It's an Exciting World

Makeup Party

We went over to Adam’s house for a makeup party. We decided that I would do Stephanie’s makeup and that she would do mine. I chose to make her look like an egyptian, she chose to make me a two face.

One side of the face has “normal” makeup and the other has “fancy” makeup.

We did this at Adam’s house with Andrew, Jeremy B, and a couple of people I hadn’t met before. I had a really nice alcohol free diet ginger beer, but I added a little bit of vodka. Adam also made a drink with lavender syrup. Adam also served really nice cheese, it was a goat cheese with garlic and herbs.

May 5, 2013 0

Shezan, Castro, and Shoreline Lake

After horseback riding Steph and I went straight to Shezan. Castro street at the time had an art fair going on. While we waited for our food at Shezan to be ready we went down the street and looked at some really amazing art. I got something for Nana, and possibly will get something there tomorrow for Dad. After about 20 min we went back to Shezan and got our food, which we took down to Shoreline lake to eat. The lake was really pretty, and I was hoping to see some goslings but no such luck.

May 4, 2013 0

Horseback Riding

We had an extra lesson of horseback riding today. The weather was a little warm for horseback riding, and my allergies have been giving me tons of problems. Once we got going and my adrenaline got up the allergies seemed to go away nicely, but they game back as soon as I stopped riding. Today I also got to ride Belle, a Belgian draft horse. She is really big, and I look kinda small on her.

Belle was really responsive to directions of where to go, but not so responsive on how quickly to go there. She also took really wide turns, and didn’t seemed bothered by me being there at all. It was kinda strange being on a horse as big as Belle, since I’m used to it mattering where I put my weight. With Belle, she didn’t really notice too much.

You can see how wide I have my legs splayed over Belle, she is incredibly wide.

Steph and I didn’t get to ride at the same time, but we still got to have a lot of fun. It was interesting to see her ride and watch Carla teach her. They do a lot more precision steering that I have been doing.

May 4, 2013 0

Stone Age

While waiting in line and in the movie theater, Nick, Steph, and I played some Stone Age on Nick’s Ipad. I really enjoy this game as it is well balanced, and has several interesting, but not too complex strategies. The randomness is sufficiently limited, but sufficiently random. The best part of the randomness is that you can get items to minimize and optimize the randomness. I really like doing that route, along with the cards. The cards plus tools has seemed to be the winning strategy so far in the games I’ve played, but that is a pretty limited number. We didn’t actually finish the game, but we probably will this weekend.

BGG Link

May 4, 2013 0

Ironman 3

The plot in this was very predictable, and most of it was obvious. The development was decently shallow, as were the characters. That being said, I really enjoyed robots fighting superhumans. Some of the small twists were pleasant, and the banter was better than most movies. That is somewhat to be expected in an Ironman movie, but it was still pleasant to see. I don’t think I’d want to watch this movie again, as some of the earlier superhero movies had much better plots, and were overall more enjoyable. I went with Steph, Nick, Adam, Brian, Candice, Andrew, and Jeremy B. We went to the AMC Mercado 20 near Great America.

May 4, 2013 0

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

This book shows some great ways to be less mindful and still good. The power of habit is all about how people get into habits, how they take over, and how they are structured. The habit is composed of 3 parts, the trigger, the action, and the reward. Knowing about how these 3 are a part of your habit will help in changing the habit. Triggers are something you try to recognize, not change. This is the same with the reward, just recognize the reward. In the middle of the habit change the action, so that the trigger can tell you when to do it and so that it produces the expected reward. This is a somewhat paradoxical way of mindfully being unmindful. As much as I don’t really buy into the whole end state of the Buddhist teaching, the practice of mindfulness has been nagging at me more and more. The power of habit makes unmindfulness mindful, and is something that can be leveraged when our willpower is low.

Audible Link

May 4, 2013 0

Eating Animals

This is a very interesting book, and I liked the listen. It goes into depth about the raising and slaughter of animals. Factory farming vs. pasture farming. How factory farming is pushing out any pasture farming they can. It makes me think more about the mindfulness proposed by the Buddhist books i’ve been listening to. This book is all about the mindfulness of eating. It makes complete sense about how Buddhists have a strict vegetarian diet. This is something that I’d like to be more mindful about, but it will be hard. The book also makes a note about how the social nature of eating can make it hard to start doing anything mindful about eating. If you say that you are not eating anything that comes from a factory farm, then people will have no idea how to meet your eating requirements. If you simply say you are vegetarian then people will know how to meet your culinary requirements. On the same point that it is hard to be around people and eat mindfully, it will make other people around you eat more mindfully if you do so. The social impacts of the eating go both ways, and can have a critical mass.

Audible Link

May 3, 2013 0

Suburbia

I played a great game of suburbia last night. The strategy of tentacles is working really well. This involves setting up lines where you can drop the great C buildings that come out and you can get the most benefit from them. I ended getting 99 points and winning against Nick, Tina, and Adam. In a second game Steph took my place. She did really well, and won despite Nick trying to thwart her. Nick didn’t realize it, but spending money early game on blocking someone else is going to completely destroy your economy.

May 2, 2013 0

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

This book looks at many of the similarities of evolution of genes and memes as has been put by other authors. The book also looks at the power laws associated with speed of activity, and how the requirements of a body, or city will diminish with the fourth root, the output will actually increase with the fourth root. This law doesn’t just apply to the physical world, but also applies to the digital world. The author then breaks does the innovations into two dimensions individualist vs. group and market vs. open source. He points out that the shift in the innovations of the past decades has been to group and open source. I think the principles of this book bring to mind some ideas that can be applied in larger settings, such that the previous norms will be destroyed, and replaced with much more open and fluid methods. I can think of a few markets that could use this kind of opening up. They open source does not need to be fully open, but only on the scale of a mostly open API. With your API and data being at the source of the platform. The example of this mostly open API that the author goes into detail about is twitter.

Audible Link

May 2, 2013 0