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05.31.02
candles on the cake on what might have been roads you might have took mistakes mistaken sometimes when i'm writing, i get into a funk. how it goes is this: i start writing. i write real well, real fast, for a few days. then i get the funk. it freaks me out and i start to become conscious of my words. they get heavy. they get stale. i become afraid of them. it should come so easy and now it seems forced. so i take a break. then the block comes back. rinse, repeat. the way i can tell that i'm getting the funk is by the rhythm. i take more notice of rhythm. usually i can spot it, because i become fascinated with song lyrics. i try to weave them into whatever i'm writing. the weaving makes me self conscious, which makes me question the words themselves, which makes me more self conscious. it steam rolls. i think what i like about song lyrics is the rhythm. they break apart easily into these tiny, perfect phrases. they have mood and color and temperature. they flow in ways that normal words don't. they defy gravity. they sing. that's how i want to write. i want words that make music. words that are perfectly formed, tiny little pearls of language. they're beautiful. they're exactly what i want to write. they're exactly what i meant to say. how well is this post working? it's very fragmented. i do that too, when i'm in the funk. my writing morphs into a huge pile of periods and commas. i think i do it because fragments remind me of lyrics. without really being lyrics. the fragments don't really align with my personal style, though. my thoughts come in long and meandering strings. just ask my boyfriend. but when i sit here and break them apart, just like i'm doing, i feel in control. so how's it working? it's served a purpose before - even producing some of the better stuff that i've written. when it works. the other times, it seems forced, glossy or garish. unnatural and stupid. it seems that these are my favorite tools; fragment and repetition. but oh! the drama. can you sit here and read this stuff for very long? probably not. so i need to work out some kind of middle ground. and i need to end this post. [updated] # all of a sudden everyone's talking about "the other crisis" at the india-pakistan border. bush is sending rummy over next week (a little odd - why the defense sec. instead of the sec. of state?) and we're recalling non-essentials from india. the cover story at salon (premium only) speculates about possible nuclear scenarios. why is this more of an issue today than it was yesterday? nobody's really saying why the sudden panic, but david ignatius of the iht explains that india's intelligence service will be releasing a report on pakistani compliance with last december's terrorist ultimatum. ignatius does a great job of exploring some of the internal politial strife that is fueling this crisis, offering a more thorough picture of what is really happening over there. the next few months will be very interesting. # the register is reporting rumors of new 17 and 19 inch imacs to begin production soon and release Q3. the article also has a fun little bit about US tech's reliance on china and the political/economic vulnerabilities that emerge. # 05.30.02 wow. our 'P' fiasco is still going on around here. it's been in the student paper every day. it even made the la times earlier this week. but now there's a letter to the editor from NARTH, and i'm completely stunned. for the uninitiated, NARTH is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and they believe that we'll all get straight again with the proper hetero-therapy. this letter, you might guess, could be a really terrible thing to have happen on a campus that's already rampant with intolerance and homophobia. we wont see what kind of response it generates until monday, but i'm going to be very anxious until then. if you have some time, you might consider sending a letter (250 words or less) to the editor at the mustang daily and help the gay community here at cal poly let this campus know just how wrong, and how hurtful (and dangerous?) this woman's words really are. [updated] # tomorrow, (friday) starting at 9am and ending at 1pm, (pacific) you can bid on unsold new and refurbished apple products. anyone want to make a nice offer on one of the combo drive ibooks (there's 19) or one of the 39 5GB ipods for # Each track is assigned a "burn" score, a measure of how "burned out" the target audience has become; when the score passes a certain level, the tune disappears. the washington post talks about today's radio industry, clearchannel's cut-to-the-bone style of business and how things happen in Big Radio these days. an interesting article for anyone who turned on their radio a few years ago and wondered where all the music had gone... # 05.29.02 my baby's really sick today. go give him a hug. # some relative nice-guy over at slashdot asked for suggestions on gifts to give to a friend's