Monthly Archives: June 2009

FOCUS!

Posted on 2009-06-20 by pappp

This is now the longest consecutive span I’ve not been enrolled in a class since the summer between my sophomore and junior years of highschool (in Kentucky, you can take college courses for keeps after your junior year. I did.) I’ve forgotten how to make myself do anything while living a fully unstructured existance. I can’t focus on anything. I’ve lost my drive to be productive… and oddly, I haven’t lost my reserve, so I’m not partying, I’m just frittering. Mostly on the interwebs. It’s kind of freaking me out. That said, it is rather relaxing, even if I would like to be doing other things, or letting loose for a bit(either would do nicely). The failure to blog is related to the failure to focus; I haven’t been forming or sitting down to articulate the kind of cogent meditation on topics that make for good blog posts.
Projects-wise, In addition to the pile of projects which have been mentioned in the past on here, almost none of which are complete, I’ve picked up an additional physical computing effort. The collexion folks have a bourbon barrel to be gussied up for a charity auction, in the same vein as the various horrible fiberglass animals that have been popular for such things. Being electronics people, we are making it into an electronic, musical bourbon barrel. The hoops will be touch sensors, connected to solenoid strikers with xylophone tiles (keys? I’m not really a music person). Someone else has taken the lead on design, but I’m now getting involved for the “Making it work” and “Making sure it won’t hurt anyone” processes. I’m hoping having one project with some form of external pressure will help me to focus on others. In a related note, I’m half-seriously becoming tempted to start carrying a pocket-sized DMM around with me. Practically every time I’ve been out of the house this week there has been something I wanted to poke with a DMM to figure out. I’m refraining from looking seriously into finding a baby (pocket size) DMM because 1. I already carry too much crap around with me and 2. Even I would fell like a horrible dork doing such a thing.
On the topic of dorkery (dorking?), the great summer reading project continues; I finally have my sought after copy of Joseph Weizenbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason, and have set to it. I’m a little afraid from the portion that I’ve read that it won’t live up to my expectations; some of the portion I’ve read reads like Weizenbaum covering his ears and chanting “I want there to be a soul, I want there to be a soul”, and a few of the “Can/Should computers do this” questions posed in the book (written in the mid 70s) have long since come to pass, and worked out fine. It is however, as I understand, still the seminal work on human/technology interaction, and is therefore well worth reading simply because it is the framework for discourse.

Posted in General, Navel Gazing, OldBlog, School | Leave a comment

Lolita

Posted on 2009-06-08 by pappp

I finally finished Lolita, and it really is fabulous. I haven’t had time to read long pieces of involved fiction in far too long, and this was a real winner. The prose is unbelievably excellent, and the latter chapters perfectly convey the (perhaps disquietingly familiar) sensation of “Oh shit, I think I’m losing it.” For people considering reading, the tight prose means it is not a quick read, so you might want to invest the two hours in watching one of the movie adaptations first, I’ve only seen the newer one, and, while naturally lacking in richness, I thought it conveyed the texture of the story quite well.

I usually hate defacing books, even my own, but while reading I’ve dogeared and margin-marked about half a dozen passages I’m particularly found of in my copy. I’ve actually memorized the opening paragraph, partly for sport and partly as a memory exercise (I’ve always been terrible at rote memorization, I remember things by collapsing their meanings); the prose here is complicated and significant enough that it resists my usual reduction. A few of the other lines that I really, really enjoy (”Nuggets” in the parlance of my peculiar senior English teacher):

“Despite my manly looks , I am horribly timid. My romantic soul gets all clammy and shivery at the thought of running into some awful unpleasantness”

*Waves excitedly at the familiarity* I’m pretty contextually shy, so most people who don’t know me well only see one mode or the other, and assume that’s how I am. It makes for some interesting double-takes.

“…and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher…”

I just like the phrasing for the process of enacting one’s desires.

“The very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised — the great rosegray never-to-be-had.”

I love the expression of the (again, disquietingly familiar) sensation of almost preferring to remain in the perfect purity of potential instead of plunging oneself into the ambiguities of reality. (The pedophilia isn’t the familiar part, I don’t do that, although some people might snarkily invoke my reproducible taste for the slight and strange in argument.)

One of my favorite features is the author’s retrospective On a Book Titled Lolita appended to later printings, which is almost better than the novel itself: Nabokov, in his perfect prose, provides a humorous, high brow, critique of criticism from publishers received in attempting to get the novel published, which develops naturally into a clever social commentary. In particular, it contains all the jadedness toward classical literary analysis that keeps me away from the literary in any formal capacity.

(I’m partially conscious that I’m trying to emulate Nabokov’s peculiar alliterative prose here, I enjoy doing so too much to try to correct it. At this point it’s probably good for me anyway.)

In a partially related matter, I’ve been listening to Bif Naked (Who is an (adopted) child of a former UK professor. Colorful company.) while I finished Lolita. I got Lucky stuck in my head from my previously mentioned recent fascination with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is really a pretty typical example of Joss Whedon’s excellent taste for integrating pop music into his TV projects. It’s a bit melodramatic and punk-ish for my usual tastes, but suits the reading.

Perhaps my next post will be about one of my various technological projects, I’m finding that I most want to blog about things which are outside the mundane for me, while I know that really at this point in my life the technical endeavors are the novelties, and the novel amusements are comparatively mundane.

Posted in Entertainment, General, Literature, OldBlog | Leave a comment