There are two beginning students, komencantoj, at the Stanford class on conversational Esperanto.  Since they are already polyglots, they are picking the language up quickly.  However, they still have a difficult time following advanced conversation.

Why is this? you might ask. Isn’t Esperanto supposed to be the easiest language in the world to learn?

Yes, and basic Esperanto is a breeze.  ”La ĉielo estas blua.” “Mi malsatas. Ni manĝu.” “Kie estas la necesejo?”  ”La plumo de mia onklino estas sur la tablo.”  ”Mi donis libon al Karlo.”

Very basic.  Very concrete.  And if we were, say, a race of hounds who live only in the moment and only think about things they can see, taste and smell, that would be all that would be required of any language.  But human thought involves so much more than the current moment, concrete nouns and simple verbs.  We think abstractly, hypothetically and subjunctively.  We talk about things we can only infer without actually witnessing.  I have heard it said that without the subjunctive, one can only speak Italian with a limp.  I would say the same about any language.

Once ideas become more complex, the language must accommodate or it’s useless to humans.  With humans, conversations turn abstract with very little prompting, and the komencantoj quickly become lost.  Fortunately, the problem is solved with practice and familiarity.

An example of this is illustrated by the translation of the phrase, describing the Society for Creative Anachronism, “The Middle Ages as they should have been.”

The best I could do was, “La Mezepoko kiel ĝi devintus.”  (There is nothing illegal about the use of the word devintus though many experienced esperantists have warned me about it.  The preferred usage evidently is ” … kiel ĝi estus devinta.” though that sounds awkward to me.  And if you google the word devintus you’ll find it used other places by quite fluent esperantists.  ”It’s not common usage,” some will complain.  But “… should have been” also is not a common phrase.)  We are talking about the conditional past.  How more abstract can you get?  It’s easy to talk about the conditional future, even the conditional present.  But the conditional past? As if the past were a malleable thing? Generally a topic for geeks, eh?  Only a first class language could tackle that.  Is Esperanto, by this definition, a first class language?  You tell me.  For my money, the nunaj komencantoj will be slinging the subjunctive lingo inside six months.  A year tops.

My garb is here, my garb is here!!

Monky Goodness

Okay so not exactly awe inspiring with a giant dish of kitty crunchies in the background like that but you get the idea.  I’m pretty excited to wear it to the next event, which will probably be 12th Night.  It’s damn hot, that robe.  It’s really a quality piece of garb and arrived expediently.  A friend of mine back on the East Coast saw a picture of the robe, and asked what the SCA was.  She seemed pretty interested so I gave her links to the Canton she resides in.  I hope she gets in touch with their Chatelaine and checks out an event.

Gotta love my best friend for making the drive over here yesterday to bring it to me.  She was rewarded with pie and ice cream.  And wine.

Then we watched Beauty & The Beast.  Is it just us or are Disney flicks funnier with alcohol?  Maybe it’s just us.  We were both agreeing that if we lived in an enchanted castle it would be kind of scary.  What’s enchanted, what’s not?  What was a person and what is simply magical?  The Beast breaks a lot of stuff that seems like both.

Deleted Scene from Beauty & The Beast (as told by Gaynip & Dutchess)

The Beast:   …We’re running out of chairs.

Lumiere:  Well, Master, maybe if you stopped throwing them.

Mrs. Potts:  <Crying>  You killed Susan!  She had 3 days left until retirement!

The whole movie is kind of corny.  I especially love the end where The Beast is supposedly dead and Belle confesses her love.  This sets off a magical transformation that not only changes The Beast into The Prince but restores his life.  I mean, you can’t really miss it.  But Belle (who’s supposed to be the intelligent one) has to touch his girly hair, look into his eyes before she exclaims “It IS you.”  I imagine that elsewhere in the Kingdom, the Enchantress is grimacing/facepalming at that.

Okay, I have to share a few things…the lady who does my NARL workout has no clue that I’m gay.  I’m not ashamed of it or anything, but I just think it would make things less awkward if she didn’t know.  One day she is going on and on about Matthew Mcconaughey and how she wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.  I forget myself for a moment and exclaim “I would!” which earns me a look.  I get kinda nervous and add, “You know, I can’t stand crumbs in the bed.”  Office Mom says that a normal person would have just said, “I don’t like blonde guys” but no, I had to say something weird.