child as she goes off to college. this reminded me: when i graduated high school, an old college friend of my mother's (an ex-boyfriend perhaps?) sent me a similar going away package, which he called a sampler in celebration of your graduation from high school & the begining of your journey into the great beyond. i still have everything he sent. the box included whitman's leaves of grass and a mix tape. the tape was perhaps the greatest mix i've ever gotten. it introduced me to so much music that i now treasure, like the talking heads, jeff buckley, bela fleck, sarah mclachlan, miles davis and tom waits. it's quality is rivaled only by the multi-disc, multi-mood, epic mixes that my friend yas is so known for. i've got more of her tapes than i can imagine. perhaps it's time i should return the favor, now that i'm graduating again, and make him a mix of my own. # the register reports that tomorrow morning, a number of major linux distributors ("distros"), redhat notwithstanding, will announce the formation of a unified front, under the flag of a common distribution of the freeOS. this could be a Really Big Thing in OS land, pooling the collective marketing resources of disparate linux companies to take on the likes of M$ for the Big Server Pie. or else it could be a Really Dumb Thing, sapping marketshare from each of the corporations and bogging down everyone involved and keeping any wiz-bang marketing tactics uselessly tethered to a crap-alliance. who knows? # sf gate's mark morford wonders, (and quiet eloquently, i might add) where's all the dick in hollywood? # looks like last week's fiasco over the 'P' has made the la times. {thanks, mike} # 05.28.02 if you had a band, what would you call it? (note: by contributing, you relinquish the right to use the name to me, who might relinquish the right to use the name to someone else who is actually looking for a band name. or something.) # o'reilly has a rather cute article sent in by a hapless fellow who was able to set up a pc/mac wireless network using apple's airport. i've had some fun with this subject before, so i was interested to read it. although the article itself isn't too wonderful (it was sent in by a reader, and this is o'reilly, so the quality expectation is a little sub-par) there is a really helpful link to apple's forum on airport and windows. also, i was surprised to find that there's actually an apple-released windows version of the airport admin utility. # 05.27.02 my roommate jon traded an old homeless lady his bible for her cookies today. they were good cookies too. # things have been pretty hectic in my normally slow little life of recent. i spent some time in florida, relaxing, learning and discovering that mentors are made, not chosen. i returned, jetlagged but refreshed, to find less than 20 days remaining in my undergraduate education and a wrecking ball sunk into the middle of my senior project. and now the long weekend has brought me a wonderful, fuzzy-headed bundle of love from san francisco to visit. so its understandable that i've been away from the web for a while. tonight i thought i would tour around and see what everyone's been up to. clicking down the list, i find myself at the homepage of one chris paul. glancing at the super-handy recent entries list, i see that i've missed a post entitled "my first threesome." chris paul in a threesome? sounds hot to me! but alas, instead of the expected insta-porn (will anyone else fulfill me like david?) i find a non-sexual (albeit lovely) bit of thoughtful personal insight. so, what's a boy to do? why, assume that mr. chris was speaking of an old post, of course! so i wander off to the search page and enter "my first threesome." initially surprised at the sheer volume of entries returned (truly, how many times can one have a first threesome?) i suddenly realized the plot which brought me down. the previously handy recent entries list, which includes the original phrase of my search, had returned many equally eloquent entries - however there were amongst them no sex-filled romps, set in the oversized beds of happy, promiscuous couples who seek out beautiful, tall colorado natives as their sexual prey. and so the moral, boys and girls, is to always be cautious of archive template design. and to send your sexy threesome stories to me directly, thus saving the headache of having to root them out myself. # my roommate jon is a man who lives on the edge. he's a fast guy living a fast life, and when he does things, he does them big. he's not going to let a second slip by without exploiting it for all its worth. he's an Xtreme! kinda guy. which is what made me realize he was the model consumer of 7-11's latest and greatest, the Xtreme! Gulp. i bought him one two days ago, and this monster insulated mug has been full since. and at 52 oz. it's actually 60% larger than the average human stomach. # 05.26.02 the register writes about tivo's latest attempt at peace with the networks - spam tv. the