[Quadari]

3 thoughts:

1) i measured myself at 5' 7 3/4" this afternoon, so i've grown 1/4" or so (probably less than how much my spine shrinks in a day!) since high school

Wow. Good job toshi. Glad that the spine extruder helped.

2) the broken d30 body is now on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3837728631

Someone snatched it up already! Impressive.

3) my unlocked nokia 3650 phone is also on ebay in case you're in the market for a gsm phone: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5718683821

Getting a new phone? What's the reason?

 

[Toshi]

Wow. Good job toshi. Glad that the spine extruder helped.

Someone snatched it up already! Impressive.

Getting a new phone? What's the reason?

spine extruder, heh. i prefer to call it "the rack"

yeah, the d30 is gone! $110 is a fair price for the purchaser if they can fix it or use its parts, and is a good deal for me since i keep the ac adapter, charger, battery, cf card, lenses!, etc. to supplement the accessories that will come with the 20d.

i will be getting a new phone, yes. this 3650 was free w/rebates (which were honored) from amazon/t-mobile and there are similar deals now, so it's basically free money: my contract was up in june so i ended service on it in july and am free to sell it. then in a few weeks i will pick up a new phone for free, again amazon/t-mobile... good deal, eh? i may even end up getting another 3650

 

[Toshi]

check it: i now have the official "minigolf champion" title. er, co-title. 3 way co-title. whatever it should be called, it's now under my name

 

[Skookum]

You are Tiger Woods.

 

[Toshi]

i feel... validated by the miniputt title. hehe.

 

[endtroducing]

Funny you should ask about what I'm reading/doing Toshi...

I've decided to go back to school and just submitted an application to St. John's College of Annapolis.

Are you familiar with it? If not, it's a school expressly devoted to reading, with a 4-year all-required "Great Books" curriculum including Greek, French, math, lab science, music, and seminar, building upon the intellectual perennialism pioneered at Columbia and U. Chicago in the 30s.

There are no text books, no written exams, all classes are discussion based and taught via primary sources in a roughly chronological fashion. Freshman year you start with Homer, senior year you end with Einstein.

For example, the sophmore reading list:

THE BIBLE
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
DES PREZ: Mass
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
SCHUBERT: Songs
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

If I get in, I'll be bald and nearsighted before I even get to grad school...

I spoke with an admissions counselor from the college last week and was told that by far the most difficult part of freshman year is learning greek, especially for american students with poor backgrounds in rigorous english grammar. So, my most recent purchases from Amazon have been a few rhetoric and sentence diagramming books.

On the pleasure front, I'm forever trying to scratch off my list of unread classics. I have these on cue:

Chang-rae Lee - Native Speaker (gotta support my alums)
Frank D.K. Ching - Architecture: Form, Space, and Order
John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progess
Thomas Wolfe - Look Homeward, Angel
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
Jorge Luis Borges - Selected Non-Fictions

What have you been reading lately?
Had much time before the med school grind begins?

 

[Toshi]

wow, good luck in getting into st. johns. that would be a truly different experience. i've had many a dinner table argument with my father about the rigor or lack of rigor in modern universities. he would think your curriculum was just about perfect. i wish i had more exposure to the classics -- we have all the great books on a shelf somewhere here but i never got around to reading them -- but i also highly value some of the courses i took that fall outside the western european sphere (japanese, japanese history, russian art, literature of the 1870s-1930s...)

i haven't been up to much at all. in semi-chronological order: wrapped up the work business in july, bummed around at whistler/vancouver for a bit, injured myself, moved out of my apartment, came back home, and have been totally inactive since then. i'll be up in seattle by this upcoming friday tho, and will have to be on my toes by saturday as kaplan starts their training before uw does.

all i've read since april 29 are:

W. Somerset Maugham, "The Razor's Edge"
Dao Strom, "Grass Roof, Tin Roof"
Tom Wolfe, "A Man In Full"

i also started gene wolfe's "book of the new sun" but didn't like the writing or scenario, d.h. lawrence's "women in love" (ditto), and wilbur smith's "monsoon" (ditto x 2).

as noted elsewhere the current book is "imperial hubris". it's quite sobering but a worthwhile read.

