And In This Corner.......

So I showed that picture to Lauren, and she was like, "oooh, it's such a beautiful table, Zack! What does the rest of the room look like?" She knew. She knew what I'd done to get that table in there. And we both laughed just thinking about it.

There you go. There's more, off to the left. It's not the best angle to show the true scope of devastation; but I wanted to include a bit of the new work table, for perspective.

Once we get the new bookcases up, all that junk is going right on the shelves. Theoretically, that's today. Cue theramin.

Books, And Cases, And Tables, Oh My!

I make a pretty good bookcase. With only one exception, everywhere I've lived since I've been on my own, I've made my own bookcases (one of my SF places had Ikea). The basic idea is, store-bought stuff just isn't going to use the space in the best possible way. When I moved into my place here, I built 4 floor-to-ceiling shelves that fit exactly where I put them, and 3 smaller shelves that ran the full length of a wall, leaving the wall area above it free for video projection.

That was several years ago. Then recently I got the idea to put 3 more floor-to-ceiling shelves in, against a wall that I'd previously been keeping free for art. I'd originally wanted to cover that entire wall with art done by friends, but I only ended up putting a few pieces up there, and it didn't have the feel I'd been going for.

I'd also run into a big problem of where to put all my stuff. I'd moved from a three bedroom apartment in San Francisco to a one bedroom apartment here, and I still had a lot of stuff in boxes, and a lot more stuff that was not in boxes, but instead on my floor, gathering dust and making a mess. It was possible to put all that stuff away, but only if I essentially stored it all in the small closet cubbies that would make everything much less accessible.

A week or so ago I started questioning my use of that art wall. Why not put bookcases against it? Well, the couch would have to move, and the 700 lb compressed-air-powered die press would also have to move. Where would those things go? I didn't know. But the more I thought about it, the less of an obstacle all that stuff seemed. I'm not sure how exactly the decision was made - at a certain point it seemed like the scales just tipped, and I was ready to do it.

A few days ago it also occurred to me that while I was building things, I could add a work table into the mix. This was kind of a revolution in my thinking - it had never seemed to me that any kind of table would even fit in my living room before. Certainly any table in the middle of the room would prevent anything else from happening in that room except some kind of interaction with the table. But my dream had been for the living room to actually be a hangout spot with open air between the sitting places, rather than a table-sitting spot or a repository for vast clutter.

So the idea for the table was really unexpected. But there was a long wall in my living room; with two windows looking out of it, and three bookcases in the spaces between the windows, that might actually work. And if it worked, I'd have a huge table area that wouldn't really take away any space from the rest of the room. Not only that, but the table could double as a bench. The way I envisioned it, it would be incredibly strong, and the nooks between the bookcases and windows would be great for cushioned seating.

Once I got the idea, it was hard to believe I hadn't thought of it before. It was perfect! A lot of my projects required space to spread out, and those projects had been languishing lately, partly because of that problem. It had been really frustrating for me, but I hadn't realized how significant the table issue was until just then. But now I'd be able to do my labanotation research, which really required a lot of space to lay out index cards and many books open to many pages; and I could do sculpture, clothes making, and other art activities, that I realized I'd also been somewhat pining for. If the table was the right height, it would also be a good ergonomic area for computer stuff. All kinds of things were occurring to me that had been mouldering away in my mind, because until then I'd just given up on any idea of having a table in my apartment.

Then this weekend I found myself with no other plans, so I asked my apartment-mate Will (he actually lives in a different apartment, but it's part of the same larger area and we use the same keys) if he was interested in helping, and he said sure! So we spent some time figuring out all the measurements, going over them again and again to make design decisions, and figure out the best way to do everything; and then yesterday we went and got a big pile of wood from the lumber yard.

In San Francisco years ago, when I'd told my friends I was going to build shelves, they were mildly amused. "Aren't you kind of a nerdy computer guy?" Then when I went and purchased all the wood I would need for 9 full bookcases, they became alarmed. "Just build one shelf, see if you can do it OK, and then maybe get materials for the next one!" But no - I got all the wood for all the pieces I intended to build, and then I got busy and built all 9 bookcases in just a few days. I knew what I was doing - my mother had built everything in our apartment when I was growing up, and that included lots and lots of bookcases for my dad's 20,000 books.

