The Mandelbear's Musings

Blank list copied from marahmarie: Quarantine Meme's spreading like...the plague. I apparently started working on this Wednesday and got distracted before I could post it.

1. Are you an essential worker?

I'm retired, so not even a worker.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?

Maybe 0.5/day? Would be more, but I'm out of gin.

3. If you have kids... are they driving you nuts?

I have kids, but they're adults and living with their respective partners.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?

Refreshing news sites and maps way too often.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

One for curbside pickup, and a couple that were run for me.

6. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

Yes. More than one.

7. Are you keeping your housework done?

Yes.

8. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

Haven't watched any movies. I don't think streaming filk concerts count.

9. What are you streaming with?

YouTube.

10. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

No. For several reasons.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

Don't really have one; we're trying to get a decent variety.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

Not about the virus. And I'm not paranoid about my country's government; they really are out to get me.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

Thankfully, no.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

I don't even want to predict which year.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

Go out for dinner with as much of the family as I can collect on short notice.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

I'm an introvert. Right here is fine.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Somewhere between singing with my band and my weekly singing lessons.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

Not yet. And we have plenty of soap.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

Probably, but rice and beans gets old pretty quickly.

How it works: reply with "Oh! Shiny" and I'll choose three of your icons. Tell me about them: where they came from, what they mean to you, and/or when you deploy them. Drop a link here to your post in your own journal. Spread it around.

(Not sure how long it will take me, if there's a deluge of responses.)

jesse_the_k asked me about:

"My fandom predates TV"

A stylized, multicolor line drawing of a propeller beanie. The outlined gores are colored (left to right) red, purple, and blue; there are white spaces between them. The propeller is a green infinity sign.

I got this from lysana; it looks like it was made by her artist husband blackfyr. It has fallen out of use recently; I used it 26 times, between 2004 and 2011, for posts about science fiction fandom or conventions.

The icon isn't completely accurate; Science fiction fandom as we know it today dates back only to 1929. Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first electronic television, using his image dissector tube, in 1928, and mechanical versions existed before then. Television broadcasting, however, only started in the late 1930s.

"hacker traveling"

The background is a 3x3 grid of black lines on a white background; five black circles make a "glider", instantly familiar to anyone who knows about Conway's Game of Life. Against this background a picture of an old guy in a tweed cap moves counter-clockwise in a circle centered somewhere in the lower right-hand corner.

This icon was made by snobahr, in 2007; the moving image came from the cover of my CD, Coffee, Computers and Song, which was in production at the time. It was first used in this post, the second of two posts from OSCon 2007. It was used a total of 30 times in 2007 and 2008, once in 2009, and once in 2012, mostly for posts about software-related conventions.

Consonance
On a purple background, the word "CONSONANCE", in black. The letters are compressed toward the top, and the two "N"'s are the support towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is the logo of Consonance - The SF Bay Area Filk Convention. Colleen and I attended all of them until 2012, when we moved to Seattle, and a few after that; our last one was in 2015. This icon appears to have been used only once, in this post, live-blogged from the Interfilk concert.

With bonus poisson d'Avril.

So... I've seen this several places. Snippets from three works in progress.

Seen all sorts of places; looks like fun.

March 1951. Just about to turn four years old, living in a house on Perry Ave. in Norwalk, CT with my parents, my baby brother, and if I remember correctly a cat named Slipper (because she was "slippery").

March 1961. Still in the Perry Ave. house with my parents, my annoying kid brother, his collection of reptiles, a tank-full of fish, and a beagle named Timothy. A straight-A student in the hell that was junior high, feeling very much the outsider. Playing flute in the school band and just about to give up on piano.

March 1971. Going to grad school at Stanford, living in Columbae House and hanging out with a girl named Colleen. Still playing guitar.

March 1981. Living on Leigh Ave, San Jose, in a house that we were starting to call "Grand Central Starport", with my wife of five years, Colleen. In the SCA and going to science fiction conventions. I had just written my first filk song.

March 1991. Still living at Grand Central Starport with Colleen and a five-and-a-half-year-old then called Katy. Still receiving a dribble of royalties on my first (and so far, only) book.

March 2001. Still living at Grand Central Starport with Colleen and our two daughters.