 

[jace]

What did you think of A Man in Full?
I read it the summer before last on my many train trips to and from Boston.
I keep passing the Imperial Hubris display in B&N, I'll have to put it on my short list.

p.s. you wear the kung fu monkllet well.

 

[Toshi]

What did you think of A Man in Full?
I read it the summer before last on my many train trips to and from Boston.

changed screennames, eh? why didn't you have a mod do it so that you could retain your post count? fresh start a la acadian?

i thought "a man in full" was excellent. my only experience with the south is the 2 days i spent down in new orleans when interviewing at tulane so i can't speak to the accuracy of wolfe's portrayal of race relations, but i thought the characters were all believable, at least. combined with an engaging story that made the book a worthwhile read. i read it mostly on the way up to whistler (trip #1) and then at the condo while laid up with injuries, and i didn't regret the lost riding time after all was said and done.

what did you think of it?

 

[Toshi]

p.s. you wear the kung fu monkllet well.

heh, thanks. i was hoping for more of a mullet look but i guess i'll have to work on my skillz with the shaver...

 

[Toshi]

i feel... validated by the miniputt title. hehe.

my title is gone!

 

[jace]

changed screennames, eh? why didn't you have a mod do it so that you could retain your post count? fresh start a la acadian?

I suppose I could of, but this was easy enough, plus everyone gets avatars now, so no real loss.

I definitely enjoyed A Man in Full; I'm always a bit intrigued by the sort of research that must go into writing a contemperary novel of the sort. It was an addictive read but I'm not positive how I feel about the ending. I wasn't sure if old Tom was trying to cram a lot of unsubtle philosophy and moralism in with the last few pages. Either way, it's persuaded me to read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test somewhere down the road.

 

[Toshi]

speaking of books, the winners of the hugo awards were announced recently:

Best Novel: Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Novella: The Cookie Monster, Vernor Vinge
Novellette: Legions in Time, Michael Swanwick
Short Story: A Study in Emerald, Neil Gaiman

 

[Toshi]

i've posted a thread asking which fork to get for my road bike, please read and respond. this means you, keith!

 

[TWISTED]

i've posted a thread asking which fork to get for my road bike, please read and respond. this means you, keith!

If you would be interested in a Kinesis fork I'll do my best to try to get you one.
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/?Manu=Kinesis

 

[Toshi]

ooh, if you could get me one for less than the $60 + shipping that the nashbar fork costs (or, having read the admonition against generic forks, the $100 + shipping that the easton runs) then i'd be all over it . thanks in advance for the effort.

 

[TWISTED]

ooh, if you could get me one for less than the $60 + shipping that the nashbar fork costs (or, having read the admonition against generic forks, the $100 + shipping that the easton runs) then i'd be all over it . thanks in advance for the effort.

You want carbon, right? Do you have any other requirements of the fork?

 

[Toshi]

nope, just as long as it's carbon and 1 1/8" threadless...

 

[TWISTED]

nope, just as long as it's carbon and 1 1/8" threadless...

I'll see what I can do. I think there are some Wedge's in stock.

 

[Toshi]

my title is gone!

and now it is back again. i took a screenshot to preserve it for posterity in case RM mucks around with the vBulletin code and removes it again

 

[Toshi]

here is a positively hilarious bushism:

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/lovedocs.html

what in the world was he thinking?

and here is a nice subaru impreza sti promo/ad:

http://www.subaru-global.com/lineup/impreza/sedan/download/imgs/tvcf_impreza.mov

 

[Instigator]

Why do you need to tease me with that damn Subie ad

There is a local Subaru dealer that has a couple of STI's in their lot. 300hp and some fool like me behind the wheel.......................dreams are good

 

[Toshi]

Why do you need to tease me with that damn Subie ad

There is a local Subaru dealer that has a couple of STI's in their lot. 300hp and some fool like me behind the wheel.......................dreams are good

just save up for another decade and buy a real prodrive impreza rallycar... :love:

 

[TWISTED]

I'll see what I can do. I think there are some Wedge's in stock.

