I've found a new writing outlet, Helium.com. The potential pay looks good on paper, but we'll see. It's pretty free-wheeling, you can write on any topic, but the articles are moderated, so it takes awhile to post them.

I wrote an article on the game Wits & Wagers, I'll post a link to it if the article gets published.

I also found a place to write about things and places in Hawaii, but I feel that having spent less than two weeks here hardly qualifies me as an expert. It's very strange - I haven't been in Hawaii very long, but I feel like I've been here for months. I think it has to do with being out of rut. When you do the same things over and over again it seems that times passes increasingly quickly, but when you are doing new things and creating new habits, time seems to pass more slowly. Maybe that's why children view the passage of times as being significantly slower than adults - everything is a new experience. Their little neurons are desperately trying to make and reinforce connections. Maybe electric impulses take longer to find their way to their destinations, but when a habit is learned and practiced, the route is short. Okay, I'm just blathering a half-baked hypothesis now. But seriously, things feel a lot slower.

I've found a new writing outlet, Helium.com. The potential pay looks good on paper, but we'll see. It's pretty free-wheeling, you can write on any topic, but the articles are moderated, so it takes awhile to post them.

I wrote an article on the game Wits & Wagers, I'll post a link to it if the article gets published.

I also found a place to write about things and places in Hawaii, but I feel that having spent less than two weeks here hardly qualifies me as an expert. It's very strange - I haven't been in Hawaii very long, but I feel like I've been here for months. I think it has to do with being out of rut. When you do the same things over and over again it seems that times passes increasingly quickly, but when you are doing new things and creating new habits, time seems to pass more slowly. Maybe that's why children view the passage of times as being significantly slower than adults - everything is a new experience. Their little neurons are desperately trying to make and reinforce connections. Maybe electric impulses take longer to find their way to their destinations, but when a habit is learned and practiced, the route is short. Okay, I'm just blathering a half-baked hypothesis now. But seriously, things feel a lot slower.

I've been doing some research on getting a job in Antarctica (thinking way ahead here), and I discovered that the NSF offers a Writers and Artists program. Most of the jobs in Antarctica are support (i.e. kitchen, janitorial, transportation) and are through Raytheon. Those jobs are extremely hard to get because there are 1000 openings, but 30,000 applicants. However, the Writers and Artists program has only 30 applications for 5 openings. That's doable! Plus they support people early in their career. There is no pay, but everything is taken care of, and unlike a support job, I could go off-base. I'm thinking, documentary film.

Anyway, I'm excited about it.

Whew! I'm about to crash, my brain is mush, I've stayed up way to late putting together a CafePress store. It's called E N I G M A T A, and it sells some of my artwork. I went for bold graphic designs here since so much of what is on CafePress is bland text. Hopefully some will sell, but this is mainly an experiment.

Yesterday I went to Ko Olina, a man-made resort lagoon system. It was pretty cool. It was strange though. I was sitting on the grass under a palm tree in the breeze, gazing out to sea as waves crashed on the nearby rocks, and it felt like I was in a video game - it just didn't seem real! I guess this is just going to take some getting used to.

A stand of trees at Iolani Palace

A statue of King Kamehameha I (ka-meh-a-meh-a)

A gazebo on the palace grounds

The facade of the palace

The royal coat of arms on the palace gate

A detail of a column at the palace

A detail on a lamppost at the palace

Flowers at the state capitol

The color of Hawaiian water

Columns at the capitol

The Aloha Tower

Iolani palace barracks

Griff posted a shot he took of the back of my head as I was packing to leave for Hawaii. Somehow, when he takes photos of people, he is unable to capture the face. I find this very odd - but it isn't everyday you see a dog up on his hind legs and holding a camera.

Below is a photo I took today of Honolulu from near where I live . Click to enlarge. Diamondhead crater is in the background behind the city:


And here is a statue near the Chilli's in Kapolei:
My quest today was to acquire a bus pass, and after going to several places that where out of them, I went to City Hall, which also handles DMV stuff. I was shocked to see the setup - everything was nice, everyone was nice, no crying babies, and no waiting four hours in line. I'm not sure I want to get a new driver's license even so, my Arizona license doesn't expire until 2041.

After I got my bus pass (I'm trying not to think about leaving my beloved car behind), I went to see Children of Men, the Alfonso Cuaron film based on the P. D. James novel (who usually writes mystery). It was an incredible movie, the scenes at the end in refugee camp are astounding. Cuaron ought to be nominated for an Oscar.

That said, this was a very novel theatre experience. I thought all theatres were roughly the same, but no, it is possible to do something so ordinary slightly askew (I'm getting that feeling about a lot of things in Hawaii). I felt like an idiot at the concession stand. I formed a queue behind a family, thinking that I would be served by the person by the register, but no, it was buffet style. I think it's kind of cool, you end up getting served faster, but it was very odd.

