On my way to ConCarolinas! My kind of people.
I'll post my schedule on Thursday, as I will be driving up today. Onward!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Old images, because my server is acting like it is full, even though it is reporting that it is not.
Posts tagged as “Blogging Every Day”
Our big butch cat - Loki is 16+ pounds of fur and muscle, with relatively little flab - is actually a little scaredy guy. I mean, I might be a scaredy guy too if the situation was reversed: I'm approximately 6 times taller and 11 times heaver than Loki, and I'd be freaked to live in a world where 35-foot-tall, one-ton creatures felt like picking me up at random times for no discernible reason.
But he's scared of other things too, like his shadow. And I think that happened because once, when he tried to go outside, a baby rat snake was coiling by the door. He ran to the nearby French doors to be let out, but the rat snake had also fled - to the same doors! And then, both of them again fled to the next door down. He was pretty freaked, and a little more cautious going over thresholds since then. Not this guy, though:
Regardless, Loki frequently gets animated, starts looking outside or in the yard to see what's going on, and stares at it for a long time, before settling down and chilling out. Even when something is really there, though, it doesn't mean that the cause is always actionable. Sometimes things are just passing through, and worrying about them or doing something about them can only lead to more disruption.
I'm not saying to ignore real problems, of course; seeing the fox requires different reactions than the deer.
But how often do we stress out about things which will ultimately pass us by?
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki, the snek, and the deer. Fox was not available for comment.
It's late, I'm tired, so here's a friendly reminder that if you can see it, it can see you.
-the Centaur
Pictured: the Moon, which sure looks creepy right after reading There Is No Antimemetics Division.
Okay, it's not a red herring, it's a grapefruit, but I am able to upload images to the site again. It appears that when my hosting provider said I had "15 gigabytes free" what they actually meant was "0 bytes free". So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix permissions on the directories when the real problem was that I was out of disk space (which causes the same error).
I already knew I needed to change hosting providers. I guess it's time.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Not a red herring, which I don't eat for breakfast anyway.
Photoshopped version of the "C Lion" neck pillow that I drew the other day ...
It is interesting how strange shapes get compared to what we imagine things to look like ... it took conscious effort not to cartoon this and to try to make it match its referent, even given that it was a quick sketch.
Even then, I moved the binder clip in the drawing to aid the composition. Breakin' the law!
-the Centaur
Another Photoshop study, of a chocolate shop in Oakland. Here's the original:
Pity that most chocolate isn't vegan, but it sure is a nice storefront with the chocolates and the origami.
-the Centaur
It's good to be home, but Loki sure doesn't make it convenient. Cat, I have work to do.
Still, I guess you're going to do you.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki, in my lap as I type this (likely because, right now, I'm not letting him sit on my recently-filled-in whiteboard desk) and Loki, eating with his feet in his food bowl, because ... ?????
Another Photoshop study, this one based on a doorway on College Street in Oakland.
So many wonderful shapes and patterns present themselves to us every day, but if we don't stop to look around once in a while, we might miss it.
-the Centaur
Another Photoshop study based on some of Sandi's art, which we finally got around to hanging after the renovations. Fun fact: both the lion and the wall are Sandi's (a sculpture, and a faux).
-the Centaur
P.S. The original is below ....
I'd gotten out of the habit of doing these quasi-comic style art pieces based on photographs, but I've taken a few really good candidate pictures with the right layout for it, so I hope to get back into doing that. This is a picture of one of Sandi's art pieces she completed this weekend at Silicon Valley Open Studios, and it will now be on display at Kaleid Gallery in San Jose. Neat fact: this little guy is actually a cabinet!
Still, he's a little guy.
-the Centaur
Pictured: One of Sandi's sculpture cabinets, to be on display at the Kaleid Gallery.
Well, that's a wrap for Silicon Valley Open Studios. After-action report will have to wait - it's late and I'm tired.
This was our celebratory meal from Craft Roots, though - almost identical to the one I failed to take a picture of a few days ago (yes, we went to Craft Roots just three days apart, it's that good).
-the Centaur
Pictured: Sandi's brochures on an unfinished table, and a meal at Craft Roots.
Brief placeholder I'm scheduling for tomorrow, in case we get caught up with Silicon Valley Open Studios stuff. But what it strikes me is how animals behave differently when we're not around. Case in point, Loki is pictured here, sitting in my rocking chair - which he rarely does if I'm present, either sitting on my lap, or sitting on the table. But never in the other rocking chair. I wonder why that is.
Or maybe it's Heisenberg's Cat Principle: if you observe a cat, you have disturbed it.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki, on MY rocking chair, disputing that "MY" part.
[twenty twenty-four day one three nine]: there’s nothing so confused as a vegan at a vegan restaurant
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A brief one, as I have Silicon Valley Open Studios AND consulting work to do today, but a comment one of my wife's friends made once was "there's nothing so confused as a vegan at a vegan restaurant" ... because normally they have NO options or ONE option, but now have ALL the options.
I dunno, to me, it seems like a good place to be.
-the Centaur
Pictured: My wife at Craft Roots, a vegan bar and grill in Morgan Hill that we love a lot.
