Down in the Mine 2.0

A short list of words whose meanings I never know, despite having looked them up in the past

2011-09-16T15:09:00.000-04:00

Ersatz
Guileless

It's been awhile

2011-09-02T10:41:00.002-04:00

But I'm back!

Thinklinkr out of beta

2010-05-25T14:24:00.000-04:00

For the past few months, I've been using Thinklinkr to outline writing projects. I've found it far more effective than outlining tools within Word or WordPerfect. It is a simple set of tools that very effectively helps me focus and organize my thoughts before writing. Check it out.

Julie Rover Commits an Act of Journalism

2010-02-24T08:02:00.000-05:00

NPR's Julie Rovner had a fantastic story about the Senate's reconciliation process and health care legislation this morning on Morning Edition. Rather than simply reporting, as most journalists do, that one side says X and the other says Y; Rovner took the time to evaluate the claims being made by those who oppose using reconciliation to pass health care. Putting aside the issue of whether the proposed changes are good policy (though they are) it was refreshing to hear a news report about a complex area of the legislative process that put the opponents' claims to the test.

E-mail ethics

2010-02-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Due to my e-mail address being just my last name, I get a lot of misdirected e-mails. If someone sending a message to some whose e-mail address is their first initial and my last name leaves off a letter, their message gets routed to me. This often includes resumes, business proposals, and other important (to the sender) messages. Do I have a moral or ethical obligation to get involved or can I continue to safely delete these messages?

Portrayal of Earth in Sci Fi

2009-12-22T19:49:00.003-05:00

I've been watching a lot of science fiction lately and thinking back on all the sci fi I read back in high school. Today, the role of Earth in sci fi caught my mind. Earth is always portrayed in one of two ways: the center of it all, i.e. Star Trek or a long-forgotten myth, i.e. BSG, Asimov's Foundation, Firefly/Serenity. Earth is never portrayed in the most logical way, as the home of humanity, but no longer its most important center. Think about how Greece, Rome, and the former colonial powers of Europe are today. I think a sci fi novel with Earth as a nice place to visit, but no longer a major power would be very interesting to read.

Homebrew Batch Two

2009-06-29T10:07:00.001-04:00

Ben and I took a trip to Maryland Homebrew on Saturday. I bought a IPA kit. I'll be brewing it this weekend. More details to follow.

Epiphany of the day

2009-06-08T20:17:00.003-04:00

Reading about how to stay focused and accomplishing my goals is not the same as actually staying focused and accomplishing my goals. It is actually the complete opposite.

Finally, a site that gets it

2009-06-04T07:47:00.002-04:00

Slate.com's "Build Your Own Slate" feature does something I have seen no other site allow you to do. It lets you check off which stories from the site you want to read and then formats them in a two-column word document with a table of contents. For people, like me, who want to be able to kill some time reading something interesting, but cannot use a phone in certain places, this is great.

Homebrew Report, Part II

2009-03-24T19:49:00.002-04:00

My first batch of homebrewed beer has been done for over two months now. With over one case gone, the reviews are in and they are positive. The final product was cloudier than it should have been because I bottle fermented the beer in a warmer area than ideal, but the taste was not affected at all.

I've got about one case left so it is about time to brew up a new batch - most likely a Brown Ale.

Taking us all to higher standards

2009-02-20T19:11:00.001-05:00

With the nationalization of Bank of America and Citi a real possibility, this seems like a good time to rewatch the video below:

The Dunkin' Espresso

2009-02-14T20:25:00.001-05:00

I'm visiting my in-laws in Rhode Island which means there is a Dunkin' Donuts every quarter mile or so. I stopped into one today and got a double shot of espresso for $1.07, though I think the dude undercharged me. Even more importantly, it was really, really good; better than Starbucks for 1/3 the price.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Oh pickles!

2009-01-26T19:00:00.003-05:00

As someone who learned all his best Hungarian swears from his grandmother before the age of ten, I have a different perspective on cussing than the founder of the "No Cussing Club". And he should not be getting death threats, but all I could think of during the NPR story was how much I'd love to see a conversation with this sanctimonious kids and Al Swearengen.

Radio endorsement

2009-01-24T11:13:00.002-05:00

A SModcast from a few weeks ago tangentially addressed an issue raised by one of my all time favorite hours of This American Life. Check 'em out.

Baby Club

2009-01-17T07:27:00.002-05:00

The first rule of baby club is - when the baby is up everyone is up.

