20.1″ inches of flat LCD goodness

DSC 0022

So the highlight of the day was a quick visit to Best Buy, happily only a few blocks away, to finalize on a new monitor. The idea was to finally stop squinting at the laptop’s screen, which for all it’s perks, has a native resolution of 1600×1200 on a 15″ screen. Wonderful for details, unreadable for fonts.

It’s become quite a challenge to avoid getting these ‘widescreen’ monitors with the 16:9 aspect ratio, or in other words, 20″ LCDs offering 1680×1050 resolution. Since height, not width, is usually what bugs me when viewing documents/webpages/photos, this isn’t a trade-off I wanted.

So with a little advice from a friend, plus the surprising discovery that Best Buy can actually have lower prices than Newegg (though not often), I am now the proud owner of a Samsung 204B 20.1″ LCD monitor. Aside from a somewhat limited vertical viewing angle, it looks pretty good. My desktop background has reverted to IMG_3104.jpg, the highly saturated Swiss photo (Lac de Moiry) that I used to use before deciding the computer wasn’t doing it justice.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day, mostly spent ensconced at my desk reading. I even managed some good old-fashioned paper correspondance, though of course the post office was closed by the time I got there. I also picked up some long neglected groceries, though after looking at the bill, my first thought is that I need to stop by Trader Joe’s more often. $27 just doesn’t go as far as it ought.

The document I got from the Grad Office on taxes might as well be written in Greek for all the help it is. Whoever does the actual writing at the IRS clearly was unable to get a job doing technical writing in the real world. In terms of poor organization, lousy sentence construction and general abstruseness, the paper is a masterpiece. It is however just about useless for actual reference.

Meanwhile, the Despotate of Morea has fallen to the Ottoman Turks, and I have massive quantities of French to do tomorrow.

I (heart) Skype

skype

The morning was pretty random. I stopped by the Grad Office to get stipend info, and wound up with a 60 pages IRS document. Yay. To be examined LATER. The NYU bookstore did not have the book I was looking for. I did toy with the thought of getting something NYUish and wearable, given that my UCLA sweatshirt seems mildly inappropriate for the location, but NYUware was only available at inappropriate prices, so there went that idea.

I did make it down to the Apple store, partly because I wanted a little exercise, mostly because I wanted to see the new 24″ iMac. Which I did. Big. In fact, almost too big. Certainly wouldn’t fit well on my desk. Core 2 Duo pi_css5 benchmarks were good though. The Mac Pro results were less good.

Read most of a book on the political history of the Ottoman empire. I’m beginning to feel marginally competent on the area. Sad to say, but I still know American political history (dates, presidents, wars, major laws, etc.) better than anything else. Thanks to 11th grade AP US History with Mr. B… In any case, interminable Russo-Ottoman wars finally forced me out, this time to Staples where I got, among many things, a stapler capable of stapling more than 10 sheets at a time.

When an important phone call I received died midway through I was a bit miffed. For some reason I thought of Skype, and since I now have a headset for use with NaturallySpeaking, I could actually give it a try. I did. Not only did it work, but voice quality was better than on my cell phone (this on a cable connection, where upload is limitied to ~40KB/s). And for now in the US, calls are free. If only Cingular service was this cheap and reliable…

For dinner, I was invited to some friends of my grandparents. I had of course forgotten that it was the Jewish new year. Oops. Now I know what it is to be a gentile. A very pleasant ceremony, followed by dinner, and some rather wide-ranging conversation followed. Their apartment is not only less than 2 blocks away, but it has a great view of the financial district of downtown Manhattan. The perks of living in a 25 story building (mine is analogous, but has only 17 stories, and is blocked by another identical 17 story building, so my view is limited to a good-sized courtyard/park).

Chess and CSS woes

acidtest

Getting up for French isn’t the hard part, although I dropped my alarm clock on the floor yesterday, and it seems to now only work as a clock (the alarm part is basically inaudible). The hard part is staying awake after French. Still 8AM class is 8AM class, so I arrived as usual at 7:59AM, having only finished about 2/3 of my cereal. Blah.

