8/4/03
Had a nice long gab with the Gray Pumpkin this afternoon about this, that and the other thing. Lots of fun chitty-chatting about an assortment of stuff, from gaming to kung fu to zombies to political stances. I'm amazed that I was the baby boy of the gaming group... he's 39, Danny's 40, Doug's got to be in his mid-late 40s. I'm only as old as the girls of that gang. Gray and I have the most similar mental frequency of the lot, still. I'm surprised how much of those gaming times I remember, and almost as shocked how much I'd forgotten.

MIT's Media Lab is a crucible of experimentation and innovation for students of media technology. Their work ranges from the amusingly baroque to the intriguingly clever. A couple of grad students there have developed the Audiopad, an interesting system for performing electronic music. Rather than explain further, let me just encourage you to go look at the video demonstration in either Quicktime (20MB) or Windows Media (11MB) formats. Then go read the project's web page. I'd hate to see what'd happen if Newt got at those control-elements.

Last night was one of the more entertaining episodes of COPS... (Very little beats the one-legged cop chasing a guy down, however.)

Essentially, a haggard-looking woman with scary wrinkles flags down the cop. She's really upset because she claims to have been robbed. After a couple of questions from the cop, the woman finally says "I just gave that woman over there $20 to buy crack cocaine, and she hasn't given me anything!” She points across the street at another lady.

She says this right to the cop. The cop is sort of flabbergasted, and makes her repeat it. "Ok. You paid that woman $20 for crack cocaine, and she took your money and didn't give you anything. And you want me to go over there and... All right. Ok. "

The cop eventually shrugs and decides to follow up on it. He walks across the street, where the other woman is waiting.

The cop says, "That woman over there says she just gave you $20 to buy crack, and you didn't give her anything."

The second woman says "No sir, officer, I do NOT sell crack. I am a prostitute."

Also got into Animal Planet's "The Future is Wild", though I view it a speculative fiction rather than sound science... mainly because we don't have a lot of the variables in place to make even something that I'd consider an educated guess about what life on Earth will be like 100 million years from now. I did rather like the tunneling birds and land-squid, however. The art and movement of the new beasties is really amazing.

Random Scotto factoid - In grade school, I hated diagramming sentences. *Hated it* Ms Mickey, the teacher at the time was as cool as could be, but when I was obliged to do that on paper... or worse, go up to the black board, I could feel the pickle-puss hang on my face. At the time, it struck me as some of the most pointless stuff I'd ever been obliged to do, and though I recognize the usefulness now, I still really don't like doing it. I wonder if it'll ever get telegraphed? Some little kid will ask me for help some day, I'll see what it is, throw off a "oh, that stuff again..." and give that munchkin an irrational dislike for it, too?

a year ago Signs movie, cancerless cigs, hellboy movie, scary bunny, 2nd wishes, Oz scary, zombies land on beach, Anna Nicole show hurt to watch

2 years ago - Oz quiz, Dictionaraoke, Day planning

3 years ago - Florida panthers, everglades restoration efforts, lj adds interests