(untitled)

from MARK S [martians666]
to William Griscom [wgriscom]
date Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:27 PM
subject Re: Visual Aesthetics Experiment @ UCB

HI WIL MARK S HERE IN BERKELEY, NEXT WK, I GUESS, WEDS OR THURSDAY, JUST LET ME KNOW WHAT TIME SLOTS YOU MIGHT HAVE FOR THOSE DAYS, THANKS AND ALSO HOW LONG IS THE TESTING THANKS MARK@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

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from MARK S
to William Griscom
date Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 6:45 PM
subject Re: Visual Aesthetics Experiment @ UCB

so will mark s here so i will be by so anytime during thursday now 1hrs is just 10 dollars you get paid the same day for this small amount let me know thanks mark s in berk ca@@@@@@@

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from MARK S
to William Griscom
date Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:08 PM
subject Re: Visual Aesthetics Experiment @ UCB

HI WIL NEXT THURSDAY HOW ABOUT AROUND 12NOON LET ME KNOW AND YES MAY AS WELL DO 2HRS A LEAST THANKS MARK S IN BERKELEY CA @@@

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from MARK S
to William Griscom
date Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 12:21 PM
subject Re: Visual Aesthetics Experiment @ UCB

HI WIL SO YES THIS THURDAY AT HIGH NOON MARK S@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

News

Hey, I am accepted to grad school!

Processual

Berkeley Graduate School of Psychology interviews were last weekend, and everybody I talked to seems convinced that I'll be a great grad student next year. Positive reviews all around. I didn't get to meet to many of the other prospectives because they were all whisked away to Stanford at 3PM on the second day, but they seemed suitably neurotic and disheveled.

Research projects continue, life is stable (if a little boring). I am re-reading White Noise by Don DeLillo.

I have new glasses.

It rains a lot here in the winter.

Everything is a process.

Unexpected Network

So my most recent project in the Vision Lab has been less than successful, and while I'm trying to figure out where to go next I've been wasting a lot of time reading blogs and generally procrastinating.

One of my favorite American new music/ethnomusicology blogs is Wayne and Wax, which recently featured a post on the Busta Rhymes song "Arab Money." That in and of itself isn't exactly unexpected, but it also features a lot of commentary from my former dorm-mate and fellow Oberlin sociology seminar student Marisol LeBron -- who apparently has her own blog as well. Small world, etc. etc. And damn if sometimes I don't wish I was still studying this stuff. I guess I'm having a crisis of faith in my chosen field, which is kind of bad considering that I'm not even a graduate student yet.

Anyway, I guess I've still got some priorities to sort out.

New Thing

STYLE//BITER

Pretty pictures, long load times. I really need to figure out how to embed fonts in HTML, or just bite the bullet and do everything in Flash.

New Gmail Themes Burn My Eyes

There are a number of basic 'palette swapping' variations that aren't too offensive (I can handle "Green Sky," or even "Marina") but way too many of these are just completely hideous and actually detract from the usability of Gmail. I don't want Ninjas or creepy Candy-girls dangling off of my Inbox, and as an old-school Linux fan I appreciate the Terminal theme, but again, it's almost impossible to actually use for checking email.

I'm not sure how to interpret the fact that outside designers contributed some of the worst offenders, but I guess it's a good thing that Gmail is funding our lab to study visual aesthetics -- it looks like they need some help.

Report from the Bomb-Proof Science Bunker

So lately I've been reading even more Wonkette than I did when I actually lived in DC (something about an election coming up?), but there are also local internet scenes that have already earned sizeable packets of appreciation from me. Exemplars include The Lonely Seagull and the neighborhood-specific Mission Mission (which is probably where I would be living right now if I were more cool/clueless).

Meanwhile, I am still struggling to discover the more geographically-oriented, real-world East Bay scene, which may or may not be hidden somewhere in the eternally night-shrouded crack dens of Oakland. We'll see. During the day, I am spending most of my time in the concrete-walled fortress of science, where I remain largely immune to both violent theft and unintended fun.