[caption id=“attachment_6442” align=“aligncenter” width=“200”] Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip in Packaging[/caption]

I’ve been using MP3 players since they first existed. I can’t remember the name of the device, but I got it with my Audible subscription. Then, I used my PDA for a while - remember those? Then I used an iPod Shuffle, but it didn’t work well with my Linux computer. The database kept getting corrupted since Apple can’t play nicely with others so it has to be reverse-engineered. So I told myself I’d never get another Apple music playing device. About three years ago, I went with a Sandisk Sansa Fuze. Since then I’ve gone through three of them, approximately one per year. What keeps happening is that the headphone jack gets looser and looser until the slightest nudge makes it so that I can’t hear one of the audio channels. Since I use it work out, this quickly gets VERY annoying. But I really, really like Sandisk’s GUI for their devices - it has a specific podcast section that resumes the podcast where I left off, even if I go back and forth between different podcasts. I don’t do that too often, but I do it often enough that it’s important. So I got a Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip because the Fuze+ has horrible reviews (for the way they changed the buttons) and since I’m using it to work out, I could use a smaller, lighter device.

Memorial Day was pretty awesome this year. All three original Mesa Brothers were reunited for the first time since Christmas. It was my third major holiday celebration since Scarlett was born (in 2012 we only celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas), but it was the first one I hosted. Even with Danielle’s family only 3 hours away we rarely have an opportunity to have a BBQ out in the yard. I find this lack of BBQs irksome as my childhood involved lots of house parties since our entire extended family lived within 30 minutes of each other. What is the point of having a yard and home in suburbia otherwise? So I took the rare chance to take out the speakers I bought back in High School for my short DJ career and set my netbook to play from Google Music. I created a playlist of songs with “summer” in the title since Memorial Day is the cultural start of the summer in the USA.

Over at Popehat they presented an interesting article about the Ideological Turing Test. The regular Turing Test says that a computer passes if you can interact with it and you don’t know you’re interacting with a computer instead of a human. One of the closest things we have right now are the chat bots whose eventual goal is to get you to some website. Well, the Ideological Turing Test tests:

whether a political or ideological partisan correctly understands the arguments of his or her intellectual adversaries: the partisan is invited to answer questions or write an essay posing as his opposite number. If neutral judges cannot tell the difference between the partisan’s answers and the answers of the opposite number, the candidate is judged to correctly understand the opposing side.

It’s easy to lust after photo opportunities elsewhere as I did in a recent post. But when you find that happening, just remember there’s a whole world in your backyard. If you live in an urban neighborhood like the protagonist of Pecker, you can focus on portraits and street photography - candid or otherwise. But if you live in a suburban or rural area, you’ll find a lot of naturalistic photo opportunities in your backyard. For inspiration, take a look at these photos taken in my backyard and my parents’ backyard. (I’ve stretched the definition of backyard a little to include the surrounding neighborhood that’s within a short walk - say, within a mile) (Yes, a lot of them are birds, but that’s what really interests me outside)

A little over a month ago I came across an article on Boing Boing about the movie Zach Braff was trying to get funded via Kickstarter. It was interesting time as I had just contributed to two Kickstarter projects for the first time - I Fight Dragons’ Project Atma and the Code Monkey comic by Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak. The Boing Boing piece linked to an article by Ken Levine saying why he wouldn’t support Zach Braff’s Kickstarter. His premise was essentially that Braff has money and should finance it himself or use his Hollywood connections. Save Kickstarter for the indie film producer/director. He mentioned that he didn’t want Kickstarter to get all corporate like Sundance. He had a response blog post in which he showed that his lamentations had come true - Melissa Joan Hart was asking for money on Kickstarter and was only offering to follow her backers on Twitter. Ten days later he posted his final response (at the time I’m writing this) in which he pointed out that Braff’s Kickstarter was pointless because he got “gap funding” anyway. Although I’m sure most of the air will be out of the tire by the time this post appears on my blog, I’d like to take the chance to refute and elaborate on some of what Ken Levine said. (Also, this isn’t the Ken Levine of Bioshock, just so you know)