So yesterday, Horrible Date Guy asks me what my MSN “ARGH” is all about.  I didn’t want to tell him the real answer and not knowing what to say, offer up this little gem “The pharmacy was all out of Preparation H.”  At least he laughed.

Friday we had a bunch of kids in the office, two I know and two I didn’t.  One of the new kids asked me about my duck keychain (black duck with green skull/crossbones painted on it) and what the “green things were”.  I didn’t know what to say, they’re not my kids and pretty small ones at that.

Winn:  What are those green things on your duck?

Mom 1:  It’s a skull and crossbones.

Winn:  What does that mean?

Me:  …Er…the duck put them there so no one would eat him.  It means he’s poisonous.

Winn:  Hahahaha silly duck.

At this point I’m getting arched looks from 3 mom’s.

Office Mom:  Are you SURE you don’t want kids.

Terrible, terrible.  I don’t know what’s come over me with the kid thing lately.  I swear it’s because I’m not on the pill, it’s been the first time I’ve been off it in about…5 years maybe?  Maybe my body went “Oh yeah, we can make those!”.   Cortejo says it’s just ovulating and it shouldn’t last longer than 45 hours.  I want to believe that’s all it is, but it’s been really bad lately.  Really, really bad.  :/  As if life wasn’t complicated enough without wanting to have kids.  I can just imagine my parents reaction to that bit of news.

Found my missing item.  Relief.

Petals ESB v3.0 is finally out (two years after the v2.0 release), there are many changes in this version but here are the main ones :

Petals ESB 3.0, includes a lot of improvements for users, as well as optimisations, and nice new features :
- Dynamic configuration, and hot-deployment of new nodes
- Redesigned webconsole for administration, and deleted statistics monitoring (based on OW2-OpenSUIT)
- SCA support: SCA engine (OW2-FraSCAti), and SCA designer (Eclipse)
- BPEL support: BPEL engine, and BPEL designer (Eclipse), with validation (based on a new BPEL engine!)
- WS Notification and WS-BorkeredNotification support (EDA)
- more and more things…

Integration with new Petals Camelia softwares :
- Petals Studio: Complete Eclipse development environment, for Petals ESB
- Petals Master: SOA Governance (OW2-Dragon)
- Petals View: Business flow monitoring based on Petals EDA feature (based on OW2-OpenSUIT)

We gave this release a name : Camelia.

I have to say I had a great time at 100 mins War this year, it was the best site yet for the event, aka not at a school.  I hate events that are at schools, just feels weird.   It was a great day over all.

The ride was great, i headed up with my great buddy of mine and she is fun to travel with.  The fighting was great, I was running a bit late / I wasn’t really sure when the speed tourney was starting.  So, i missed that by a few mins but that was ok since I am so horribly out of shape.  Than I made it to the rest of the event fine.

The new shield is working out great and so is the new leg armour! I am pumped, after using the small shield at a fight practice and at a war I feel really good about the whole thing.  Things are turning up milhouse, and once the new year starts I am going to get back into pushing hard to get back to twice a week fighting.

I did get a pic of my kit as it is now, so I posted it here.  I need work on my foot wear and a new helm.  I am working with Master Cet to work out a sugar loaf.

-H

This week at the annual Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association (AHA) ,  the renowned Framingham Heart Study released the alarming findings that one in eight males and one in 24 females in the US who reach the age of 40 are likely to die of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

 According to the AHA, 12 M Americans are at risk of SCA–and every  year, some 350  thousand US  individuals die of SCA, making SCA one of this nation’s leading killers.

But—there is hope. Also at the AHA, a Japanese research team released clinical trial results reaffirming that a non-invasive treadmill test developed by Cambridge Heart, Inc.,  of Tewksbury MA, can effectively predict the risk of sudden cardiac arrest for many cardiac patients—and can quite accurately which patients are NOT at risk.  (Disclosure; I’m paid to help Cambridge Heart with media relations).

The test, called MTWA (Microvolt T-wave Alternans)  measures a tiny heartbeat irregularity believed to cause SCA. Administered on a treadmill like a stress test, the MTWA test helps doctors assess whether riskier, more costly invasive testing is needed.  While studies show that MTWA is often as accurate as invasive testing in predicting SCA, invasive (and potentially risky) electrophysiology  tests are still generally used to determine whether cardiac defribrillators—which shock stopped hearts back into action-  should be implanted.

