Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"When people are responsible for their own lives, and their own happiness, they can be more free, healthier, and actually able to GET that happiness." -- n0ire, 2004-01-08

• Does fast-forwarding through ads make them more effective? This article about the future of advertising and television ratings says CBS is about to release a study saying so. I can't arue with the notion that "fast-forwarding through commercials represented a better opportunity for commercial recall than how viewers avoid commercials in non-DVR environments - by changing the channel to avoid them," even on an old-fashioned VCR like I use.
• Another musician's perspective in favour of p2p file sharing, discussing the currencies other than money that musicians trade in. (Points that I've seen other artists make, but good to look at if the differences between the economic worlds inhabited by small artists and megastars isn't absolutely clear to you.) I can't yet say that I'm personally thrilled at the thought of "losing a sale" to individual piracy, but there are some convincing arguments here. (Note that The Homespun Ceilidh Band does make sample tracks -- not tiny clips -- available online.)
• A special, cat-friendly aquarium. Cute. (Link from merde)
• 2.5 Gigapixel digital photo -- it's actually a stitched-panoramic composed of 600 individual shots over the course of 75 minutes. (Don't remember whom I got the link from.)
• "The United States can get completely off oil and revitalize its economy led by business for profit," according to Amory Lovins, who suggests a plan for doing so that'll take $180 billion in investments over ten years but pay off by creating new industries and jobs, as well as the environmental and national security ramifications.
• Satirical online draft registration form -- pay attention to the values in the pull-down fields.
• I'd heard about a live-action game of Pac-Man being played in NYC before, but there are new twists in this article about live-action Pac-Man in Singapore, including research ramifications and military applications of what's learned in implementing the game, and mentions of other live-action / video-game interaction and/or crossover -- including Doom superimposed on players' goggles as they move around a university campus. (Link from Fred, and also from austin_dern
• A couple of links mentioned by shelaghc: "Solving The Cat's Purr Mystery Using Accelerometers" describes medical benefits to the cat when injured or in pain, and "What If The Cats Purr Had Therepeutic Virtues" goes on to talk about medical benefits to humans of cats' purring (and advertise a CD of purring).
• Plastic Cambrian critter toys, " the FIRST EVER scientifically accurate toys based on the half-billion-year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale of British Columbia." (Link from drglam)
• Pirate riddles for sophisticates, such as, "Of which concept shared by Jungian psychology and Northrop Frye's literary theory are pirates especially fond?" and, "What's a pirate's favorite alliance-creating diplomatic agreement from the Second World War?" Read all the way through -- it changes gears. (Link from Fred)

I looked down at the pot of burbling stuff on the stove as I stirred it, and thought, "it looks wrong and it still smells wrong ... why?" Then it dawned on me: I forgot the garlic. I forgot garlic? I must be less awake than I'd thought, and I was already aware of being not quite all here.

So I pried a clove off the garlic bulb, but then I thought, "Wait, I bought this how many days ago, and this is only the second clove I've used? Is the reason I've felt headachy and dizzy so much of the past few days just a garlic deficiency?" Come to think of it, could that have anything to do with the recent pattern of: feel hungry, get an idea for something to cook, cook it, sit down, look at it, wonder why I don't feel like eating?

While I'm making random observations: my cat seems to like canned veggies. Well really just the liquid they're packed in. If I open a can, she wants a sniff. She may accept and appear to enjoy a small piece of whatever vegetable is inside, though not a second one. What she really wants is to taste that slightly salty, vegetable-flavoured water, and in some cases to take a good long drink of it. Today she enjoyed a fair dollop of that thick fluid from a can of kidney beans. This after she'd already eaten as much of her own food as she eats in one sitting.

Today's breakfa ... ah, really late brunch? ... is one of those things that'll probably sound terribly odd but actually works pretty well -- the results of a dizzy, 3/4 awake werecatfish reacting to the first ingredients to cross my field of view and trying to decide what else I was in the mood to combine with those. ( details for the curious )

(Thinking back to various conversations with various people over the years, along the lines of, "You're combining what with what? Are you mad?" "Trust me, it'll work." "Hey, you're right, this is good. How did you know to do that?" "I don't know how I knew, I just knew." And for the record, the trick to the coffee when I use it is (usually) to use too little for anyone to detect coffee-flavour, but enough to alter how other flavours interact with each other. You can use maple in people-look-at-you-funny ways similarly, causing "how did you do that?" changes to the ways other flavours balance one another.)

Anyhow ... frustrated with pain/dizziness/fatigue 'cause despite a few productive days last week and managing to chase a few delayed LJ entries out of my head and onto the screen, I'm not managing to do a lot of what I need or want to be doing. Thanksgiving is almost here (I just got word on the family plans for that -- they're what I expected and now I have details), and Darkover (I'm not quite prepared and need to get that taken care of), and an unspecified possibly-dinner with an out-of-town friend who'll be in Maryland for about two days, and I'm suddenly noticing just how late in the calendar it is and I haven't gotten out to visit anniemal in far longer than I'd like.

So with my body being a bit wonky, my current approach is to handle whatever I feel I can handle at any given time and just hope that by the time everything needs to be done I will have gotten to it, because I'm afraid that if I try to do everything in order of urgency, I'll just wipe myself out and not manage to do any of it. I'm trying to pace myself, but having trouble letting go of worrying about the pace.

Progress where I can manage it, I guess. Putting a computer in the green bedroom actually helps.