So it turns out that actual food doesn't play much of a part in people's morning rituals anymore. In fact, more people preferred drugs to food in the morning, with espresso being the drug of choice. My favorite reply was:

"Bleary eyed stumble into the shower...out... Expresso and cigarette... 8a.m. news... Expresso and cigarette... Dressed... work...hungry now... croissants and, you guessed it, Expresso"

Other rituals included:

• roll out of bed -> smoke a bowl -> shower (and smoke second bowl) -> out the door, smoking third bowl and 2 cigarettes on the way to work.
• 2 shots of espresso and a scone for social value, then walk to work with friends and partner
• donuts every weekday [Mmm... krispy kreme...]
• bananas
• No breakfast
• I don't eat breakfast
• Who are you people? Nobody I know eats breakfast anymore.

Personally, I wake up when my cat decides it's funner to stand on my chest than sleep by my side, I hit the snoose alarm (ie. scratching her behind her ears until she decides it's a good idea to lie down for another catnap, get up and go to the bathroom, check email, stocks, and slashdot, take my shower, dress, check email again, feed & water Kisa, clean litterbox, take off, and get my ritualistic large chai and cranberry scone at the corner coffeehouse before heading off wherever.

If you're interested in cryptography, especially steganography, you might want to read a post I put up on Slashdot this afternoon.

It details how a hypothetical data haven could work for secure transmission of information between you and someone else, where not only the data is secure, but also the information about who you're sending it to, where you're getting it from, and whether you're getting it at all.

Best of all, it's all out in the open.

I promised to share info about the focus group I went to on Wednesday, but unfortunately they're pretty sticky about confidentiality, so I can't say much more than that it had a great deal to do with the feature article of last November's Wired, and a company founded by (coincidentally enough) the boyfriend of the woman my friend au-paired for five years ago, and the boss (same guy) of another friend who started working at the company because I connected the two of them. It's a small world after all.

In other small-worldian news, I got a surprising email from Morgan Friedman this evening. Morgan saw my War entry in the 5k contest and thought my name sounded familiar. It turns out i was at the top of his personal bookmark list since 1995, when my site (regrettably) looked like this. We've never met, and I still don't know what it was about my original site that warranted such an accolade. Must've been the stunning Photoshop work.

Tomorrow, I share with you what you've all shared with me about your breakfasts. If you haven't written in yet, scroll down, 'cause there's still time!

Okay, breakfast. This is a weird entry, but I'm curious what breakfast means to people. It, along with other morning stuff (shower, changing clothes, possibly reading the paper, checking email, or making your bed), is probably the most ritualized thing we do all day. I'm wondering what people's thoughts on that are.

Do you have a breakfast ritual? Does it change? Do you eat your breakfast before or after to change into work clothes? Is eating breakfast the last thing you do before leaving the house or the first thing you do when you wake up?

What is your own purpose for breakfast? Is it to wake you up, make you not hungry again until lunch, to give you the caffine or sugar rush to get you going, or have you never really thought about it?

Does your breakfast ritual go beyond mere food?

Talk about it! Just write what comes to mind:

Tell us about your breakfast

The marcom flash bits for the limited edition beetle is a really good example of interaction following function. The interface isn't crystal clear, until you realize that there really isn't that much to it, but it does a great job of sharing an experience.

Check it out

I spent far too long this evening working on Sendmail, BIND, and weblog analysis.

I intended to go to the Starry Plough, but it wasn't destined to happen I suppose. Now I'm off to sleep. I'll have some breakfast questions for you in the morning, so be ready with your spoon!

G'night.

Writing a web log is a weird thing. Why do people do it? More importantly, what do you say? Even more important, what don't you say? It's one thing to write a log for the anonymous net, but then you realize that your friends aren't so anonymous and they check out sites too.

Well, no revelation here, but while I ponder it, here's an entry from one of my favorite (though least-frequently updated) personal sites, www.myboot.com.

Also, please feel free to email me anytime with your thoughts about the site or anything else. Drop me a line at hello@fury.com and I promise to write back.

(Beware... shameless plugs ahead...)

Saw High Fidelity with Nomes on Friday. This was my second time seeing it and I can't reccomend it highly enough. The movie is great, especially if you've seen and loved Say Anything. Not that the two are alike. In fact, the reason HF is so great is that it is no more like or unlike Say Anything than you are like or unlike the person you were when you first saw Say Anything. It's a tribute to evolution and constancy both, and has a great soundtrack. See it.

Saturday Em, Karen, Crystal and I went to see Gladiator. It was very long (2 hours, 24 minutes plus previews), and very good. The camera work during the action shots was interesting, with relatively high-speed photography (little motion-blur) combined with a slow frame rate (about 12/sec to 4/sec at times, dropping frames and stretching out those that remained) and a very first-person pov for almost a Blair Witchy experience, if BW was set in 2nd century Germania and Rome and had a huge budget. All in all it was very good, especially if you can ignore the Braveheart-ish overtones. Interestingly, the Portugese version is two minutes shorter than the American version. I wonder what they cut...

Sunday was Spike & Mike's Festival of Animation at the UC Theater in Berkeley. As (almost) always, the shorts were great, though my personal high point was when they finished with Billy's Balloon (sorry, no clip). This is the funniest thing I've ever seen on a movie screen. It's even funnier than this.

After the festival, we all went back to Crepe de'Vine and played two hours of Fluxx, a great game that everybody should own and play.

Wow. All this gushing is making me tired! Tomorrow's the last day of instruction for the semester, so prepare for only one more week of cynicism (building up around Thursday and Friday), then finals on Saturday, Monday, and next Tuesday. After that, it's pimping myself on Craig's List for a few months until I start back up in late August.

Tomorrow, I'm going to ask you about your breakfast habits, and tell you about the kind of corporate espionage I'll only do for my loyal readers. 'Till then, have a good night!

-Kevin

Next on my list of nifty gadgets to own? A Sony Tivo. They should be out in about a week and a half, but if you want the latest, as always, turn to usenet (in this case, a link to 'sony and tivo' search results on Deja.com.

Also in the land of nifty, check out IMbot. It lets you send email or web messages to people's telephones, where it's read to them, whether they're signed up for the service or not. (thanks peter).

No time, must type. Paper due at 2.

I'll post it here once I'm all done (and have time to translate it to HTML). Some of you might find it interesting.

5k? Any day now...