Yes, equipment matters. But desire, heart, and your desire to achieve your goals matter more.
Life
The Art of Video Games
I think it’s wonderful when non-traditional art mediums get their due. Just because it’s not an oil painting on a canvas doesn’t mean it’s not art. Or as well, the consideration that some mediums are “childrens” and not to be taken seriously, like cartoons or comic books. To me, that just shows you don’t understand the medium.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is going to be presenting an exhibition on The Art of Video Games.
The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early developers such as David Crane and Warren Robinett to contemporary designers like Kellee Santiago and David Jaffe. It also will explore the many influences on game designers, and the pervasive presence video games have in the broader popular culture, with new relationships to video art, film and television, educational practices, and professional skill training.
Forty years? Geez… that makes me feel old. 😉
What’s cool tho? Look at the winning games. It’s hard to argue with their choices. If I’m in the Washington DC area while this is open, I’d love to go see it. Else, I do hope it tours and comes somewhere near me.
Perspective
A man named Derek Miller makes his last post — truly, his last post (if that page doesn’t load, try here).
Derek died just a couple of days ago of cancer. I don’t know him at all, just found his last blog page via Fark. He wrote the page while he was alive, with instructions for it to be posted after he died.
Derek writes about perspective. Most of us live our lives thinking we will never die, but when you have a terminal disease and know you’re dying and your time is limited, I can only assume it consumes your every thought to some extent or other. Obviously Derek accepted his mortality and used it to give some good advice for living:
While I was still alive writing this, I was sad to know I’ll miss these things—not because I won’t be able to witness them, but because Air, Marina, and Lauren won’t have me there to support their efforts.
It turns out that no one can imagine what’s really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can’t expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won’t. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That’s neither bad nor good, but it is real.
I think and hope that’s what my daughters can take from my disease and death. And that my wonderful, amazing wife Airdrie can see too. Not that they could die any day, but that they should pursue what they enjoy, and what stimulates their minds, as much as possible—so they can be ready for opportunities, as well as not disappointed when things go sideways, as they inevitably do.
As I have gone through life, I find the main reason people want to live, whether they realize it or not, is because there’s so much they don’t want to miss out on. The reality is, we all miss out on a lot of things every day. Why do we focus so much on what we don’t have, instead of focusing on what we do have? We spend all our time trying to not miss out on things, and in doing so all we’ve done is focus on trying to not miss out on things, which means we probably missed out on those things as well as missed out on a lot of other things too.
It reminds me of an Eagles song, “Learn to Be Still”
Now the flowers in your garden, they don’t smell so sweet.
Maybe you’ve forgotten the heaven lying at your feet.
We can’t stop death. We can’t avoid death. But what we do have control over is how we live. Live your life well.
I don’t know what came over me.
I’ve decided to pay a little more attention to Twitter.
I obtained a Twitter account (you ought to be able to figure out it) mostly to ensure the name was reserved. Then I hooked up my postings here to auto-publish to Twitter as well. But mostly I ignored Twitter in terms of keeping up with it, posting to it, whatever. But something bit me last night.
Upon the suggestion of a friend, I’m trying out Twitterific as a desktop client app. Like all things the Icon Factory does, the interface is beautiful and well-thought out. Obviously a lot of influence from iPad and iOS development. But really, it’s slick and well-done.
We’ll see how it goes. I doubt it’ll be a primary source for me to send information out, but I’ve been spending the morning finding people to follow that might present news or information I care about. We’ll see how this goes.
He’s dead
Osama bin Laden is dead.
I wonder what difference it will make. Ten years later and it feels largely symbolic at this point, but it’s still good to have a madman gone. What difference will it make? I’m sure within some circles he’s now considered a martyr, but how much will that strengthen the cause? How much was bin Laden still in control of terrorist efforts and actions, thus will his demise actually weaken anything? It’s too soon to tell, but I do hope it leads to positive things for the world.
It feels like not just a chapter has closed, but a whole volume. What will be interesting is to see how the next volume will develop in light of this incident.
Hail hail the witch is dead!
Wild Hogs in Austin
No… the Republic of Texas biker rally isn’t for a few months yet.
