Then the Lord said to the Accuser:

"Have you considered my servant Job? Blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."

"Does Job fear God for nothing?" the Accuser replied. "You have blessed the work of his hands, his flocks and herds are spread across the land. But strike everything he has, he will surely curse you to your face."

Then the Accuser went out from the presence of the Lord.

...for your listening pleasure. Feed it through your good speakers.

01. The Accuser
02. The Fall
03. The Saviour
04. The Joy

Download zipped album.

You can also write a review. Or better, share this post in your Google Reader. :)

how to choose secure passwords

"I need to change the password on my email account. Someone managed to figure out the old one."
"That's why your password should always include numbers as well as letters. Everyone thinks its fun to use the name of your dog or boyfriend, but that actually makes it easy to crack."
"My old password was Gj7B!X."

Greetings from a former RCC. This post exists because a friend fell for phishing, and it worked due to universal password usage. Universal passwords are bad, bad, bad. *finger wagging*

Guidelines for password selection:

• use at least one number and one letter.
• use both upper and lower case letters if possible.
• also use at least one special character or punctuation mark (if permitted).
• be at least seven characters long.
• do NOT use dictionary words (especially in English), names of people/pets, addresses, birthdays, SSN's, driver's license #'s, passport #'s, variations of your usernames/aliases, or phone numbers. or for that matter, fundamental constants (e, pi, the speed of light, square root of 2, sequences of perfect numbers, fibonacci sequence, or if you do choose one of the irrationals, don't start in the first five digits or so)
• do NOT use patterns on the keyboard (i.e., qwerty, ;lkjh, or 2468)
• And change your passwords every three months.

You might ask: how the hell am I supposed to memorize a unique something like Q34jp$s! for every account I have? and change it every three months?! Who do you think I am?  River Tam?  Veronica Mars?

Actually, it's easy. Pick a novel, movie, or a book of poems. Pick a page/passage/quote at pseudo-random. Pick a sentence with a number in it. use the first character of each letter, preserve punctuation, use actual numbers to represent the numbers or constructions like "some1" If you're really desperate for numbers.  (Okay, fine, you can take every prime-th decimal digit of pi.  I'll allow you that.)

Now you have secure passwords. Remember, passwords are like underwear. Change often, don't share.

Current music: Slow Runner - Make you love me

(seen on t-shirt) forget the dog, beware of me

Actual conversation. Over ice cream. After Quartino's and Blagojevich Superstar for J's bday.

RM: Honestly, I'm actually scared of Veronica Mars. (long pause)
Me: (slowly, while looking at RK) I am *not* scary.
RK: (equally slowly) Yes. You. Are. You're intimidating.
Me: Not on purpose.
JZ: (quoting t-shirt seen earlier in the evening) Forget the dog, beware of me! hehe...
Me: (shocked expression) Oh, is that why MK was hiding behind you like you were a tree?

Current music: Sneaker Pimps - Spin spin sugar

behold, the mustard squeeze bottle centrifuge

Do you ever wish your kitchen had a centrifuge so that the mustard squeeze bottle would actually dispense mustard?

Yes, I ran into this problem when making a sandwich. The solution: a piece of string.

The basic construction involves 2 tight loops (one around the neck of the bottle, another around the 'waist' or skinnier portion in the middle), and a handle (attached to both loops so it stays centered when you spin it).

You can use whatever topology suits you best, but my method used one continuous piece of string, somewhat similar to tying a ribbon around a gift box. By similar, I mean ribbon^2(giftbox) where giftbox = mustard bottle.

Also discovered that the two red wires in my thermostat were switched, but that it didn't matter for heating, only for cooling. I'm on a roll.

Current music: Don't worry be happy.

Google Reader Feed Streams

Yes, indeed, it's possible to create google reader pages for different tags. It's like me editing a personalized magazine of what's out there.

So, here we are.

Jade's science feed (journal articles, news/blog clippings)

Jade's music feed (an assortment of free music downloads)

Jade's eco feed (green-ness)

Current music: Boxing Fox - Do you live?

Sigh

Wow, my mother is very whiny when she doesn't get to level up in Wii Tanks...

