Archive for January, 2010
I’m finished with clue 2 of 5 of the Enchanted Wood mystery knitalong. I’d photograph it, but I’m using very short needles so I can’t get a decent unbunched section yet. It shrinks as it goes, so I hope to have a better shot at a photo after clue 3, which comes out Friday morning.
Many members of the knitalong were signed up to do Evenstar next, which starts on February 12. February 12 is also the first day of Ravelympics, and I knew I wanted to take part in that. I’m playing for Team Unique Sheep in the Sock Hockey event–a toe up sock from the Lord of the Rings sock club. The good thing is, Evenstar is a circular shawl, and the beading is only on the border, so the quickest clues are the earliest clues, and then they get longer as the shawl grows outward. Also, the clues are every other week so by the time clue 2 comes out, Ravelympics will be over. I took the plunge.
Also, in the 7 Heavenly Virtues (aka Embrace the Lace) club, the Justice project came, and it was a lovely shawl. I cast on last night. So that’s three shawls in a really short period of time. I’m fairly confident The Unique Sheep will do another mystery knitalong, and I’m certain, if they do, I’ll sign up.
So that encouraged me to sign up for the 10 Shawls in 2010 challenge on Ravelry. It’s actually a simply challenge. Knit 10 shawls by the end of the year, at least two of which use at least 500 meters of yarn (actual–you need to subtract what’s left over) and the rest must use at least 250 meters. Justice will barely fall shy of 500 meters, but Evenstar and Enchanted Wood both fly right past the 1000 meter mark, never mind 500. The rules are rather relaxed so lace scarves that meet the meter requirement (this would include Heart to Heart, also from the 7 Heavenly Virtues club) would count.
A sub-challenge is to knit at least 5 of these shawls from stash, and Evenstar will count for me on that score as well.
All of this is, I think, my sanity trying to save itself from me signing up for the 52 socks in 52 weeks challenge. Maybe next year.
January 28th, 2010
I’ll start this by saying it seems everyone is fine.
Dokuritsu is on Tapazole for her thyroid.
(can you tell my hands were still shaking when I took this photo?)
The vet recently changed the dosage to 0.06 ml and the stuff comes as a gel in a 1.0 ml tube. I had about 0.04 ml left in the first tube, and I had a second, unused tube ready to go. My plan was to empty the whole 0.04 ml tube into her ear and then add 0.02 ml from the new tube. No big deal, right? I grabbed the wrong tube. Since I thought I was dealing with a pre-measured amount I just hit the plunger and suddenly way too much stuff shot out.
I panicked. I started scooping the stuff out with tissues, then cleaning it out with wet Q-tips. After I removed all I could, I called Ambu-Vet, a pet emergency and ambulance center. They said it was an emergency and would have someone call and come right over. Half an hour later, no call.
I remembered my vet had a different emergency number on his answering service, so I called them and they referred me to the ASPCA’s poison control hotline.
They asked how recent it had been, and if there was any way I could clean the excess off her ears. I told them that I had. They asked how much I got, and I said, about 80%. Then they asked how long she’d been on the medicine (since November) and if she’d had any adverse reactions to it (she hadn’t).
They told me to get a wet tissue and clean all I could out of her ears (I used wet Q-tips because I could do a more thorough job with those). Since she’d tolerated the medicine well before, it was unlikely there would be any serious problems, but I should watch for nausea, diarrhea, lethargy, or loss of appetite. She hasn’t thrown up, she has no diarrhea, she’s no more lethargic than usual (I had to break up a four-way cat fight in the middle of the night) and this morning she was eating everything in sight. I spoke to her vet, and he said to skip the medicine tonight and resume tomorrow.
I feel so stupid. I’m just grateful there weren’t any serious consequences.
January 27th, 2010
I was reading Player VS Player (it’s really good) and trying to catch up. I’ve started at the beginning, so it’s a kind of fun time machine. It talks about when the PS2 first came out, and when each of the second/earlier trilogy of Star Wars movies came out. Fun stuff.
The thing that interests me is the way time almost seems to dilate. In this strip in March 2007 the characters talk about the death of Captain America. When I read it, I was amazed that he was dead for so long. It feels like that just happened. This was right this strip in January 2007 about the introduction of the iPhone and it feels like that device has been around forever.
