Well, I survived. My best estimate is that 700-800 people were there at the event’s peak, which was far more than I expected. I suspect that the SWIL equivalents at nearby academic institutions helped mobilize everyone.

There was a preponderance of geeky t-shirts, not just ones from XKCD. I was weird in that I was wearing a boring, collared polo shirt. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be “that guy” and wear a shirt from the comic. Plenty of people did that for me.

There was a big wall of signatures – somewhere, on one of them, is a simple “UltraNurd was here.” If someone chooses to google that, they will find me.

I chatted for a while with and ; their presence was not at all surprising, since they live only a few blocks away. I also ran into Mark R., class of something recent; he was at the Swarthmore alumni event a few weeks ago.

I did not see there anywhere, but she actually took pictures, and I forgot my camera.

The age cohort was not very diverse (a very fast fall-off over the age of… 25, I’d say). A much better male/female mix than I usually see at geeky events; I suppose that’s an indicator of XKCD’s broad appeal (as opposed to say, Penny Arcade, which to my knowledge is a very male audience).

There were a number of amusing things going on – a tape measure extension contest; some guy wrote out the DeCSS code on a sidewalk; lots of humours signs, posters, and shirts, and generally just a SWIL-write-large kind of crowd. The spectacle alone was entertaining.

In about an hour, I’ll be at some coordinates in North Cambridge that were specified in this web comic. If you don’t hear from me, assume it was all a trap and that I’ve been eaten by raptors.

put out a call on the Boston [FUN] list that there was a ticket for tonight’s Suzanne Vega concert at the Somerville Theater. I was ‘s last-minute replacement; I also got to chat briefly with Amy (Why am I blanking on your LJ? Stupid brain.), , and before and after the show.

It was good; I had heard some of her stuff on Radio Paradise, but I’m not an obsessed fan or anything. I was admittedly stingy with the standing ovation; I like to reserve those for when I’m really impressed. Also, I think planned encores are a little silly.

The opening act had some funny songs, and some with really cheesy lyrics. All in all, a good dose of culture for the evening.

I almost missed the concert, because while turning onto Rindge coming from work, my entire rear derailleur assembly fell off. I assume the locking screw has been missing for weeks, and it only just then worked its way loose from the rear axle spear. Dear Boston: repave your roads. Also, when you need to dig up a road for a utility fix, do a complete patch all the way across instead of a half-assed one that is just going to turn into a ditch of potholes. Thankfully, a quick repair on the sidewalk by Fresh Pond Parkway prevented from waiting outside the theater for too long.

A motorcycle officer passes you in the left lane while you are in the right lane; his lights are blinking, but there is no siren. He pulls into the intersection you are approaching, and stops traffic (your light was already red, anyway). What do you do?

I signaled my braking and stopped at the red light, and waited for a signal from the officer.

Said signal took the form of him angrily yelling “Get off the road!” at me.

Of course, had I been a car, with a full rear-view mirror, I would have seen the speeding funeral procession coming up from behind; however, since I was the only vehicle (other than the officer) on the road ahead of the procession, I had no indicators like other people pulling over, and I didn’t see anything with the quick look over my shoulder after the cop passed me.

My sense is that I did something incorrect, since the cop was obviously annoyed at my ignorance, but I’m not sure how I was supposed to know they were back there.

Now, had the cop been using his siren, I would have heard it coming from behind me and pulled over anyway. I assume they weren’t using sirens because it would disturb the funeral procession or something. I’m not sure why they were going so fast; maybe they were late. Then again, I don’t really “get” the fancy hearse funeral anyway. Have a nice prayer service and launch my ashes into space.

• To get into the building where you get your Harvard ID, you need a Harvard ID.
• Yelling “share the road” at a car looks like “asshole” (same vowels) if said car’s windows are closed.
• I can go on a blind date.
• I like the new Dr. Who.
• There is such a thing as Dalek porn. Thank you, Wikipedia, for informing me of that. ::shudder::
• Lots of Swatties are at Harvard this coming year.
• A red bell pepper ruptures when dropped two stories.
• The Internet is sometimes wrong. In this case, its tendency to cache maintained out of date information for a now-closed business.

So, I was having a discussion about verb tenses with a friend who is a copyeditor at a newspaper. The subject turned to us complaining about “pleaded” – the newspaperese past tense of “to plead”. Both of our NESIs say that it should be “pled”, by analogy with “to lead”/”led”.

That got us talking about “dove”, past tense of “to dive”, which I remember reading in Trask has taken over from “dived” in most American English dialects, by analogy with “to drive”/”drove”.