basic concept is that network's can "sponsor" a tv show and tivo will force your player to download the program into a special, reserved portion of it's hard disk. i'm mixed on this, as it's probably not too hard to just ignore the extra programing. but jessie got me thinking about the rather invasive nature of this as well. feel free to chime in with your own thoughts. # 05.24.02 everybody mark your books. mark has moved. # 05.23.02 more music! now available is jeff buckley's hallelujah. you might have heard it on this week's season finale of the west wing if you were watching. it's a beautiful, bittersweet song from one of the best debut albums i've ever heard. download it now. # 05.22.02 the short and the long of it is that i'm back home, safe and sound. miraculously, none of the plane's i flew on today seemed prone to dropping out of the sky, although i had some moments of doubt while on the prop plane during the last leg of the trip... # 05.21.02 DAY TWO i don't know what i could have been afraid of. this place is really beautiful. it's a wonderful vacation and i'm feeling so relaxed. i overslept today, still not on the right schedule. after missing the first session this morning, i caught up with my contingent. i only caught one session before we broke for the afternoon. there's a golf tournament at the resort today and most everyone went to play or watch. back in my hotel room, i took took a long nap with the balcony door standing open, the breeze falling across my face as i slept. after the nap i went out to the pool to read for a while. i found my way to the lakeside bar, which was closing. the bartender gave me my coke for free. if i'd asked her to add rum to it, i'd have been asleep again in no time. i finished my book and sat on the deck watching the birds fly over the lake. there's quite a few cranes here. they stand together on the shore of the lake and fly overhead in small groups. a group of turtles swam through the lake, pausing often to poke their heads up above the water. local news is on right now - it's just after five. a local tv reporter who looks like a sloppy hilary clinton and has a neutral gas as a name (argon) is telling me about a man who is robbing jewelry counters at sears throughout the south. her male counterpart is telling everyone that hurricane season is coming. of course he says it with a perfect smile. did you know the next superbowl is going to be right here in jacksonville? tonight we're attending a large banquet awards show. they call it the golden cylinder award, which is appropriatly silly. tomorrow morning we'll pack and head out, another day spent crossing the country. i'll land back in the correct time zone and hopefully my cycle will return to some flavor of normal. there's a lot of work to be done now, but i feel refreshed and ready to tackle it. # ELECTROBOY an impulse purchase with byron led me to andy behrman's memoir, electroboy. the overwhelming boredom of cross country flying propelled me through the book. behrman is a manic depressive who has led a bizarrely wild life until his diagnosis and multiple attempts at treatment. the book's climax and title is born from his experiences with electroshock therapy, which are described with a lucidity that is astounding. my expectations weren't high. this book isn't going to win a pulitzer price. but it's an amazing description of the experiences behrman has been through. reading it gives one the feeling of being allowed inside the head of a mentally ill young man. the novel reads like a diary and often becomes repetitive. but the descriptions of the emotions stirred up by the illness and the bizarre events that it drove this man to. manic travel, obsessed sex and drug consumption, and art forgery - behrman tells these stories, as well as his experiences stripping and hustling. all the while these stories are interspersed with tales of his wild and seemingly uncontrollable manic behavior. he often takes on a braggarts tone, trying to wow the reader with expensive and exclusive things and purchases. it doesn't impress, but it does fold you into the desperation that is driving behrman throughout. it makes one wonder what about the emotional and mental devices that allow us to keep ourselves from these sorts of maddeningly impulsive behaviors. # DAY ONE (more) yesterday ended well. very satisfying experiences all around. after some rather interesting sessions (standards for supply chain management was most interesting for me) i joined kellee for a drink at the lobby bar. we nursed our drinks for an hour or better, swapping funny stories and having a generally pleasant time. the kids from stout (univ. of wisconsin) invited us to go with them to the beach. they're nice and i love their accents. i put my feet in the atlantic ocean for the first time ever. it's much warmer here than i would have thought. (although it's still cold, there's no bone-chilling need for a wetsuit. it's also not as salty, oddly.) kellee and i went