 The newly reported study, which enrolled 458 patients in 38 medical centers in Japan, was called “ PREVENT-SCD” (PRospective EValuation of VENtricular Tachyarrhythmic Events and Sudden Cardiac Death in Patients with Left Ventricular Dysfunction  It included patients with cardiomyopathy and ejection fraction of 40% or lower. In the study, 280 patients underwent non-invasive MTWA testing using the analytic spectral method and were followed for up to three years.

At a median follow-up time of 36 months, patients with an abnormal MTWA test were 4.4 times more likely to experience a life-threatening arrhythmia or SCD than those with a normal test, the researchers found. The 3-year negative predictive value was reported to be 97.0%, indicating that patients with a normal or negative MTWA test are at low risk for experiencing sudden death.

According to lead author Satoshi Shizuta, MD, of Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto, Japan, “MTWA has a very high negative predictive value for lethal arrhythmias in this population He noted that these patients are at very low risk for SCD in the next three years.

According to Dr. Ali Haghighi-Mood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Heart, “The PREVENT-SCD trial further confirms the results of several previously published studies of MTWA in patients with left ventricular dysfunction…The value of MTWA as an accurate predictor of sudden cardiac arrest in this population has become very well established.”

The  Japanese trial was not funded by Cambridge Heart, nor was Cambridge Heart aware of the results before they were announced at AHA. 

However, the Japanese announcement follows close on the heels of a joint announcement last week by Cambridge Heart and Cardiac Science, a Washington State stress test manufacturer, that the two companies will collaborate on developing a “super stress test” that will include an MTWA testing component.

More information about the Japanese trial is available on Cambridge Heart’s Web site at <http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridgeheart.com%2Fcontent%2FShared%2FFAQ.shtml&esheet=6103292&lan=en_US&anchor=MTWA&index=1&md5=a98add7e8a88beb9b2b0e62edffa32f7> ) . The Web site (www.cambridgeheart.com) also offers information about SCA, other studies of MTWA, and the MTWA test itself.  The test is reimbursable by Medicare and many private insurers.

—Anita M. Harris

HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer.

I want one.

I don’t have anything worth showing off, other than wearing the green sari to a work party (I felt elegant all day), and since I can’t find photos of that I guess I don’t have it to show off, either.

That is not to say that I haven’t been busy. Work has been kicking my butt lately, so I’m in go-home-and-collapse mode. I fear I’m forgetting what little Hindi I’ve learned, since I haven’t been able to practice for the past few days, and will be unlikely to get much chance until the holidays (when my practice time will be questionable, at best).

But I have a big lump of fabric in my dining room, and that lump attests to a joint creative effort between Lea and myself, which will ultimately yield something like this:

Only in red silk. I think I’m going to try to replicate the stripey pants, though.

We built it from a kind of Mongolian coat, which has similar construction (plus some modification) and a similar shape. We’ve made this garment a lot more fitted and there will be a gathered skirt all the way  around, instead of only at the gores. The sleeves are also going to be a lot more fitted than the model coat. This means that the underarms are poofier than I’d like, but the lady in the miniature appears to have poofy underarms, and I’d really like to have more than 30 degrees of movement in my arms.

So far, I have a bunch of cotton rectangles, and I’m a little closer to getting the fit I want. I will not be done in time for Castle Wars, so I’m doing the Persian thing for that. I should be done by 12th Night, though, and will subsequently have cool-weather garb for most of the winter. I also have to do an underthing, which probably didn’t exist for the original outfit, but which will help with warmth-retention. I will most likely make several of these and do some in cotton for the not-so-cool-but-still-not-warm seasons. My current garb is rather impractical for a Georgia winter, I have come to discover.

Oh! And also, there is this really excellent thing I found, which motivates me a little more to do my chaupar/pachisi board that I’ve been planning:

Indian by Design – Doshi Levien

The absolute best part of this is the chaupar charpoys. They have pockets for the game pieces. With a little ingenuity and some experimentation, I think I can come up with a reasonable facsimile for field-side seating. I would buy one of these, but I don’t have $1500 (I would have one right now if I did, though).

I really don’t want kids, but if I could without a doubt I could have a child just like this one, I would have two of them:

10 Year Old Boy Won’t Pledge Allegiance Because Gays/Lesbians Don’t Have Liberty & Justice

He’s so smart, so well spoken and cute as a button.  But everyone agree’s if I ever have a child it’s going to be like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.  Too smart for his own good, big imagination and constantly in trouble.  Constantly.