March 2011. Still living at Grand Central Starport with Colleen, our 18-year-old daughter Emerald, and her boyfriend (who will be moving out in April). Still filking. Turning 64 this coming Sunday.

I would like all my friends here to comment on this post stating how you met me. But I want you to LIE. That's right. Just make it up. After you comment, feel free to copy this to your journal so others can do the same.

(From a couple of friends who, since they locked their posts, had best be left unidentified.)

I got this one from pocketnaomi. The rules: comment if you want me to give you a color... either one which I feel somehow associated with you, or just a random one. Post ten things that you like which are that color. pocketnaomi gave me BLUE.

1. Cobalt blue. I seem to have lost track of the little piece of cobalt glass Dad brought home from the lab when I was rather young, but it was a lovely shade of deep blue.
2. The sky. Especially when it's a deep, deep blue with high wisps of cirrus clouds around the edges.
3. Big Blue. IBM has deep roots reaching back to the age before software was a business, and it shows. They also made damned good laptops.
4. Blue agave, especially when made into tequila.
5. Star sapphires.
6. The microfiber washcloths I've been getting from Fry's lately -- fast drying, very absorbant, very good at scrubbing... and a lovely light blue.
7. My new GoLITE therapy lamp, with 30-odd bright blue LEDs.
8. Forget-me-nots. Also the blue iris we had growing in our back yard of the house where I grew up.
9. Blue plastic tarps. Actually I'm not particular about the color; the one we used as a sunshade in the SCA was green, but for some reason the blue ones seem to be easier to find. I have our present blue tarp out in the driveway protecting the bicycles right now.
10. George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue.

Barb, who lost her battle with breast cancer last year. Lynn, still fighting more than half a century after two mastectomies and a hysterectomy. Abe, pancreatic cancer, and Shirley, breast cancer, 11 years ago or close enough It still hurts. And that's just close family. Friends. Acquaintances. I've lost track.

In memory of family and friends who have lost the battle with cancer; and in support of the ones who continue to conquer it!

I've taken out the memish part -- post this if you feel like it. I know there are people on my friends list fighting cancer right now, and others who are grieving. I could name many of them, but probably not all. You know who you are.

Ganked from pocketnaomi but seen lots of places:

If I came with a warning label, what would it say?

(if you want to play along, post this on your own journal)

1. Fractals (Because of your default icon, I originally thought your LJ handle was short for Mandelbrot Bear.)

My handle is (partly) short for Mandelbrot Bear; it was shortened both to make it fit in less than 8 characters and to make it ambiguously mean "middle-sized bear" as well. You can find more about the set and the program I wrote to generate the icon here. I came up with my original description when I came in to alt.callahans feeling "infinitely fuzzy"; someone else described me as a Mandelbear and the name inevitably stuck.

I love fractals. I bought Benoit Mandelbrot's books, and explored the space with fractint on the PC and some other program on the Mac 2. I think it was fractint that let you play around with different formulas; I discovered the Mandelbear set by replacing z_i² with z_i³ in the usual Mandelbrot set definition (the set of points z₀ such that the series z_i+1=z_i²+z₀ remains bounded).

The Mandelbear and Mandelbrot sets are actually cross-sections of four-dimensional objects; the cross-sections in the other direction are the corresponding Julia sets.

I first encountered fractals in grad school, before the name had even been coined, when I was introduced to the Dragon Curve. This is the shape you get when you fold a strip of paper back on itself repeatedly, then open each of the folds out half-way. Four of them fit together to make a square with fractal edges that can interlock to tile the plane.

Fractals are perversely beautiful: they take difficult mathematical concepts such as limits, self-similarity, complexity, and infinity; and wrap them up in an image of such breathtaking gorgeousness that you forget just how weird they really are.

2. Filk

Let's see. I think filk first came to my attention in bardic circles at the SCA tourneys that Colleen took me to in lieu of dating. It was sometime in the late 1970s that we started going to SF conventions. My real intro to filk was through Amy Falkowitz, who had learned most of the songs on Leslie Fish's "Solar Sailors" album. I wrote the first song that I actually identified as a filksong, The Shores of the Night, in 1981 shortly before Bayfilk 1, if I remember correctly.