to a fun little pizza place for dinner and continued the fun. we stopped at the liquor store and got some drinks for later. the cashier told me my id photo looked like the younger brother from growing pains, ben. it's the second comment i've gotten on my id since i left california. perhaps it's time to get rid of that silly picture (i was sixteen and looked twelve). before kellee and i could get out to the hot tub where the other students were gathering, dr. keif came back to the room and told me that i should come and talk to someone about my project with him. i'm conducting an experiment examining the gamut differences between two processes used in packaging. there's a very interesting fellow here who i talked to about the project earlier. he had an idea that i was really dancing around a much larger, more illusive issue of continuous tone reproduction. it's all very obscure, but we spoke for about an hour and a half. i learned more in 45 minutes with him than i have in the last year. the whole thing was very fulfilling. after that, kellee and dr. keif and i made out way out to the hot tub, which was set to a flesh scorching temperature. i was red for quite a while afterwards. we all shared some beers and talked at length about the graphic communication department at cal poly. dr. keif shared a lot with us and it was very interesting to see some of the inside ideas driving our faculty. these posts are pretty long, and probably not terribly interesting to others. i'm taking the opportunity for the time being to use this site as a bit of a travel journal. there's little real blogging to be done at 56k over aol from a hotel room, so if you're not interested in hearing this stuff, just skip it for now and wait for the return of regular updates in a few days. # 05.20.02 DAY ONE i don't deal well with time changes. my body tells me that today's breakfast was actually served at four am. sure felt like it. thing's aren't as bad as i had feared, which of course anyone could have told me when i was panicking. the flight(s) were pretty nice. i read almost half of my new book (more to come on that later) between los angeles and georgia. there was a problem out of la, delaying our plane and causing us to miss the flight from atlanta down here to florida. luckily that was easily resolved and we were on another plane within an hour. the i've only met a few of the other students who are here. they seems nice. there's only two cute boys out of all of the ones here! i knew i was getting spoiled by cal poly and it's high ratio of beautiful people. there was some suggestion that some of the kids from rochester wanted us to go out with them tonight, which might prove fun. sharing a hotel room with dr. keif isn't too bad either. he brought earplugs for me, because he snores. i used them last night. we've only had two sessions so far today. the first was a terrible presentation by some professional speaker from the bay area (figures - giving us a bad reputation). he stood up there for almost two hours and spewed out pseudo-profundities about business and talked to us like we were a room full of illiterate children about how to deal with change. nobody was buying it. whoever booked him got screwed badly. the second presentation was a panel discussion with three print buyers, focused on how the industry (the gravure printing industry, as if you really care) can better meet the changing needs of their clients. this really great, angry fellow from kraft foods stood up and basically yelled at the room and told them that everything they were doing to try to cater to packaging company's like his was wrong. then he laid out, in explicit detail, the changes that kraft is planning for their marketing direction in the future. (segmentation, regionalization, specific market targeting. for macaroni and cheese?) it was really neat to hear something different and get some real specifics on what needs to change. from the packaging perspective, it seems the only logical thing for print to do is to step forward and integrate directly into the client's filling and distribution. which amounts to printing as simply a component of a production line. which is totally against everything our pundits say. i love it. i'm enjoying kellee, my traveling partner. she's quiet and doesn't like to talk to these people too much, which makes us quite the duo, walking around the exhibit areas, staring at booths and not talking to anyone. it's sort of fun to be the wacky california kids. i'm bothered however to watch these lecherous men trying to interact with her. (she's quite pretty and has that self-assured nature that always attracts people.) hanging out with her is also reminding me of how straight the printing industry is. that's a hanging observation that i'd just like to stick in there and leave alone. so that's it so far for day one. of course, it's barely halfway over, but i don't know if i'll have much chance to blog later on. # 05.18.02 it's worth noting