Okay, this one was horribly late - but I have a good excuse (moving to Hawaii). This one is about future directions in physics, though I wish I had more space than just 400 words (I still blew my word cap, which reminds me of all those times in highschool and college, like a little snot, I would ask the teacher the maximum number of words for an essay when everyone else asked for the minimum).

Do you remember that one perfect summer day in your childhood? The one that was idyllic, warm and sweet smelling, sunny with a deep blue sky, vivid green grass, the day that stood still in your memories, and all the worries of the world became nonexistant? That's Hawaii. I can't believe I've actually moved here.

I went to Kaena Point, and went to the beach there, standing as the waves crashed into my legs. There were large patches of lava rock to explore - showing how young these islands are. It was a beautiful, unsullied day. I only wished I had brought my camera.

Here are some interesting and odd things I saw:

• a blue stop sign
• a man carrying a surfboard while riding a skateboard
• an aqueduct coming from a desalination plant (I think)
• weird broadleafed trees
• lots and lots of street names I have no idea how to pronounce
• the seemingly common practice of putting caught fish in gallon water jugs

I should be packing and cleaning (and writing), but I ended up composing some music with Record Producer. It's not that good, but I haven't written music in this manner since I was a teenager. I found that Record Producer is very frustrating to work with, at least compared to GarageBand, but the piano scroll and notation interfaces are really quite cool.

In my whirlwind in getting ready to move to Hawaii, I finally typed up an essay written about my Grandmother's life by a woman she had cared for as a child, Ruth Brighouse. Ruth wrote the essay for a college anthropology class in 1984. Here is an excerpt:

Mrs. Murray was much more relaxed as she talked about her experiences after she left her husband. She found people were very supportive and helpful, especially men. Through their generosity, she realized that not all men were cruel and abusive. In fact, she had more close men friends than women friends. She attributes this situation to being so close to her father. When she moved to the interior, one young man offered to drive her girls there in his touring car. By this time her two sons had left home to work. Another man gave her the meat from a deer he had shot on a hunting expedition. Still another gave the children a toboggan. Mrs. Murray remembers spending many happy hours playing in the snow with her children while the bread was rising by the stove. ... By scrimping and saving, she managed to pay for a piece of land with a beautiful view. A one hundred dollar bill from her son was the down payment. She took out a loan to pay for some lumber, signed out "how-to" books from the library and set about to build a house. In spite of the loan payment and land payment each month, Mrs. Murray believed in setting aside money for savings even if she could only afford to deposit twenty-five cents. After much hard work and perseverance, she and her daughters completed her new home. "Gee. I felt good that I'd actually accomplished something."

Someday I would like to talk to Ruth, and with my aunts and uncles. I want to write my grandmother's story (as well as my grandfather's story on the other side). It might end up being fictionalized, but the core story and her character would remain.

Matt reneged (sp?) on his promise to buy my car, so now I have to figure out what to do with my car just 4 days before leaving for Hawaii. Trying not to panic. I think it is illegal to just leave my car in it's parking space (or at the airport). I feel like putting "Free to Good Home" on it.

I came across a link to the paper I presented at the 1998 founding convention of the Mars Society (don't laugh - it's not dorky, it's just uber progressive). The paper is still up at my old tripod site which I haven't touched since about then, and have almost forgotten about. I have my own copy of course, and it was published in the proceedings, but it's interesting to see it as internet cruft. I wonder how long tripod will linger. People must still use it if it is still in business.

I'm still stressed out about moving, but I cleaned the fridge and discontinued my gym membership. Cleaning the fridge is the turning point for me. Once it's empty I feel much better about leaving. Not sure why that is exactly.

Also, I picked up an interesting book called "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, and Susan Blakeslee (who gets second billing with a "with" so I assume she did all the actual typing). I've just started the book (and read the highly illuminating appendix first), and recommend it highly. I've been interested in how the brain works for a number of reasons, but most lately for the script I'm working on dealing with artificial intelligence, and the transition from mimicry to true intelligence. I tenatively named the script "Magnus", but lately I've been inclined to change it to "This Matter Awake" after a phrase in a book about parallel universes. I guess I must have a taste for rather dense subjects.

I've slowly started to freak out. In a week I'll be flying to Hawaii, and I can't keep my head straight trying to sort out everything that needs to be done. Meanwhile, I still have articles to write. I spent probably about 12 hours this past night, and more yesterday, trying to settle on a topic to write for my physics column. This stress is leading to the worst sort of writer's block. But I did finally figure out a topic (it's a bit of a fun one):

Phlogiston and Aether

Meanwhile, the article I wrote on theory, law, and hypothesis is still my most viewed (and most controversal) article. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it is a bit sad since it is such a basic idea. At least people want to figure it out.