On Math, Muses, and Poets

When RM sent me this highly entertaining NYTimes column (by Strogatz) on using diff equ's to model love, I had to share it. Of course, in the process of said sharing, came another little gem from the Journal on Applied Math (from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics).

An excerpt from the abstract:

Three ordinary differential equations are proposed to model the dynamics of love between Petrarch, a celebrated Italian poet of the 14th century, and Laura, a beautiful but married lady. The equations are nonlinear but can be studied through the singular perturbation approach if the inspiration of the poet is assumed to have very slow dynamics. In such a case, explicit conditions are found in the appeals of Laura and Petrarch and in their behavioral parameters that guarantee the existence of a globally stable slow-fast limit cycle. ... The result is that the calibrated model shows that the poet's emotions followed for about 20 years a quite regular cyclical pattern ranging from the extremems of ecstasy to despair. All of these findings agree with the recent results of Frederic Jones, who, through a detailed stylistic and linguistic analysis of the poems inspired by Laura, has discovered Petrarch's emotional cycle in a fully independent way.

In summarizing the work of Jones, the authors state that Jones made the assumption of the cyclical nature of Petrarch's emotions, and "on the basis of this conjecture, Jones... put all undated poems in chronological order." But in this case, the authors set up some basic behavioral parameters:

And found the solution to be a limit cycle.

Oh, and more pretty graphs:

The paper is highly entertaining, very readable, and not as verbose as you might otherwise expect. Really, papers in the humanities should read like this. Characterized by precision, humorous, and defended up to the limits of falsifiability. Well worth the effort to read it, for poets and scientists alike, not just the slender intersection of the two.

References

Rinaldi, Sergio. Laura and Petrarch: An Intriguing Case of Cyclical Love Dynamics. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Aug., 1998), pp. 1205-1221

Current music: The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You

So what type of combat training do you have? ... Fencing.

Verbatim review of Star Trek from D's parentals...

Father: "Fascinating from a cultural perspective. I don't empathize much wit our macho delinquent protagonist. Though obviously this appeals to a lot of people. At least his skill at hanging off cliffs by his fingertips saved his life many times."

[Pause]

Father: "I may have some Vulcan sympathies."

[Pause]

Father: "Although giving a success probability estimate of 4.3% for anything involving the decisions of a small number of people has too many significant digits. Really, it's a caricature of reasonableness in risk evaluation procedures."

Mother: "Yes... I didn't much like Spock's mother. She was a bit of a sop. Especially for that sort of environment."

[Pause]

D: "Didn't she only have about one minute of screen time?"

Mother: "Yes, but that minute was just filled with wide-eyed, soulful stares."

Current music: Paper Tiger - Jolien

teatime between bits of MATLAB coding...

Mother: I worry for those birds. That's not a stable branch and their workmanship on that nest is rather shoddy.

Me: I don't think there's much you can do to help. (Pause.) Oh, you meant you're going to super-glue the structure so it doesn't fall...

Mother: But they're likely to detach in the breeze if I don't! Or I could build them another nest...

Current music: Modern Music - Sixteen Going On Seventeen

hanging by threads of palest silver

From spring 2009

From spring 2009

Current music: Garbage - Stroke of Luck

Chirp-stream Digest

Swine Flu Tweets:

• real time updates: http://healthmap.org/swineflu
• IL has a disproportionately high infection rate for its population. cause for concern? http://cdc.gov/h1n1flu/upda... #swineflu
• the green line is the U.S. -- something isn't right today: http://bit.ly/LB3tU #swineflu
• viral origins: H1N1-erine http://bit.ly/x1wAB
• http://twitpic.com/4fmg6 - at brk

Berkshire Tweets:

• It dawns on me that this is investment as a tool for intelligently planned production on the planet. #brk
• Try drinking every time charlie says "I've got nothing to add." #brk
• "that was slick, striking up a conversation with the guys we were cutting in front of..." -ar #brk
• Best seats possible. Sprinting ability is useful. Yeehaw!
• somalian cab driver named den. what's he doing in omaha?
• http://twitpic.com/4ctvs - meta-image
• http://twitpic.com/4crsf - Omaha old marketplace
• http://twitpic.com/4cqkt - seen in omaha -- friends don't let friends...
• http://twitpic.com/4c5gd - is this how you imagine Omaha?