Not pictured: the meal, other than the buffalo cauliflower - I forgot to let my phone eat first.
Also not pictured: the dog which came BARRELLING past us, tied to a clanging metal chair that was chasing it down the street (AAA! AAA! Angry metal thing is following me AND I CAN'T GET AWAY!) I caught her by the leash (just as unleashed a load of pee, how fun) and my wife grabbed her and calmed her down until the owners, panting, ran up - apparently the male owner had tied the dog's leash to his chair, but the chair moved or fell over when he stood up, and the dog, scared, took off, the chair in hot pursuit.
Good doggie, though. Reminded me of my old dog Lady, from back in the days we didn't have portable phones capable of taking frequent pet pictures.
Contrary to yesterday's post, which was done after midnight so it fooled me about what day it was, TODAY is one day left to Silicon Valley Open Studios, where my wife Sandi Billingsley will be showing off both her paintings and mixed media including furniture, like the geode table above.
Below is one of my wife's pieces, Marylin Thumbtoe, from a series combining animals and celebrities into surreal combinations, like ... Marilyn Thumbtoe.
Perhaps the work should speak for itself.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Yes, I know, after midnight is the next day according to the calendar, but I count days as over when I go to bed, unless for some reason I pull an all nighter, so a 1am post is technically the previous day. I don't always hold to that, but for the purposes of the blog series, that makes the most sense.
Just two more days to Silicon Valley Open Studios where my wife Sandi Billingsley will be showing off both her paintings and mixed media including furniture. Can't photo yet, we are currently scrambling to get the place fixed up, so let me present representative samples from South Carolina (not on display here).
These three, however, will definitely be on display!
Most of this art, even the large furniture pieces, are made from recycled materials such as paper and reclaimed wood, which I think is very cool.
Please come check it out!
-the Centaur
Pictured: One of the frames I helped assemble today, and some of Sandi's furniture.
On my way to Silicon Valley Open Studios to help my wife with her art show this weekend - both paintings and mixed media, including furniture:
Short layover, hit publish, please attend!
-the Centaur
... so here's a sunset dinner from a month or two ago that I thought was beautiful. Enjoy!
-the Centaur
Pictured: the patio of La Parrilla restaurant in Greenville at sunset, along with one of their excellent La Parrilla house margaritas - the best drink on the menu, actually, even though it is the house drink.
Wow, the Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter not only got funded, we reached our first stretch goal - bookmarks!
We had hoped to reach postcards or even the audiobook, but this was a great achievement, and I'll take it. Not only did we take in almost $9K to help pay our authors and defray other costs in the book, but also a hundred and eighty people backed and another hundred bookmarked the campaign. Which means that over two hundred fifty people liked it ... and probably ten times as many looked at it. Mission accomplished!
Next up, finishing the ARC (the preliminary version of the book for industry and sensitivity reader review).
Onward!
Pictured: Graphics from the Kickstarter, which were not only fun to do but taught me a lot, and an Old Fashioned from Select restaurant in Greer.
Okay, I understand that many restaurants serve tomahawk chops like this because they're not really a meal for one, but actually a for-the-table sharing dish. But, for the love of Julia Child, please, don't do this.
You have here a steak cooled ON its long, frenched bone for its beautiful Fred Flintstone-cut appearance. But your kitchen has proceeded to cut if OFF the bone before the diner ever sees it.
And you have a THICK-CUT steak designed to retain both its juice and heat. Then your kitchen has proceeded to THIN-SLICE it before the diner can even take a bite.
In sum, don't slice your tomahawks.
-the Centaur
Pictured: a doubly ruined steak: first, because they cut it up, and second, because I ill-advisedly tried it blackened. Unfortunately, the already charred nature of a tomahawk doesn't go with blackening, so I cannot recommend this to you. Yes, I threw my body on that grenade for you. You're welcome.
P.S. This was supposed to be my celebration steak for funding our Kickstarter, which funded yesterday, but still has a day to go. I suppose I jumped the gun here and paid the price.
There's an ongoing debate over whether human emotions are universal: I, like many researchers, think that there was solid work done by Ekman back in the day that demonstrated this pretty conclusively with tribes with little Western contact, but some people seem determined to try to pretend that evidence can be made not to exist once it's been collected, if you just argue loudly enough about how you think it's wrong.
(The evidence is wrong?)
Yet my cat can look surprised, or scared, or angry, or alarmed, or content, or curious. It's fairly well established that some emotions, like the self-conscious ones of shame or pride, have highly variable, culturally-determined expressions (if they have consistent expressions at all). But when animals very different from us can still communicate emotions, it's hard to believe none of it is universal.
(The evidence is wrong? What's wrong with you people?)
-the Centaur
P.S. If you subscribe to the anthropic fallacy fallacy, please do not bother to tell me that I'm falling into the anthropic fallacy, because you're the one trapped in a fallacy - sometimes surprise is just surprise, just like a heart is still a heart when that heart is found an animal, and not a "deceptively heart-like blood pump."
Pictured: Loki, saying, "What, you expect me to do something? I'm a cat. I was busy, sleeping!"