Entries by David Jonas

Or news breaking late, as it were. Erin and I are engaged! I proposed to her on October 21 at the Ravenswood Winery in Sonoma and she said, "yes." It was romantic, wonderful and we are both extremely happy. I'm working up a website that has a detailed account and bunch of pictures and information on the wedding and lots and lots and lots of other things. Watch this space for updates! But for now, here is a picture of us absolutely in love.

I went through the Mexico pictures tonight and now they're up! Here are some highlights from the mexico set.



Where are the Spain pics? On my computer waiting to be organized, filed, corrected, and uploaded. There is a lot of them and it takes a long time. And I'm lazy like that.

Amateur Illustrator did a MemberZoom on Marshall Alexander today. Fantastic stuff. I just thought I'd share. Check out his site for more illustrative goodness. And the Spain picture will be here soon!

More pictures from the Iowa / Chicago Trip are sorted, cropped, color corrected, and ready to go. Here are some highlights from the new gallery.


For some reason I didn't take nearly enough pictures in Dubuque. Guess I'll just have to visit again!

The first set of pictures from my Iowa / Chicago trip are up. There are some really notable shots! Only the renunion pictures are there with the others comin next week.

The gallery software I'm using doesn't let me mark particular images so I'll highlight a few here.


I used the new beta of Lightroom for Windows to manage and edit the pictures that are actually edited. Though its terribly slow on my machine and uses an exorbitant percentage of memory, and crashed once during a basic operation, this just all could be due to the beta status. It's a wonderfully organized program that has some real utility. Once I have my new laptop I'll give it a spin and see how well it handles.

He's yellow all the way through! And in this case he's mostly butter! And he's crumby! But he tastes fantastic with his dyed cream cheese skin (fake'n bake, this one) and sprinkle-mosaic eye. I had the power-pill cupcake for breakfast and I must say, it kept me going all day long. So Happy Birthday Erin!!

Back in October I traveled through Peru with some friends. It has taken four months, but I now have the pictures on this site and available for viewing. I also re-did the gallery to a large extent. So take a look at the pictures!

Today on Digg there was a link to a fantastic google video. This video does an excellent job illustrating how we understand particles to behave as both a wave and a bit of matter at the same time. So good in fact that I recommend everyone watch it. If you already understand the subject watch it anyway; from that point forward you will be able to explain the phenomenon to anyone easily. My only problem with the entire thing is that the animated host busts out with the word "superposition" with no explanation. I know what the word means, but I remember quite well the fairly recent time in my life where I didn't. If you think I'm being overly harsh or out of touch take a look at Wikipedia's quantum superposition page. It's not a one liner.

As far as I can tell this clip was taken from What the Bleep Do We Know!? that I admittedly avoided seeing despite my interest in such topics because I heard their sources were a little more than questionable. I really don't like it when people inject new age hooey into science and then call it science. The new age hooey is fine, just don't tout it as science. As for the old age hooey, well, I think God punishes ignorance too.

I'm not talking about the children. I'm talking about the real future, the one with the flying skateboards and 3d advertisements custom tailored to your desires and delivered directly to your impulse centers. And, as a matter of practicality in light of how much science costs in the future, the ads were absolutely necessary for funding. Funding for what? Time travel research. You'd think you would have heard about it by now. We all want flying skateboards but do we all want ads microwaved into our cerebellum's? Do you??

Okay, then do what this guy is doing and help out the scientists of the future! Defray their cost and make their work easier! You might even meet a future man! Just think of how amazing and sexually attractive (and skillful) these future beings will be with their centuries of genetic research and breeding. And with contraceptives of the future, there is no risk of polluting the timeline! They are monitoring blogger.com, so be the first to grab retroappt.blogspot.com and post some sexy photos so they will know whom to visit. Become a national hero! After you're dead that is.

I haven't posted anything in awhile because I have many things to post, some getting very old, but they all require attention and more attention them I'm willing to give them. I guess that's the problem with a so called blog-- it is so obvious that it hasn't been updated in awhile that new visitors won't browse around. They think it's abandoned. Shame on me, I suppose.

Anyway, it seems I read a lot of items these days and almost none of them actually interest me. This one did. I found a wonderful little beat on drawing and photography and drawing from photography. I've always had a thing for human perception and I know that a scene is perceived differently when it is real and when it is a photograph. I think the described effect that it has on drawing is demonstrative to that point. The short think piece does a clear and layman gloss of human perception with and without a lens. I recommend the quick read.

"Teleportation severly limits excuses."

Hold up a minute. Don't move on quite yet. Read this. I'm not insisting it's true, but think about your own life. How well do you remember what happened, when it happened or where? What year did you purchase your car? In what theater did you first see your favorite movie? Now imagine there was an anouncement that we'd been keeping track of time incorrectly and your calendar would be updated with a new system. Not only that, we won't have names for the last 15 years. When did you buy that car? That theatre closed down, sometime in the past 15 years or so. When exactly? Who knows, we don't have a good signifier for that time period. Or, we do, but it's special and perhaps complicated. Time is an odd thing that carries us along. If we don't pay attention to it, we'll get lost. Ever been swimming at the beach? Some time in the tide and you're 300 yards from where you started without even realizing it. So, is it possible that in a couple years you won't be able to describe the discrepencies that are confounding your memory?

Now imagine if a large bureaucracy with a questionable track record had the opportunity to adjust a calendar at the time when few people could read or write. Just think about it.

Further Reading:
Did the Early Middle Ages Really Exist? [pdf]

How much do I really need to say here... I don't know that guy. He was obsessed. You can see a bunch more pictures from our antedated halloween revelry on Joel's site.

"Nearly everything in life requires either training or youth."
- David Jonas

Over at Brian's Vox Clamantis he has some interesting news concerning your credit. More importantly though, he posts to his blog with all consistency and about things you may want to know about. If you want to sit in a dark closet all by yourself, go for it. If not, pay attention to the Vox. It helps illuminate and gets you out of the closet, if that's what you need.