After class, I verified that my $1000 deposit check (for housing) is still AWOL. Nobody seems to know where it is, or has received it. Clever. My checkbook from the new bank arrived though, so I’m still at least as solvent as Uncle Sam.

Had lunch at a nice little Thai place on 4th St. near 6th Ave. with my grandmother. In the process, we wandered a bit in the village, passing a chess shop, where I bought my last chess set, about 10 years back. Also played in a kid’s chess ‘tournament’ at a different chess place across the street around that time. No wonder ‘the Village’ seems slightly familiar.

Afternoon was a mishmash of reading and wrestling with CSS. I’m trying, per somebody’s request, to get the sidebar here moved to the left side of the page. Unfortunately, my skills in the department are a bit lacking, so after almost 3 hours, I was forced to admit defeat. At least now, all the ugly hacks on the original wordpress theme have been pretty much tidied up. The diff against ‘kubrick’ is down to maybe 50 lines.

“Orientalism” on the other hand was slightly more successful. Some of yesterday’s discussion is finally beginning to click. Not for the last time, I’m sure.

Cabling the Orient

orientalism

Today centers around 2 salient facts: Cable internet access was enabled in the apartment, and I “led” a class discussion of Edward Said’s controversial (and influential) book, “Orientalism”

Actually, I was desperately trying to come up with good questions for said discussion when we got a ring from the cable guy. Up he came, fiddled with the cable a bit, plugged in a cable modem, made a 5 minute call to headquarters to enable the connection, and there we were. Oddly enough, he left me only a receipt: no documentation, no charges. Peculiar.

Then I went back to formulating discussion questions. Not east. They’ve got to somehow get at the essence of the topic, while forgoing judgment, and engaging everybody in the discussion. Make them too broad, and the discussion goes nowhere. Make them too narrow, and nobody will have anything to say. A balancing act.

Meanwhile in my other class, we had a discussion that essentially centered on how one can write history based upon problematic sources. The issue in early Islamic history is that we really have no original documents from, say 622-750AD. What we do have is the Quran, and a large supply of hadith, narratives of things the prophet or his companions did or said, via some chain of transmission. Since none of these documents are provably from the period they ostensibly describe, there is the question of how much of it is retrojection (projection of current circumstances into the past) or downright fabrication (indeed, with hadith, there is a whole field in Islamic theology devoted to distinguishing the good ones from the bad).

For the discussion itself, which started at 5PM, the professor began with a presentation of Orientalist art. You don’t need to see a lot of it to see many of the traditional Orientalist myths cropping up: the exoticized Orient, the eroticized Orient, the timeless Orient, and so on. The discussion actually more or less ran itself, though my questions proved less helpful than I’d hoped. One of the things we did get at though was the sense that Orientalism as a discourse influenced on many different levels, and in different ways. The fact that two individuals are embedded in the Orientalist discourse does not, a priori tell one a whole lot about what those individuals actually did or thought. This is something that many of Said’s critics maintain he discounted, but his actual position seems reasonably nuanced.

After the discussion, I went home and cooked some more spaghetti. Seems like Wednesday is spaghetti day. This time I think I undercooked it though. Despite having eaten spaghetti for at least half my meals this last week, I’m still not sick of it. What I am sick of is discovering that the still unripe fruit (nectarines and peaches) that I bought is rotting from the inside. Ditto for my avocado. Not cool.

So the Orient is cabled, and I’m tired.

Verlan at the palace

verlanA solid hour into French this morning, we turned to the topic of ‘verlan’, the language of French youth originating in the impoverished slums around Paris. Basically, ‘verlan’ reverses the sound of words. We read a rather neat poem which alternated back between ‘verlan’ and regular French. A few examples:

Ar-a-be -> beur

Fre-re -> reuf

Me-re -> reum

And so on. Essentially, the sound is reversed. Supposedly it was originally constructed so that ‘les flics’ (the police) couldn’t understand it, but it has since taken on a life of its own. It’d be as if gangsta’ talk here had become common among youth from all backgrounds. Not bloody likely, given that we’re such a melting pot and all.

My other course was a seminar, in which we discussed a very methodical book on the Ottoman empire subtitled ‘structures of power: 1300-1650.’ The book itself featured chapters entitled ‘The Army’, ‘The Palace’ and ‘The Provinces.’ It’s funny how sometimes structure conveys substance: this is a case where the author clearly believed that one could subdivide power under the Ottomans into a discrete set of structures. The result is a fascinating, but heavily skewed book, which gives a very elite perspective on Ottoman history. The obvious subtext is that if you weren’t involved somehow in one of those categories, you weren’t a part of the power structure. This seems highly simplistic to me: informal structures of power are often as important as formal ones, and the notion that power can be transmitted unidirectionally on an empire of millions of inhabitants seems a bit thin.

At any rate, we had our discussion, and then it was back to the apartment for me, to prepare for tomorrow’s seminars. Plenty more reading to go. I’m now on the cusp of finishing the spaghetti I made last Wednesday, which is also an achievement of sorts.

Bank holiday

piggy-bank

Okay, not really a bank holiday. Actually today was read-lots-about-the-Ottoman-empire after-wasting-too-much-time last-weekend-day. But the morning French was fine, and aside from an impromptu rainstorm, I can hardly complain. Also, my furniture has been rearranged for what had darn well better be the last time.

I did make a pilgrimage to a bank this afternoon to open up an account. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with my bank, but they don’t have any ATMs within a hundred miles of here, nor branches or anything else for that matter. West coast banks for west coast residents. Which I am no longer. So I’ve now added one more card to the bulging wallet.

With a good deal of effort, I did manage to post my reading response for tomorrow’s seminar only an hour after it was due (apparently others are even worse, as I was the 4th out of 14 to post). And now, some sleep.

myownlittleworld -> left404

myownlittleworld

As you may have noticed, there’s been a slight reorganization here. The good news is that it allowed many things that needed to actually be done. The bad news is it took most of today.
A lot of the old cruft is gone. The new design uses server-side includes, so mass changes should be much easier now. Aside from being shiny and new, hopefully it’ll be a lot easier to update more regularly. Yes, yes, I suppose that last part is wishful thinking.
In any case, myownlittleworld.com is being phased out. I’ll probably keep it as an alias for the new site, but that’s the extent of it.
Otherwise, I managed to squeeze in a bit of genuine work as well. Still don’t know how to satisfactorily arrangeme all the spiffy new furniture I’ve gotten from Ikea. And wireless keeps cutting in and out. Definitely looking forward to having the cable guy come this week.

Let there be stuff

ikeaThe downside of sleeping well is sleeping in. So it took a while to have breakfast (the waffle iron was having an identity crisis) and to get everything ready to leave. I think I wound up with a large percentage of grandma’s refrigerator, but hopefully it’ll be to a good cause (starving students and all that).

The plan was for grandma and I to make a quick stop at Ikea on the way down (or rather, make a detour, so it would be on the way down), pick up a lamp base, office chair and desk, and then get dropped off at my place. Of course, it turned out that the only Ikea that claimed to have the lamp base was in Elizabeth, NJ, a good bit farther than the other Ikea we’d been to, in Paramus.

On the way down, we stopped at the little mall between Hartsdale and Ardsley, wherein I received a haircut from the barber who according to one person was ‘dying’ for me to come by. A little literary license I think, as he seemed to be doing just fine. A nice clear Saturday morning, with sun and blue sky, does that.

Getting to Ikea would have been easy, save for a mistake we made leaving the parkway. This was compounded by the fact that New Jersey specializes in making each exit unique, so it took a fair amount of creative route-finding to wend our way around part of the Newark airport and back onto the correct route. Ikea itself was packed, as expected. The chair and lamp base were easy enough to find, but the table (noteworthy because it has adjustable height legs) proved difficult. Even once I found it, I had to get it in a smaller size because they were out of the larger sized tops. It took a bit of ingenuity to fit everything in the car too.

