Time considered as a helix of semiprecious little journal entries, all alike

[avram]

One useful thing about journaling is that you can look back years later and say “Oh, that’s how long I’ve been doing that!” Also, “Crap, look at all the typos!”

I’ve been browsing through Natter, the occasional online journal I kept on my personal website, Pigs & Fishes, back before I’d ever heard of LiveJournal. (Possibly before LJ was invented.) Discoveries:

• 9 January 1997 — First real entry.
• 25 February 1997 — The black-and-white cookies entry. For years afterwards I got mail from people asking me questions about black-and-white cookies. This page is the #4 hit on Google for the string black and white cookies. I don’t even particularly like the things.
• 19 March 1997 — I’m getting tired of Magic: the Gathering.
• 10 April 1997 — First NYC rasff meeting. I suspect it won’t be long before the last one.
• 12 May 1997 — I move up from a way-obsolete Mac IIvx to a slightly less obsolete Power Mac 7200/75. It has 32 megs of RAM! It runs MacOS 7! (Current machine: G4 Titanium PowerBook, half a gig of RAM, MacOS X 10.2.) Part of Godzilla movie is being shot in office neighborhood.
• 3 November 1997 — I’m laid off from my job at Crossover.
• 4 November 1997 — I’ve been helping copyedit The Star Trek Encyclopedia.
• 22 November 1997 — I start Master and Commander, the first Aubrey and Maturin book.
• 26 March 1998 — Looks like I’m starting to get serious about drawing again.
• 2 April 1998 — Ah, this is the period where I’m getting up early and having tea and grapefruit for breakfast.
• 5 May 1998 — I’m starting to get rid of books, a major step in my relationship with material possessions. I still have too many of the damn things.
• 11 May 1998 — I start my weblog.
• 6 May 1998 — I say, after reading Cerebus #230: “Man, I've been reading this comic for 180 issues, and there are 70 to go, a bit under six years, until it ends. That's a big part of my life.” I gave up a couple of months ago, with 18 issues to go.
• 15 May 1998 — I first become acquainted with the artwork of Umberto Boccioni.
• 1 June 1998 — Interport, my then-ISP, is acquired by RCN. I get a Bigfoot email address.
• 24 July 1998 — Chris’s guest entry: Top Ten Microsoft Office Assistants or villains from The Tick.
• 1 August 1998 — I’m back at Crossover, as a contract worker.
• 14 November 1998 — Memory upgrade! 64 megs!
• 30 December 1998 — I first join Eastern Athletic and start working out. I weigh 302 pounds.
• 12 January 1999 — I get my first Leatherman, lost this past Thursday.
• 29 January 1999 — I am once more fully employed at Crossover, and Chris is no longer at ITS.
• 16 February 1999 — I first ordered some of Ken McLeod’s books. (I’m almost done rereading his Fall Revolution series.)
• 2 March 1999 — Poem: “Attention all passengers”.
• 7 March 1999 — My first exposure to Cowboy Bebop and Revolutionary Girl Utena.
• 11 March 1999 — “2,000 books”, a stark realiztion of my own mortality. I’m not cheered by the fact that it’s now three and a half years later.
• 30 April 1999 — My letter to The New York Times that almost got published.
• 5 December 1999 — I’ve lost 19 pounds for the first time.
• 15 December 1999 — Chris and I get back together (“Sort of. In a non-cohabiting, non-exclusive kind of way.”), after having broken up a few months earlier, during a Natter hiatus.
• 27 December 1999 — I buy an Icehouse set and a Manhattan Portage Wallstreeter bag, I’m starting to fiddle with PHP and CSS.
• 8 January 2000 — I see the Brooklyn Museum’s famous “Sensation” exhibit.
• 10 February 2000 — “No sandals today?” “That’s a different guy.”
• 29 February 2000 — My Seattle trip.
• 15 April 2000 — I actually manage to see some episodes of Cowboy Bebop. I start reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
• 14 May 2000 — Demon-head doodle. I’ve discovered water-soluble colored pencils. I weigh 280 pounds.
• 28 May 2000 — I’ve been trying to learn to read Japanese.
• 31 May 2000 — “Mojo Jojo — Microsoft User”
• 2 July 2000 — First visit to the Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth & Space. I’m getting feedback from prospective players about what will eventually become my “Wander Angels” RPG campaign.
• 16 July 2000 — “What most people mean when they say ‘city’ describes what New Yorkers mean when they say ‘neighborhood.’ New York is what you would get if you took several dozen regular cities (not all American), smooshed them togther, and ran a mass-transit system through them to make it easy to get around. ”
• 12 August 2000 — The machine I’m soon going to be setting up in the new apartment as a file server or something is my brand-new office Linux box.
• 19 August 2000 — Free They Might Be Giants concert in Prospect Park.
• 14 October 2000 — Dalia first tells me about Spring Street Studio, with $10 life drawing sessions. It wasn’t till 18 April 2002 that I actually went there.

I noticed a pattern to my weight-loss efforts. Not one that surprises me either.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

On the entry on "what most people mean when they say city", we were idly counting cathedrals one day, and deciding Montreal has four.

Me: "No wonder the people are content." (You can't more than one per city in Civilization.)

Rysmiel: "But maybe it's actually four cities on adjacent squares?"

Me: "Well, yes, that's what it technically is, or was, before the merger a couple of years ago."

Zorinth: "I wonder if you can do mergers like that in Civ II?"

Cathedral counting

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

A googlesearch on new york cathedral turns up 5 edifices calling themselves cathedral in new york: RC, Epis., Russian, Armenian, Greek.

But this doesn't tell the whole story: what about the huge christian edifices that don't style themselves cathedrals? To say nothing of the synagogues, and to a lesser extent mosques (only in number: I can't really say that any of the synagogues in the city can really compete with the mosque on the upper east side), whose physical plants are of cathedresque stature.

Or to further the civ analogy, count UNIVERSITIES: need I mention that CUNY is not a school, but a sytem? Or wonders! This is my biggest gripe with civ, and with most games that include multiple city building: you can't make anything even vaguely similar to modern cities, let alone THE CITY.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

What are the Ken McLeod Fall Revolution books? "The Star Road" and the others in that series?

I've read all the ones in the series beginning with "The Star Road" and I'm reading "The Cosmonaut Keep" series, although I don't have a handle on it yet. I'm just afeerd that I'm missing a series or something.

Did you finish the Aubrey/Maturin books?

I like the quote about New York.

[avram]

The Fall Revolution series is The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, and The Sky Road, not necessarily in that order. (The Star Fraction was written first, but I'd recommend most readers start with The Stone Canal. I noticed a whole lot more stuff the second time through than I did on first reading, especially the jokes.

The Engines of Light series is Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light, and the soon to be released Engine City. Cosmonaut Keep is a very odd book; it took me till most of the way through before I had a good handle on the setting. I'll probably reread that series too when the third one comes out.

I read the first four or so of the Aubrey/Maturin books.

Re:

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for the elucidation. In that case, I've read the Fall Revolution books and am reading the Engines of Light books as they appear.

When I really got going on the Aubrey/Maturin books, I bought them two at a time so I wouldn't run out in the middle. I'd finish one and pick the next one up immediately. Yeah!

Chris has another NYC cathedral.

[(Anonymous)]

St. James Cathedral-Basilica, the seat of the RC Diocese of Brooklyn (which is separate from the New York Archdiocese), around the corner from my mother's. I think there may be another Greek Orthodox one in Brooklyn too. We are the Borough of Churches, after all!