Goals for this weekend:

1. Make a dish from this book.

So far, it looks like a pretty decent cookbook with fairly hassle-free recipes for simple stuff.

2. Read more Hitcherhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, so I will be even less oblivious to the cultural references on Slashdot than I currently am, and will thus know where my towel is.

3. Drag my lazy butt to see Perfume before it goes out of theaters.

4. Try to do something social with another human being.

I am salivating. Severely.

I've wanted to write programs for cellphones for years, but most mobile manufacturers make the process needlessly difficult. I've looked at Windows mobile, but I can't find a single, bare bones "Hello World" visual basic/c# tutorial anywhere on Microsoft's site (lots of pretty promotional crap, though). And the mobile java community has had it's head shoved up its ass for years (how many acroynyms and layers of abstraction does one need, anyways?). And palm? Don't even get me started. Nokia python? Was easy, but couldn't do much with it. The closest thing I ever found to a usable mobile API was Trolltech's Qtopia+python, and that had way too many user interaction issues.

If this phone comes with some sort of Cocoa programming library like the kind I use for the macs as work, this phone will kick some serious ass.

I am posting from my old Sharp Zaurus. It dates from a time when I used to have in a group of technologists that I today no longer have faith in. Still, it's a intriguing curiosity, sort of like a steam-driven car from last century.

I thought that I'd turn the Zaurus into something useful' maybe a recipe guide to keep in the kitchen or something of the sort, maybe some kind of remote for home automation. Who knows. Since my powerbook's LCD got cracked, it's also the only portable web browsing technology in my apartment. I guess this post technically qualifies as a mobile post, though it's not really from a cell phone.

In my first week back from my micro vacation in NC, Ifindthat I come back to a situation where I still don't have my shit together. My house is a mess and the spreadsheets at work that I'm supposed to hook up to the database are full of typos that break things and this weekend was taken up by sleeping constantly to get rid of my sore throat with rest and tons of OJ.

I guess I need to look on the bright side of life. Last weekend I found out that there's still a lot of people back home who love me very much.

I finally made a donation to WBFO. I can now officially feel less guilty about listening to NPR's All Things Considered as I'm driving down the Skyway on my way to work.

Here's the gratuitous Channukah pics I mentioned. While I know that the holiday (and Christmas, for that matter) is over, I'm going to post these pictures anyways because I had meant to post them while the holiday was still in-session.


I try to celebrate the holiday as regularly as I can, as it's the one period in this stretch of time between Halloween and New Year's that I can truly celebrate my being different and not being driven insane by a several hundred-billion dollar bombardment of music, commercials, decorations, food, and other societal artifacts celebrating a holiday I don't participate in

To start with, I uploaded as my music Tsum Balaike performed by the awesome Klezmer R's, a klezmer band from Hungary that is only like the best klezmer band ever. If I were a rich man, I'd have them as my wedding band (if I ever get married). Not exactly Channukah music, but festive enough.

On with the pictures.



First night. Accidently forgot the proper ordering of the candles (place right-to-left, light left-to-right, it's just so confusing).



With the lights off it looks cooler.



The sixth night. This time with aluminium foil under the menorah; wax kept dripping on the heavy silver plate tray I recently bought and resurrected, and I didn't want to make the job of cleaning 8 days worth of bee excretion from it any more difficult than it already was.



The eighth night, all candles blazing at full burn.



I spun the dreidel, just for kicks. I've toyed around with the idea of replacing the chocolate gold coins (aka gelt) usually used in the game with shot glasses--it would make for an excellent drinking game.



Dreidel frozen in mid-spin. The magic of photography and a lucky shot. The Hebrew letter hay being shown wins half the pot, if you land on it.



Another frozen-in-spin picture, this time with the litter gimmel, which wins the entire pot.



I finally made latkes! (potato pancakes). The first batch I made, back when I went to school in Ithaca, was a total disaster. I don't remember whether (e:lizabeth) remembers the horror, but I sure do. I managed to acquire a good recipe that my dad uses, which only adds about a zillion critical ingrediants that my first batch 10 years ago didn't have. This second batch was really good--good enough that my third batch will be next year when my cholesterol has declined to reasonable levels again.

My family sometimes has, er, strange tastes in gifts. We usually get each other weird/utilitarian stuff, but then each one splurges on a single expensive gift as well that we ourselves want and hand it to the family members to "give" to us on one of the eight nights. My splurge gift was a PCI graphics accelerator to make up for the fact I bought an underpowered, non-upgradable emachines computer (no AGP/PCI-E slot--second life is intolerable). I already put it in, so I can't very well take a picture of it.



What better way to say "I love you" than with a level?



The commemorative pins are cool. I don't care what people up here will say.



I got this one night; it's one of several gifts my parents left here when they visited me a month ago. I really didn't know what the hell it was, figuring either it was a sculpture or something that wasn't art but rather served some boring mundane purpose, like hanging ties or propping up ironing boards. I cam to the conclusion "it's art, I should display it prominently", and hoped that my mother wouldn't rib me for making a tie rack or shoe tree into an objet d'art. Turns out I was right and it was a sculpture after all.



What were you expecting, Joy of Sex?