So, same thing Saturday. Will and I went to the lumber yard and purchased all the wood for the bookcases and the table, and got it back to the apartment, and got to work. He wanted to start with the bookcases, but I was in a fever to do the table, partly because I'd never done one before, and partly because it was going to be so cool. According to my calculations, it had to be precisely the right size or it just wouldn't fit at all. The bookcases had no such stringent requirements.

There it is! In this picture it's still only resting on about half of the posts; but the far side is fully attached, and very strong. Originally we were going to finish all the building that same day, and then I'd spend Sunday cleaning up and putting everything on the new shelves; but I dropped the 15 foot table top on my toe, and it is 1" birch plywood, strong and heavy, so... ow. But the toe survived. And by then we only really needed to screw the table top into the posts, so Will did most of that while I read Little Orphan Annie (did you know "Daddy" went blind during The Depression?) and helped a little.

There was one very iffy moment near the beginning, when we had to lift the entire table-top and slide it into the slots created by those bookcases, and set it down on the freestanding posts. We really weren't sure, even up till the last minute, whether it would truly fit or not. But it did, and after that, I had the pleasure of walking around and admiring the actualization of a lovely idea that hadn't been part of my worldview just a few days before.

Today we'll finish up the table top and build the three bookcases (they are much easier, with just thin pine and no space issues.

But isn't that table great? Four or five people could do art along it, or sit against the edges of the bookcase and look out the window, or jump up and down on it, or whatever! Soon it'll also have a few coats of polyurethane for splinter protection. Also, those shelves in the bookcases that don't quite line up with the table top, I'm going to remove and set lower down so they're like an extension of the table itself.

And the best part is, the table doesn't really encroach on the rest of the living room. No one would walk through that thin strip of floor; but now they can sit on it and converse and hang out. And for getting stuff off the top shelves of the bookcases (which are several shelves above the top of this photo), anyone can feel confident in standing right on top of the table without it falling or really moving at all. This is a strong, functional, kick-ass table of awesome.

Reading, Walking, And A Car

I read while walking. It's a skill. The trick is to understand the meaning of different kinds of movements at your periphery. It's all about trajectories. And if something is obviously moving but not changing position relative to your ebook reader, that means it's coming right for you and you should look up, ready to take evasive action.

I cross the street while reading too. But I'm not insane - I do take a moment to glance both ways, and I make a point of keeping any possible oncoming traffic available in my periphery. But I'm so talented, that my total awareness of my surroundings isn't always obvious to the people around me, which can cause some consternation.

Yesterday on my way home, I was deeply engrossed in my calculus book. Derivatives are so amazing, it's a shame the financial mess is turning them into a dirty word. I love how you take this weird thing and stick it into an equation - and then when you reduce and solve the equation, the weird thing disappears of its own accord, leaving you with a whole new view into the thing you were just looking at. I'm telling you - derivatives are like eye of newt!

Anyway, right at that moment, as I was about to get to the other side of the street and find out how derivatives relate to limits, this car swerved out of the path of traffic, heading right at me! I jumped out of the way, but in any case he hit the breaks before hitting me. Something about the way he just happened to be aiming straight at me told me that this was yet another person trying to give me a life lesson.

So I turned around and just stared at the guy for probably a full minute, and he stared back. Clearly, this was a guy that had road rage among his top 3 emotions. Then he rolled down his window, and drove past, saying, "Look where you're going instead of reading your book!" or something like that. And I cursed him out through the same window.

The last time something similar happened, I was fully on the sidewalk, in the middle of reading Proust. Would he and Albertine see each other again? Would he become lovers with Monsieur Charlus? When all of a sudden, some guy walking in the opposite direction stuck his hand between the ebook reader and my face, and wiggled his fingers around before passing by.

I chased after him and tried to grab his hat, but he was too quick and I couldn't get it. It's a good thing, I probably would have thrown it into the street or something. But when I tried to take it, he spun around, and again I stood staring at him for solid minute or so, till finally he walked away.

