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JAVASCRIPT ERROR I know there are a lot of flash haters out there, but I must tell you, it's a thousand times more annoying to go to a page and have a javascript error pop up on your screen. Since I have Visual C++, my explorer always asks me if I wanna debug or not and if I accidentally hit 'Yes,' there goes IE. Pain in my ass! ACE VENTURA We're watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective right now. It's definitely Jim Carrey's most hilarious movie ever. I liked The Mask, too, but it's nothing like Ace Ventura. My favorite quote is: "If I'm not back in five minutes... just wait longer!" It's a shame they had to go and ruin it. PETRINETS Having spent most of the day fixing my damn PetriNet, I'm glad that I finally got the "syntax check successful" message. I don't even wanna think of all the problems it will give me once I try loading it into the database. I guess the steam ran out of my Thursday. I might be bored or tired. I think I'm ready for the weekend. What about you? REAL AGE Wanna know your real age? I've started getting tips from them daily and some of the tips are quite interesting. Today's tip says that it's bad to read in bed. If you can't fall asleep, get up and read in a chair, it says. Save your bed for sleeping. THURSDAY Thursday might be my favorite week-day. It's a day when you know the week is almost over, but not yet and you enjoy the anticipation. I seem to get more work done on Thursday than any other day. Wednesday is kinda neat as it's the middle of the week but there are still two more days to go. Friday, you know it's over and you're not really motivated, you just wait for the day to end, so you can go home. Anyhow, I'm enojoying my Thursday this week. A McSweeney's article for people who love angels. It's quite funny. Mel C of the Spice Girls says she wants men, not women. I know you wanted to know. COFFEE = BAD Take my poll, won't you? Here's the link to the fire I mentioned last night. In case you didn't already know, coffee is bad and chocolate is good. I'm glad everyone agrees. JETTA AD Have you seen the recent Jetta ads? The one where the guy rushes into the house to pull his girlfriend out. She's painting her toenails and he grabs her and drags her out, all excited. Once in the yard, he shows her how the windows open at the push of a button. As he's excited playing with the automated windows, she goes back in the house, with that oh-men look on her face. It's such a great ad! Mostly cause, I think it represents the genders and their reactions so well. SALINGER As a huge fan of JD Salinger, I read all of his books. While my favorite was Franny and Zooey, I really enjoyed Nine Stories and Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour. While, The Catcher in the Rye is his most famous, I think his other books are just as good, if not better. Anyhow, his daughter has decided to write a book about their life. If you're a fan, you might know that he is quite a recluse and hasn't published a thing in 47 years. While I never read Maynard's book, I think I might take a look at this one. FIRE IN NJ A huge fire is going on in New Jersey right now. Thank God, there are no people living in the area, but this is the largest fire I've seen in the New York area since I moved here. I tried to link in an article about it, but there's nothing, yet. I guess Broadcast news is speedier than the net. HOLIDAY FLIGHTS Doing anything for the holiday weekend? I think Memorial day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day are the worst days to travel in the summer. Everyone in the US wants to go somewhere for the three-day-weekend and most of us end up stuck in traffic or get cozy at the airport. I can't remember one holiday weekend when the flights weren't delayed. So why do this each year? I guess we must like torture. On that note, we are, of course, traveling this weekend. :-) TIVO OR NOT? Jake's birthday is coming up in less than a week and I still haven't found any presents. I'm getting desperate. As of now, the most feasible option is TiVo, but I don't have enough info on it. It sounds like a neat idea, I'm just not sure whether it actually is or not. VENICE Are you a sun-lover? Read this. I think it might make you reconsider. At least, I hope so. There was an article in yesterday's New York Times about Venice sinking. I can't find it in their web page or I would link it for you. The article talked about how the government is about to approve a multi-million dollar project to save Venice while some professor from Colgate proved that the proposal will not work. The professor is trying to make his findings public so that the project will get dropped, and so they can start searching for a feasible alternative. If you've never been to Venice, I think you should try to go soon cause I'm not sure how much longer this wonderful city will be