smokerblog

Rawr!

I am holding in my hands right now (well no, not right now--obviously, I'm typing right now, but you know what I mean) the Mac OS X Tiger v10.4 installation DVD.

No, I did not stand in line all night at CompUSA or any such nonsense. Apple FedExed a multi-user copy to to work in time for today's official release date. Doesn't that seem a little insane? Like, we couldn't wait through the weekend or something?

Anyway, I'm just the kind of bleeding-edge nerd they have in mind for such rush-to-market tactics since I'll be installing it on my work laptop this weekend. So, if you don't hear from me in a while, it's because I'll be huddled over in a corner with the laptop either giggling with glee or cursing in frustration.

Either option is likely.

Adoption, First Steps

We're going to adopt a child.

Many of my readers (all three of you) already have heard this news already, but I figured I'd blog about it anyway, on the odd chance that there are people out there who might be interested or able to learn from our experience. I plan to report semi-regularly on our progress, including all of the hassles and joys involved.

After making that initial decision, we sat down with an attorney that Kari knew to gather advice. It was very helpful to have a frame of reference for getting started. The most helpful thing that the attorney said: there are all kinds of reasons for choosing a particular adoption plan and none of those reasons matter. What matters is that we are choosing to share our lives with another human being. At some point, any rational explanation breaks down and this decision is made for ineffably personal and emotional reasons.

Here's how our logic (or lack thereof) worked:

1. Get pregnant

We couldn't. We both have issues that make pregnancy highly unlikely.

2. Go through infertility treatments

Our doctors were encouraging, but we didn't want to. My concern was for Kari's health. Kari's concern was that I wasn't ready for children yet.

3. Wait

A couple of years were spent trying to come to terms with the decision whether or not to even have children.

4. Adopt

Yes! We're ready!

5. Domestic or International?

International.

We weren't as worried about the horror stories of domestic adoption--birth mother wanting her child back, custody battles, etc.)--our attorney assured us that these cases are rare. We just weren't so comfortable with the idea of "selling" ourselves to prospective birth mothers or with the uncertain timeframe (anything from 2 weeks to 2 years). International adoptions follow a more fixed timeframe, such that, if approved, you have a child at the end of a year's time. That seemed the best fit for us.

5. Pick a country

Here's where logic goes entirely out the window. I have personally always been dismayed by the cultural mindset in countries such as China and India where boys are favored over girls to the extent that girls are abandoned or abused or worse. In India, preference for adoption is given to Indian families, making it difficult for foreigners to adopt. China, on the other hand, has a very well-established international adoption program, so China it is.

Now, there are thousands (millions? billions?) of children all over the world who are worthy of our consideration and attention, there is nothing that says a particular Chinese girl deserves a chance more than a particular Guatemalan boy, for example. Leaving the successful track record of the Chinese program aside, the simple truth is that we can see ourselves with a Chinese girl. It's an image that just feels right, and that's good enough for us.

6. Pick an agency

On the recommendation of a couple of different people, we chose New Life Adoption Agency, an agency with a good track record with Chinese adoptions and is based in Syracuse. We've sent in a preliminary application and application fee and will be going to an informational meeting on Thursday night.

More to come, for sure.

Totally Self-Indulgent Post About My Dog

One of the best parts of spending a lazy Sunday morning at home is watching the CBS Sunday Morning news. And one of my favorite parts of that show is the closing piece where they show some nature scene, presumably for the benefit of city slickers who never get out to the country, but what's fun for me is watching my dog's reaction. This morning, they showed prairie chickens dancing around in a ritual mating dance, cooing and chirping, all of which had Buddy sitting up on the couch tilting his head back and forth trying to figure out where these noise were coming from.

I don't know why dogs do that head-tilt thing, but it's pretty funny-looking. I imagine Buddy rattling his brains around in his skull until something falls into place.

Adobe/Macromedia Merger

Honestly, my first reaction when seeing this news on the CNBC crawl yesterday morning was "meh." And, after reading through Kottke's extensive coverage this morning, my reaction is still "meh."

As Kottke points out, "the general feeling seems to be that Photoshop will kill Fireworks, Illustrator will kill Freehand, and Dreamweaver will kill GoLive." For someone working on the production end of the media content creation, this is a good thing. This consolidation translates to lower costs in training users and maintaining licenses for multiple versions of multiple design packages on multiple platforms.

The biggest downside that I can see is the weakening of innovation. If Adobe can continue to outpace the competition, I see this as a net plus for the design community.

Joining the iPod Nation

Yes, it's true. I am right now wearing the white-wired earphones that signal to the world my membership in the über-cool club of iPodsters.

Now, before that snort of derision makes its way through your nostrils, let me explain myself: My company this put on a silent auction of various donated items to raise money for our local United Way. Of course, the most coveted item (so I thought) was a 512MB iPod Shuffle. I had already been contemplating getting exactly this model, so I scribbled down a bid that I thought reasonable, but was certainly five or ten dollars too low to actually win. No such luck.

So but anyway, I got the iPod at what turned out to be about a fifteen percent discount, so I'm happy. And I have to say, it is pretty cool. The unit itself is tiny, almost too small to believe. It truy almost looks tasty.

Aesthetics aside, the functionality is pretty nifty as well. A small set of button allow you to control the volume, pause, play and move forward and back in the track listing. The only (major) drawback is the lack of display screen. Which according to Apple, is the whole point.

So following Apple's guidance, I've created a huge playlist of everything in my library that is not classical or jazz and loading it to the iPod in random autofill mode (classical shouldn't be listened to at random and I'm making a separate jazz list). It's like having your own private dj in your pocket.

