Maebius Musings

This is generally a short musing for now, since I am recovering from a fun and guest-filled Easter weekend, and my co-worker is expecting his third child in about….now. (Actually, his wife has not given birth yet, but the due date is here and she’s starting feel initial contractions, so this week is expected to see me here alone at work)

However, my musing for the day is one I’d like to see comments and engage in a hearty discussion with someone on. Mostly for the somewhat belittling humor I initially felt when reading the linked article, and how it reflects my own archaeological paradigm.

Question: Given a set of data-points and artifacts which appear to deviate from the local norm, construct a reasoned hypothesis to explain their existence in relation to historically localized phenomena.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/104631-tunguska_meteorite-0

Putting aside my own “rational” thoughts on the Tunguska incident, the article linked above is quite interesting.

Not just because it seems highly implausible to my worldview and my own understanding of the reported ‘facts’, but in terms of the potential propaganda-slant this takes, and it’s ability to be read in terms of being myth.

On one hand, the article may be taking some unusual objects and applying a non-mainstream scientific viewpoint to explain it. If that is the case, it is simply a misguided attempt to delude the local population in the area.

However, what’s the harm in the story, if it is at least superficially plausable? Will the locals there sleep any worse thinking that instead of some random rock almost destroying their landscape, a sentient being helped save their landscape? Isn’t that the root of what religions do? Unite a culture with common mythology, in order to better the community? (controlling-the-community trends of organized religion aside).

Interesting thought….and one I’m going to ponder over the next day or so.

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Well, in case you needed to calculate it yourself…

((19*t+u-w-(u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w- (u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-z)mod7)-7*(t+11*(19*t+u-w(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+22*(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w-(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-g)mod7)+114)\31

Happy Easter!

also, for you non-anglo-christian inclined readers, if ye be reading:

Happy Purim (Jewish holiday)

Narouz (Persian New Year)

Eid Milad an Nabi, (Happy Birthday Prophet Muhammad)

Small Holi, (Hindu Festival of Colours)

Magha Puja ( Buddhist “Fourfold Assembly” day)

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In more muse-worthy discussion, spring is officially here in my neck of the woods..er… field?

Every year in March, I start fretting about our garden, and watching outside to see if the nearby farms are ready to start preemptive plowing. I feel like winter is going away, and we need to get outside and do stuff, plant stuff! Yet I know that in early (and late) March, there is still a good chance of snow, and late April is really when things get in the ground around here. In fact, as I type this, mere hours away from our big Weekend involving guests at the house, dining at a huge annual buffet, and egg-hunts, it is below freezing and snow is accumulating on the cars again. I’ll have to de-ice the doors before driving home from work!

I’ve attributed this early anxiety to my being raised farther south than where I live now, and the general climate being slightly ‘off-schedule‘, compared to my fondest childhood memories. (Perhaps my friend Nettle has similar experience, having migrated south to the Big City?) Where I grew up, it really was time to start serious browsing of seed catalogs, and the big amish farms started, if not full plowing, then getting the equipment hitched up and tightened. Within one or two weeks, things will be blooming down there. Around upstate New York now, the trees are only considering the possibility of budding out.

Lately though, in the past few years, started to drift away from specific date-centric celebrations of seasons (with the exception of solstices, equinoxes, and birthdays, etc). More and more, I am building a set of internal correspondences for general seasonality and celebration. The subtly spiritual side of being in-tune with the world around me has taken it’s cues from the local area, rather than the printed dates on my desk. Most notably felt was this past Imbolc, where the feeling of coming spring remained aloof and distant in the midst of our wintery weather.

As a timely example, I can say with authority (at least to my own heart) that spring has arrived. Not because this ball of rock orbiting the sun has swung around to a certain point. Not because of the clock on my computer reading off dates similar to 03/21/xx. I know it is spring because of the geese.

This past week, I have seen flocks of waterfowl across the sky in growing numbers. It’s hard to picture, but perhaps even more geese than crows are visible on my evening drives home. Yesterday, I looked out at our pond to see four Branta Canadensis floating around! To me, that is a stronger sign than any easter-themed flowers, eggs, and chocolate.

Going solely on the calendar, especially in terms of Easter celebrations, which tend to fluctuate all across the month of April, seems a tad bit silly as a measuring stick. For the rest of the country, and probably a more useful truism in the European climate which helped create the iconic imagery for these festivals, this time of year is reflected in the return of nature’s growth.