Amusement, Cbae and TTL:

• [RT from @TimTL] My neighborhood is burning! This is my parent's house at minute 1:05: http://tinyurl.com/cnun52
• http://bit.ly/IGET6 organization. go veggie.
• video games that never made it to the usa http://img8.imageshack.us/i...
• this just in: our roomie @TimTL featured in one of China's biggest newspapers http://bit.ly/pZMc5
• [via @anthonyha] miss those days & fail to see what she finds morally objectionable?! http://bit.ly/VvQjG the kid *chose* to draw into cbae.
• [via @TimTL] takes guts to edit a vid, change the meaning, broadcast it & blame the victim for it being incomplete http://tinyurl.com/cyhuh2

Current music: Vienna Teng - Stray Italian Greyhound

cuteness prevails

atonement among bears

Such beautiful clever, peaceful creatures. Why hasn't hunting already been abolished?

Current music: Tracing Arcs - Through A Glass Darkly

sometimes

1 20 1 1 20 7 7 1 1 7 20 1 7 1 7 1 1 3 3 3 3 7 1 1 3 7 20 20 3 20 1 1 20 1 20 20 20 7 3 1 1 1 7 1 7 1 3 20 1 20 1 7 1 7 3 7 7 20 1 7

... No, the book is wrong. This whole conclusion is fallacious.

Current music: Gattaca Soundtrack

bunnies! armed bunnies on a mission!

Based on the manga.

Current music: Bassnectar - Underground Communication

around the house

wine glasses and doily on piano. (camera rebooted funny, but I liked the effect so kept it.)



soliloquy (above). balcony scene (below).





still life with tea, roses, and fondue (above). conversational (below).



Current music: Olive - Trickle

yes, reading everything in the same place

Google Reader is like a meta-blog. With total seriousness. Optimal speed of downloading content to brain: firehose.

Current music: Guster - Fa Fa

Wishlist of Imaginary Apps

Apps I would totally use and grow dependent upon if they existed. So, if you're out there, and you've the inclination to develop any (or all) of these, consider this a pretty, pretty please. :P

+ sync gTalk away message and Twitter (I know you're on it, R. But right now, it's still imaginary.)

+ integrate gCalendar with eVite, facebook events, and other event-planning mechanisms by extracting not only date/time/place information, but contact info for the organizer

+ seamlessly sync the GPS system in my car with gMaps. (may require 3G-enabling the car. either that or you could extract it the calendar of a docked and gCal-synced iPod.) That way, I can get traffic conditions in real time, and have the option of integrating it with expected future traffic conditions (on the way to my destination) to have an accurate ETA.

- And if this becomes widely adopted enough, when a large enough proportion of cars are using this, we'll have optimized traffic patterns everywhere!

+ well, hey, if that works, we might as well have destination information directly funneled into my car from my gCal

+ voice control. yes, I know there are voice activated GPS, but I want it to seamlessly control onboard GPS as well as phone function (dude, we have to 3G-enable the car).

- by which I mean I press something on the steering wheel and say "change destination" or "show map" or "call Julie"

- and the voice control should be adaptive, like Dragon Naturally Speaking. reading a paragraph to train it on my peculiarities is actually kinda fun, especially if it improves performance.

+ if my ETA deviates from expected > threshold, prompt me for a voice command to call or text the humans I'm supposed to be in contact with (or update Twitter) with my new ETA.

+ on second thought, there is a certain cumbersomeness to voice control that's less optimal than, say, in combination with twitch control -- something like mouse gestures, but for the a body appendage (like a finger-less glove).

+ oh! and ... never mind, the Kindle already does gReader. ha.

Current music: Camouflage - Perfect

believe it, river.

Now available in North America. $3.49 at Jerry's. Unfortunately, the dark chocolate variety has not been observed.

Current music: Garbage - Vow

littered with white gloves

b 8 1 13 19 10 13 1a 7 11 7 17 7 12 6 11 7 17 13 11 7 5 a 13 5 13 10 3 18 7

first one to solve this gets a prize. i'm waiting. <3

Current music: Shivaree - John 2:14

Happy New Year!