Oh yeah, and the money went to a good cause. That's really why I got it. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Peter Schickele and Minimalism

Over the past couple of years, I've been developing a taste for modern classical music, also known as "art music" or "new music" or some other euphemistic phrase for "fancy music composed by conservatory-trained arteests holed up in their ivory towers and played by black-turtleneck-wearing arteests in stuffy concert halls."

One of the recent musical developments (as in sometime in the past 100 years) that has driven much of modern classical music is minimalism, a concept that often makes your average classical music fan wrinkle his nose in disdain.

So but rather than succumb to that mindset, tune in to Schickele Mix this week for the beginning of a three-week series on minimalism. Seriously, it won't hurt you. Peter Schickele begins every program with "the proposition that all musics are created equal" and he follows through on that promise, brilliantly explaining music in terms that the average listener can clearly understand.

As an example, this week's show focusses on the increased use of ostinati as a key precursor to minimalist music. Not only do I now know what an ostinato is (and how to form the plural), I can recognize it in music that I hear.

And don't just tune in this week, tune in to Schickele Mix every week (times listed are EDT). Each show is dedicated to some topic or theme and (as you might expect from the creative force behind P.D.Q. Bach) is filled with Schickele's off-the-wall sense of humor. It's the perfect antidote for turtleneck-wearing sensibilities.

More On Avoiding Freezer Burn

Let me just say that the amount of brainpower being expended on this problem is astounding.

Doug asks:

What about hypotenusal construction? Say your Dad needed a 16 in^3 chunk of ice cream. An isosceles wedge that is 4 inches long, 2 inches wide, and 4 inches high would do the trick. That would leave an exposed surface area of only 8 sq. inches, wouldn't it?

The answer is: sadly, no.

At first, I thought Doug failed to take into account the surface area of the 2-inch-wide diagonal shelf, which would add approximately 11.3 square inches to the 8 that Doug had suggested, for a total surface area of 19.3 square inches on the first cut:

But then, I thought that maybe he was going for this kind of wedge shape (not exactly isosceles, but still):

But that still doesn't work, leaving a total surface area of approximately 17.9 square inches, almost 2 square inches more than Dad's method.

Jazz Festival Linuep

The Rochester Jazz Fest lineup has been announced. I'll be spending most of the rest of tonight listening to mp3's and making mental notes on the must-see shows. After just a cursory glance, leading candidates so far appear to be:

• Steve Turre
• Night of the Cookers
• Joe LaBarbera Quintet
• The Bad Plus
• John Scofield

Oh, and I haven't even thought yet about the headline acts of Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, and Strunz & Farah.

And the festival's worst kept secret? The Bob Sneider Trio at the Crowne Plaza, playing every night of the week.

Ice Cream Math

Okay. So while I was getting myself some ice cream tonight (Edy's Vanilla Bean) I thought about my dad's peculiar ice-cream-scooping methodology. He likes to scoop ice cream from the half-gallon boxes (usually Perry's or Breyer's) in rectangular shapes, the goal being to leave as little surface area as possible exposed for freezer burn. I've always assumed, but never proved, that this is, in fact, the best way to go about achieving that goal. Tonight, I decided to find out for sure.

First, let's assume that the carton of ice cream measures 8 x 4 x 4 inches, like so:

Now, I figure that there are eight servings in each carton--there are probably more, but knowing how much my dad likes ice cream, let's stick with eight. And let's assume that he eats one serving every night. The first serving would leave 16 square inches of ice cream exposed, thusly:

The next night, the second serving would also leave 16 square inches exposed:

Hmmm, except 8 of those square inches were already exposed the night before, so let's suppose that the effects are cumulative and we can call this 24 total inches exposed.

Okay, now the typical ice cream consumer would just start scooping from the middle leaving a roughly semi-spherical hole of exposed ice cream, (use your imagination):

And here comes the geeky math part. (Matt had better check my work.) We know that each day, dad consumes 16 cubic inches of ice cream (2 x 2 x 4). To find the total exposed area of the semi-spherical indentation, we will use the volume of the ice cream scooped to find the radius of the indentation. Then we can use the radius to determine the surface area.

The formula for the volume of our half-sphere shaped hole:

The formula for the surface area of the hole:

Solving for r in the first equation and plugging it in to the second equation results in:

(okay, I'm busted, this was all really just an excuse to play with LaTeX)

Solving this equation gives a value in the neighborhood of 24.4 square inches, more than Dad's method even considering the cumulative effect. Turns out, the next night, as the hole gets deeper, the exposed surface area is 38.7 square inches. Freezer burn city. Dad's right...I never doubted it.

Put On Your 1D Glasses

A not all that mesmerizing version of Tetris.

Mob Rules

The people beat the experts in King Kaufman's NCAA tournament Pool o' Experts. This is probably the place where I could insert an insightful comment about the wisdom of crowds, but I'm not feeling particularly insightful after my miserable bracket picks.

And let's give the NCAA selection committee some credit. Armchair-coach-extraordinaire Joe N. noted that there were only two teams who landed two upsets in the tournament: Michagan St. (beating Duke and Kentucky) and Wisconsin-Milwaukee (beating Alabama and Boston College).

More Breaking Jazz News

The official announcement will happen on Thursday, but the lineup for the 2005 Rochester Jazz Fest was prematurely unveiled on the official site.

The Democrat & Chronicle reports that, in addition to the handful of performers already leaked, marquee acts will include Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, and Chris Botti.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing the the entire list of performers. The new or obscure acts in the smaller venues are usually much more fun.

Fifteen

The number of tennis balls recovered from the next-door neighbor's back yard, now that the snow has (almost) completely melted.