I’m talking about feral hogs.
Apparently they started showing up in a northeast Austin neighborhood.
I can’t say I’m surprised because I know friends that live east of Austin have seen them running around. And so, the feral hog problem starts to come closer to home for the urbanites!
You know… I’ve got 6.8 Special ways to take care of a hog problem. Just give me a call!
Tho granted, the best way to try to manage this is going to involve trapping. If they’re as small as the article reports, trapping should be more effective AND they better do it now because they’re just going to reproduce like the plague.
Continuous Chest Compressions
Every three days, more Americans die from sudden cardiac arrest than the number who died in the 9-11 attacks. You can lessen this recurring loss by learning Continuous Chest Compression CPR, a hands-only CPR method that doubles a person’s chance of surviving cardiac arrest. It’s easy and does not require mouth-to-mouth contact, making it more likely bystanders will try to help, and it was developed at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.
Not everyone can learn CPR and keep up with how it changes. For instance, when I learned CPR it was ABC – Airway, Breathing, Circulation. But very recently they changed it to CAB: Compressions, Airway, Breathing. When I first heard about this compressions-only technique I was skeptical, but the American Heart Association endorses it, supposedly this video is a Mayo Clinic presentation. When you consider the realities of why guidelines have changed and what this is about — keeping blood flowing — then it seems pretty sound. Granted, there are strict circumstances for its use, but hey… this is much easier for the average lay person to know about and perform, plus it alleviates a typical concern people have about germs/disease through mouth contact.
This was brought to my attention some time ago. It’s been sitting in my inbox for a while with the intent to blog on it… and finally I’m getting around to cleaning out my inbox. 😉 Seems like a good thing to share with others.
Life is good
I know I should be working this weekend. I have a project that I really want to get finished. But, my family sacrifices a lot… a lot of “sorry, Dad needs to work”. Today, I wanted it to be about them.
We went to the Buda Wiener Dog Races. I’ve heard about this for numerous years and people always say what fun they had. I figured one of these days we had to check it out, and when I heard a few days ago that it was this weekend, I knew we had to go. It was fun. Had no idea so many wiener dogs lived in the area. 🙂 It was fun to watch them race. Yes, I groan a bit at people who dress up their pets, but hey… if that’s your thing, fine. I will admit a few people had little “caps” (baseball, cowboy, etc.) on their dogs and they did look mighty cute. Had some good food, picked up a few interesting crafts. A good time with the family.
Then… we went to leave. As we were pulling out of the parking area one of the attendants waved us down and told us our front left tire was flat. Great. I examined the tire and it was sliced on the inside… not sure what the deal was, but there’s no patching this. Pulled over and changed to the spare. I can’t remember the last time I had to change a tire, and certainly it was the first time for the Kiddos to experience it. Showed them how it works and how it’s actually pretty easy to do. Thankfully it’s Saturday and Discount Tire was open. Thing is, I bought some Arizonian tires from them for the minivan about 5 years ago. I wanted Michelin’s, but money was tight at the time and the guy talked me into it (my mistake). Sure, they are tires, they do the job… but I was never happy with them. Loud. They seemed to lose air faster than other tires I’ve had. Seemed to wear faster than their label would lead you to believe, and the wear seemed rather uneven. I actually said a couple of months ago that I wanted to buy new tires for the minivan, and they’d be Michelin’s this time. Well… today was the day. 🙂 Had them put on a set of Michelin Destiny‘s. We’ll see how they do. Bummed that I didn’t have the ability to shop around and get a tire of my choice at the best price, but hopefully this will work out well.
Thing is, while it wasn’t the way I wanted to spend the remainder of my Saturday, I’m just thankful I could. That I still have a good paying job. That I had the money to be able to handle this unexpected event, and didn’t have to compromise all that much. That I was able to spend a day with my family; Oldest even came with me on his own choice to the tire store.
Life doesn’t always give you what you want, but if you play things right it seems to give you what you need. Life is good.
Termites – we got ’em
Last week we looked in the backyard and noticed this quivering mass of something on the ground. Upon closer inspection, termites. Swarming. Didn’t last long tho… the birds came and picked them off.
