fox@fury
Intelligent design meets recursive decomposition
Tuesday, Aug 09, 2005
Maybe someone can help me out here, but if the basis for Creationism 'Intelligent Design' is that the chances of complex life occuring on its own are infinitesimal, where did the intelligence that created us come from?

If that intelligence is 'eternal' with neither beginning nor end, then what argument can be made that our own design is not similarly eternal?

In other words, isn't the Intelligent Design argument just a sidestep from the ultimate problem of how intelligence, be it human or deific, arose in the first place?

Not dead
Thursday, Aug 04, 2005
Not dead, on vacation. Back soon.

PS: I'm aware of the commentspam problem and will be turning on one-time identity verification soon.

Does anyone have a spare dashboard hula girl?
Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005
No, seriously. Do you?
On a linear tangent
Monday, Jul 18, 2005
Why is the opposite of a linear thinker someone who goes off on tangents? Isn't the tangent of a straight line the same line? Even if the original conversation was curvy, isn't the tangent still a straight line, and hence linear?
Retrogeek
Sunday, Jul 17, 2005
Rachel and I ran so many errands today, and made a few exciting discoveries along the way. Amidst attending a preview day at a new housing development (gotta see how the housing market is coming along, and we miss looking at new houses!), finally choosing just the right patio furniture, and spending a few hours at Keeble and Schuckett, we got sucked in to an estate sale.

Oreste Allario had been a cornerstone of Sunnyvale for nearly 50 years, a member of the Elks, Shriners, Lions and Masons, and a long-time member of Sunnyvale's Chamber of Commerce. As Rachel and I walked through his home amidst several of his kin (adorned in bright pink shirts that say 'Family' on the back in much the same way as FBI agents identify themselves on their jackets) we couldn't help but notice how so many grandparents homes smell alike. It's not a bad smell, but a familiar mustiness that takes you back to penny jars with Lincoln cents and silver quarters, Radar ranges and shortwave radios.

It was in this minor reverie that I came across what appeared to be an abnormally small cassette player given the apparent age of the piece. It had only a 'Play' and a 'Stop' button and a small switch labeld 'ffwd'. It also had a strange unmarked extention behind the player. Imagine my surprise when I figured out it was a plug-in adapter to let you play 'state of the art' cassette tapes in an 8-track player. Sure enough, on the next shelf down was an AM/FM/8-track player that the adapter could plug in to.

Rachel though I was joking when I said I had to have it, but I resisted the urge and left empty-handed. Well, that's not strictly true. We managed to spend $37 at the estate sale, 20 of which went to an unused dress (not this one, but one for the same almost-wedding). $4 procured us a small painted ceramic garden gnome, while $7 purchased five tailored coats and two tailored trousers, at a dollar apiece. The jackets fit wonderfully and I'll hopefully find occasion to wear most of them. The pants may need a little retailoring.

But back to the point: Why would someone who's worked so hard to reduce clutter in their life consider an 8-track player? I was wondering how cool it would be to hook the audio-out jacks to my mac, stream the output to Live365, and create the first Internet radio station fed entirely by a realtime vintage 8-track player and carts.

Of course the problem is that it would be cool for a couple days until the inevitable slashdotting takes the thing off the air, the inevitable cease and desists from zombie RIAA lawyers from beyond the grave, the chore of swapping carts every hour or so, the effort to actually find interesting 8-track carts (okay, maybe not such a big problem), and of course the myriad other projects on the docket, including more functionality for Fury 5, Underblog, fixing Qwer, Randompixel and, you know, work stuff.

I hope someone takes up the idea though. That would be pretty cool.

Bonus points for hooking up either a full 8-track jukebox or for creating an automated system whereby listeners could influence which tracks play when.

Would you use a Flickr pro account?
Thursday, Jul 14, 2005
Do you use Flickr? Are you hitting limits because you don't have a pro account? I have one free account to give away. I'm not going to give it away frivolously though, so if you haven't used Flickr, please don't apply. If you do use Flickr and would find the pro upgrade useful, please leave a link to your Flickr profile page in the comments so I can take a look.

Judging will be based on an arbitrary choice sure to piss off those not picked, but will probably be most heavily weighted by how well you're currently using Flickr and how well I know you. Cheers!

Skyrockets in Flight
Tuesday, Jul 12, 2005
Rachel has put up a gallery of firework photos from Friday Harbor. Unlike 'traditional' skyrocket photographs, Rachel and I played around a lot with shutter speed, focus, panning and depth of field to create some truly unique firework-generated pieces.

My favorites are Intertwine (picture on the home page), Fireworks II, Dandylion and Fire Flower. I'm sure it won't be long before these make their way on to PhoenixFeather blank cards.

Frustrated and off-balance today
Thursday, Jul 07, 2005
Gah. I have so much pent up frustration today from so many sources, none of which would individually throw off my whole day.

In no particular order:

  • Six bombs went off in London this morning, a day after the city was named as host for the 2012 Olympic Games
  • Last night's Dancing with the Stars finale ended what many feel was a rigged competition. Whether or not the actual judges votes were influenced unfairly (and I believe they were) the structure of the competition was strategically orchestrated to favor one specific contestant. (I may write more later.)
  • I realized this morning that I forgot a close friend's birthday two weeks ago and now I feel like a schmoo
  • I went on tilt playing poker yesterday, letting my emotions wipe out the gain of hours of good playing in just a few seconds
  • So much work to do...
  • I always feel weird when a post of mine (the McManus post) gets picked up by several popular blogs, and first-time viewers read one post of mine outside of the context of all my other posts. Ironically, this is exactly what happened when I read McManus's post.
  • The week is progressing far too quickly (see above re so much work to do).

On the upside, I'm happier that the blog redesign shell is pushed out because I feel like I have both a canvas and an audience, and I'm excited about adding pieces of functionality bit-by-bit. I love the posts/comments display on the home page, and that my read-state is now maintained across all my machines.

Okay, time for lunch, and maybe a little de-stressing.

Fireworks tradition
Tuesday, Jul 05, 2005
Being born on the Fourth of July, I've always associated fireworks with birthdays. For the past two years running, the family has camped out on rocks at the shore of Friday Harbor to watch fireworks with fellow islanders.

Last year Rachel took some phenomenal pictures, and this year we each took about a gigabyte's worth of skyrocket photos in a variety of styles. I'm sure we'll each be putting up albums of our favorites in the next week or so, but until then I hope you like Starburst as a teaser.

Happy Birthday to Me!
Sunday, Jul 03, 2005
Watching the webcast from the Deep Impact mission site. Pretty cool fireworks for my birthday.
  
aboutme

Hi, I'm Kevin Fox.
I've been blogging at Fury.com since 1998.
I can be reached at .

I also have a resume.

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I'm co-founder in
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pastwork

I've led design at Mozilla Labs, designed Gmail 1.0, Google Reader 2.0, FriendFeed, and a few special projects at Facebook.

©2012 Kevin Fox