Perhaps this observation is a result of being more in-tune with the place. I’ve lived here, going on a decade now. (Wow, has it really been that long?!!) I’m starting to get used to the changing seasons in a way that is meaningful to my innermost mind. Logically, I still cling to the habitual time-frames I grew up with, and habits die hard. Beyond that though, I think that the semi-conscious thought of marking local signs like our pond-dwellers to the seasons is my brain’s way of re-connecting without having to break up those old habits.

For whatever reason, it’s working, so I won’t dig too deeply into the reasons, other than to acknowledge the observation and enjoy it. Spring is here. The geese came home.

What a great worm moon!

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Not much to muse about lately….so here’s a brief update on random life.
It’s the grind of tax season for Mrs Maebius, so my evenings are filled with the joy of playing with the sprogling while she does the hermit-thing in the computer room.

My World of Warcraft playing has gone down slightly, though I am currently at a nice lvl 64 with Kanandi the Holy-troll priestess. Lots of fun with playing healer, moreso than any other class I’ve played, which is reflected in the fact that while Kanandi is the second-youngest character I created, she is my highest level now…. and my guild is awesome. (also have a lvl 12 rogue just to have an unused bank-mule who can craft me some minor potions for everyday use).

Otherwise, the official spring-time holiday is fast approaching. Birthdays coming up for Varulv and Mrs Maebius…Easter just around the corner, so last night we coloured a few eggs (more this weekend when company visits).

I’m sure I’ll have more time in the evenings to wax muse-ical [sic] and include a slighty more thought-provoked posting here. Until then, we are just sitting around, enjoying the slightly warming weather, seeing the light at the end of winter’s tunnel just ahead, and getting ready to head back outdoors to play before it gets dark too early.

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While I have more than a passing interest in the current cultural and societal future, in regards to Hubbert Peak, and it’s affects on oil and pretty much our entire economic/technological infrastructure, there is another Peak which has been crossed, and have not found any good references to help explain it.

I’m talking about my self-referenced “The SpongeBob Artistry Phenomenon”, and how it relates to the animation industry. In essence, I think that while computer generated imagery continues to make huge improvements over time, the classic animation styles are suffering for it.

There is a really, really good article regarding the decline of “Saturday Morning Cartoons” which highlights a different facet of this troublesome situation. Perhaps the cheapness to produce lower-quality shows is the result of the more general inclination of today’s internet-enabled kids to not be sitting at home watching TV much, and the resulting budget constraints. But my musing here is specifically related to the quality of animation, which is only the partial story in that article.

This situation is also not directly related to the phasing out of hand-drawn Cel-based animation where artists penciled and painted on transparent sheets which were photographed in sequence. Digital ink and paint has now replaced pencils and pigmented liquids, but still maintains the procedural style of this type of traditional animation.

(side note, Princess Mononoke (1997) was one of the last feature-films to incorporate largely hand-drawn cel-colored techniques! Disney has been using digital methods since 1989. [source=wikipedia])

A few years ago, Disney closed one of it’s larger hand-drawn animation studios. Back in around 2003 or so, they even made an announcement to the effect that they would stop all 2D animation projects and concentrate more fully with Pixar and the 3D CGI market. Luckily, they have recanted that and are doing a decent mix of 2D and 3D styles now. I found a decent blog write-up to this shift (though it’s not specifically about Disney).

I also can not argue that today’s CGI-enabled effects are becoming more and more realistic. This is nothing to complain about, as long as movies don’t get stuck in the Uncanny Valley. The movie “Jurassic Park” made headlines for their use of believable CGI ‘actors’, and a no less honorable effort was made with the memorabe Jar-Jar Binks in the Star Wars films.

The issue I take is with the current popular 2D cartoon styles. Why do fingers need to be blocky? Why does every single thing on Saturday mornings either have to be manga-themed, or else so squared-off, unproportional and hyper-accented? Spongebob is debatable, since he is not based of any sort of real person-shaped figure, but do so many other shows and movies have to follow that style?

Take for example, some getting-outdated movies and current shows, as examples of this bothersome trend. Atlantis: the Lost empire, the 1999 adaptation of Tarzan, The Emperors New Groove (and the current Saturday cartoon “Emperor’s New School“, Kim Possible (which is actually a quality show), The Replacements, and Chaotic. All of these I have seen on TV in the past month with the exception of Tarzan, which can go hide in a cave for all that I enjoyed it.

I may be a bit nostalgic, or even more than a bit perhaps, but I remember while the plots of my favorite shows are potentially just as vapid and predictable as these new shows, at least the animation style looked a bit more polished and clean. People looked more like people. Cartoon animals were allowed to look more impressionistic.

