Every family's got one...

Someone with a lot of spunk, that is. In my case it is "Grandma Margaret", as Elias calls her, my 93-year-old grandmother. In this picture she enjoys some imaginary tea Elias has prepared. Grandma has more energy and optimism than I do at less than half her age, I've never seen her grouchy, and even now as she is working through some severe arthritis issues she is able to maintain a humorous spirit, and finds a way to turn the conversation again and again to how everyone else is doing.

Individual variation

I was talking to a friend about how individual variation is generally a good thing for everyone (versus the view that there's a narrow set of characteristics that is ideal for humans). A new data point today: the world's tallest man was the only one with arms long enough to pull plastic out of some dolphins' stomachs.

My first music video

Starring Elias, of course. This is a short cover of a marychain song, recorded on a whim a few years ago using a cheap computer microphone and Windows Sound Recorder.

Real estate

3rd quarter 2006 US house price data is published here. The rise in prices continues in 45 states yet is decelerating, but the good news for us is that Oregon shows some of the best appreciations, with a 17% 12-month increase in the Portland area and a best-in-the-country 30% increase in the Bend area. Of course, it's only profit if you sell.

marychain

Here's a good recent review of marychain -- that's The Jesus and Mary Chain if you don't know, sheesh. Watch the Just Like Honey video if you need a reminder.

WPF/E

CTP of WPF/E today. Utter nonsense, you say? Well, I say it's a glimpse into the post-HTML apocalypse -- and a beautiful thing it will be!

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism, in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. I don't remember seeing this in 2000 when we were there.



This is 2nd century BCE technology that was more sophisticated than anything to come for the next 1,000 years. I want a recreation of it for Christmas.

A site riddled with errors

Realizing today that I misspelled "principal" yesterday, I came upon a nice site that helps quickly disambiguate between words that sound similar. Just scroll to the word in question and click.