Project 365

2009-01-03T11:41:00.002-05:00

In 2001, I committed myself to taking a photo a day. This was before I had a digital camera and the project was a mess. I had four or five cameras going at once and lousy record keeping. I've decided to restart the project, camera phones and digital cameras will make it much easier this time around. And, of course, the addition of Ben to our family provides a great subject for the photos.

Homebrew Report, Part I

2009-01-02T12:21:00.004-05:00

For my birthday this year, Amanda bought me a kit to homebrew beer. Homebrewing is something I've wanted to do for years, but never got around to doing. For my first batch, I bought a Continental Pilsner kit, which I think it supposed to taste like Pilsner Urquell.

I spent half of Christmas Day seeping mashed grains, boiling malt extract, and hopping the beer. After cooling the mixture down, I dumped in a yeast packet, sealed it up in a bucket with an airlock, and stuck it in the basement.

Last night, after a week of anxiously watching bubbles form and dissipate in my fermenter's airlock, I had the first, and lesser, moment of truth in brewing my first batch of beer. I pried (literally pried, it is near impossible to get the lid off of a food-grade plastic bucket) off the lid to the fermenter. It looked like beer, smelled like beer, and best of all, when I used my hydrometer to check the final gravity of the beer, it was perfect. Right in the target zone.

I classify fermenting beer in the same category as baking bread, making yogurt, and carmelizing sugar. When I start the process, even though I know that all of the science and millenia of experience say the process will work, I am still aways pleasantly surprised when it works.

Tomorrow morning is bottling day. The final moment of truth will be in three weeks when I pour the first bottle.

Today's Haiku*

2008-12-31T15:57:00.001-05:00

Power out at home
PEPCO online map updated
Hard hat in my ZIP

* This does not constitute an express or implied guarantee of a daily haiku.

New Years' Resolutions?

2008-12-31T15:43:00.003-05:00

I usually don't make New Years' Resolutions for myself, though I love to make them for other people in my life. As you can imagine, that makes me very popular this time of year.

However, in looking back at my media consumption over the past year, I realized I most of the opinion pieces and blogs I read are ones that I agree with- the liberal echo chamber effect. As a result, I am resolving to read more things I don't agree with. A great starting place is Megan McCardle's blog.

She is a liberatarian who blogs mainly on economics. She's a great writer and provides a nice counter-point to some of the more liberal blogs I read. As an added bonus, she has an open thread inviting her readers to submit their resolutions.

2008-12-29T12:16:00.006-05:00

Wired published an article in the January 2009 issue about Late Fragment. It's a new movie out on DVD that features a movie with 130 or so total scenes that are pieced together by the viewer. The creators of the movie wanted to give the viewer an opportunity to control the narrative and explore each character by deciding when to learn more about a given character and that character's narrative. This strikes me as lazy movie making.

What makes a movie with multiple or non-linear storylines good are the decisions made by the writer and director. Why is Short Cuts so good? Because Robert Altman had to make tough choices about how much to reveal about each character through dialogue. The viewer was then required to think about the characters and realize what their motivations were. It would have been cheating for Altman to include a few dozen extra scenes a viewer could watch to learn more about a character's life.

The same principle applies to Magnolia. The movie works because the connections between the characters and events in the movie unfold over time and in a specific order. And Fight Club. And Pulp Fiction. Good movies that have non-traditional narrative structures are good precisely because the writer and director made the decisions that the creators of Late Fragment did not make.

Beyond seeming a bit gimmicky, I don't think watching a movie like Late Fragment would be all that enjoyable. When I sit down to watch a movie, I do not want a interactive experience; I want to watch a story unfold before my eyes and not have to direct the narrative. The creators of Late Fragment have taken one of the hardest parts of make a movie, deciding how much to reveal and how much to let the viewers figure out on their own, and dumped it on my lap.

Down in the Mine reboot

2008-12-29T10:57:00.003-05:00

The first version of Down in the Mine was hosted here at in 2003. In the intervening five years, I've gone to TypePad, Vox, WordPress, and probably another hosting site I can't think of right now. For the past two years, the updates have been sporadic at best, sometimes with six months between posts.

No more.

Like J.J. Abrams rebooting Star Trek, I am rebooting Down in the Mine.

Gone are posts saying I put up new photos at Flicker. Here's my flickr page and the RSS feed for my photostream. Unless I take a particularly great photo or a really cute one of Ben, there will be no more cop-out, here's-a-blog-post-saying-there-are-photos type blog post.

Gone are posts apologizing for not posting enough.

On the ~~left~~ right is my Twitter feed. I make an honest effort to keep this as up to date as possible.

Down in the Mine 2.0 begins now.