around. CANDIES' TEST The Candie's Personality Test says that I'm a dreamer. It also says: "You want meaning out of life. People are important to you. Your relationships can make or break your day. Your friends are amazed at how well your intuition works for you. You demand no less than truth and justice." Wha'dya think? COMMENCEMENT SPEECH I got Conan's Commencement Speech in my email several weeks ago. For those of you who still haven't seen it, it's quite hilarious. BIRDIE AND I Now that I'm home four days a week, instead of two, my bird and I seem to have a closer relationship. The small parakeet comes and hangs out next to my keyboard as I type. He'll chew on my jewelry for a bit and then, not getting the attention he really wants, he'll jump on the keys and start chirping. He gets louder and louder till I pick him up and put him on my shoulder. Even then, he continues to chirp and climbs all over my face, hanging down from my hair into my eyes. He's quite cute actually. WOMEN WITH ATTITUDE The latest trend of woman-with-an-attitude movies is quite interesting. If you've seen the previews for Coyote Ugly, Bring It On and Love and Sex, you'll know what I mean. Although I haven't had the pleasure of seeing Bring It On, yet, I've seen the other two and they were less about sex than the preview hinted. Actually the entire plot of Coyote Ugly was skipped in the preview. Do you think that says something about what moviemakers think attracts a viewer to a movie? Oh and let's not forget about Whipped, opening this weekend. Quite a selection we've got. HITTING KIDS I seem to have a strong aversion against people who hit their children. As I walk down the street, if I see a parent yelling at or slapping her kid, I feel like kicking the shit out of her or him. Honestly, I can't think of any cases where the kid deserves a slap. This is how we introduce violence to the society, not through movies or stupid computer games. I have the same problem with people who treat their dogs that way. Or people who kick pigeons. Why must you enjoy someone else's pain? Just let everyone be! Especially the animals and children. Ok, done lecturing. Actually one more thing. As a dog person, I feel like all dog people should be nice and approachable humans. That's what differentiates the dog people from the cat people. (Tho I admit to being both, I lean slightly more towards being a dog-person.) When I see an owner walking his puppy on the street and she gives me this don't-you-dare-come-near-my-pet look, I feel peeved. This time, I'm really done, I promise. POLL ANYONE? Come on, go take my poll. Thank You. :) Today, I go back to the New York Society for the Deaf. Check back later for more details. DUMB LAWS Did you know that, in Italy, a man may be arrested for wearing a skirt? In Denmark, headlights must be on whenever a vehicle is being operated in order to distinguish it from parked cars. Funny enough, in New York, it's against the law to throw a ball at someone's head for fun and slippers are not to be worn after 10:00 P.M. Like these? Checkout more dumb laws. FLAGS Also, if you're curious about the history of flags, like I was, here's a small article which explains it in detail. Flags have been around for over 4,000 years and now every country has one. Neat, eh? SMELL I've just finished reading the smell section of Diane Ackerman's A Natural Histroy of the Senses and I learned an amazing number of fascinating facts. The Book talks about a disorder called anosmia which means that the person lost her sense of smell. (Or never had it.) It's interesting to me that when someone is blind or deaf, we can tell quite easily but I've never even thought of someone losing her sense of smell before. There even is an Open Smell Directory Project for people who suffer from anosmia. Quite interesting how many of us won't spend time thinking about something that we can't see. Or is it just me? POLL? So I decided I wanted to try a poll. Go ahead, tell me what you think, you know you want to. MORE ABOUT LIGHTS Oh and I forgot to mention that they turn off all the lights for "Day Without Art/Night Without Lights" : AIDS Aweness on December 1. EMPIRE STATE LIGHTS If you live in New York City, you might have wondered what the Empire State light's represent. The red, white and blue on American holidays is always easy to tell. So is the pale pink and green during Easter. There was a small article in last week's New York Times, which told the keys to some of the more unusual ones. For example, the tower goes pink and white in September for "Race for the Cure" for Breast Cancer. In October, they light up in purple, teal and white for the National Osteoporosis Society. October 3rd, the German Reunification day, turns the building's top to black, yellow and red. They also celebrate India Independence Day with green, white and orange and Portugal Day on June 10th with red, yellow and green. They have