It’s amazing how our memories play these games with us, in spacing things out in time. If you haven’t, definitely check the strip out if for no other reason than to take a fun stroll down pop culture memory lane.
January 20th, 2010
Hikari has a new habit: sitting in bags.
I’ve seen cats do this before, but none so obsessively. If I can’t find the cat, I just look for the nearest paper bag, and sure enough, there’s a cat in it.
I don’t think he’s hiding. He’s a bold cat, and he’ll take on all comers. He tries to take me on, which I find hilarious. Yeah, I may be ten times his size, but he’s not going into that carrier or getting his claws clipped without a fight.
He sometimes uses it as an ambush point from which to spring out at the other cats, but I’d like to think that’s more opportunity than planning. He’s enough of a handful without employing any sort of devious tactics.
I guess it’s his space, the one place he doesn’t have to contend with any other cats or humans climbing in. That or he’s trying to build his secret base out of brown recycled paper and odd bits of cardboard from which to take over the world.
January 19th, 2010
On this week’s The Writing Cast I talk about philosophy and your characters.
January 15th, 2010
This showed up in the mail unexpectedly.
I have been appointed an ambassador for the Unique Sheep.
I keep thinking I should do something ambassadorial, like try and ease relationships between the Knitting World and the Kingdom of Moths. Maybe hand out visas to traveling sheep, or grant diplomatic immunity to persecuted silk worms.
January 14th, 2010
This is Enchanted Wood, clue 1, or at least part of it. The clue is pretty simple, once you get past the cast on row. The cast on row is less than 400 stitches long, and took me from about 9 am to 8 pm.
In order to cast this on, you do a knit on cast on, once in a while adding a bead or a stitch marker. For two sections you cast on 10, then slip a bead, and do this over and over 17 times per section. First time, I had extra beads. I counted how many the pattern wanted, how many I had, how many I had against how many I should have had at various milestones, and couldn’t figure out the problem. Ripped it out and started over.
Too many beads, but no problems at any milestones. Ripped it out. I think this process took the first two hours.
Eventually I caught on to the fact that I’d strung too many beads to begin with, ripped it out again, removed the extra beads. Counted. Recounted. Recounted again. Considered asking my roommate to count beads for me, and proceeded. And finished with no beads missing, and none left over. So I started knitting, and found out that the pattern repeats over each of these iterations of 10 (which I would have known had I paid attention to the part about reading the entire clue first). So I started putting closing stitch markers every 10 stitches, because I’d already lost faith in my ability to count, and found I’d cast on 9 instead of 10 for one section. At this point I wondered if one could get drunk of coffee and scrambled eggs. Frogged it again.
I cast on, this time placing markers as I went, and counting beads to get the right number of repeats. By the time I got to the point that I should have had 18 beads left (17 for the second set of repeats and one for the section that comes after that) I had 18 beads left, so I stopped counting sections and just went until I had one bead left. Then I stared knitting the row and found I’d left beads off a few sections, so the row was too long, and some sections lacked beads. Frogged again.
I cast on one more time, this time counting sections. I got clever. See, since the pattern repeats over each of the 10 stitch section 17 times, I should have 17 sections, right? So I did, then I checked every section had a bead, and I ended with 2 extra beads. The pattern had an error where it should have said 18 repeats, not 17, and I didn’t pay enough attention to see where that extra bead would have fit in. Rip.
I finally got it cast on, checked it, checked it again, wondered I had to have fallen asleep and was having a dream where all the numbers magically lined up, and tried row 1.
The rest of the clue is pretty straightforward, and a lot of fun. I’m now heading over to Gamefly to see if I can rent something that will help me learn to count.
January 13th, 2010
More and more people are pointing to the impending demise of cable T.V. These voices, are thing, are still in the minority, but they raise some excellent points. Most shows are available on DVD right after the season ends. There’s no need to worry about missing an episode, just pick them all up from Netflix and watch them at your convenience, or put them in your Watch Instantly queue and have one of a growing number of devices, including the P.C., simply stream them to your TV.
