Hey, geeks – check out http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/ – just the thing if you have to tell a nontechnical person who’s used to using ftp how to scp something to a server! Never have to run insecure ftp again! Isn’t it cool? 😉
Just finished a little mini music project – which those of you who want to hear how badly I suck can listen to at www.brassrat.net/~sheer/stuff/phen.mp3
Other than that, dealing with large amounts of psychodrama, which seem to be present wherever my ex-girlfriend [who’s now male] is. I don’t know, that’s not really fair, but I am starting to find these situations in which I’m not really sure who’s telling the truth stressful.
In the meantime, indecisoin about other parts of my life continues to loom large. And I need to get back to work on the mk3 project, but I’ve been too sick to want to think about bits & bytes & a/d & noise filters & properly sizing caps & all the little EE type stuff that goes along with the mk3 project.
But I will get back to it soon, I promise.
I also need to order new shocks for the EV, so I can put it back togeather – at the moment it’s in the garage, with the rear springs out, awaiting new parts.
I’m happy to discover that both resort and foothills are still up, albiet at new addresses (resort is at resort.org 2323 and foothills is at foothills.infomagic.net 2010) – so I’ve been dropping in both places from time to time of recent, and talking to some of my old friends.
It is very reassuring to find that some of the parts of the net that I thought had dissapeared forever have just changed names. I wonder how many other people are still searching for them?
I’m still sick, though after a day of jamming out, I feel a bit better.
A Tony Li quote comes to mind. ‘I just want someone to make a god damn fucking decision!’. Well, in my case, it’d be more like ‘I just want ME to make a god damn fucking decision!’.
Or three.
I think I’m going to start looking for jobs in SoCal. It can’t hurt..
S.
There’s a scene in Richard Powers’ book ‘Plowing The Dark’ in which one of the coworkers of the heroine discovers that he has fallen in love, over the net, with a lisp script. While pretty inplausable – no one has yet built a chat bot that could pass the turing test, much less turn someone on. But the concept is beleivable, and it won’t always be like it is today. Someday, someone will manage to do it.
It’s really a somewhat creepy idea. I read once about a Japanese corperation which would let you sign up, for a small fee per month, to get script-generated love letters from a virtual girlfriend. You could trade emails with her, get to know her.. never mind the fact that she doesn’t exist..
There’s something eerie about the possibility of computer generated fiction going out in the world and portraying itself as reality. Partially because it is something that I can so easily see happening.
Of course, with VR, the stakes go even higher. You could create a entire virtual world where you could meet with your virtual lover who had no corperal existance..
Would this be cheating, if you had a significant other?
Strange.
S.
Argh! Livejournal web site is down. I’m addicted, got to get my fix.. 😉
But, hopefully this nifty windows client thingy will work okay and I’ll still be able to make a entry, just unable to view anything. I think I can live with that.
Feeling kind of sick.. sore throat, tired, all that fun stuff. Body manafesting the confusion in the mind? Or just pushing it too hard? I don’t really know.
Haven’t heard back from Elgort yet – hoping that he’ll give me a excuse to return to the big CA 😉
Submitted my top ten 80s songs to this site – of course, those are just my top ten for today, tomorrow they’d be totally different.
But, just in case they don’t like my style, I’ll post them here too.
In no particular order, by the way.
*)Lou Grahm, Midnight Blue.
‘I used to follow, yeah, that’s true – but my following days are over, now I just gotta follow through’. Words to live by.
*)Midnight Oil, Beds are burning.
‘The Time Has Come, To say Fair’s Fair, To Pay The Rent, To Pay Our share – the time has come, a fact’s a fact, it belongs to them, let’s give it back’. Is your car burning oil? Do you know how we get enough to run your gas-guzzling SUV? Do you know how many innocent people have already died, and how many are going to? Are you okay with this?
*)Mr. Mister, Kyria Elason.