Today before Dutchess went home, we went and did a bit of shopping.  Went back to the pet shop to play with the puppies again.  I really want one, but Pickles would eat it for lunch.  Also, I found a few items to give as favours for my SCA stuff.  Look how cute they are:

Wooden Critters

There’s a bear, a camel, pig and a cow.  The cow even has a wooden utter.  There were more, I wanted the sheep but the wooly bit was dirty and the others had plastic on ‘em.  But these were great.  They have a little logo under them all, so I’m wondering if I can sand it off.  So cute.  :)

This is a hood I made in 2007…

This is another Traditional song from Scotland. It refers to many places found along the way as you travel the road.

This was also one of the first dances I learned in the SCA in Sentinel’s Keep. However, they did it to the tune of Scotland the Brave. I offered to play it once so that folks could dance to the actual song but it turns out that there are four more bars in each verse of Scotland the Brave so the choreographers had added an extra set of spinning and crossing at the end of each verse. I tried to convince them that they could just drop that extra set and everything would work fine but they didn’t get it. I did try to hold a strict rhythm when I recorded this so you can try it yourself if you know the dance.

Road to the Isles

Road to the Isles by Glen E Hammer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I’m planning to be at Castle Wars in Meridies next weekend, then I get some time off.

If you look back in the deep archives of the site, you’ll find that one of the reasons I set the site up was to motivate myself to write songs for the SCA’s A&S 50 Challenge. After seven months, I find I must modify my goals. In my 25+ years in the SCA I have only written about a dozen songs and have nine of those of my repertoire today. Though I have managed to write lyrics to two songs recently there is no way I can write 50 new songs. Therefore, since my oeuvre is really singing other people songs (just like a minstrel would, see Why not a Bard), I have decided I will learn 50 new songs for the A&S 50 Challenge. Now to some people this may be no great feat but it takes me about a month to learn a new song. There is also the problem of finding 50 new songs I like well enough to learn and that fit in with my persona. I got lucky recently in ordering Ken Theriot’s “Human History” from Raven Boy Music. I found four songs on the CD that I liked (including the wonderful The Feast Song) and I am working on the fourth now. Gee, that only leaves 46 more to go.

Like the smartmouthed hero Dade Murphy said in the movie Hackers, RISC is good.  Good for ARM’s business, that is.  ARM is the chip seller that developed the RISC architecture back in the early 80’s, and luckily for their longterm shareholders these little chips now have homes in about 98% of all mobile phones.

I’m talking about iPhones, Blackberries, Android phones, Game Boys, the fun battery powered things that we all carry around today.

Because small devices love the reduced power and increased processing power gained from RISC, ARM loves these small devices.  Since everything is going small and mobile these days….

Enter the ARM Solution Center for Android.  “The ARM Solution Center for Android (SCA) offers developers new to Android or to ARM, the widest range of Android resources for ARM architecture.  SCA members come together to share their expertise, solutions and services, including:  Development tools, complete Android solutions, Android software components, Android services and Android training.”  (text quoted directly from the SCA site).

That’s nice and dandy for developers, but what does this mean for us consumers?  Since Android is being used for more than just smartphones, it means we’ll see a lot of great apps on a lot of great devices.

Lets follow the math and peer into the future.  Take the amazing progress that Android has seen in its first year, its roots with the juggernaut Google, its enthusiastic following from techies everywhere who aren’t still too drunk with lust for the aging iPhone, and the fact that ARM is now throwing their weight into the ring.

Look into the past a little bit and think about what grew like weeds in the early days when everybody under the sun started making x86 based personal computers and servers?  Microsoft.  And we all know how big they are today.  All those devices needed something to run them.

This SCA is the chicken and egg situation, build it and they will come.  When they come, they use your chips.

Google’s egg was Android.  All they need to do is keep fertilizing it with free apps like Places and Gmail, and the chickens are sprouting like weeds.

The farmers are HTC, Motorola, Samsung, anybody who is now pumping out chickens … errr, device after device with the Android OS running it.

I’m betting that Android will come out on top.

Now if only I could figure out that one stock that stands to benefit the most from this …. does anybody know of a good Android Mutual Fund?