from the previous post that i'm going to be out of town for a few days. i will be back wednesday, so regular updates will resume sometime around then. i may be able to scrape together some dialup access with my laptop, so there may be a few short posts from the conference. the high point will be the multitude of plane changes i'm going through to get there and back. i love take off's and landings, and there'll be 12 of them by the time i arrive back here. if anyone finds themselves in jacksonville, florida monday or tuesday... # i hate traveling. which is not to say that i hate to travel. i love the verb part of travel. i hate the noun part. i always get that slightly frightened feeling. do you remember going to summer camp? i don't, because i never went. just the idea made me feel ill. condense your belongings into two bags and flit away to spend some predetermined amount of time in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. so it's not traveling that i'm busy hating right now so much as it is business traveling. i'm going to a conference in florida. (not the sunny, beachy fun part of florida, but rather the southern part.) i'm sitting here packing and i'm getting more and more creeped out. i'm traveling with people i sorta know to a place i've never been and know nothing about to attend a conference where i'll know and care about very little and there's guaranteed to be very few, if any, people who would be of interest to me. how did i get signed up? i start to get worked up as soon as i start packing. it's totally different from packing for other events. i almost never spend a weekend at home - for those trips, i can pack in 5 minutes. but for this i have to iron, get all the traveling bags out, lay all the clothes out on the bed. seeing them all sitting there terrifies me. all those little folded piles waiting to be put into my bags. i have to make sure i'm taking exactly what i need. taking too much means i look like a fool and i'm traveling heavy. packing too light means i'll be dressed inappropriately or i'll be missing something i absolutely needed. there's got to be business wear for the daytime. formal attire for any banquets or Important Dinners. casual clothes for hanging around between events. something swanky in case there's going out to be done. how many pairs of shoes does that make? do i have the right belt? there's a near panic state that occurs as i realize that i'm stuck there, fun or not. what if i have a terrible time? what if i can't make conversation with these people? worse yet, what if i spend the whole time stuck in those terrrible, made-up conversations where you have no desire to be talking to the person in the least, but you have to make polite questions and nod and smile a lot because you have to sit next to this person or they're someone important or something? i sit through those conversations in a state of total terror - what happens if i run out of positive, i'm really listening to what you're saying with devoted interest acknowledgments or questions? i'm stuck there until wednesday no matter what happens. having to share a hotel room also makes the whole thing even more claustrophobic. i know i'm overreacting to the whole thing. half of the damned trip is flying, which i love to tears. i have a few good books. it's hardly even two full days. it could very well be a great time. i'm sitting here with a calm the nerves drink trying to convince myself of these things. what am i forgetting? # 05.17.02 the register eulogizes today's death of napster. # 05.16.02 when microsoft's xbox was released, did you find yourself completely baffeled when sony held the playstation2's market commanding high price steady? me too. as the register is reporting, they knew what they were doing better than we were. now that xbox sales are slumping and M$ is hurting (the xbox was already being manufactured at a loss) sony has chopped $100 off the price of their unit, forcing microsoft to do the same. (they were planning to do it, but now they're forced to, and a week ahead of schedule as well.) their economy may be failing, but the japanese still know how to one-up us in classy business moves... # 05.15.02 in other news, i'm looking for a new hair style. (as if you couldn't tell from the photo below.) i want to find something fun and full and scruffy. but it needs to be stylishly scruffy. as if to convey, "hey, i have fun, stylish hair, but i still bathe regularly and am highly employable." any ideas? (include pictures!) # COMMUNITY i've bitched about the gay community here at cal poly before. you probably skipped over that post. not that i blame you. so i wasn't really planning to get too involved in this week's pride events. not that i'm not proud. i just prefer to be proud from the comfort of my own home. but this place really gets to me sometimes. so today, when i got up and saw that, even after byron's fantastic letter to the editor, the P had been painted over again, i was pretty