Jonathan Ben Ari

One of my all-time favorite Dead songs:

Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
And it looks like the old man's gettin' on.

1929 when he stepped to the bar, drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar.
1930 when the wall caved in, he made his way selling red-eyed gin.

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
And it looks like the old man's gettin' on.

Delilah Jones was the mother of twins,
Two times over and the rest were sins.
Raised eight boys, only I turned bad,
Didn't get the lickin's that the other ones had.

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
And it looks like the old man's gettin' on.

Tumble down shack in Big Foot county.
Snowed so hard that the roof caved in.
Delilah Jones went to meet her God,
And the old man never was the same again.

Daddy made whiskey and he made it well.
Cost two dollars and it burned like hell.
I cut hick'ry just to fire the still,
Drink down a bottle and be ready to kill.

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
And it looks like the old man's gettin' on.

Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,

Come on, folks. We all know LJ is _sooooooo_ 2002 and all the cool kids are using Twitter these days.

There is something to be said for the 160 character limit, brevity and all that.

I am at http://twitter.com/jonathanbenari.

Get twitty wit it!

from Neatorama

For the few folks out there who don't read boingboing...

Banjo player Eddie Adcock recently had surgery to repair a tremor in his right hand. To be sure that the surgery worked, they kept him awake during the surgery - and had him play the banjo. Video of a bit of it here.

just getting into this show. really well done, high production values. character development I remain undecided about. no spoilers please, just on episode 6 of the first season.



in this episode, approximately ~37 minutes in, Joan (the smokin redhead) says "Well, you know what they say, the medium is the message."

The episode takes place in 1961. Marshall McLuhan wouldn't write "Understanding Media", the source of the "medium is the message" meme, for another three years, in 1964.

*small spasm of fanboy glee*

So, it turns out a third of my desk was attached to the cube wall with only one screw. Was mucking about under there this evening, the above is the result.

Converting Vegetarians.

This _is_ the time of the revolution.

Interesting explanation of why the whole 'raw food movement' is a foolish idea...

I didn't know this but apparently you can recurse VNC sessions, as seen here:

We don't know much, but we know this has been one long-ass week. And
when we here at Brass Tax have a long week, we like to turn to our
favorite comfort foods. Comfort food means a lot of things to different
people. For some, it's chicken & waffles. For others, it's a steaming
bowl of pho. For a lot of peeps, it's gotta be mom's chicken noodle
soup. For our vegan friends, it might be...I don't know, lettuce and
raisins?

But for us, comfort food means something way more demented. (You are
surprised?) We're talking plates piled high with DingDongs. The
sloppiest of Sloppy JoeJoes. Mountains of Franks 'n' Beans.* And
sometimes, a special treat of Kapt'n Crunch. And that happens to be our
lineup for Amnesia tonight! So come on down and grab yourself a plate.
You might want to tuck a napkin under your chin, cuz things could get
messy.

*It should be noted at this point that Ernie Trevino's DJ name shall
henceforth be Franks 'n' Beans, for reasons we are not at liberty to
divulge. Also Lil' Bear Hat has been transformed into Sloppy JoeJoe.
Will it stick? Let's find out!

*************************
Brass Tax @ Amnesia
Friday 08.01.08, 10pm-2am
853 Valencia at 19th/20th, SF
Residents: Sloppy JoeJoe, Franks 'n' Beans
and DingDong
Special Guest: Kapt'n Kirk (Space Cowboys)
Thumpin' Brass Tax Sound
$5 cover
*************************

sign your (friend's) ass up:
brasstax-announce-subscribe@topica.com
Check this: http://www.thebrasstax.com

Seriously, compilers are for chumps. This is the future, goddamnit; computers are supposed to be powerful enough to let us write even the most complex of applications in an interpreted language. ProTools should be written entirely in Javascript so it can run on my 3G iPhone.

:-p

My latest foray into buildmastery is exhilarating and frustrating in equal measure.
I inherited a wacky, byzantine build system, not necessarily well-documented. We have a tight deadline, a customer who we have already been late on a deliverable for once, and no senior engineer leading the project I have to build. In other circumstances this might be serious stress, but after the morale-boosting sight of my old boss walking out of the office for the last time earlier this week, I've been invigorated. I've inherited a whole lot of messed up systems and need to get them up and working fast. Fuck yeah! Bring it on.

... continuing the theme of "subject lines that sound dirty but aren't..."

This is what I spent my evening entangled in...



Three cheers for office moves!

... or so the vet said. Boltzmann has conjunctivitis in one eye, and one of the possible causes might be FHV, feline herpes. Not communicable to humans, although it's quite common in cats, apparently, and not a cause for concern provided his eye infection resolves itself soon.

But, still, I bet the subject line got your attention. :-p

xtristessa made this:

Important news out of China:

As yet, not a single panda is known to have died, unlike the human horror unfolding elsewhere in the mountains.

the beatles performing "stairway to heaven"
obviously the low-res works in the editor's favor but it's still mighty convincing

Received this little gem in an email today:

"We are in the process of developing a new Specification Development Process and would like your input. "

Well I wasn't too concerned about the fires down south, until now...

A third of state's avocado crop lost to fire, more threatened

Nooooooooooo!

Won't someone think of the avocados? Where is our sense of national outrage? Why is the blogosphere ignoring this issue of international importance?

"baby put out that candle right now! I have an aversion to candles; I have been woken up by them far too often."

So after observing the traffic of the email planning lists for several all-volunteer events I participate in, I think I've discerned a trend in the 'successful leadership/organization styles' versus the less 'successful' ones. Principally, I've noticed that the people who Really Get Things Done in these organizations tend to only respond to good ideas, and to ignore bad ones. Obviously if a consensus is emerging on an idea which they don't like, they'll speak up, but if a notion doesn't have momentum, they'll let it slide.

There's a technique in animal training called Least Reinforcing Syndrome, and it seems it works pretty well on humans, too. I got this idea initially from an article on the NYTimes.com called 'What Shamu Taught Me About A Happy Marriage.'

The small sample size I'm working with (two lists which share the majority of their subscribers) makes me hesitant to draw conclusions, and I have some reservations. For one thing, I think there's some benefit in gently acknowledging the bad idea and pointing out where it's lacking. My experience has been that even if someone is disappointed to hear discouraging feedback, the fact that they're getting any feedback at all means someone is at least acknowledging their efforts, and encourages them to put the same energy in in the future - when they may have a good idea.

Then again, I haven't masterminded eleven consecutive 48 hour events for upwards of 500 people, with budgets in excess of ten thousand dollars.

There's also the question of whether or not Successful Leaders of listserv-based communities are just clever enough to delegate the task of shooting down bad ideas to others, preserving the image of the wise and benevolent yet laissez-faire patriarch that is so very helpful in Actually Getting Shit Done.

This is perhaps a very cynical characterization and in no way a complete picture of the people in question. It's entirely possible that they themselves never saw the situation that way. The conniving Machiavellian overtones are all courtesy of yours truly.

if you didn't already know about it, check out:

http://www.livejournal.com/misc/expunged_list.bml - a dead journals registry.

What's more, you can for a mere $15 dollars purchase a "rename token" that will let you use it as your journal title. So for instance I could purchase the old LJ moniker of Matt, cubikbeats and start blogging there myself. Does anyone besides myself find this vaguely creepy and dystopian? It's a telling slice of postmodern zeitgeist.

6.0 Earthquake Shakes Northern Tanzania

Powerful quake rocks Arusha

Yeah, hadn't heard from xtristessa in a few days, and now I find that there was a 6.0 earthquake the day before yesterday, right near where she's staying. Several in the last week, in fact. eep.