Hanna-Barbera was king in my youth, and is a great example of the quality I am talking about. Likewise, if you ignore the cheesy 80’s references, Jem and the Holograms, Dungeons & Dragons, and G.I. Joe had characters that looked (to me) more like real people than today’s current fare. (Though both G.I.Joe Sigma Six, and the newest “He-man: Masters of the Universe are strikingly more manga in their newest incarnations, which isn’t bad.)

So I wonder, are my eyes just stuck in the past in terms of popular style, or is this trend more symptomatic of more/faster/cheaper cartoons in today’s financially competitive market?

And if this trend is due to slacking style on the part of the animators (likely due to cost constraints) are there any ways to recover? Or have we passed the peak of cartoon coolness?

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As a follow-up to this posting, regarding being mindful of food, here are my thoughts after doing that practice for two months.

Initially, the process of stopping for a brief moment was irritating after the first week. Intellectually, I understood that my process for this experiment was going take a bit of determination, but it still seemed that my “monkey mind” rallied against the effort for a few days there. Interesting….

Eventually, that rebellious nature gave up and I actually started to enjoy the vague challenge of tracing foodstuffs to its’ sources. It became almost second nature, and did not require much effort at all. Towards the end of the month, I didn’t even mentally make the connection in compartmentalized terms of Sandwich >> Bread >>Wheat + Sandwich >> Meatloaf >> Hamburger >> Cow + Garnish >> Gardens. ( alternately, Egg salad or marinated chicken strips for the protein part of the sandwich innards)
It became more of a matter of “Sandwich > process” and even that was not so much words and images as it was a vague sense of feeling “I understand the origins of the meal”.

In retrospect, I am very glad I did this little experiment, and while I no longer mentally rationalize the matter, I think it has helped subtly steer me towards a better eating regime. I still do not got out of my way to be totally organic, free range, and all natural, but when faced with a fried chicken sandwich at work or a salad for lunch (on the Rare times I do not pack leftovers) I am leaning towards the salad instead.

A side benefit of this change has made me not nearly so snacky during work. I used to nibble of sunflower seeds, or a bag of popcorn (bulk from this store, not the microwave kind), or more usually, a bag of candy. More recently, I skip the salty nuts and either grab some gorp I made, or just chew a stick of gum all afternoon to cancel the oral fixation of chewing something.

As part of my next experiment, since this one I consider a success, I will begin setting aside 15 minutes a day at work to sit quietly and meditate on some subject or other. At first, I am thinking I will just concentrate on de-stressing and relaxing while at work. I’ve done it for two days this week mostly to see if I could remember to take time out of my lunch and sit quietly in my car, instead of not leaving my desk and surfing the web. Seems like it will work out.

I’ll check back next new moon, to report on the newest incarnation of mindful moon-musings! See you then!

PS: Since twinkies were referenced in my original musing, and I am still an avid world of Warcraft player…here’s an image I found quite humorous.

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I found the camera cable, and was able to dump a good backlog of images to a more PC-friendly location (ie: my hard drive and subsequently a CD-rom).

So, here are four fun images to keep you occupied until a real Musing-style post hits the site in a day or two….

First, announced briefly over here, was my wife’s grandfather turned a century old earlier this month, and had a wonderful party with all sorts of relatives, friends, and the like. Here’s the man of honor himself, presiding over the cake & candle ritual. One candle per decade, Awesome!

Next, mentioned in this posting on Happy Camping, is a shot of the new bathroom style. The walls are painted “Happy Camper” green, which fits nicely with the general use of the room. *wink*

Thirdly, there was a strange visitor to our house, who took control of the Wii for the day, and played “the TMNT game” for hours upon hours, giggling the whole time. Isn’t he adorable!

Finally, after years of deliberation, and in order to help out a good friend get some practice with his chosen hobby, I have gotten myself re-inked. This design, which is not 100% completed yet and will get some touch-up work and perhaps a bit of colour, has lots of cool symbolism for me, which may be described in a separate post someday. This solar-inspired design is also going on my djembe head, in either henna, or watercolors, because it is just that cool to me. ….it’s still a bit ouchy though today.

Sorry for blurry pic. The camera was out of batteries, so I had to keep snapping it, hoping to grab the image before it turned itself off.

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Recently, I was told about a potential opening at a nearby military-type base, for an IT support tech. Essentially, what I am doing now at my current job of 10 years, though with a more UNIX bend, while I have more Windows experience, and relatively no experience with Emacs or butterflies.