The guy I need to talk to about a fork hasn't gotten back from Eurobike yet, I'll let you know.

 

[Toshi]

sweet. thanks again, tim.

 

[TWISTED]

You get a camera yet? I need some new pictures of me taken by an expert photographer, such as yourself.

 

[Toshi]

You get a camera yet? I need some new pictures of me taken by an expert photographer, such as yourself.

hehe, flattery won't get you pics

(since i don't have a camera mainly, try again later .) plus i'm headed up to seattle on thursday

 

[TWISTED]

hehe, flattery won't get you pics

(since i don't have a camera mainly, try again later .) plus i'm headed up to seattle on thursday

I guess I'll be stuck with these two pics for awhile.
I showed a MC sales guy the sequence shot, he said "That's cool you got your friends to follow you".

 

[Toshi]

I guess I'll be stuck with these two pics for awhile.
I showed a MC sales guy the sequence shot, he said "That's cool you got your friends to follow you".

heh

 

[WTGPhoben]

i've posted a thread asking which fork to get for my road bike, please read and respond. this means you, keith!

wow, you miss one email and all of a sudden three pages of this thread go by...

In the fork front, my advice is that you probably won't care one way or the other so spend your money on lenses instead (I also have never had to replace anything other than a tube, tire, or spoke nipple on my road bike so I have n point of reference for an opinion)

In other news... (ithink I just told thad this, as opposed to posting) there's a good chance that some of those pics I posted from VT are going to be in some Green Mountain club literature (and credited)... the subject also wants full sized framed prints. Which brings me to the question: what do I need to do to get pro quality prints out of digital photos... I'm looknig to get them professionally printed, what kind of technology is out there?

 

[Toshi]

congrats on the vt deal! i don't know. maybe ask at calumet?

 

[WTGPhoben]

congrats on the vt deal! i don't know. maybe ask at calumet?

cool, will check out... btw, my website work for you? I only can access through internal IP on router.

 

[Toshi]

yeah, it's working. that javascript to resize and move the window to the upper left is (still) very annoying

 

[WTGPhoben]

congrats on the vt deal! i don't know. maybe ask at calumet?

this looks way cool: (I wonder if local high-end photo place near me has one)
Pictography printer!

let the investigation continue...

 

[WTGPhoben]

yeah, it's working. that javascript to resize and move the window to the upper left is (still) very annoying

someday it will be all better... (but that will probably be the day that coincides with my rewiritng the whole thing in ASP, and not soon).

 

[Toshi]

agh. no uw symphony for me. they rehearse right in the middle of histology, anatomy & embryology and systems of human behavior (and i only have 5 classes total)

 

[Toshi]

a fly eating robot (isn't modern technology great? )

http://tinyurl.com/6oqaz

Chris Melhuish and his team, who are developing the robot, have to manually feed the flies to EcoBot II because they are still designing some type of pump to suck the insects into it.

"One of the great things about flies is that you can get them to come to you," he said.

Hence the downside of the fully autonomous robot: it will have to use sewage or excrement to attract the flies and is bound to smell appalling.

 

[Toshi]

i decided to count how many words i write in a more or less typical day on various forums. the total is startling: approximately 3000.

i present the transcript of this day (up to and including this post, ooh) as modern art of sorts

 

[WTGPhoben]

i decided to count how many words i write in a more or less typical day on various forums. the total is startling: approximately 3000.

i present the transcript of this day (up to and including this post, ooh) as modern art of sorts

...thus proving you have far too much time on your hands (or just don't sleep). But, I suppose I did actually read all 3000 words, and I too am probably voting nader (it's nice to live in MA so I can do it without guilt as well.)

 

[Toshi]

i hope i don't come near 3000 words in the future, because that will mean i'm neglecting my studies ... and by "studies" i mean "memorizing irrelevant junk so that i can pass the boards" :mumble: