Of Cooking, Mixtures, and Milieus:

What is at issue here is that the attractors defining subject-positions are never simply a matter of the individual occupying these positions, but are rather the result of ongoing processes of individuals in relation to one another, such that a change in subject position is not simply a matter of the individual decision, but of the ongoing processes by which the subject is produced as a subject in relation to other subjects. What I am trying to think through in this connection is the issue of the ontological status of social structures or systems. It is all well and good to study social structures after the fashion of Saussure or Levi-Strauss as a structure, but what, ontologically, are these structures? A language, for instance, is not in any particular individual. Language, as it were, is not up to me. Yet language nonetheless could not exist without individuals. It only exists in and through the individuals that use the language. As such, language only exists through the ongoing operations of language in its use by speakers. Ontologically there is nothing but individuals, nothing but bodies, yet certain relations of feeback emerge among these individuals such that language takes on an emergent reality.

(from Larval Subjects.)

This, I think explains why I’m interested in the things I’m interested in. Everything fits together after a while. It’s nice when that happens.

hello my fellows.

I’ve gotten a huge rise in traffic from posting the content of a message I got in spam. I hope you all are enjoying the rest of the stuff we have here.

Also the books are good. The quote is from one of Asimov’s foundation books, not sure which. While I generally detest spam, and don’t want to hear about breast enlargement, or cheap prescription medications, I think a little bit of fine fiction is totally acceptable. Though I would concede that moderation in all things is the way to go on this.

Have a good day!

and then his brain fizzled out and he went to knit something easier.

I tried attempt two at stranded sock, and this one will make a good demonstration toe.

It’s that bad

In other news, my stuff from camp finally arrived, so I’m a happy camper. heh.

I would like to note for all the doubters playing along at home, that shetland is kind of amazing stuff.

that’s all for now, like I said, brain of fizz

seriously folks, I’m listening/proofing a transcript where, the interviewee said the name Kavanaugh and the transcriber typed “Cannibal”

oh, the unfortunate.

… for the class I’m teaching in two weeks. I need to make version 2.0 and a mate for this sock. I think in that order, but in any case I think that I’m going to have enough yarn left over to make the second sock, which I wasn’t entirely expecting.

It was my main project, and I finished it in a bit more than 2 days. Which is kind of cazy. I never finish socks so quickly. The downside?

I’m compleatly beat, and I haven’t been blogging and writing as much. which makes me sad. There’ll be a new station keeping here soon. Also, my friends from knitting camp have added a picture of my shawl to our camp blog. I’m touched! Thanks!

Cheers.

Hello! It’s good to be aback on a normal week schedule. I hope that the last few weeks haven’t been as hectic for you as they have been for me.

I was in Wisconsin last weekend (again¹), and it was delightful, but I had to drive 500 miles back home Monday afternoon, and that took a lot out of me. I was reeling from exaustion all and being behind all week. I didn’t get to blog as much as I might have liked. I didn’t get to knit as much. It was kind of crazy.

But, I’m back now, and let me tell you that I have a great week for you on TealArt. There will be a new `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_ this week. This weeks installment will be written by Jo Goodman, and I’m really looking forward to being able to share this with you. I hope that episodes not penned by me will become more common place in the near future, but congrats to Jo on writing a truly wonderful episode.

I also am proud to announce a geekywonderful occastional series on TealArt. This one is drama, and I’m calling it “Better Living through Regular Expressions.” It’ll be great, and anyone with good regexp puns should feel free to contact me with them.

Chris is starting a new job at the end of the week, and we’ve both been working a lot of late, so our geek content might be a little crunched this week, but we’ll see about that. “Thursday’s are for Geek” at TealArt is not in danger, fear not.

Will there be Deleuze this friday? I hope so. I’ll read something academic-y at any rate, so we’ll see. I have a pile of books calling to me.

In any case, I will be blogging throughout the week in my usual haphazard style at http://tychoish.com, and I look forward to spending a few moments with you this week².

Read on in good health!

--tycho

I taught the second session of my knitting class yesterday, and was generally pretty pleased with the outcome. The two people in my class seemed to get what I was teaching, and although I might have expected them to get a little further in their projects, they seemed pleased and had a handle on how their projects would continue, and if they’re happy, well then, by gosh I’m happy too.

In even greater news, I agreed to teach another class in two weeks time, on toe-up socks and/or stranded/2-color socks. While I’m an avid toe-up sock knitter, I have yet to completely master the stranded-toe up sock¹. This meant that I came home and promptly (well almost) cast on for a toe up sock. This time it came off better. My trick: I’m knitting it at the same gauge as the sweaters I make, because I realized I tend to knit those, ahem, firmly, so no need to knit foot armor.

I have to say that this stranded sock things is really kind of fun, although I’m going to need to unvent/invent a new toe, to deal with the “stranded knitting stitches are square” issue.

In other knitting news: I finished the first sleeve and the colar of the red-and-black sweater I was working on at camp, and over the last week the stranded sweater I was working on at camp has grown to be about 10 inches, but otherwise nothing exciting.

At the moment I’m focusing on getting projects done so I can start new things, like an Armenian design, or more stranded socks. I’ll post pictures at some point, I swear².

Once again, I’m going to reply to a post that Jeff Kirvin has made in my own blog, because I’m too lazy to register to post on his. Forgive me Jeff:

Is Apple crazy like a fox?:

Okay, by now you guys know I’m not a fan of the iPhone. There are some things I like about it (battery life, durability, music UI) but I don’t think it’s a very good phone. The lack of 3G, inexplicable inconsistencies in the UI (different themes, different gesture effects) and the crippled Bluetooth profiles make the iPhone a non-starter for me. But what if there’s a method to the madness? Bob Cringely has an interesting column up where he talks about how Steve Jobs should know better than to release a device on hype alone:

We’ve all heard that the iPhone shipped with EDGE because the battery drain from current 3G chips was too high. But what if that’s a smokescreen? The iPhone’s battery life is off the charts, and a lot of the problems the iPhone has could be fixed by moving to 3G. Not just the data speed, but 3G allows a better voice codec as well, meaning better call quality. Add the bump to 3G to “fixes” to the UI consistency, minor bug fixes (why do you really think every Apple employee got an iPhone? product testing) and roll it all out the same time as Leopard, just in time for the Xmas shopping frenzy. And you could also use that opportunity to add things like copy-and-paste and the iWork office suite that is supposedly the real delay in getting Leopard out the door.

(from JeffKirvin.net.)

I think it’s pretty clear that 3G isn’t something that can be done in firmware, so that hope’s out, but your other complaints: UI consistencies, bluetooth, etc. are things that can be changed with a forced (or not) update, and things that I suspect will be changed. Also, I suspect that in October when Leopard ships, we’ll see some improvements to other complaints: note syncing and ToDo’s seem like logical first steps, but I also have to imagine that we’ll see some sort of 3rd party widgets at some point.

Some sort of iPhone-WikityWidget, or just about anything that the OmniGroup could write, I think would make folks like Jeff and me really happy.

My prediction: a firmware update coming soon, Leopard and a slightly beefed up Phoneless-iPhone in time for x-mas, and iphone v2.0 ready by MacWorld next year.

cheers!