Of course, I called our exterminator. They scheduled their termite guy to come out today.
Meantime yesterday, Oldest reported he saw them again in the same area yesterday.
There’s no question, we have termites. In fact, just about everyone in Texas does… they’re everywhere, you can’t escape them. The trick is tho, we don’t appear to have any structural damage to the house. There are no dirt tunnels up the side of the house. We have a slab foundation and it’s fairly high off the ground, so it’d be obvious if we did. We do get monthly exterminator exterior spray to mind for things like scorpions or other bugs, so that helps.
The question at this point tho is… should we get a preventative, like in-ground baits or Termidor.
It’s expensive.
Repairing your house is more expensive.
As I read up on Termidor, it seems amazingly effective. But that same effectiveness is also a source of concern. Toxicity. I read that it is highly toxic to bees, to aquatic life. Upland game birds too, tho oddly not waterfowl. I even read one thing that specifically said it’s non-toxic to mallards… but what about muscovy? Doubt I’ll get any direct info there. Still, I’d hate if any of the ducks died because of this treatment. Plus think about it… it sits in the ground for 10-12 years churning out its effective poison. While that sounds great from a termite control perspective, that also means this potent poison is in the ground… and what sort of impact will that have on our groundwater and aquifers? I don’t know, but I wonder.
It seems like it’s almost one of those “too good to be true” sorts of solutions, which means it probably is….
So the bait system. It seems less ideal in a way, because some studies I read on the Termidor is that it can’t be detected so the termites don’t avoid it, thus colony destruction is pretty quick therefore making the window between treatment and destruction rather narrow. With a bait system, they have to find the bait then take it, and who knows how long that could be. So you potentially have a larger window of opportunity for destruction to still happen. In mentioning this to Karl, he said he’s used baits and likes the added benefit that someone comes around every 3 months to inspect things, instead of 10+ years and hoping it’s still working. There’s a good point to that.
Then there’s money. Termidor is a huge expense up front. Baits are a lesser expense, but constant treatment. Over the lifetime of things it’ll probably add up to about the same amount of money spent, but I think bait ends up being cheaper if you expect to not live in the house for the next 10-20 years. And hopefully, cost of bait doesn’t skyrocket.
Really tho, I think at this point it’s more about what’s going to be effective yet safe. I don’t want to bring harm to anything, really… it’s just wanting to keep my house safe. If that means termites go bye-bye, then it does, but if it’s not hurting my house, I don’t want to see it harmed.
Any input?
Updated: We do have an exterminator that comes out once a month and sprays the exterior perimeter of the house. We do this mainly for scorpions, but of course it keeps a host of other things out too. Looking at the sheet, they put down birenthrin and cyfluthrin, which Google tells me are both barrier repellants that work against termites.
So you know…. I may just stick with that and save my money.
It’s a gamble, I know.
No fires, people…. seriously!
Those fires that broke out a few miles from my house? They were having a fundraiser yesterday to help people affected by the fire. Even the firefighters showed up…. and then had to leave to fight a fire.
Their chance to relax was short-lived, however, as a callout to a nearby brush fire had the firefighters rushing to get to their trucks.
Investigators said the fire was started when embers from an unattended grill touched the dry vegetation surrounding it. An AFD spokesman said firefighters were able to get it under control quickly and that other responding units were canceled.
Look folks. I know we all think it can’t happen to us, that it can’t happen because of us. That we’re all responsible with fire and our grills and smokers.
But it can happen, and we all slip up.
Even “contained” fires, like in a grill or smoker, are still risky. We’re having some seriously high winds, and all it takes is one ember to go flying. I know from my years of working with wood and charcoal grills and smokers that embers can and do escape. I was wanting to smoke some bacon-wrapped venison and hog backstraps for my Easter supper today, but because of conditions I will not. Yeah it sucks, but more wildfires, more loss of homes — especially my own — is not an appealing thought.
Please folks. Show restraint. It can happen. It does happen. I love BBQ, but I’d hate to lose my house or for you to lose yours. Don’t risk being the one responsible for another fire, for someone’s loss of their home.
Stuff From Hsoi 