Oh, well the answer is ARM Holdings plc of course, their stock has doubled in price since Jan 2009.

ARM shareholders: "Recession? What recession?"

I was able to make it to the crown tourney this weekend though I left fairly early Saturday night as my ankle was hurting. Too much walking I suppose. I was heartened to see so many folks there, I guess the weather is getting more conducive to camping and such.

I was greatly saddened to find out while I was there that an old friend is in the latter stages of prostate cancer. I was very lucky in that I got to talk to him for a few minutes on the phone. I sent him the information for this site, I can only hope it provides some diversion. Gods be with you, Richard.

Tomorrow night I’ll post this week’s song and also a modification of my plans for the A&S 50. Reality has set in at last. =)

When one prepares to venture into the frozen north (of Florida) and brave the wooded expanses (of Florida) and sell stuff of a luminous nature (presumably to Floridians) it is right and meet that one be ready to face all challenges. Specifically one should test the screen tent first. Lest you end up looking like Lord of the Tardmos in front of a slew of amused SCAdians (members of the SCA and I am oh-so-sure that’s gonna be its own post tomorrow), it is very important to know which pole goes where and, in fact, that you have all the poles to start with.

To this end, the Incomparable April the Motivatress and I sallyed forth upon her lawn to test run the screen tent. It had been several years since she had used it, and the directions were long since blown to the four winds, so it seemed a good idea to make sure the damn thing would go, and stay, up.

We are two highly intelligent, creative, vibrant, and dare I say, beautiful, ladies. We know How Things Work. We are Down With Technology. We, I venture to say, Have the 411 On All That is Jiggy.

We were stymied by the stupid tent.

The Internet yielded no help as the company had gone out of business. We wandered in and out of the house, carrying the tent bag, checking online to see if we could find other poor schlubs in our predicament. We separated out the various poles, proud that we could sort out such complicated concepts as “1″, “2″…all the way up to “6″, and then, most amazingly of all, “3A” and “3B”. We stared down at the poles, and I can’t speak for April, but I was hoping they would magically form into a tent shape all by themselves solely through the power of my wishbeams. This didn’t happen.

The outcome of the story, of course, is, we did figure out roughly how the poles go, accompanied by much giggling and inappropriate innuendo, because putting up a tent is the most entendre-laced activity since drilling for oil. “We’re pitchin’ a tent…har har har” “This one goes in this hole here…har har har.” At one point, I toyed with a pole (har har har) and muttered, “You know this will be a new blog entry, right?” I can’t wait for tomorrow. If the damn thing doesn’t fall on us, bursting into flame in the process, I will be firmly convinced of a higher power.

After the near fiasco with the tent, we went to the diner for dinner and I put sugar on my fries instead of salt, which I see as proof that I am getting dumber by the hour.

Yesterday I got in a wee bit of trouble at work.  A minor scolding but, a scolding none the less from the boss.  We had done this story about how Britons were the ugliest people in the world according to a controversial website that rates attractiveness.  1 in 8 British men and 1  in 20 British women were deemed attractive enough to be on this website.  So we chatted a bit about that, about how it’s  a surefire way for you to take a knock to your self esteem to submit your photo and have it judged by others.  It’s incredibly superficial but if it’s important to date something beautiful (but mostly likely vacuous, so be it.)

Give us a kiss then...

After the commercial break I came in over the top of the song, I said something to the effect of “Don’t believe us?  Just look at Camilla.  What was Charles thinking?  Woof.”  The term ‘horsefaced’ may have even slipped out.  It was funny, and I stand by that.  She is an ugly, ugly woman.  How do you cheat on Princess Di with Camilla Parker-Bowles?  That’s like saying, “I don’t want prime rib for supper, I’d rather have a spamwich.”  That’s right.  I went there.  What I wonder is how her daughter Laura Parker-Bowles is so smokin’ hot?

She must be adopted...

Clearly, I didn’t learn my lesson.  We just did a bit about how you can now be genetically matched to a mate.  The experts say genetic compatibility means better sex, less cheating, longer-lasting love and healthier kids.  My line?  “Just ask Prince Charles.  Worked for him.”  More subtle this time.  Bad SJ.  Bad.