The pay for this ‘entry level’ position seems to be on-par with my current wages, (and with a 5 year gap of not even a cost-of-living increase here, that’s hardly surprising), and has the additional benefit of being a “government job”. This means much better benefits, potential to promote upwards as time/experience qualifies me, and a decent chance of retirement in 20 years or so, if current social economics stay the same, and the world doesn’t suddenly go into a post-hubbard’s-peak implosion.

I am applying, though it is with a huge amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

At the surface, and to everyone I’ve talked to, this is a great opportunity. Go for it, they cry, even if you take a minor pay-cut now, in 2 years you’ll be further ahead than you are at this current place. …and it does sound like a decent job, if I buckle down and brush up on my Unix and re-familiarize myself with Java instead of PHP.

However, I keep coming around to the question of “do I want this?”. I have generally thought in my inner-most worry that I simply do not think I prefer to be in an IT support position “when I grow up”. I can’t put my finger on it, and have written and said over and over in my head how to explain the doubt, but have yet to nail down the feeling in concrete terms. Don’t even try asking “Well what DO you want to be when you grow up?” because I’ve asked that very question over and over again, with little headway towards and answer.

In the interest of brainstorming phrases, proceed with caution below, this could get wordy…

I want to ‘Do something” with my job, and somehow, even at this current place, I dont get that satisfaction. I like the job itself, but every time a mouse or keyboard breaks, I replace it. This can be argued to be “helping” that customer do their job, but doesn’t seem to “fill my soul” in the same way that helping rake the neighbor’s yard does.<

I love computers, and don’t think I would deal well if I had to distance myself from the online world. World of Warcraft is an escape for me, from the drudgery of life, and a way to keep social contact with distant friends. Heck, even this blog is an online way to network for me. But I under that all, I keep thinking the online world is still “virtual”, and it would be even better if I could get involved with groups of people consistently off-line, such as the Open Drum group I recently found. The problem, is all my current outside interests involve camping, drumming, gaming, and other distinctly non-technical situations.

I have said and pondered before that my ideal “job/lifestyle” would be to own a hunk of land, grow things on it, and have either a teashop, or otherwise hold workshops there to teach others about herbs, winderness survival, ecological stuff, painting river rocks, etc.

For those who know what I mean when I say “I want Susan Weed’s land and workshop-meetings”, it fits my mental image of Utopia somewhat, though with a different focus. However, in that regard, I am also honest enough with myself to know that I do not have the business-mind to pull something like that off. I tend to start 10 projects before I finish the first one. If I was to suddenly win the lottery and all bills were paid off, I could see myself getting a teashop and paying people to actually run the place, while I helped be a creative influence in planning events, and helping restock shelves. …but then again, would I keep the interest up in 5 years, or would the novelty of non-computer-support wear off then?

Additionally, there is the matter of my current job. For all I complain about it, it’s not really that bad. Sure the boss is irritating, but aren’t we all at times? Granted, I have no immediate promotion opportunities unless I look outside this department, but that makes me at the “top of the heap” here on the bottom rung of this ladder. I’ve been here longest, I am frequently called upon to help with the tricky things, since I stuck around through the last 10 years worth of changes, and if not the most technical-minded, I know the processes that changed, and how they fit into the current workings of the company better than my co-worker. And I am willing to backup our night-shift operator in emergencies, often with only a few hours notice, unlike some other folks. I know the mainframe print position better than the official mainframe print operator. And because of how this, if I need to take an emergency day off to deal with something unexpected, I can simply walk over to my boss and say “I’ll be back tomorrow” and not feel bad about leaving early. King of the molehill is still a king, right?

In talking to my wife, we both agree that the worst that could happen is I grab a temporary place at McDonalds if needed someday. Heck, when I first moved to New York with nothing but a bag of soot-stained books and some spare clothes, I got hired at my current office within the week. I don’t mind temp-jobs and we can adjust financially without too much strain. Life has a way of helping work out the kinks and moving us all forward.

So, I sit at a tough crossroads here.
On one hand, there is an opportunity before me, which would require a change on my part, and a bit of re-learning to happen if I am hired. On the other hand, there’s the sinking feeling that if I stepped across that bridge, it would burst into flames and send me into the river below.

I can swim, no problem…but is the stick I might be grabbing for this journey tipped with sulpher and flint, or a nice comfy rubber-foot?

I don’t have the answer yet, nor do you. Could this even be the dreaded “Midlife Crisis?!” I doubt that.

I wanted to muse about it here, so there you go.

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