Category Archives: Coolness

Living in the Age of the Status Feed: Then & Now

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Computers and Writing, Coolness, Media Ecology, Reading, Technology

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A picture of Samuel Pepys.Samuel Pepys just tweeted me.* His commentary on Charles II’s return to English soil landed in my idea-box from a distance of 350 years: “Infinite shooting off of the guns, and that in a disorder on purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise.” [Read more.]

So begins Lisa Schamess‘s essay “In a Disorder on Purpose: The Diary and the Status Feed,” originally published in the Summer 2011 issue of Creative Nonfiction and now available for free online, just in time for Samuel Pepys’ birthday, which is today. I’d be telling you to read it even if I wasn’t her fiancé.

Cake Day: A Day to Enjoy a Simple Pleasure

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Coolness, Life

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A slice of chocolate cake from the Parkway Deli, Silver Spring, MD

Big Fat Chocolate Cake, available at the Parkway Deli, Silver Spring, MD. Picture by Lisa Schamess

We here at Machina Memorialis are shocked to realize we haven’t mentioned, let alone promoted, Cake Day. Let us rectify this oversite.

Simply put, Cake Day is a monthly celebration of life. While we here at Machina Memorialis celebrate Cake Day by eating cake with or as breakfast, the purpose of Cake Day is to take a moment to enjoy something you love, not simply to partake of it, but to marvel and savor the experience of enjoyment. Traditionally, Cake Day is celebrated on the first day of every month, but keeping withing the spirit of Cake Day, it’s a flexible holiday. Since celebrating our first Cake Day in June, we haven’t always managed to celebrate Cake Day on the first day of the month.

For those wanting more information, here’s a short FAQ:

What is Cake Day? Cake Day is a monthly celebration of life. While purists shall celebrate Cake Day by eating cake with breakfast or for breakfast, the purpose of Cake Day is to take a moment to enjoy something you love, something you could enjoy everyday but for practical reasons do not. The goal is to not simply to partake of it, but to marvel and savor the experience.

When do I celebrate Cake Day? Officially, Cake Day is celebrated on the first of every month; however, keeping with the spirit of Cake Day, celebrate the day whenever it best fits your schedule.

What if I don’t like cake or can’t eat cake? Does this mean this I’m left out? Of course not! Excluding people is antithetical to the spirit of Cake Day. As explained above, the purpose of Cake Day is to take a moment to enjoy something you love. And the goal of Cake Day is not simply to partake of it of that thing you love but to marvel and savor the experience of your enjoyment.

Why is Cake Day a monthly event? We wanted Cake Day to be a special occassion but not too special. Making it a yearly event would imbue it with too much significance, and, besides, the goal is to enjoy the moment of doing something you like, something you could enjoy daily but for practical reasons do not. We should take a moment to treat ourselves more than once a year.

Does Cake Day have an official website? Yes. There’s a Facebook event page dedicated to Cake Day. The event date is updated a day or two after each Cake Day.

When was the first Cake Day? The first Cake Day was June 1, 2011.

How did Cake Day start? The inspiration for Cake Day came about one morning as the resident 12-year old and I were sharing the remants of a slice of Big Fat Chocolate Cake (pictured above), and she said, “I wish we should have cake for breakfast everyday.” My first thought was, “No, not everyday because then it wouldn’t be special,” and then decided that cake for breakfast once a month sounded right.

Kern Type: A Kerning Game

12 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Coolness, Digital Resources, Gaming, Teaching Resources

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As I learned in a desktop publishing class I took as a M.A. student at Portland State, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between letters. Kern Type is a game designed to teach you how to kern well. It’s very cool. It even has mutitouch capability for those accessing the website via an iPad. (The image is a screen shot of Kern Type’s front page.)

Temporal meditations

30 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Coolness, Reading, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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From How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu:

And so I am reading this book and somehow in act of reading it, I am, with the help of TOAD [Textual Object Analysis Device] and TAMMY [the user-interface personality of the onboard computer of the character’s TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device], creating a copy of it, in a very real sense I’m generating a new version, actually, that is being simultaneously written into and store in TAMMY’s memory banks. In doing this, I am making the book my own, in retyping a book that already exists in the future, producing the very book I will eventually write. I am transcribing a book that I have, in a sense, not yet written, and in another sense, have always written, and in another sense, am currently writing, and in another sense, am always writing, and in another sense, will never write.

Some days, I feel like I’ve been there.