Daft Punk Fans: The New Beliebers?

Since the death of Turntable, I have since migrated over to plug. It's pretty similar to Turntable where you share your music with other individuals and they share their favorite tunes with you.

Towards the end of Turntable's lifetime and through my time at plug I've noticed a disturbing trend among some of the younger users. These individuals practically jizz over Daft Punk, much like weak little teenage girls obsess over Justin Bieber. And much like Bieber fans, these new-found Daft Punk "fans" will savagely attack you at the first utterance that doesn't worship their holiness. I can understand (though not rationalize myself to the extreme), albeit somewhat difficultly, that people can be enamored with a particular group or genre, but I don't understand why people feel the need to bash anyone and everyone who doesn't follow their narrow views. Too many young folks these days go around screaming that dubstep is the only music and that anything that doesn't have a drop is utter trash. (Personally I feel like if you only like dubstep because it obviously places the drop for you, you are not sophisticated enough to understand anything about music.)

/end rant

The Supposed Right of Way

A large portion of the country seems to feel that the pacific northwest is a somewhat more "progressive" society, full of hipsters and people who aren't downright buttoned-down and closed-minded. However, this doesn't mean that they are necessarily not assholes who believe that their self-worth comes above the worth of anyone and everyone.

I've noticed this a lot more as I get back into riding. While riding and other forms of non-solitary vehicular transport are more prevalent (in addition to exercising in general), a disproportionately large group of these people act as if they're above the law and above reproach. The prime example of this behavior is when the bike trail crosses any road.

When many bikers (and runners) reach these crossings, they choose not to stop and then just continue on through the crossing regardless of traffic. While some of these crossings have stop signs for cross traffic, most of these crossings just have a sign indicating that there is a trail crossing at that present location and no more. However, this does not stop the endless berating of these drivers who choose not to stop at these crossings that have no stop signs and let the bikers/runners pass.

It's quite obvious that those drivers owe the trail users anything and anyone who does stop at these crossings is only doing so out of courtesy, but yet it has come to the point where these runners and bikers, for some strange and unfounded reason, expect any and every car to stop at these crossings as if it were the law, and will actively curse out drivers who don't wait at every crossing to let everyone cross.

What is especially maddening about some of the cyclists here is how they feel like they're above all laws and that no laws apply to them. In many places it is illegal for bikers to use the sidewalk, so bikers must use the road and designated trails. That being said, many cyclists feel like traffic laws don't apply to them and bike around the streets as if they were pedestrians, with everyone yielding to their every whim.

What would be entertaining is to see these bikers and runners try to be "progressive" and everything in the LA area, where I started riding. I feel like they would be a lot more grateful for what Seattle has to offer them...

Fountain Pens!

The other day I bought myself my first fountain pen, and so began a new adventure. Pressing down on the nib to release the flow of ink seems so much more elegant than using a ballpoint or felt-tip pen, and the ink smells really good when it flows through the pen. I feel like once I get used to writing with a fountain pen, there will be no going back to the ballpoint. The only detraction thus far is that the ink in the nib will dry up when I leave the pen lying around uncapped, but I suppose that's part of the learning curve.

"Reduced"

One thing I haven't understood is the concept of foods being prepared the exact same, except as "low sodium" or low whatever, especially with items such as "low sodium" soy sauce and other condiments. It seems like the mindset of people is that they don't want to put on any less of a condiment because it will somehow make their food "inferior" because they put less stuff on their food.

I think this links back to the predominantly American mentality of excess, where bigger is better, and there is no such thing as too much anything. It seems like portion control and any form of self-control when it comes to food tends not to exist with many individuals, and these people seem to act like it's up to these food producers to reduce the negative impacts on their diets instead of taking matters into their own hands and becoming healthier eaters.

Occupying Yourself For Four Hours

It's actually not a bad movie...

Presented Without Comment

Worst Flight Ever?

Red-eye, SEA to IAD

The plane has a 3-3 economy configuration, and I have the isle seat on the right side. Soon thereafter, a family of 7, with none of the five children seemingly above 6 (and they definitely acted the part), sat down around me-three children across the isle, one more in front of me, and the remaining three across the isle from her. Then a family with a newborn (definitely less than 12 months) sits down the row behind me.

As soon as the plane starts moving (and by that I mean as soon as we pull out of the gate) the baby starts screaming, and I could not drown out the baby's screaming with my over-ear headphones (or at least to the point I could barely tolerate my music without busting my ears). Throughout the flight, the parents tried to placate the baby to no effect, even carrying the baby up and down the plane (and probably waking up half the passengers that could actually fall asleep). I'm not sure how the baby managed to scream almost nonstop for almost 5 hours, but the baby finally fell asleep...as we landed at 530am.

Of course, the fun didn't end there. As soon as the seat belt sign was off, the father of the family of 7 sprung up and grabbed several (probably 7) pieces of luggage from the overhead bins and placed them in the aisle, thereby blocking almost everyone from going anywhere, which was a problem because he couldn't seem to get his kids to take a suitcase and get off the plane, and no one was able to get off the plane for about a good minute after the first class passengers got off.

My advice on flying with very small children: don't. If your child cannot behave and control themselves in public, don't fly with them until they can. If you absolutely must fly, fly when it's not going to disrupt everyone else, especially on a red-eye. You can't go around telling everyone that your child will behave because you think that your child is special and thus obviously can't have any faults because you're a perfect parent. This is obviously not true and is just an indication of people's lack of taking personal responsibility.

RIP Turntable

Sundodger and OFUDG!

These past two weekends I attended my first two ultimate tournaments of my grad school career in my bid to make the A team in my final year of eligibility. Two weekends ago we split into three teams and went up to Burlington for Sundodger, which was sort of wet and cold, just like most of the year in the area. We didn't win too many games, but played strong and finished well.

This past weekend we sent two squads down to Eugene for OFUDG. The main thing I learned was that Eugene sucked and there really isn't anything there, but the ultimate there was much better than the previous weekend and the competition was much tougher. It was another cold, wet, and windy weekend featuring lots of zone defense and some tight games. Our split squad came in second place after beating our other squad for a spot into the finals before losing to a local club/alum/pick-up/??? team. Unfortunately the tournament featured a 5+ hour drive each way to some random location in the middle of nowhere...

Here's to trying to make the A team! Tryouts coming up!

Mathematica 9!

So I finally upgraded my desktop's version of Mathematica to version 9.0 (though my laptop's version is still 8...), and I noticed that the biggest difference is that Mathematica 9 actually lets you attach legends to any plot you have. This is huge! It's also interesting how Mathematica 9 will sometimes suggest commands for you to use while you're typing them, as sometimes they're really off...