For some reason I feel as though staring at the person is similar to capturing their soul. I don't dumbly stare. I devour them. I take them into myself; their cares, their fears and frustrations, and see how little they are. And then they don't bother me anymore, because I also see that in their own small way, they believe that disturbing someone who's reading a book is actually doing them a favor, teaching them to pay attention to the world around them, and not bump into other people or get hit by cars.

It's also a cultural phenomenon. In my culture, people feel like reading while walking is a negligent act, and that anyone is justified in bothering me, since it will make me a better person. The same people won't give two dimes to a guy with a cup; but for me, they'll make the extra effort. In other cultures, someone reading while walking would provoke outright rage among everyone they passed; and in yet other cultures, it would be seen as a commendable act, a sign of intelligence and sensitivity. In mine it's considered a sign of carelessness and social neglect.

Well, I'll keep reading. An hour or two of my reading is done each day on foot or on the subway. I'm going to give that up because sometimes people jump out and say boo? No thank you.

I Has Foodz Issues: Part III

It was pretty sudden. I'd been on my diet for about two weeks, and was experiencing all kinds of emotional ups and downs, to the point where I really could barely participate in conversation. I was sticking with the diet, but it was really, really tough. Then one day, poof! I was fine.

All of a sudden, my brain was back! I could think and feel normal emotions again! I wouldn't collapse into a heap of disfunction as a mealtime approached. In fact I could be arbitrarily late to a meal and experience no ill effects.

Feelings of hunger, that before would rage out of control, now had simmered down to something akin to a normal sensation, something I could recognize without it utterly taking over my existence.

The cravings, which had been extremely intense, had actually subsided a few days or a week earlier, after I'd adjusted my diet to give me a few vitamins I'd been lacking. So those had already been gone for a while.

So, what's my experience right now, after several days of this new non-insanity? Well, my salads and relatively small meals satisfy me; I don't go through life in agonizing hunger, but instead I have plenty of energy and I feel basically fine.

Yay! I am very joyful!

I'm staying on my guard though. I expect the cravings and possibly other symptoms to return within the next few months, and stronger than before. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the feeling of freedom.

I Has Foodz Issues: Part II

I've been on this diet for 2 weeks now. So far I've lost 8 lbs and the cravings have gone away for the moment; but I've been irritable and cranky. Then I happened to be reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting and it mentioned irritability as a symptom of dieting.

So today I just feel like doing nothing, and just vegging out in my bed, watching movies. Blah. I have articles to write, and a batch of other projects I'd love to get going on, but every time I start to do them, I just feel repelled.

It seems pretty clear it's the diet. But I doubt it has anything to do with any particular vitamin deficiency. I'm getting all the nutrition I need, and then some; but my caloric intake has really gone down. So wherever this bad mood is coming from, I'm guessing it's related to calories alone.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty sure the bad mood will clear up in time. It's probably the result of the sudden change, not to mention all the withdrawal I must be experiencing, from grease, salt, and sugar. I'd be amazed if I did this sudden dietary change, and just felt great right away. I have to pay my dues.

This reminds me of when I gave up caffeine recently. I felt awful for quite awhile, but then I was free. This has to be the same exact thing. It's amazing how nonfunctional I feel. As I write, the words seem very poorly thought out.

So yeah, this is clearly one of the early tests, where my strength of resolve has to be equal to the challenge of losing the ability to reason. And through it all, I have to remember the massive temptation that lies probably months in the future, and not get lost in any sort of "hey, I'm losing so much weight" euphoria.

Still though - blah.

I Has Foodz Issues

I've changed my diet. In fact, I've really only decided to eat healthy foods, i.e. mainly vegetables, but also some fish. The idea of a 'diet' as a special new understanding of what's healthy seems like the result of so many fad diets being on the market, like the one saying you should eat mainly meat and fat. Ugh.

Science pretty well knows what a good diet is. We may not have a perfect picture of the nutrients required for optimal health, but the picture is still pretty clear by now, and we know which foods will give us those nutrients, and which foods will include too much of various things like salt and sugar.

The problem isn't identifying the good stuff to eat anymore. The problem is that people have all kind of crazy ideas about the ways we need to eat; and people have all kinds of crazy issues like cravings and an inability to control hunger.

