same thing). Self-similarity is also very GEB-ish. My stance on determinism has finally been revised; I shall have to get around to posting that soon (now that I've said that, I totally won't).

What else have I done recently that constituted this flitting? "Gotten excited about" would be a better term that "done." I got my first issue of Make in the mail, which led me to browse their website and discover the very cool material that can be made by melting eight layers of plastic grocery bags together with an iron. I tried it with my straightening hair iron and a Target bag, and it works remarkably well, though I'd need a regular iron for larger pieces. I think I may have to invest in a cheap iron, because despite the fact that there's very little risk to the iron--you cover the bag with parchment paper so the plastic won't stick--I suspect it's a bad idea for me to borrow one. See, most people are careful with their things and don't take them apart on a whim or use them for unintended purposes, but I currently have a box full of the miscellaneous severed limbs of previously functioning flashlights, musical greeting cards and tiny motorized fans.

I picked up my guitar again yesterday, and asked Marie to send me the music we used to play (South American folk music of some kind, to be extraordinarily vague). I remembered just a little of one of them, but am still incapable of tuning. I believe I got curious about trying it again because of a music theory 101 lesson my future music teacher roomie gave me a few nights ago. I can't remember how we got on the topic, but she explained some of how the major and minor scales work. It's like math with an artistic application and requiring serious specialized technical skill to execute. (Ha! I think Erika must laugh every time she talks about her major and I respond by going off on one of my tangents about the complexity of neural networks that could process such sensory input or some other such silliness. I've tried to explain to a few people that analyzing life is my way of living it. Sure, but I also know full well I'm missing out on something. It's like I deliberately set out to make nothing unknown by overconceptualization, reductionism, or simply dismissal. I do take myself way too seriously!) Anyway, my fingers do feel good back on those strings, so I guess we'll see.

So: LaTeX. Chaos. Plastics. Guitar. See? Flitting! And there's more: robots for kids, kickboxing, t-shirts for WCS (and recruiting people as the new outreach person), electric skateboards, practicing writing. It's not that I did that much of them, but that I got super excited about each one and spent a few hours obsessed on each. It would be interesting if this was actually an effective way of learning for me... Doubtless I'm just too relaxed because school hasn't quite gotten intense yet. And I need to get some real work done at the lab. I did some today, but got a bit distracted by vi fun. Text box selection (try visual mode + ctrl-v) is very nifty. There I go again.

And my download's done, so I'll see all you nonexistent readers later. :)