It’s like the time Beam and I got in trouble for taking 2 minutes to make fun of Anne Murray.  Honestly, it wasn’t my intent.  I had pointed out a lyric in one of her songs about the wine making her a fool.  Somehow this evolved into doing her concert from a recliner, saying things like “I love you man” and forgetting the words to her songs and just kinda mumbling along.  In retrospect, it wasn’t necessarily a good idea to make fun of a core artist on this kind of format.  Beam always was a little devil on my shoulders when it came to stuff like that.

I remember at Christmas, we were talking about that horrible Michael Keaton film “Jack Frost” not to be mistaken for the horror movie of the same name.  Beam makes reference to the “carrot scene” and if you’ve never seen the movie, it’s…of a violent sexual nature where the carrot is no longer on the evil snowman’s face.  It’s not something you could take seriously, the entire film is a farce.  But you just don’t talk about that on this format, possibly any format.  I couldn’t help but laugh about it later.

This is the problem with this format, my boss says to me, “SJ I want you to be more like yourself on the air.  Like you are outside the studio.  Only say f*ck less.  And when I say ‘less’ I mean ‘never’.”  It makes me think he’s trying to get me fired.  MORE like myself?  I’ve got a warped sense of humour and not a day goes by where someone doesn’t laugh and shake their head, saying “Oh, SJ”.

Okay, so today is Friday the 13th.  Dun dun dun.  The trivia question for this morning was based around this concept and the winner says to me, “Friday the 13th.  Do ya know why it’s unlucky?  I got married on the 13th.  And you know what?  …I’m divorced.”  Followed by a maniacal cackle.  Old people are funny.

On a nerdy note, I think I’ve discovered my favourite Middle English word.  It’s BARELY a period word, used for the first time by Shakespeare in 1597 when he wrote “I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered: there’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life.”  It means to be a dirty, shabbily clothed child.  An urchin.  Also defined as a muffin begin a poor thing, so a ragamuffin is a poor thing in rags.  Either way, fun word.  Fun to say.  God I’m a nerd.

More nerd stuff…I’m working on my device.  I  have a basic design I sketched out while I was drinking last night (hello apple juice and spiced rum!).  I really like it but I might tweak it just a little and it still needs colour which means I need to pick up some colour pencils.  Maybe I’ll splurge and get myself some really good ones.  Anyway, I’ve combined 2 animals and included a chevron as well.  I think if I tried to work a crescent moon into it, the whole thing would be too busy.  I like it so far, though.  The bird I used is that of the German coat of arms, which has existed going back to the 1400th century.  I’m wondering what the rules are about borrowing from actual heraldry.  I might change the wings and give it a less rigid, less militaristic look.  The idea is that because my persona name is “Adelhayt von Richter” (where von indicates some kind of nobility) that perhaps that nobility is from military service.

Speaking of the SCA, tonight I’m going to buy my membership.  Still holding on to the hope I win that robe.  I’m at the brink of what I set max bid at, but I’m willing to go higher, so we may snipe in at the last minute to get it.  There’s another red up for grabs if I can’t get this one, and failing that a black robe that I’ll see about snazzing up.

Por: Indira Verçosa

Ser elagante sempre, é mais fácil do que parece. Escolher as peças certas e os acessórios na medida é o que faz toda diferença na composição do visual. Mas, se tem um “amigo” que na maioria das vezes (se bem escolhido, é claro!) é sinônimo de elegância, sem dúvida: é o Scarpin! Acompanhando um vestidinho leve, uma saia secretária ou até mesmo calça jeans, o visual básico se torna mais chique com certeza! Com bom gosto e criatividade você fica linda e elegante em diversas ocasiões.

Conhecido dos pés das mulheres mais conservadoras, o Scarpin agora também está presente no visual das mais ousadas. Com cores  vivas e estampas mais discontraídas, os sapatos fazem a cabeça da mulherada neste verão. Confira!

Had an interview last night, about the Ballistics By The Inch project, with the fellow who does the “Gun Nation” podcasts that are quite popular. Sent this humorous bit to a friend about it last night after it was over:

Funny bit to share from the interview this evening…

So, it was for a podcast this guy does about gun stuff. It’s a good podcast. The guy is a bit of a nerd, materials science researcher involved in working on the next generation of ballistic cloth (Kevlar, et cetera), but he does his show for a general audience. Anyway, he *loves* our project, and has been a bit nuts about wanting to do an interview for about six months, but one thing and another always kept getting in the way. But it finally worked out that we both had the free time to do it, at the same time.