Pulaski Day with red and white in October and blue, white and blue for Hanukkah. The article also mentions that the building has a policy of not honoring commercial products, corporate events or private occasions. An exception was when in March 1995, the building went blue to celebrate the announcement of the blue M&Ms. CIDER HOUSE RILES Last night, we watched Cider House Rules. As a huge fan of John Irving, I was not really sure why I put off watching this movie as long as I have, but last night the reason became clear. The movie, as always, wasn't nearly as good as the book. I know Irving wrote the screenplay and it is much more similar to the book than Simon Birch was to A Prayer for Owen Meany, but still it's nowhere near the real thing. I love Irving's style of telling a story and how attached to his characters the reader gets. Cider House Rules is a particularly long and involved story and the beauty of the story on paper didn't, for me, translate to the movie. I guess I just shouldn't watch movies of books I loved. We also watched BASEketball which I don't really think should qualify as a movie. Happy Birthday Cheryl! EXTRA LIFE I just finished David Bennahum's awesome book called Extra Life: Coming of Age in the Cyberspace. The book is a great read for people interested in computers. It tells the story of how David, as the first generation of kids who grew up with computers, bought his first computer and started living his life through the keystrokes of a machine. There are many excellent point made in the book that made me think. As a person who grew up in Istanbul, computers didn't enter into my life until I was in fifth grade. My Commodore 64, floppy drive and dot matrix printer from those days is still sitting in storage in my parent's house. The interesting thing is, I never had the community that David had at school. In my high school there were no computer classes until after I graduated. Maybe this was because I went to an all-girls school or maybe the whole country was behind, I'm not exactly sure. Either way, I never saw a Macintosh, let alone a UNIX machine, till I stepped into the clusters of Carnegie Mellon. Filled with kids who'd had a computer since they could walk and ones who had already programmed in several languages before they made it to college, it was no wonder that I felt intimidated in my computer science classes. I was thinking, as I read this book, that it's amazing how much I've learned in the almost eight years I've been in this country. Then again, in some ways I'll probably never catch up to those kids who, like David, grew up hacking with 1,200 baud modems. While reading the part about Zork and how he and his roommate stayed up until late hours, playing the game for several weeks straight, I was reminded of my college years when sleep wasn't really an issue. I remember when my friends and I spent endless hours playing the LucasArts game Full Throttle. College is a time when you do fun things just cause they're fun. You listen to the same song over and over again or you yell out an inside joke ("I'll never find that secret passage") and laugh till you pee. You stay up all night, making the most of your T-3 line. I'm not sure what happens once you graduate; maybe because you have to get up and go to work in the morning, or because you no longer live in a building where the average age is 19, you just don't pull all-nighters anymore. You don't spend several weeks playing Doom across the network, boding with strangers as you try to sneak up on them and blow their brains out. I really think college is magical and unfortunately, as it is with all good things, you never appreciate it till it's over. I laughed as I read Harvard's lack of foresight on computers and what they represented for our future. Then again, Harvard has never been famous for their innovative technology. The interviews with Microsoft also made me chuckle out loud. As I read that he was excited about Microsoft, I felt terrified cause I'm a firm hater of the company, the further I read, the more I enjoyed what happened. Microsoft has never been and will never be about innovation. Finally, the issues of sharing code and not keeping secrets intrigued me. It's interesting that, in the beginning, people shared code and promoted the idea of building on top of their programs to make it more custom to your wants or to perfect it further. As companies like Microsoft and others emerged, the programs became close boxes that didn't dare share the details or 'secrets' of how they functioned. With the Open Source Movement we're returning back to the time when programmers can see the magic behind a program and tweak it and learn from it. I think that's the true power of computing. The idea of sharing and learning through the wisdom of others is what will bring programming to another level. Here's more of David's work. If you couldn't figure it out from my long