This is my 25th move (I think, it could be more), and yet still, it's stressful. I was a military brat, and that carried through to adulthood. I get antsy if I'm anywhere for more than 2 years, so I've brought this misery onto myself. I think that living in paradise will be more than worth it.

I now have the process rather streamlined. My bookshelves (the bulk of my accumulus is books) are modular. Odds and ends have plastic tubs to go in, clothes go in garbage bags for transit (or storage in this case). I know it seems a little trailer park, but it's cheap, space saving (you can shove a bag into leftover space where a box won't go), and easy. I never use movers - too much stuff got stolen from my parents when I was a kid. It's not that I care that much about my material objects, it's just annoying to look endlessly for something you no longer have but don't yet realize that fact. Most furniture gets hucked. Kate, my former co-worker, loves to quote some factoid she picked up about how half the mass of a mattress of such and such age are the dead and living bodies of mites and other detritus. Yum. Moving is a fantastic excuse to huck a mattress.

In other news, my TV decided to show things in shades of blue (yes, I fiddled with the tint and color, but no luck). I think it realized I was moving with the intention of leaving it in storage and it decided to throw a tantrum. Now it's going to be left by the dumpster to be picked up by some unsuspecting neighbor, *maniacal laugh*. Come on, we all get stuff left at the dumpster. When I was moving out of an apartment in Ames Iowa, I left a day bed at the dumpster, went back in to move some more stuff, and when I came back out for the next load, the bed was gone with no one in sight. This was in a space of 5 minutes or less. It was about 15 years old and I was already the second owner, so yikes!

In other, other news, I've written some things at Gather.com. They are looking for Film and Movie correspondents. There is a small stipend involved so I went after it aggressively. Enjoy.

Sam just got hired to do the allergy column at suite101.com. Griff, her dog, now also has his own blog - pretty funny! Congrats to Sam!

Me, I'm feeling a bit weird about my first day of freedom from the ol' 9-5 thing. Last night I panicked a bit about no longer having health insurance, and I tried in vain to get a quote online. Shopping for individual health insurance is so primitive! It's not like car insurance at all - which makes me think that solving the health care "crisis" would involve making the process much more like that for car insurance. At least it would solve MY problems with it. Apparently, you can't get any numbers online. The online places send your "confidential" info to various companies who then hound you incessantly - BY PHONE! Come on! Don't back me into a corner - I won't buy stuff from people who phone me (especially those on commission). It's not convenient, it's annoying.

Well, yesterday morning I finished a rough cut of "The Typist", or, as I erroneously typed in the credits "Typist". I was a bit surprised to find out the length is 16 minutes instead of the 7 I was hoping for. It will probably get shorter, but by not more than a minute or two.

In the process of putting together the edit, I apparently damaged the sound card on my laptop - I think it might have had something to do with the constant and notorious hiss from the camera.

Speaking of notorious, I finally saw "The Notorious Bettie Page". It's a film that's gotten a lot of buzz but didn't really hit theatres. Bettie Page is a bit of an icon in in both feminist and free-speech quarters, so I really wanted to see the film. I was quite blown away - it is such a well done film - really one of the few perfectly executed movies - everything comes together in just the right way. I thought it was really cool that the writer, director, and most of the producers were women. I think that really proves a testament that Page's legacy did more for women that it did for men. Page was a good-hearted moral person who believed that there was no harm in enjoying oneself - it was the "moral majority" types who cast her as the harlot leading men to their doom and ruin. The whole thing is an echo of how men have thought as women in the past, and shockingly, on occasion at the present time. The truth is though, that everyone choses their own path in life. You cannot be lead unless you chose to follow. It's always a choice.

In other news, I may or may not have a fractured foot (something's causing sharp pain in the metatarsal of the toe next to the baby toe on my left foot (might it be the little piggie that left home?). It's nothing glamorous, just a stress frature if it is broken. I had X-rays taken last week, but they didn't reveal anything. I have an appointment with a podiatrist later today to try to figure it out. I need to get this solved because my health insurance runs out on the 7th.

Also, I bought my plane ticket to Honolulu. I got a direct flight from Phoenix at a dirt cheap price. I'll be leaving on the 20th. I can't wait to go, but I feel like I'm a little bit in shock. This is the first time that I've really planned a move like this. Usually it's my big mouth and my heightened sense of equality for all (usually my coworkers not me in particular) that gets me an inadvertant career move. I'm definitely glad to be completely self-employed, but riding without training wheels is definitely scary.