We get to do the interview, about 45 minutes by phone (Skype, actually), of which he’ll probably use 20-30 minutes for his show. Goes well. Get done, and we’re just chatting a bit about the whole project, et cetera. He asks whether we’ve gotten information about it up on Wikipedia yet, and I say that I hadn’t gotten around to it. He misunderstands, thinks I don’t really appreciate Wikipedia’s power to help spread the word. I say, “well, I do – a couple of years ago someone put up a Wiki entry on me because of something else I did – I just need to update it, and get other links on there about the BBTI project.”

“Oh, what other thing?”

“Well, about 8 years ago I did this odd conceptual art project, called Paint the Moon.”

Pause.

“Paint the Moon??”

It was my turn to misunderstand. But I’m used to having to explain about that project, so I start. “Um, yeah, see . . .”

“That was YOU????”

“Well, yeah.”

“Oh my God, I’m in the presence of greatness.”

No kidding, that’s what he actually said. Evidently made the guy’s night to find out that his favorite geeky gun science project also involved the nut behind his favorite crazy artistic project…

Nerds. Go figure.

* * * * * * *

My friend was amused, sent me an email about it this morning. In responding, I said this:

My wife and I both thought it pretty funny. I need to decide whether I can write it up for the blog without sounding like a self-aggrandizing ass. Though it’s not like worrying about that has stopped me in the past . . .

And I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple of hours.

Now, one of the things about blogging, and in using this blog like I do, it that it is for promotion. So there’s a certain amount of self-aggrandizement that goes with the territory.

But the truth of the matter is that for the most part, I find myself bewildered by attention. Yeah, sure, I long ago learned (in the SCA, as a matter of fact) how to cultivate a ‘public persona’ which I could use in that regard – a simulacrum, as it were, who could do the public speaking, the interviews, that sort of thing. It gives me the psychological distance necessary to handle the attention, deflect it without letting it crawl inside my head.

And that’s mostly what you see when I post stuff like this to the blog (or elsewhere). Because while I understand the need for people to have heroes, or leaders, or favorite artists/authors, et cetera, I always find myself completely bewildered to be in such a role. From my perspective, I’m just doing stuff anyone could do, and am only very lucky to have it noticed.

And now *that* sounds like another bit of self-aggrandizement.

Jeez – there’s no winning. Ah, well.

Jim Downey

So I need some of my own garb and I might be getting it sooner rather than later!  Dutchess and I were talking online (she’s too sick to talk on the phone) and one thing lead to another…I got her to put in a bid for a crimson monk’s robe.  I hope I win.

Front View

Side View

Back View

Isn’t it beautiful?  Don’t you want to weep openly at it’s Majesty.  It’s right about now that Erin would be telling me I’m being “adorkable” but I don’t care!

Thank God for Gina.  She’s trading off altering this for me (as I figure it will need to be done, being a men’s large) because I’m dubbing her music cassettes to MP3 format.  Otherwise, I’d die by the sword in this piece of garb.  Not because I’m a fighter, but because I’d trip and fall on a pile of swords and die.  I’m kind of clumsy.

I told Dutchess that I’m going to be like Merlin from Disney’s Sword in the Stone.  Except instead of getting my beard in things (no beard here, phew) I’m going to get my robes caught in things.  Which then prompted me to comment, “Imagine Chris?  SJ you’re going to get crabs from dragging those robes around like that.”  (She once told Dutchess & I when we were kids you could get crabs sitting in the grass…).

Dutchess says, “Oh Medieval Chris.  You know girls, next year when you turn 11 and grow up, you’ll get married to an old man, have ten children, and die.”

I reply, “…If you don’t die of the plague first.”

Imagine if you will Gaynip and Dutchess, 10 years ago, riding in the car lamenting about bed times.  Finally, from the front Gaynip’s step mom (who never had her own kids) says “When you’re a grownup you won’t stay up as late as you want.  Do you know why?  Because after high school you have to go to college and work 2 jobs to pay for that and study all the time so you’re exhausted.  After college you’re going to get another job to pay off that loan and will be too tired from work to go to the bed at 3am.  THEN you’ll get married and have to deal with your husband and eventually kids.  Those kills will want things like toys and drives and to go to college.  So you’ll work and work and work to pay for that.  Finally, when they leave the house and you can retire you’ll be too old to stay up.”