passages above, I highly recommend this book. CELL PHONES Cell phones might just be the most annoying instruments ever. In NY, everyone has to own at least one and it seems talking loudly while walking down the street is a requirement. Last week, Jake and I were sitting at a deli, munching on our sandwiches while this woman, at the table behind us, felt the need to share the intricate details of her latest blind date with the entire deli. Over the cell phone, she retold her date, moment by moment, to her friend, making sure her voice was loud enough to be heard several blocks down. What happened to the days when eavesdropping was rude? This woman's loud voice almost dared us to ignore her. The same scenario repeated itself today as I sat downstairs at Light Delights. Another woman, walking her dog, approached the Chase ATMs, hollering at the top of her voice. She spoke so loudly that another girl and I looked up from our books and caught each other's eye. As this woman kept yelling, I got more and more agitated and almost felt like screaming at her to quiet down. I felt like saying, "You know what? I couldn't give two fucks about your personal life and please shut up!" Being the calm and collected person that I am, I gritted my teeth and felt thankful that the machines responded quickly so that she could get her damn cash and leave. Just cause you have a phone doesn't mean you own the streets and can speak loudly calling attention to yourself and disturbing all of us in the process. I won't even mention the rudeness of a cell phone ringing at a movie or theater cause I'm sure you've all had the pleasure of experiencing that before and if you have, you don't need any explanation from me. FAMKE I read this article about Famke Janssen in the New York Times a week ago and decided to keep an eye on the movie. Last night, I finally got to see Love and Sex and have mixed feelings about it. While I agree with NYT that Famke acted well and certainly shined in the movie, I also agree with the comments which point out that this movie wasn't exceptionally original. It seems this Times review agrees with me about the movie being kinda cute and recognizable. You can also read the article on women and sex, a subject more and more explored in today's movies. If you're a fan of the Bond lady, this is a neat movie to see, as long as you aren't striving for extreme originality. In other, really bad, news, Zapata corp decided to focus away from word.com. As a fan of word, I find this news quite terrible. BIG WORDS Know the meaning of concupiscent? Are you callipygian? Confused? Checkout Big Words. It will make you ebullient. SWEET ASPIRATIONS Sweet Aspirations is beautiful. I love its simplicity and the serene feeling it gives me as I browse through its pages. LINKAGE Have you seen Melanie Griffith's web page? I'll leave the comments to you on this one. Care about the world we live in? Check out oneworld.net. Their mission is: "OneWorld is dedicated to harnessing the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development." Here's some press about them. For some online activism, try out VoxCap. They have everything from Economy to Education. Wanna read about psychology instead? Try out PsycPort or brain.com. Hate it all? Just like to take tests, you say? Have fun with Kingdomality or use this iVillage allHealth test to figure out what career is for you. Still not satified? Here's another one that measures your charisma. Know some fun tests? Mail me. LEBOWSKI Right now, we're watching The Big Lebowski for the second time and, I must tell you, this move is awesome. My favorite line is: "Lebowski? Dude, that's your name!" You really must see it. CLUTTER Is clutter a problem for you? Take this test to find out. Me? That would be a 'Yes!' :) Checkout this Shot Glass Chess Set and the Slam Man both proudly brought to you by Firebox's Bachelor Pad. KINKOS This week’s Work article of Word is by a Kinko's employee and it's quite neat. This woman, Natasha Werther, talks about how she used to be a teacher and how she likes this job better. There are two things she mentions that I found particularly interesting. One is how, even when we grow up, we're put through tests and situation that make us fell like children. Like, in their case, they had to take this psychological exam as part of their application and then they had to take classes and exams while employed there. Also, she mentions the mystery shoppers and how the managers praise people in public and how no one wants to not have done well cause everyone will know about it. It’s funny how we always want people to think well of us and how desperate we are to please. While it's possible that Kinko’s does more of this than other firms, most large companies do treat their employees like children. They make you take tests or go through training about the company's culture. I find it quite interesting that when you're