We started talking about other potentially silly irregular past tenses, and stumbled across an interesting case that I’m hoping someone can shed some light on. So, we have “to weave”/”weaved”. However, we do the analogy with “to leave”/”left”, and we get “weft” instead. Which is very, very interesting, because the noun forms, as in “weft and weave” (which I know I’ve read in a poem at some point), mean the two perpendicular thread directions on a loom.

So, the question is – does anyone know the order these words came about? It seems possible that the past tense was “weft”, and then on a loom you started to refer to the threads you had already weaved as “the weft”, and the thread you were just adding as “the weave”… and then for some reason the past tense got standardized.

Thoughts?

“Wasted Words” from Stand Back: The Anthology by The Allman Brothers Band

Thanks to ‘s reaction to my regular “Churchylizing” away message for Sunday mornings, the following t-shirt idea popped into my head. However, I’m not sure on the proper way to art it up, since I haven’t taken chemistry in 7 years.

First, we have a quotation from John 1 “In the beginning was the Word”; then we have a simple molecular diagram of an amino acid, H₂NCHRCOOH, but with the R group replaced with the text (probably in a cheesy overwrought gothic font) “Jesus”.

I’m trying to decide whether to do an L or R molecule… I think it would look better for the R group text to be flowing to the right, at the top of the molecule (so the carboxyl group would be pointing left, and the amine group would be at the bottom right).

So, is the joke funny at all? I find it amusing, but I wonder if it’s just stupid, or if too many people won’t get it, or think it blasphemous or something. The point is to get across the idea that you can believe in a creator god but also accept the scientific explanation for the origins of life on Earth.

“Melancholy Man” from Question Of Balance by The Moody Blues

Random thought of the day:

Today’s gospel was Luke 13:10-17, the story of Jesus healing a woman in the temple on the Sabbath.

I was reminded that, sometime shortly after learning this story in Sunday School, my sister and I started saying on Sundays that we couldn’t do our chores because it was the day of rest. I think my dad sort of bought it, too.

“And The Tide Rushes In” from Question Of Balance by The Moody Blues

So, my flight from Minneapolis back to Boston happened to have a group of at least 50 Japanese students. While waiting for my checked baggage, I noticed something: the typical American traveler uses what I would call a roller bag (a few, like me, use duffels or rolling duffels), whereas all of these students had a hard-shell vertical suitcase.

The main design distinctions are that a roller bag is soft-sided and has an extensible handle and only two sets of wheels that require it to be tipped (with the handle at a natural dragging height) to roll, whereas these suitcases were made of heavy-duty plastic, had an older-style flip-up carrying handle, and four casters on the bottom.

It’s entirely possible that their group was specifically instructed to use that type of suitcase, but now I’m wondering what technological marvels of luggage Japan has been cooking up while our domestic luggage manufacturers have been stagnating.

Also, I am convinced that baggage handlers hate me and consistently put my bag on the conveyor last to spite me for all those times I go carry-on only. Perhaps I should make the relevant sacrifices to Hermes before every flight?

Also, helping one of said students get their large bag off of the carousel earned me an “arigato” and a “sumimasen” and a short, crisp bow. I thought “sumimasen” meant “sorry”, but apparently there’s more to it than that, so in that context, it made sense. This is what I get for knowing approximately three words in Japanese, I suppose.

I think I saw 2001 the movie first, certainly didn’t understand it, then I read all four books in high school at some point. I don’t think I was even aware that there was a second movie until Netflix recommended it to me last year some time (yes, it only just now made it to the top of my queue).

So, first, 2010 is pretty generic sci-fi. It rather obviously doesn’t have the craft in Kubrick’s film, so while it wasn’t amazing, it wasn’t bad, either. I had forgotten how much the silence in space in 2001 changes the film.

As always, I am amused by what dated sci-fi got right, and what it got wrong. Part of that requires a certain level of special effects; the current capability of photoreal rendering lets you go pretty crazy with look-and-feel (yes, I’m thinking computer interfaces), whereas 2010 was doing mostly miniatures, set design, camera tricks, all the usual stuff.

I’m wondering when current sci-fi, like say Battlestar Galactica, will start to look really dated. They obivously thought ’80s hair was going to last a good 25 years after the film was made.

Also, when Dave Bowman shows up as an old man, my first thought was that he looked a lot like Dr. Soong (Brent Spiner in lots of makeup) from the nextgen episode “Brothers”. Guess what? Same makeup artist, Michael Westmore. I watch too much Star Trek.