Today was looking at pretty people walking by, and this time feeling vaguely like I’m one of them. I really am happier now. I think that I doubt myself, wondering if I delude myself, but I really am happier than I ever have been now. The valleys aren’t so black, and the peaks are more frequent. I’ve had happier moments, but not so consistently.

I stopped at every jewelry booth at the fair, looking, admiring. So much diversity this year. A few of the vendors asked about upna, and a bunch of people from town. I think that one never really loses the connection to the people here. Not really.

It surprised so many that we’d broken up. I guess we looked stable. In a lot of ways, we were. I think our friendship still is.

wolftracks asks:

1\. Would you rather feel able to confide in other people or have them feel able to confide in you?

I'd far rather have people confide in me. That's a large part of my life, and I can deal with myself other ways.

2\. Name three people who've influenced you the most over the past year. Tell us how.

1. upna is still a deep influence on me — this year in breaking up and moving apart, but she’s been an influence on me for years now. I don’t see that changing. I’ve learned about the depths of frienship and love and the details of what makes a relationship work.
2. rising_dawn — I’ve learned how old friendships change and grow.
3. raijna for teaching me how much everything I thought was neccesary in a relationship was wrong.

3. If you could pick a single thing to have an astounding aptitude— just absolute genius— for what would it be?

It would be for listening so that people could understand themselves.

4\. What's the last thing you checked out of the library?

Oddly enough, it's been over a year. There was a baking book perhaps more recently, but I've been reading books entirely purchased lately, so I have my complete lesiure to read them.

5\. If you had to consistently and regularly practice one mainstream religion for the whole of your life, which one would you choose? Why?

I think I would probably end up Catholic. The huge, long, deep, all-encompassing tradition speaks very deeply to me. I love and feel deeply a connection to cathedrals and old churches.

noam_rion asks:

1\. You must leave the area where you live and never return. What will you miss most? Will you take anything to help you remember?

I will miss the way the clouds lie on the hills the most. Cool mornings and afternoons, and the light filtering through the grey mist. I'll take only memories, but forever seek that feeling.

2\. What have you learned from the mountains? How does it affect your daily life?

They are the silent guardians. They are a boundary, but not a jail. They're everpresent, and they remind me that it's always possible to look up to something beautful and bigger than oneself.

3\. You can either get good spices or good vegetables. Which?

Vegetables. No question there.

4\. What book (or a few) do you most wish other people to read?

There's none that I can say generally. Every connection I have with people is different, and the books I'd reccomend would be just as personal as that connection. To you, noam_rion, I'd reccomend “The Care of the Soul”, by Thomas Moore.

5\. You're stuck with a lot of customers who don't get it, aren't interested in understanding, and won't listen. They want you to make things go, but won't explain (and don't even really know) their requirements. You can't get rid of them without your business going under. (Either there aren't enough other people to replace them so you'll lack income, or they're vindictive and will see that you go down if they feel treated badly.) How do you deal with it?

I'll slowly move into another business with people who suck less. Specialize elsewhere. Seek perfect customers and eventually bail on the others. The act of doing that would free up what remained of my patience, and things would go more smoothly until I got out.

6\. What emotion don't express well/as much as you'd like? In which situations do you not express it? Why?

I think I express everything I feel pretty well now. I don't feel nor express anger at all often, though that doesn't surprise nor bother me anymore.

I’d love to ask anyone who wants questions. Leave a comment and I shall.

Breathe slowly for a moment. Don’t struggle, but be as slow as you can. Walk, breathing evenly to where you want to go. There is no hurry. Take off your shoes.

Stand in the center of a group of growing things. Look to the west and see the setting moon. Remember its shape, where it rests over the hills and watch where its rays reach the earth. Trace from the far hilltop what the shadows there are like — trees, grass, the hills themselves cast shadows toward you. Let your mind run closer to you, tracing from light to shadows and back again as you go. Notice the colors and shapes of things in the moonlight.

Notice the light reaching your body. See how it falls across your skin and clothes. Trace it downward to your bare feet. Let yourself feel the ground under your feet. Let yourself notice the lumps and the texture and the plants underneath.

Stretch downward and let yourself imagine stretching into the dirt, hands and feet growing roots, twisting around the roots of the plants already there, gently finding your own path into the soil. Feel the moisture of the earth, the cool after the warmth of the day.

Look sideways, and feel the plants around you growing upward, reaching for the sky. Slowly stand again, tracing an arc with your fingers along the stems of those plants, and continue them upward until you’ve traced to their destination far above. Reach upward, and feel even your roots straining skyward.