a kid, you look forward to a time when your words will not be overridden by adults and then you grow up and, in some ways, act even more childish than you ever did before. For example, the reason we have subjects like 'Is he approachable?' in our yearly feedback forms is because as they grow up, people become more judgmental and start segregating people. Whereas a kid who's never been told that someone is less important than he is would never know to make such a differentiation. Which then becomes the reason to treat these so-called adults like children. Therein lies the irony of the entire thing. Another interesting point she makes is about how her job has resolutions as opposed to everything else in life. She mentions teaching and marriage as examples. I think this is one of the reasons I like programming so much. When my code works, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment. The same goes for the 3-D graphics I do. Immediate feedback and a sense of completion. (Tho both in art and programming, you can always tweak things to be more perfect.) I get the same feeling when I finish a book. While I'm sad it's over, I feel fulfilled. In a world where we have no way of fixing or changing many things, it feels good to have something completed. Go read the word article, I think you might find it interesting, too. Let me know what you thought of it. Btw, I remember when word had that three-eyed smiley and I used to love it. I wish they brought it back. Even though they have some really neat layouts and effects, I miss the little smiley dude. MAKING CHANGES Here's another article on someone who's making changes in people's lives. It's long like most Fast Company articles are, but it's worth the read. CHARTER SCHOOL STORY You should read this article in the New York Times. It's about a new Charter School that opened up in the Bronx. I think it's amazing how some people sit and complain while others decide to take charge. The world would never improve if we all did nothing more than whining and thanks to the boom in the Economy, fewer and fewer young people choose their life according to their ideals. Most people go where the money is and stay there until more money shows up somewhere else. When I switched from a full-time job to a part-time one, giving up quite a sum of money, to spend a bit more time volunteering and learning, people looked at me like I was insane. There are two kinds of people in the world, it seems; those who want to help the world and those who wish to climb the corporate ladder. These two don't mix. Except in my case, where they do. I wish more people did both because sometimes the connections in the corporate world have the monetary power to make things happen. When was the last time you volunteered? FOX TEEN CHOICE AWARDS Watching the Fox Choice Teen Awards last night, I realized that I can't tell the difference between the members and songs of In Sync, 98degrees and Backstreet Boys. I wonder if that's a sign that I'm not a teenage anymore. That's what I get for watching Television when I should be reading I suppose. The thing is, I can differentiate between Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, so maybe it's not me. Oh well. I've seen the Monster ad about kids telling they want loser jobs many times before but each time I smile and enjoy it over again. That, to me, is the real power of an ad. Most quirky ads are interesting the first time around but as repeated they get annoying. If it has lasting power, then the company did a good job. EGGERS INTERVIEW I printed Dave Eggers interview with The Harvard Advocate after seeing it on Jason's page. It sat in my printer for a couple of days. The reason I even bothered to print it is mostly cause my boyfriend is a huge fan of McSweeney's. Anyhow, it sat in my printer for several days until, in an effort to find something to read during lunch, I grabbed the printouts on my way out. Since I am quite unfamiliar with Dave Eggers in general, a lot of the specific questions asked by Saadi went right over my head, but the answers Dave gave not only didn't require any historical knowledge but they were timeless. I am now officially a huge fan of this man. I strongly urge everyone to read this amazing response. Specifically the butterfly analogy of criticism. While Jason talks about how he feels he won't be able to understand how beauty is created unless he analyzes and dissects it, I feel that you can't learn that way. Art, in my opinion, is not something that's constructed, therefore it's impossible for someone else to break it into parts that can then be rebuilt by someone else to produce the same piece. I think you absorb and relate to art. It's an emotional process and not a scientific one. As a huge hater of critics in general, I found Dave's words inspirational. I love the way he chooses to construct his readings. It shows what a full-of-life person he is and