Ask three filkers to define "filk" and you'll get between four and six definitions. Mine is "the indigenous folk music of science fiction fandom." Your mileage may vary.

I love writing songs, and I've even gained enough self-confidence to love performing them. I love hearing other people cover my songs. I think the best things, though, is the filk community; just being able to hang around with a bunch of amazing, talented people, swapping songs and talking about everything in the universe.

3. Coffee

Let's face it: I'm addicted. For better or worse, one of the best coffee roasters on the West Coast, Barefoot, is only a short drive from our house (and on the way to the hospital, for what that's worth). Not surprisingly, I have song about it.

I usually drink two or three 12-oz mugs worth in the morning. I have learned not to drink coffee after noon unless I need it to stay awake driving at night.

4. The River (It's something you already write about on LJ, I know, but it is nonetheless one of the first things I think of.)

I'm glad The River is one of the first things you associate with me -- it's been an amazing ride, and I'm still more than a little bemused to find myself a respected authority on getting along with geeks. It surprises and delights me that some people are finding it helpful.

It started with the song a little over a year ago, turned into a major theme in my livejournal, and is now threatening to spawn at least two books.

5. Cross-talk (I remember you mentioning it in a post about geekboy care and maintenance or flow or something, and it made me more aware of my own sensitivity to cross-talk.)

I ganked that usage from cflute, who's even more sensitive to it than I am. Some of us don't multitask very well, so if there's another conversation going on, or more than one person talking to us at once, or a major distraction like a TV in the room, our train of thought gets totally derailed.

My main post on the subject was this one.

I have asked a couple of people for five Things that they associate with me, to ramble on about in my journal. I extend the same offer to anyone who comments here.

Here are the five things I got from pocketnaomi:

Songwriting

I believe I started making up songs when I was eight or ten years old, but didn't actually write any down until I was in college and found myself rooming with two other guitar players. They would have been classifiable as filksongs if I'd ever heard of such things at the time. I only remember bits of one of them, but was told at the last reunion I went to, a decade ago, that one of those former roommates still sings that and another one, which I had entirely forgotten. I keep them in my computer files now.

It was my involvement with fandom and filk that finally "gave me permission" to write songs, a few of which were worth singing in public. As time goes by I seem to have gotten better at it.

I wrote five songs last year, my most prolific year so far, and more than the previous five years put together. Last year also included my two or three best songs so far.

I have a tendency to write lyrics first; if I start with music it may take years for the tune to attach itself to a suitable lyric.

I've helped teach songwriting at a couple of weekend workshops run by Kathy Mar; I don't claim to be much good at that, but you're welcome to read my notes for the 2007 workshop and draw your own conclusions.

Programming

Programming is, in essence, the art of giving orders to an incredibly fast, incredibly accurate, and moronicly literal-minded demon. As such, it represents a very useful skill for game-players and parents. You will note that I do consider it an art, and in particular a branch of literature. (My degree is in Computer Science, but I feel strongly that any field with the word "science" in its name isn't one.)

Another way of looking at it is to say that the inside of a computer is an alternate universe where magic works: programs are spells, and obey most of the usual laws of magic. They also share with traditional magic the fact that a misspoken spell can wreak untold havoc.

Programming, like reading, is one of those activities I do in a light trance state. When I'm on my game (increasingly rare these days) I occasionally look up from my keyboard after what seems like a short time and wonder why it's suddenly gotten dark outside.

House Parties

Our household has four Saturday parties every year: one in late December or early January celebrating the new year and our anniversary, one in March (the "It's Green!" party, now by long-established tradition the Saturday after Consonance) to celebrate Spring, St. Patrick's Day, and our birthdays, one in June (originally to celebrate the anniversary of Colleen's flower business, but now just for the tradition of it), and one in late October to celebrate Halloween.

We also have an Open House every Wednesday -- these were originally devised by Colleen to make sure that she would have adults to talk to even after our older daughter was born.

The house is also more-or-less open during the entire Winter holiday season; we don't exactly expect guests, but are never surprised if they show up, and occasionally invite them.

Our 25th Anniversary party was remarkable in being the only one for which we hired entertainment -- the members of Golden Bough had been to a few of our previous parties, and we booked them a year in advance to make sure they'd show up. It was also the only one we had to rent chairs for.