Look at it as a humorous insightful commentary on China in modernity. Jay Chou rapping with a little break-dancing kid (who's probably kick-ass at wushu) about medicinal herbs in front of a giant dancing ginseng, and then traditional drums, trimmed with LED's, beaten on by nun-chucks.

As a child, I was given a necklace with 卿 (prime minister) inscribed on one side of a gold pendant and Zhuge Liang on the other side, and told that Zhuge Liang, the master of statecraft, would watch over me and protect me.

Red Cliff is highly aesthetic, both in the Inara dimension (palace scenes feel like Hero) and the action-dripping-with-style dimension (visualize Infernal Affairs). Musically, well-composed. In the Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu musical duet scene, you really can decipher their communications by listening to them play. ("But, sir, you haven't even talked about the war.") But the pacing of the film is more reminiscent of Baraka. A lot of time is spent carefully setting up the scene, building up the action, methodically hanging Chekhov's guns on the wall, an air of 'just-bear-with-me-a-moment-longer' anticipation. And when you think that which you are looking forward to is about to happen, you see in bright red calligraphy: "to be continued."

If I searched my memory carefully, I might have recalled seeing two posters for Red Cliff one for each installation of the two-part film, but in the intervening time, it had truly slipped my mind. But seriously, what is it about an aesthetic cliff-hanger that jerks us forward by the wrists until it's difficult even to return a proper glare to the source of the motion? And to quote someone else's review of Red Cliff II: Those who had lamented the lack of big battle sequences in the first film, well, you can continue to lament as this one only had ONE which takes up almost the last hour.

Current music: Faye Wong - Ban Tu Er Fei

non-random linkdump

Just to see if I can.

Plan A

Plan B

Current music: PJ Harvey - Sheela Na Gig

actual conversation

Mom: Coco! Did you shower yet?
Me: (long pause) You were asking him or me?
Mom: No, I was asking you. Why would I ask him?
(exchange glance. pause.)
Mom: I know... It's because I'm Dual Core.

form is emptiness, emptiness form

At the close of the 2621st anniversary of the birth of Thales of Miletus, it seems timely to sit back and reflect that our universe contains stuff, and that in particular, it isn't empty.

Thanksgiving.

Pistachio in Chinese, literally: open hearted nut.

When the lights turn blue I know what to do
I'll drown my tomorrows in an ocean or two
And the pretty little things with their magnets and rings
Blooming like a flower through a series of springs
Thank you Fate and the freight that she brings
Thank you Fortuna and the song that she sings
Thank you to my manager for letting me live
Thank you to my friends and the friends that you're with..

Current music: Church - Block

Tr16-244

Astronomers imaged Tr16-244, along with neighbor star WR 25, as part of a series of studies on star-forming nebulae. They are rare and powerful stars that live relatively short lives, burning through their hydrogen fuel faster than most stars. They radiate brilliantly in ultraviolet wavelengths and appear blue in color. Newly released images from Hubble show Tr16-244 is made up of three stars, with two stars orbiting so closely around each other that they appeared as a single point of light in previous images.

Current music: Etro Anime - Diablo

not a religion, just a technique

laugh awhile, I can make your heart feel



Current music: PJ Harvey - The Dancer

Now Accepting Applications

Artist seeks muse(s) to increase and improve creative productivity in multiple domains. Please specify which muse positions you believe you are qualified for, and demonstrate some familiarity with the artist's work. Responsibilities include inspiration, insightful commentary, constructive feedback, emotional support, companionship at cultural events, pep talks, sitting-and-looking-pretty, and dog walking. Also required: basic proficiency in each muse domain as well as math & science, and extraordinary talent/merit in at least one sub-area. General aesthetics, gracefulness, and appreciation for high tragedy a plus. Must be willing to endure suffering and the artist's mood swings, unpredictable outbursts, and other erratic behavior. This is a full time, tenure-track position.

There are no restrictions on gender, height, or previous occupation; the artist is an equal opportunity employer. To apply, send your CV (or 'resume' out there in the real world) to jadism [dot] muse [at] gmail [dot] com, and post a witty reply to this entry.



Current music: Tom Lehrer - The Masochism Tango (Orchestrated Edition)