From Elizabeth to Manhattan was no great distance, but the traffic at the Holland tunnel was most unpleasant. And when we finally did come up in downtown Manhattan, we were both somewhat disoriented. Even once we were correctly oriented it took over an hour to go the 3 miles to my apartment. This is why I don’t like to drive in the city. Impracticality.

It took a bit of doing, but we managed to haul everything up to the apartment in 2 trips, thanks to a hand from the roommate. Then it was out to a late lunch in a funky bar/restaurant which had fine food, but miserable lighting.

My roommate had discovered that a favorite band of his was having a concert, so, feeling spontaneous, I tagged along. It was a venue called “The Knitting Company” down in the former garment district, and it had something of a gritty feel. When we left, we were asked to please not talk much in the streets because the neighbors didn’t like that sort of thing. Odd.

Anyhow, once I proved I was over 21 (first time I’ve had to do that) and paid my $14, we went in, and the concert began. There were three groups, and the first was easily the most experimental. Like all live rock, it was too loud for my taste, and it was tough actually catching the lyrics, even though the band, which combined a string bass, two electric guitars, and a drum seemed to have a rather thoughtful lead. They called themselves Shearwater.

The second band was a lot louder, and a lot less interesting. They lacked variety.

The last group was the once my roommate was hoping to hear, Magnolia Electric Co. Theirs was a somewhat more country feel, and, when I could catch them, occasionally good lyrics. They had a good rapport with the audience which also made it more interesting.

An interesting experience all-in-all, but next time I’ll take musician’s earplugs. Have a hard enough time hearing some things as it is… Next up: finish assembling the new furniture.

Oily wet

syriana

So I wake up this morning and it’s raining. No, really raining. As in, “I don’t want to go outside because I’ll melt” style raining. Yeah, that’s the raining.

So, since Friday is a no-class day (apparently, no professors want to teach Friday seminars), I stayed at home. This was fine so far as I was concerned: sit in my chair, read, pontificate, and above all, stay dry.

Lunch was a dullish affair, and around 2PM I headed off for a film screening in my building. The film? Syriana. Yes, those of you who remember my original blog (since deceased, several times) may remember I began it with a comment on that movie. And indeed, I did.

Watching it a second time through didn’t really change my perceptions. The problem with the movies is that it presents caricatures. The corrupt oilman, the messianic fundamentalist, the go-getter agent and so on. In reality, you don’t need any of these idealized types to get exactly the same mess. Indeed, bureaucracies as Adolf Eichmann readily demonstrated, are far more effective at accomplishing evil than madmen and other ‘bad’ guys. The fact that the Arabs in Syriana are either westernizers or religious nuts (or merciless soldiers) doesn’t really help much. It confirms the stereotype of ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’ as Columbia’s Mahmoud Mamdani nicely puts it.

After the film, I had to pay my dues in the rain, going back to the apartment to pack up my odds and ends, and to the Grad Office to pick up my stipend. Nowhere to deposit it yet, but I’m sure that’ll change. I found my grandmother (as we’d prearranged) in the Physics building listening to professors explain their research to an assembled batch of graduate students. I caught something about ‘molecular machines’ before leaving. A bit above my head…

The idea was for me to go up to Westchester and spend the night with them, and this we did. Unfortunately, a lot of New York was also going up, so the trip wound up taking a while, and involving a lot of unplanned detours, as we sought to avoid the general backup on the main highways. Don’t try leaving NY at 4PM on a Friday. It won’t work.

The evening was spent in a rather relaxed fashion, eating dinner, talking, and clearing up a whole queue of little odds and ends. Just in time for the next installment I’ll warrant. Hopefully tomorrow can finish the apartment-furnishing saga that is now almost in its 3rd week.

Just the daily bread

bread

“I never could get the hang of Thursdays” say Arthur Dent, of “Hitchhiker’s” fame, and I agree.

Had the early morning French, and everything after it was something of a blur. Not exactly a memorable day. Lots of reading. A little writing. Some desk organization. Walked a bit around the neighborhood in the afternoon looking for a bakery, but failed to find one that actually had bread (bakery apparently can mean patisserie in the part of the world).