If you’re too impatient to do that you can buy the season pass from Amazon Unbox and see them as they come out. You can ever put the file on any non-iPod device and watch them on the go. If you favor iPods, you can get close to the same deal from the iTunes store, but you’re more limited on the devices that can stream the media. Still, the P.C. does the job.
If you’re both impatient and cheap, you can get most shows for free from Hulu or the various network sites. Sorry, there is no online shopping channel and most of the stuff relegated to daytime TV isn’t online yet, but the infrastructure is in place if there is sufficient demand. CBS has their soaps online already.
I’m going to say that the people who foresee the death of cable are right, in the long term, so long as the cable companies don’t get aggressive about keeping their customers. No one will pay cable prices when they can get a superior version (watch when you want, don’t worry about recording space, don’t worry about failing to record an episode, watch anywhere) for cheap to free. The premium companies see this. HBO, for example, has their HBOGo service in beta, so that if the cable companies fail, they can continue to sell their premium programming, this time direct to customers. So far, it’s only available for HBO subscribers, but it wouldn’t be hard for them to make the switch.
Cable companies see this too. They know they can coast for a while on laziness–people not wanting to make the call and unhook the system, on worry–people not sure if they’ll still be able to get their shows, and on inertia. This would last longer in a good economy, and not so long in a weak one. They’re going to milk it as long as they can, but then they’re going to drop prices in recognition that they are no longer selling content, they’re selling convenience.
January 12th, 2010
Batman and Philosophy
is the first book in the Blackwell Pop Culture and Philosophy series that I’ve read. It’s a collaborative effort between several authors, each tackling a different element.
Part 1 focuses on ethics, discussing deontological vs utilitarian ethics. The short form is deontological ethics holds that the ends don’t justify the means. Utilitarian ethics holds that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So if you could save 100 people by shooting one plague victim, deontologists say not to, and utilitarians say to do it. The discussion on ethics moves on to Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics.
In part 2 we learn about Hobbes state of nature and how and why we cede certain individual liberties to just authority in exchange for peace and security. For example, we agree to chip in for a police force, with the understanding the police force will work to protect us. We learn about just and unjust uses of power, which is interesting with Batman as he is legitimate in so far as he is a member of the JLA and they are authorized by several governments to use coercive force in the name of law and justice, similar to the authority granted the military or police, but that authority is not recognized in Gotham, where he is a vigilante.
In part 3 we get the ethics of becoming Batman, and I’ve already written a blog post about that section.
Part 4 is metaphysics and identity. Who is Batman? What makes him Batman? What does it it mean to be or not be Batman, or anyone else? The best section here, and in the entire book, is Ron Novy’s treatment on what it’s like to be Batman. He provides an excellent overview of situational freedom, and then makes, and supports, the claim that the person who best understands Batman, is the Joker, and the person who best understands the Joker, is Batman.
Part 5 discusses existentialism as it relates to both Batman and Alfred. Here we get a discussion of how Batman represents one kind of knight, the knight of infinite resignation–this is the more dramatic, the more flamboyant, the more commanding sort of knight. Alfred is said to represent a different kind of knight, the knight of faith, and his is a higher, more noble calling. There is a lot of love for Alfred in this book. This section also talks about the deep inner conscious that is more than the imposed “they mind” conscious, and how Wayne faces his moment of Angst, which is a term used here to refer to the admission of his own eventual death, and the responsibility it imposes to make meaning of his life.
In Part 6 we learn about the roles Batman plays as friend, as father figure, as rival, and as guide. This section is about value ethics, Aristotle’s work is discussed in greater detail here, and my favorite section for this part is Gales Foresman’s on why Batman is better than Superman. Politicians take note: he does this while talking about why Batman is desirable and good, not why Superman is undesirable and bad. Read this. Learn from this. We end with the very amusing The Tao of the Bat.
This book was written by philosophers well-acquainted with Batman, not only from the movies and TV shows, but from the comics, which offer a richer trove of stories and a deeper development of character. The works sited most often are Batman: Year One, Arkham Asylum (the book, not the game), and The Dark Knight Returns. I was surprised at how approachable and enjoyable this work was. I give it 5 stars out of 5.
January 11th, 2010
On this week’s Knit Spirit I talk about Aristotle, and how his theories reconcile how the virtues of mercy and justice are not in contention with each other.
January 8th, 2010
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