My New Keyboard

Three weeks ago, I started getting numbness and stinging in my wrists at the end of each workday. I hadn't been drinking any coffee for a month; an experiment to see if I would somehow become a more effective person without it. Life without coffee was surprisingly similar. I'm afraid that  without a steady coffee intake my circulation is exceedingly poor, however, and this started giving me RSI symptoms.

Anyhow, it's three weeks later. I've been sleeping in wrist supports, and I've bought a couple of trackballs for work and home, as well as the rather pricey keyboard pictured below. The symptoms have decreased quite a bit. Before any of this had come up, I'd read plenty of bio's that mentioned animator / programmer types not being able to work for years at a time because of RSI. So being overly cautious is how one avoids this sort of thing.

I thought I'd share the  keyboard because I think it is a a great design and I am quite pleased with it. My only complaint is that the rubber function keys stick a little. I re-mapped the 'Caps Lock' key to be 'Escape'. The two programs I use most are AutoCAD and Vim, in which you are hitting Escape constantly. Apparently, this is where Escape was on the terminal keyboards of yore, so I am using Vi as it was designed to be used. (Vi is great. How many pieces of software do you use everyday that were written the year you were born?)

MLG Pro Circuit Starcraft 2 Live Today

If you've ever wanted to check out a Pro Starcraft 2 game, this might be the day to do it.

Moebius as abstractionist

Check out these compositions by Jean "Moebius" Giraud. They have a science fictional flavor, much like Lee Bontecou's work. (Link.)

Someone should make a movie in the "thriller" genre about this.

Police in Poland have been left puzzled by the discovery of a collection of 300 paintings worth "millions of euros" in an outhouse belonging to a 92-year-old former bricklayer.

Radiophonics

This BBC documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop makes some interesting observations about the relationship between creativity and technology. Before synthesizers, electronic music was made with tape loops. The observation is made that the tape music was more creative because it was manipulated on a deeper level, whereas playing a synth was like picking off of a menu. I see this as a expression of the modular / monolithic divide that exists in many technologies. (Link.)

Great Performances

Proper Computing

Fuseli, Henri. "The Artist Moved By the Grandeur of Antique Fragments" 

I found these items illuminating:

• Software Carpentry is an old site that I recently discovered. I recommend the tutorials on using the shell, if you use Mac or Linux. (Link.) 
• The developer of the indie game Braid gave a talk at Berkeley about the Herculean effort that game programming requires. (Link.) (Via.)

Wonky Urban Planning Post

Effective urban concentration.

This is one of those topics that gets me all riled up.

This is a great album!

This was released last year. I didn't really have my ear to the ground. Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks and Black Flag screams, one of the McDonald boys from Redd Kross is on base, and the other members are pretty heavy hitters, also. It goes without saying that I deeply identify with the indignation and misanthropy in this music. This isn't 1980s nostalgia, like the last post. The same blood suckers and crypto-fascists that were screwing-up America in the 1980s are still around. This is the appropriate response.
OFF! by OFF

Early Exposure

I was allowed to play D&D with my big brother's friends at a community center in suburban Maryland a couple of times. (Pictured above. Not including my little brother, of course.) I think I was deemed too young. They were playing the "G" series modules, and I do remember being somewhat baffled by what was going on. This was my second D&D group. My first D&D group was my big brother and my mom. My big brother wrote and ran an adventure for us using the blue box. I have the manuscript and hand-drawn maps, but I won't bore you. For more 1980's pop culture, here is myself as mohair Chewbacca.