Dutchess almost cried.  The funny thing is, almost none of that is true for either of us.  I did work 2 jobs in college, but I didn’t have a loan.  I didn’t get married (and probably never will) and I don’t plan on having kids (despite what Dutchess and Office Mom say).  I have a sleep disorder that actually PREFERS me to stay awake til 3am.  So…there goes that theory.  Oh parents.  They’re so cute.

On a side note, I know I’m getting sick.  I’ve been wearing my toque in the house for a few hours now.  I put it on so I wouldn’t leave it in the bedroom and never took it off.  Not to mention, Tuesday night I almost cried when I couldn’t get the can of apple juice open.  I’m such a suk.

by Abdel Hai Mohamed, for Emirates Business, November 11, 2009.

New corporate governance rules and an institutional code of conduct for listed companies are being introduced by the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA).

The regulations are set out in a decree issued by Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Economy Minister and Chairman of the SCA’s board, and will come into effect on May 1 next year. The decree amends rules announced by the authority in April 2007.

Al Mansouri urged all stakeholders to use the grace period to hear the views of public joint stock companies and other institutions that will implement the code.

This would enable them to make the necessary adjustments to achieve the objectives of the decree. These included improving the standard of administrative and financial controls, taking into account the importance of these in terms of protecting the financial system on the one hand and protecting stakeholders on the other…(continue reading)

You know what’s really hard?  Writing a blog, while trying to do research on something at the same time.  I’m a pretty decent multitasker but I think I might be pushing it this morning.

I have a PDF file on Heraldry, so I’m making some notes before I try to create a device.  Call me a stickler, but I want to know what the colours mean (and in the cases of or and argent, what they mean when combined with the others).  I also need to pick a symbol to go with the colours.

My family crest is that of a helm with white/red with leaves of both colours.  On the German side of the family is yellow/blue and features a crowned lion carrying a water jug (?) topped with a helm and some leaves.  The Scottish side of things shows a red crest with 3 wolf heads and over the helm a fist topped with a crown.  I don’t know what any of this means, so I guess that means I need to keep reading.

A few interesting points about some of the colours:

• Purple (purpure) was borne by English families and now considered extinct.  Lacy, Earl of Lincoln is supposed to have been the last whom this colour legitimately appertained in arms.
• Brown/Crimson (Tenne/Sanguine) implies something dishonorable and is a mark of abatement or degradation
• Green (Vert) seldom occurs in arms today because of mistakes made in copying ancient shields which had faded.  Presumed in some instances blue or black.

So far I’m looking at several creatures for the device that appear in German heraldry.  What’s interesting to note, other than griffins and unicorns, you don’t find mythical beasts (for the post part) in English arms.  Top of my list is a phoenix after I had that dream a few months ago (recap:  I had a tattoo of a phoenix on my back that kept growing until it engulfed me, finally I morphed into it altogether.).

I’d also like to use a celestial body like a crescent (or increscent/decrescent for that matter) moon.  Stars are fairly rare in heraldry, so I will probably forgo it.  The elements are usable as well, but I don’t like the representation of water (it looks like an Easter egg).

Need to remember to extensively Google German Heraldry in general.  Get an idea of colour themes, how the fields are divided up, etc.

My brain is leaping for joy at all this stimulation.  I have always been a vault of useless information…so you can well imagine what this is doing for me.  Pure elation.

I surprised a few people last weekend by showing up at an event in the Midrealm. (I’m from Trimaris.) I took some friends from the area to their first event as an introduction and they enjoyed it even though it was smaller than everyone hoped. Also sprained my ankle rather severly but it’s healing up pretty well. Next weekend is Trimarian Crown here then off to Meridies for Castle Wars.

This weeks song is a Traditional work also known as “The Hunter.” I’ve been able to find very little else about it except that it seems to have been first recorded by The Weavers. The idea behind the song is the King’s gamekeeper fetches the deer back to the preserve to protect them from poachers. In my case, this is another song I learned from that book of campfire songs which “Old King from the Northern Sea” came from. However, my last verse is different from every other version I’ve found and I have no idea where I got it. It has a response part on the chorus and I altered the speed on the recorder so it gives a little different tone. I sometimes get creeped out by people singing both parts to a song. =)

The Keeper

The Keeper by Glen E Hammer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I guess I’ll be here for a while, I just noticed as I was uploading that I am using less than 1% of the space available on the site. =)