The cornerstone of my new diet is essentially the idea that if I can't find anything to eat that fits my diet, I'm going to go without. That doesn't sound very radical to me; it just means that I'll wait until I find healthy food somewhere, rather than just eat the unhealthy food that's put in front of me.

This has provoked universal consternation from everyone I talk to. Immediately they're conjuring images of a hunger strike. Zack has gone insane! He's not eating! Is this a syndrome? How could this happen???

All I'm saying is, if a big plate of pasta and mashed potatoes comes my way, I'm not going to eat it, but instead wait until I can find some nice vegetables.

It seems perfectly sensible to me, but it really has produced a huge uproar whenever I tell someone new about my dietary changes.

Another thing that seems almost universal is this idea that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." When I tell people that I don't eat breakfast, they completely wig out. But not one of them can actually justify this idea. The argument in favor of breakfast basically is, it jumpstarts your metabolism.

Why would I want my metabolism jumpstarted? Well, they answer, it will cause you to burn calories.

But does my metabolism really burn so many calories that the whole breakfast I've just eaten will be burned off before lunch?

No one really has an answer to this. I think it's because people mainly just accept that theory without question because they then have an excuse to eat a big breakfast. They don't want to lose the whole "most important meal" theory, because they wouldn't be able to have their flap jacks and bacon.

As far as I can see, the difference in the number of calories my metabolism burns just on its own, versus the number of calories I burn on an empty stomach in the morning, can't be such a large number. Maybe in the double digits? A breakfast with a double digit number of calories might be a container of yogurt or a glass of orange juice. That's the kind of breakfast that must be advocated if someone insists on the whole "most important meal" concept. But that's not the breakfast I hear people advocating.

Getting back to my specific approach though; I'm attempting to deal with the cravings and other eating urges that have been overwhelming me. If I'll just eat whatever's in front of me, I'll never be eating healthy. I'm surrounded almost all day by very unhealthy choices. And my job serves free, very tasty, yet also largely unhealthy, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. If I try to make a small change, as I've tried in the past, it might proceed for awhile, but eventually I just drift right back to eating too much of the wrong stuff again.

Another problem is, if I go a little further, and make a larger change, like cutting out the bad foods, and trying to set up some kind of regimen where I always eat well, then I start getting cravings. Hoo boy will I start getting cravings. After a few weeks, it can become intolerable. And then, if anything happens to disrupt my carefully planned regimen, I can become completely overwhelmed and just pig out, and fall totally off the wagon.

Hence my current diet plan, which I chose specifically to deal with those hard cases. It does me no good to set up a very fragile, brittle approach to eating, if that approach is just going to break at the first shock. What I need is an approach that can withstand the exceptional circumstances as well as my daily life.

So, by design, my intention to "do without" if I can't get what I want, is an attempt to address cravings, and situations where my routine has been disrupted. My focus is on those inevitable events, because those are the events that always beat me. My plan has to address the real problem.

So, some people have said I should carry healthy snacks around with me, so I never run into a situation where I have to "do without".

Bad idea. First of all, I'd eat all the snacks right away, and then what? I'm stuck with no snacks again, facing cravings and temptation.

But the main thing is, if I try to rely on keeping snacks with me, and creating an environment where I never experience being deprived of food, then I'll be all the more likely to fail when I am one day confronted with that situation. I wouldn't be solving anything, just making myself weaker and more vulnerable.

So, my experience with my current new diet so far has been very difficult. I'm eating well. I have a large, vegetable-heavy salad for lunch every day, which gives me a lot of everything except a few vitamins that I can pick up elsewhere. For dinner I have a larger meal, typically with fish, or at least a larger quantity of stuff than what I had for lunch. And I'm losing weight at a healthy and not too aggressive rate. I'm not starving myself, I'm doing OK.

BUT.

The cravings are so powerful, it's a nightmare. Each time I try to control my eating, the cravings and temptations get worse. If I'm with someone who's eating something, I crave whatever they're eating.

The cool thing is, because of my simple protocol of "doing without", I don't feel any actual compulsion to act on these cravings. I experience them merely as a symptom, something that triggers my "do without" protocol.

Still though, it's extremely distracting. I really hope that the cravings start to subside in the next couple months.