Cordwainer Smith

... is/was one of my favorite science fiction authors. The name "Mandelbear" comes in part from a post I made in alt.callahans, and in part from one of my favorite characters, the Middle-Sized Bear, in his story "Mark Elf"; my latest and arguably most autobiographical song is called "A Talk With the Middle-Sized Bear". My first filk song, "The Shores of the Night", was loosely inspired by another of his stories, "The Lady Who SailedThe Soul".

My favorite story of his is probably "The Dead Lady of Clown Town", though it's hard to pick just one. I especially admire him for his imagery and his narrative style; many of his stories are written as if they were popular history, written years -- centuries, in some cases -- after the events they recount. "Drunkboat" is also worthy of mention; its description of the first journey through hyperspace is simply a translation of Arthur Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre".

Janis Ian

... is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and probably the celebrity I would most like to spend a night with -- swapping songs, of course. She's also a long-time science fiction fan, and more recently author. I see from her tour schedule that she's toastmistress at the Nebula Awards banquet this year. I have yet to run into her at a Worldcon; she never goes to the filking.

I have been known to perform one of her songs, "The Last Train", in filk circles and even at a concert or two.

Her website includes lots of good articles on being a songwriter and performer, backed by 40-odd years of experience. Highly recommended.

I'm not pasting in the results of the Muse meme, mainly because their stupid CSS code is broken and won't let me select the entire paste-in section, which wasn't in a scrollable text box. Dumb. I came out "30% Urania, 0% Clio, 0% Erato, 30% Euterpe, 20% Calliope, 0% Thalia, 0% Melpomene, 10% Polyhymnia and 10% Terpsichore! Your muse is Urania!"

It could just as easily have been any of several others; most of the questions had two or three answers that applied to me. *shrug*

"If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal."

(from ravan and others)

Would have been higher if I'd known the names of a couple of recently-invented mixed drinks.

Ganked from kayshapiro and thatcrazycajun: These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today whenever it was). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.

The Time/CNN list of 100 Greatest Television Shows of all time. Post in your LJ with the following legend:
Bold - I watch/used to watch this regularly
Strikethrough -- I wouldn't watch it if you paid me
Question mark -- I never heard of it
Add comments if you like.

From telynor and gridlore; probably all over the place by now.

I seem to have been tagged by pocketnaomi, and this one seems somewhat interesting.

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random habits/facts about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged & list their names.

Added by me: I don't like to tag people -- it seems like an imposition, and I don't need to do any such thing. If you're interested, jump in. If not, I won't have bothered you.

1. I find it difficult to sleep on the left-hand side of a bed. When I'm sleeping by myself I usually sleep on my side facing toward the left, but when I'm sleeping with the flower_cat we sleep back-to-back, so I'm facing to the right.
2. I like to walk, usually around lunchtime. If I don't get enough walking in, I tend to get very restless.
3. I buy identical pairs of socks, so I don't have to bother sorting them. (My hiking socks, which I like to use on longer walks, are different from my everyday socks, but because they can be distinguished at a glance I can keep them in separate piles.)
4. I am probably the only person to have written a song about RFC 1149 and its implementation.
5. I often make myself a bowl of fried rice for breakfast, or Ma Po tofu when there's tofu in the house.
6. I'm a packrat. I keep things in piles. My stacks of unread magazines were declared a fire hazard once, at a previous job some 20-odd years ago.
7. My birthday is March 13^th, 1947, the 17^th anniversary of day the discovery of the planet Pluto was announced.

Somehow I'm not surprised. (From lisa_marli.)

lisa_marli got the idea from ladycelia to try capitalizing ones name. These resolutions are ones I can get behind.

In 2007, Mdlbear resolves to...

Go filking three times a week.
Spend more time with my web communities.
Pay for my computers on time.
Keep my xml clean.
Take evening classes in debian.
Go to chocolate every Sunday.

Get your own New Year's Resolutions:

Filking three times a week? Chocolate every Sunday? Spend more time with my web communities? Debian? Yeah! Don't know about keeping my xml clean.

I've seen this all over, and the last time I tried it I got nothing interesting, but this one was pretty good.

From lysana.)