A little less than a month ago Ars had a story about Skype’s text messages being insecure. This is pretty devastating considering how many political activists are using Skype to stay secure from governments like China and Russia. The article doesn’t mention anything about the voice communications, but I would be a little cautious if your life actually depends on it. It turns out that Microsoft is scanning messages between users to make sure they aren’t spam or other bad messages. The problem is that your system is either 100% secure or it’s insecure. If Microsoft can see the messages then anyone else can by hijacking Microsoft’s servers. (And countries like China and Russia definitely have the skills to do that) This is a good reminder that you should make sure to read EULAs because this information has been there since Microsoft bought Skype. I wonder what technology political activists could use to stay safe in light of this revelation.

[caption id=“attachment_6252” align=“aligncenter” width=“400”] Scarlett Sleeping[/caption]

Sleep is one of the most stress-inducing topics for parents. Well, for first time parents. I imagine that, baring some medical conditions, once you’ve figured out how to get one kid to sleep through the night, you can reapply the template over and over. I think one of the reasons sleep tends to be so stressful is that parents are so gosh-darned competitive. It’s ridiculous, but every parent is in a competition with every other parent. People like me are cognizant that this is stupid and don’t do it consciously, but my mind is always playing on my parental fears and bringing it up. “Hey, that kid can walk/talk/insert skill and is the same age as Scarlett so why can’t Scarlett do that?” Other people do it on purpose - it’s how they get their sense of worth - their kid is better than those around them. These are the same people who will be asking in 18 years what college Scarlett is getting into - not because they care but because they want to tell me what school little Dylan got into. And sleep is one of those activities where the parents actually have some control (unlike their mental skills) and so it’s seen as a sign of bad or weak parenting if you can’t get your kids to sleep through the night.

One of the earliest demands for justice children make is that of fairness. What parent hasn’t heard the complaint “That’s not fair!” uttered by their children? Scarlett isn’t there yet (shoot, she’s barely speaking so far), but I imagine one of the hardest things I’ll have to do in her toddlerhood is to explain to her that life isn’t fair. It must be such a scary moment for children. It’s the first time we realize that the adults in our lives aren’t always going to provide justice. It’s funny because it’s an extremely important life lesson to learn, but it often arises out of frustration when another child won’t cooperate in the fairness regime. And it’s a tough balancing act if you’re sovereign over both children between requiring fairness and teaching that fairness just isn’t in the cards all the times.

Unsurprisingly, Scarlett is once again the subject of the Photojojo. Also captured, a visit by the in-laws. I think the most interesting thing is that I find her way cuter as she looks now vs a year ago. But back then I found her way cute. Scientists say it peaks at age 4. I guess we’ll see.

During the month of May I continued to try and completed story-based games in my library.

[caption id=“attachment_6370” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Quantum Conundrum Science Ball[/caption]

Quantum Conundrum (3 hrs) - I started playing the game early this year. I really, really enjoy this game, but the imprecision of the moves really bugs me. I’ve been playing it with a keyboard and mouse, does anyone know if it plays better with a control? I keep dying because I go too far in my jumps and it’s annoying when I’ve figured out the puzzle but keep dying because of platforming issues. In other words, when I play Sudoku I don’t fail because my pen lands in the wrong box when I try to write a number. The thrill of the game is solving the puzzles. I enjoy teasers and, while I admit I sometimes have to use a guide to solve the puzzle, I always try really hard to see if I’ve considered all the possible ways to use the game’s elements to solve the puzzle. I don’t know if the game is evenly balanced, but I think there are three halls and I’ve finished one of them. But I spent around 30 minutes of of the three hours this month trying to get through a puzzle I’d solved but I kept falling to my death. So I put completion of the game on hold to play other games. I may not ever finish this one.  We’ll see.