Slowly turn around. The sky is turning past you overhead, from the horizon, to above you, to behind. The earth is turning the opposite, carrying you forward with it. Embrace what is coming.

Again, notice your feet and what you’re standing on. Slowly move and get ready to walk back to where you came. Keep breathing evenly as you do.

function require(url) { var a = new XMLHttpRequest(); a.open("GET", url, false); a.send(null); eval(a.responseText); }

Allowing it to be loaded asynchronously would be nicer, but it doesn’t match the simplicity of Ruby’s require nearly so neatly then.

I see a lot of XMLHttpRequest code that makes a function that handles the request differently for each implementation. Instead, why not just make Internet Explorer behave like the rest? Like so:

if(!window.XMLHttpRequest) { try { var t = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP'); XMLHttpRequest = function() { return new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP'); } } catch(e) { var t = new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP'); XMLHttpRequest = function() { return new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP'); } } }

If anyone can think of a more kosher way to see which ActiveX objects are instantiable, I’d love to see it, but this code isn’t too inefficient, and you can just write code for the four good browsers and pretend the fifth, evil browser is the same.

Walk to some place quiet and at least somewhat open. Listen to the sounds your feet make on the walk. Listen to the echo off of things you pass. Walk slowly. Take slow, deep breaths in time with your walking, but don’t let them become a struggle.

Close your eyes as you get close to where you will stand. Stop walking when you get there.

Face the east and remember what the twilight looks like as the sun sets behind you. Remember the dark filling westward until the night fills the sky. Imagine the light of sunset continuing behind you, away, around the globe until you can imagine the first glimmer of dawn to the east.

Turn to the north. Remember or find where the north star is, and imagine the stars rotating about it as the center point. Breathe deeply and imagine where the stars are during daylight.

Turn to the west and remember cool wind rushing at your face, driven by the receding heat of the setting sun. Let your mind coast with the sun, over the continent and ocean and continent again until you come back to where you are standing.

Turn to the south. Think of the sun rising and falling in the sky with the seasons. In the winter, the cold, hard light from low in the sky, and in summer, the penetrating heat from high. Remember the fall light, oblique and gentle. Remember the warming light of spring, new life bursting forth again.

Stretch upward, and remember that you stand on the ground.

Stretch downward, and remember that the sky is bigger than the earth, and it lies behind you, infinite.

Stand.

Breathe.

Open your eyes.

We are deprived of our senses. At once we are numbed by overstimulation, and left senseless by isolation. Our sense of touch is wrapped in clothes that never let us feel the motion of air, the brush of things we walk past, grass and stone and dirt under foot, and we hide in houses from rain and wind. Our vision is bombarded by bright lights and flashing movement everywhere, constantly passing cars keep our attentions shifting and our focus falters.

There is a constant barrage of noise from fans and heat-pumps, traffic and city-sounds. It’s mind numbingly overwhelming. We adapt, we stop feeling the detail, but we’ve lost fidelity.

The most deeply felt and most clearly remembered moments in my life are where my senses are woken, the noise gone for long enough to let me turn the coping filters of life off, and experience the raw sensation fully.

One such moment is after a sweat-lodge, where after an hour of intense heat and humidity in near-total darkness, mostly surrounded by people sitting still, not making noise, I stepped out and lay in the grass. I could feel every blade, and then water poured on me from above to cool off was the most intense sensation I have ever experienced, every drop registered separately, and the boundary between senses was completely gone. The impact of the drops wasn’t just felt but heard, seen and tasted. It’s not that I saw the impact, but that the memory of the event is visual and auditory, not just of touch. I have a suspicion that such synaesthesia is normal in human development, but turned off by overstimulation, the brain trying to cope with too many inputs to be able to interpret any with full clarity.

I wonder if the feeling of being numbed either by overstimulation or by isolation interacts with sexuality — how much is just wanting touch? How much fulfillment can we get just by interacting more carefully and fully with our environment, getting rid of the noise and focusing on the important things fully?

lypanov asks:

1\. which do you prefer: waking up, sleeping, or going to bed?

It's a toss-up between waking up and going to bed. I love transitions in general, and I usually go to bed when so tired that falling in feels really good. Getting up is fun when it goes right, but lately I've slept in too much and been rushed. I should fix that.

2\. whats your next big goal?

To get wheels — I'm looking at motorcycles and pondering getting some freedom to travel. That involves getting somewhat free of the business. Hiring dad was a critical first step, and that's helped a lot. Next, get the cashflow up, and get some time in other places in.

3\. do you prefer to be alone and productive, or out having fun with friends?