Also, if the diet follows the same path as quitting smoking (which it really does seem to), the cravings will subside, and then will come back somewhere down the road in a sudden massive attack that will be extremely difficult to resist.

So that's my plan. Weather the current cravings, keep my guard up even as those cravings subside, and be prepared to resist the larger wave of cravings that will hit me once I do finally start to relax my guard.

I'm kind of hoping it's like cigarettes. I quit those, and got a lot of practice trying and failing, before I managed it. Now I have a lot of practice trying and failing to get my eating under control. If the addiction is similar, I may be able to use my cigarette experience to advantage here.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Crumble Rules

I've been playing crumble for a couple of years now, and the rules are no longer changing. I think the game is done. Every once in awhile I consider ditching one or more rules that seem difficult to explain to new players; but I always decide that those rules make the game much better than it would otherwise be.

Take joins. They typically never happen in the early part of the game, and you can definitely get some good play without resorting to them. But having the option to do a join is a very powerful weapon that forces the opponent to take your pieces seriously, even your pieces are smaller than theirs. Without the threat of a join, a player could simply ignore the smaller pieces on the board, until the entire position became completely immobile.

Even relatively obscure elements of joins, such as the ability to join many pieces into one, seem essential. Not only do they allow sudden interaction with much larger pieces, but they also make it possible to create regions of the board that are completely distinct from other regions, like a world within a world.

Long splits are another feature that sometimes gets criticism, though it's used much more frequently than joins. But long splits are one of the major ways that multiple simultaneous attacks can be launched. This is something that is so difficult to set up in a game like chess. In crumble, multiple attacks are much more common, and they add an element of force to games of even relative beginners, that you'd almost never see in chess.

It's the same right down the line. People criticize captures on the same grounds - takes up time to explain how it works. But capturing is important because it forces players to maintain cohesion between their pieces. In general, the entire game position is always very significant in crumble. Without captures, you'd end up with little pockets of pieces everywhere, not really doing anything, but just hanging out, waiting. With the possibility of captures, most of the pieces on the board have to remain focused on protecting one another.

Other rules come under criticism for more legitimate reasons. Why is it necessary to be able to divide the pieces down into other, arbitrarily smaller pieces? Why not have a reasonable limit?

That's something I have to answer on more abstract terms. For one thing, imposing a limit would mean that at a certain level of recursion, the very strategy and nature of the game would completely change, in order to accommodate that limit. For another thing, that limit would put an inherent limit on the ultimate complexity of the game. And one of my goals when I first started thinking about designing a game, was to create something that didn't suffer from having a finite game tree. I wanted something whose complexity would grow to match the needs of its players. The game of checkers has already been solved, and chess is not far behind. Unless an entirely new approach to game analysis is discovered, that fate will never befall crumble.

It can be frustrating to introduce someone new to crumble, and see them shake their head sadly at the 'obvious' mistakes I've made in its design. But without exception, those people are looking at the game in terms of irrelevancies. They have no clue of the justifications behind each rule of crumble, they only think in terms of how well it could be packaged or marketed.

My idea is, first you get the good idea, then you get other good ideas that solve the packaging and marketing problems that may stand in its way. But you don't cripple your good idea just because it would be easier to fit it in a box.

For example, I've had consistent problems writing down the rules. I've written them down a number of different times in a number of different ways, but each attempt has been unsatisfactory. The problem is that the rules do require a lot of explanation. But another problem is that the more explanation I give, the more likely it is that a newcomer will miss something I've clearly explained.

So, this is an example of needing to have more good ideas in order to solve the problems surrounding the good ideas I've already had. There has to be a way to express these rules clearly and concisely, so that people find it easy to get started.

One reason I know there has to be a way is because once a player learns the rules and gets comfortable with them, oftentimes they'll remark that the rules are actually extremely simple, once you know them. In other words, they're clear, intuitive, and result in easy-to-follow moves by both players. I just need to find a way to express them, so that all the details are just obvious. Maybe there's a natural analogy somewhere, or a set of natural analogies, that would make a lot of the nuance of the rules seem obvious to all concerned.

That's what I'm thinking about lately. I'm trying to write the rules down again, in yet another way that will hopefully be easy to read. So far, though, the new text is still relatively long. I have to keep working on it.