finding an artist who is not full-of-himself is refreshing. His words relating to how you cannot judge other people and what they do is well put. Here's the part that best sums up that subject-matter: "What kind of small-hearted person wants an artist to adhere to a set of rules, to stay forever within a narrow envelope which we've created for them?" Think about that one for a while. He addresses the issue I find so fascinating about some people I've met who consider themselves a good judge of art. Just because something is popular doesn't automatically make it 'unreal.' What a twisted way to think! I love that he talks about not saying no and how he mentions that he doesn't get along with people who say no. I've met many people who think refusal is a form of coolness. Real people are never too busy or too important. They don't worry about the messages they send and the way people might judge what they do or say. "What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say." If we could all live with this frame of mind, not only would we all be happier, but the world would be such a better place. Thanks to Jason for pointing me towards this amazing article and I am glad people like Dave exist in this world. MOUSE I finally registered for all my classes. Yeay! Saturday night Jake and I went to a restaurant by our house to have dinner. The weather was so wonderful that we looked for a place with outside seating. As we sat on the bench outside the restaurant, waiting to get a table, a small, brown mouse scurried by us towards the tables. These tables were outside the restaurant but within a low barricade the restaurant had put to separate itself from the sidewalk. Jake and I looked at each other and waited for the shrieks to come. Ten minutes later, we were seated and forgot all about the mouse, until the woman in the table behind ours cried out a few unintelligible words as we saw the poor mouse run for his life squeezing below the tent barricade. The owner of the restaurant simply shook his head as the animal tried to find freedom. I truly think it's impossible to live in New York City if you're afraid of mice or bugs of any sort. You wouldn't be able to walk down the street or use the subway. As this little mouse made its way across the road, two women walked by and one shrieked while the other said, "Why are you so scared? It's Mickey Mouse." No joke. MOSQUITO Last night a mosquito bit me which, normally, wouldn't be anything more than annoying. Thanks to the recent breakout of disease carrying ones, the small bite might prove to be a huge problem. Isn't it amazing that amongst all this freedom and technology, I have to keep my windows closed in case a small creature decides to infect me in the process of sucking my blood? NYSD If you ever wondered what PEZ means or why Rolling Rock bottles have the number 33 on them, you must check out The Straight Dope. I've sat in the bookstore and spent hours reading random questions from his books and now, most of them are on the Web. At noon, I go back to New York Society for the Deaf. It's really interesting being there and working with deaf people. I'm always amazed at how flexible their fingers are and how quickly they sign. It also fascinates me how they make up signs for certain words. For example, last week, I helped a few women fill out a form for housing aide. One of the items on the form asked if they currently live in substandard housing. Another item asked if their rent is subsidized. I kept wondering if there is a sign for subsidized. The only way I managed to explain it to her was to ask if anyone helped pay her rent, but I bet there is a sign that would have conveyed it better. Sign Language is really amazing. It's the only language where you can say two totally different words at the same exact moment. BLOGGER I just started using blogger. I'm still not sure how well they work, but so many people are using it that I think it's worth a shot. We'll see.... CATEGORIZATION It amazes me how much Americans like to categorize. I wonder if it comes from the need to segregate or the need to belong. The idea of fitting into a compartment of some category pisses me off. When I fist came to the US, I went to a campus Jewish organization that made me fill out an application. A section asked me what kind of Jew I was. Up until that moment, I didn't even know that there were different kinds of Jews. In Turkey, I always knew myself as Jewish. Just Jewish. Isn't that enough of a category? Why do they need to break it down more? I am only comfortable with a few categories. Human. Female. Turkish. Jewish. That's about it. I'm not willing to go any deeper and I challenge you to give me a sound reason as to why I should. Wireframe Wireframe is by far one of the best sites on the web. You just have to check it out for yourself. I promise, you will love it. |
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