I don’t beleive in christianity, and not always in god. But I beleive in the sentament in this song. Kyria Elason means, by the way, ‘God be with me’. It’s nice when a song can speak of spiritual matters in a way that aren’t offensive to those of us who don’t think there was a point to Christ’s death.
*)Phil Collins, Hero.
While not technically the 80s – I think this was released in 1990 – this captures the spirit of the 80s quite well. Phil is the quinessentual 80s rocker – look at all Genesis did in the 80s – and the message here is clear, easy to understand, and heartbreakingly familiar.
‘The Villin goes to Jail, while the hero goes free – I wish it were that simple for me’.
*)Richard Marx, Right Here Waiting.
The perfect love song for a long distance relationship. For me the 80s were all about the [then budding] internet, and the inevitable long distance friendships and romances that resulted from it.
*)Simple Minds, Don’t You Forget About Me.
Truly, I love most of Simple Minds’s work. They’re brilliant musicians. But this song defined it.. often, during the 80s, I would stay in my room for hours, dancing to as many watts as I could get my hands on. This song defined those moments. And, of course, the breakfast club.. a movie that should be required viewing for high school students.
*)U2, Street With No Name.
The first song I ever heard a mp3 of. And still one of my favorites. I’ve seen U2 in concert three times, and I’d go back in a heartbeat. If you’ve ever heard the song, I don’t have to explain, because you probebly feel it too.
*)USA For Africa, We Are The World.
Okay, you all hated it. I know. It’s not the song itself – which doesn’t sound that great and is utter shlock – it’s the concept it represents. Of course, 30 years later, USA for africa is withholding AIDS drugs in order to make maximum profit while millions die. Yah, great.
*)Warrent, Heaven.
I think all of us secretly wish our significant others thought of us as this person thinks of his. I think this song is beautiful.
*)Jefferson Starship, We Built This City On Rock and Roll.
Music is too important to leave to the professionals! Pick up a guitar, hit some keys, join in! Music transcends culture, gender, gender identity, and to a certain extent even humanity. However good, or bad, you are, there are other people to jam with who have the same skill level you do, as well as ones you could learn from and ones you could help teach! My hope is that someday the human race will truly be able to say, ‘We built this planet on rock and roll!’ – and creative efforts of all types.
Anyway, as I said, that’s just my comments for today. Tomorrow they might be very different. Time for sleep now, after I finish listening to the Forrest Gump Suite. [Writing about 80s music forced me to delve deep into my mpeg collection.. but I’ve been in a 80s mood of late anyway.]
I feel terrible, not mentioning any of the five million other bands that made the 80s great. But that’s okay, I’m sure if I continue this journal for any length of time, I’ll slowly type out my opinions on such things.
You know, it occurs to me that we, the people, need to go kick a little ass.
Let me explain something to you, dear readers. Something you may not have thought about. [There are two of you now! I feel special ;-)] A H-bomb is really a fusion bomb. Has anyone thought about what it’s going to be like to have a small sun burn against the surface of our planet?]
Kids, this leaves us with two choices:
1) We can learn to live togeather
2) We can all die, and potentially damage the path of evolution on this planet
Religious people, it is NOT acceptable to say that god is watching the situation until you can _prove_ to me that there is a god. With a instrument, in a lab.
I accept the possibility of a supreme being – I’ll go into my views on the subject at some later date. I do not accept the idea that he/she/it has their eyes on planet earth and has any intention in intervening there.
I *definately* don’t beleive that he/she/it wants our unquestioning devotion. Ask yourself: Do you want unquestioning adoration from your children? I didn’t think so. You want your children to go out there and fix whatever your generation screwed up, because over, and over, that is the job of the children – and will be until the end of the human race, we can all hope.
Another interesting question for you all.. while you’re trying to picture a tiny sun burning against inhabited land, which is, after all, what a fusion bomb will be like.. do you really trust our government to have their fingers on those switches?