Out with a friend, singular, maybe two is my favorite, and in and being productive after that. Groups really don't entice me in any way. I really like a balance, since I do my best thinking when I'm with other people.

<dt>
    4\. what do you think friends respect most in you?

I wish I honestly knew, actually.

5\. and now for a silly one, what is your favourite typeface, why?

I can’t say I have just one favorite. I really like Georgia for its strong but well-hinted design. The strong serifs and wide glyphs are at the edge of what’s possible to make look really good. That’s enticingly different. I have a soft spot for the italic from Times New Roman, though I’ve since found details in other forms I like better. I really like Adobe’s typefaces. Caslon especially is elegant, though its form is lost on-screen.

I’m still seeking the perfect typeface for internationalized use. Accents and some characters like ł and ß look terribly out of place in most typefaces, obviously afterthoughts. Of all the broad-coverage faces I’ve seen, Gentium is the only that I like in a variety of languages. If I were to typeset using more than one European language in mixed paragraphs, it would be among my first choices.

All this coming from someone who gets to do type design work nearly never, but who loves watching handwriting and letterforms everywhere.

The right face is situational, a matter of setting, not of personal preference. If it’s 1200dpi laser-printed type on white bond paper, I can think of a handful. If it’s sinage for an industrial complex, none of those would be right. On-screen, the choices are far more limited.

</dd>

branwen asks:

1\. What is your very favourite childhood memory, and what makes it so special to you?

Sitting on the porch with my dad, watching a thunderstorm. We'd huddle under this particular blanket and just be close. He'd drink a maté and we'd listen to the thunder, smell the rain, and smell the drink.

2\. What got you into coding/programming?

Having it be there, always in my life — it's always been something to focus on, something intriguing and artistic and creative. And the sound of the keys on the TI99/4a was particularly pleasant.

3\. What was the best trip you've ever gone on?

In 1998, I went to England with the theater group. We did improv shows in two schools, a performance of Antigone, and I ran the lights for the adult's show. We toured Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch, Bath, Avebury and Salsbury. I learned more about myself on that trip than I can possibly describe, and enjoyed it very, very much.

4\. What skill of yours are you most proud of?

The ability to see what people are really feeling despite both attempts to hide it and practiced façades.

5\. What was your first word as a baby?

The ever boring "mama". I'll have to ask what I said next — I don't know.

Someone sent a donation to help cover the costs of running the NBTSC.org community server, and perhaps work toward getting more disk space and RAM … and their check number was 1337. ‘leet!

Thank you!

The future might just involve seeing scary vampire movies in the theater, motorcycles and a trip to Europe, more drawings and cello than I have of late, more holding hands, a clean house, late-night walks, and an end to fear of calling people I want to talk to on the phone.

I just spent far too long already playing my favorite game of yore, or at least its fantastic remake, Wing Commander: Privateer Remake. Many a night and day were surrendered to making the original run on my 386 with my funky Covox sound hardware. (Mmm, 8 bit μ-law!) I was really glad there were no actual human characters worth anything. It made it really easy to just ignore and shoot spaceships strategically. One day I’ll have to learn how to edit the save files for the remake, too, just to relive the cheating I loved.

I can count the number of phone conversations I have truly, deeply enjoyed using just my fingers. Tonight was one.

horseygurl88 asks:

1\. If you could change one event in your childhood, what would it be?

I'd have stopped being so self-concious in the library. I was afraid to talk to a couple of the librarians because I'd said something in a silly way once. It was such a silly event, but I remember it so deeply.

2\. You're having a dinner party, and can invite any number of people — living or dead. Who would be your top ten invitees?

Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Mary Pipher, Leslie Feinberg, John Holt, Grace Llewellyn, Vernor Vinge, and Diane Duane. Notice that they're all highly socially aware people who are good with the written word.

3\. What led you decide upon Ari(a) as your name?

Aredridel was the origin. My first online moniker was terribly unncomfortable for a fair number of reasons, so I picked Aredridel as a way to escape some assumptions about my gender, and it’s something that’s stayed with me as I’ve grown. It’s impossible to say aloud, though, so Ari is the natural shortening of that.

Aria is, I think, quite possibly the final change. I like its meaning, and I like its sound.

4\. What music brings you to somewhere in your past?

Nearly all of my favorites. Dar Williams _When I Was A Boy_ reminds me of the past five years. The Shrek soundtrack reminds me of working at Wondermill, and some late nights crying then. There's more and more and more, but those are two highlights.

5\. What is your favorite article of clothing?

My green floral shirt. It's just the right mix of ugly and beautiful and fits me right. I'm starting to like more and more of my wardrobe, though.