When bush speaks of nuclear disarmament, he means unloading the missiles from the silos and putting them in warehouses. He does *not* mean disassembling them into component peices. [i.e. making them into non-missiles, the sensable thing to do]
I don’t trust these guys very far. I have a lot of reasons, starting with Russia and Vietnam. I’m glad the Korea thing was in fact what the Koreans wanted – but it looks to me like we did the same thing there we do everywhere – walk in and abuse our superior technology to give one side superior firepower.
The dynamics of the cold war are really interesting. Presumably because they weren’t able to blow each other up without major consequences – or perhaps because the russians never had a ICBM that they’d trust to deliver a bomb – ICBMs aren’t cheap and easy to build.
At some point it becomes this bizarre Communism Vs. Capitolism chess game. Communism and Capitolism would pony up warriers to meet on various battlegrounds around the world.. germany, korea, vietnam, whatever.. and Communism would ante up. Or fail to, more often – Russia never really had that many resources.
The funniest part was the space race. People talk about how we ‘won’ the cold war – but a large part of the competition was the space race – the USSR managed to hold a manned space station for several years – which beats the heck out of sending up a bunch of satellites in a glorified airplane with a missile bolted to it. We might have gone to the moon.. but we stopped there. I’d say the USSR won the space race, and yet supposedly they ‘lost’ the cold war.
The actual sample is from Trainspotting – and of course normally it doesn’t have a very positive message at all. But when listened to in this context, you can see – choosing something else is at the very core of coming alive.
CHOOSE LIFE.
Choose a job.
Choose a career.
Choose a family.
Choose a big television,
choose washing machines, cars,
compact disk players and electrical tin openers…
Choose leasurewear and matching luggage
choose a three peice suite on hire-purchase in a range of fabrics
choose DIY and wondering how to assemble it
choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing spirit crushing game shows
stuffing junk food into your mouth
choose rotting away at the end of it all in your miserable home,
nothing more than a embarrassment to the selfish brats you spawn to replace yourself
Choose your future
choose life
I chose not to choose life: I chose something else!
Apparently a friend of mine from Lambda (lambda.moo.mud.org 8888) read this, or at least parts, and commented that they were the ravings of a ‘very intelligent and rather troubled mentality’.
After some thought, I’ve come up with a few reactions:
1) If you’re not troubled, you’re not paying attention.
2) Troubled? Me? You must have me confused with some other left wing pinko liberal anti-religion commie hippie scumbag..
3) Troubled? No, I’m just upset.
Seriously, do I advocate blowing things up? Killing people? Anything like that? No, i’d just like to overthrow the government and install one that actually beleives in the principles they told us all about in grade school. That’s all. And I’m not even willing to kill anyone to do it.
[Which means I’m not likely to succeed.]
Or, if you prefer, troubled? No! I’m just trying to develop technology that will make our transportation grid not cause a global climate shift and several major wars.
Okay, so I’m troubled. I admit it. But I’d like to think that the fact that I’m troubled indicates that I’m paying attention – which I’d like to point out that about 99.5% of the world – isn’t.
Besides, isn’t it always the tortured geniuses who produce the most interesting creations?
Oh, forgot, I’m not a genius. but I’m tortured! Really! Honest!
S.
A little boy goes to his dad and asks, “What’s politics?”
Dad says, “Well son, let me try to explain it this way:
I’m the breadwinner of the family, so let’s call me Capitalism.
Your Mom, she’s the administrator of the money, so we’ll call her the Government
We’re here to take care of your needs, so we’ll call you the People.
The nanny, we’ll consider her the Working Class. Now your baby brother,
we’ll call him the Future. ow, think about that and see if that makes sense.”
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said.
Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.
He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper
So the little boy goes to his parents’ room and finds his mother sound asleep.
Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny’s room. Finding the door locked,
he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up
and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father,
“Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.” The father says,
“Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.”
The little boy replies, “Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class,
the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future
is in deep shit.”