livid. some quick background: here at cal poly, there is a big hill behind the school. on it, there is a big concrete letter P. you know, for poly. on many occasions, people change or adapt the P. it get's painted pink for breast cancer week. the frats use bed sheets to spell their greek letters out during rush week. and the cal poly gay club paints it rainbow during their pride week. on sunday they painted it. on sunday night, someone painted over it. on monday, they repainted it. on monday night, someone painted over it again. the first time, byron wrote his letter. today i wrote this. and i went up there and helped them repaint. it wasn't much - they had lots of over people supporting them. hell, they've got enough students to keep painting it all week. and i hope they do. but i can't believe that people on this campus would be so homophobic and so damned rude as to paint over it, not once, but twice. so i'm mad. and that's why i'm playing with the other kids this week. personally, i hope they do keep painting it over every night. so that we can go up there every day and paint it back. because we're not going anywhere, and they'd better get used to it. # three young women just came to our front door and offered to take out our trash. apparently, they're doing random kind deeds for their bible study group. because garbage brings us closer to jesus. #
THEN & NOW take a look above for a glimpse into the past, courtesy of my roommate alex. he uncovered this scan of me and some friends camping at the beach during my freshman year of college. it's the kind of "wow, we were so young back then" picture that i should look back on many years from now. except that i'm already astounded by how much younger i was, and that was just four years ago! anyway, i put a current picture up next to it, for comparison. # 05.14.02 remember that book in the 70's, compiling the uncollected works of j.d. salinger? it's back, kind of. grab it while you can. and be sure to read hapworth and let me know what you think. # you knew it was coming. but did you know it would look so cool? # 05.13.02 from ananova comes word that our lovely planet has been punched through by two high density, high speed "strangelets" back in 1993. they have determined that the ultra-dense, microscopic particles collided with the earth at nearly 900,000 mph and exited back out the other side. # thumbing through the mac news, as i often do, i found a link to this apple document describing the origins of apple's involvement with open source and the birth of darwin, the open source mach/bsd kernel that drives mac os x. if you are familiar with this story, there's not much new to find here, but if you're looking to find out more about how apple got involved with all of this, it's a pretty spiffy article. also, the long dormant mac os rumors has popped back up today with a few words about tomorrow's server release and some hints at apple's future plans. #
have you seen a prettier mug than that? why, it's our own poetically minded rob lowe hard at work making the world a better place for ... erm, congestion management, according to the screen capture. yes, it seems that aaron had to fill in for the boss last week and present a bill to the california legislature. he's a bit modest about the whole thing, and i'm probably butchering the story with my meager understanding of political workings, so go and take read about the event for yourself. # 05.12.02 it's time for more random search referrals! today was a pretty hot day, with winners like "romantic camping in oregon" and "bootleg porn from thailand." then there's my two favorites, "stories about little boys who love to masturbate" and "trout porn." # spent a lovely weekend amongst friends. the boyfriend came for a visit along with mark and his camera friendly husband rich. our collective presence was even graced by a brief encounter with mr. matthew. we visited the castle up the road and enjoyed some of the local san luis obispo cuisine. ahem. sometimes i forget that this town isn't good for much more than drunken, rowdy kinds of fun. (i stay in a lot.) # back in february i decided to do all those shirtless+boy referrals from google a favor and post some actual pictures of shirtless boys. anyway, i was cleaning up on my server a little and rediscovered those pictures. so i thought i'd be kind and update those pictures. you know, so those google kids can see something new every so often. and i figured you all might enjoy the same privilege. so, since i've not presented any fun pictures recently, here's some random shirtless boys.
# according to greenplastic, thom yorke popped in on the radiohead.com message board. he said the band is hard at work on the next album. thom said this album will be more "focused" and will come out "sooner than you think." # 05.10.02 i've recently discovered a lovely pair of new sites, for your reading pleasure: time is the enemy has a mix of storytelling and style making each post a wonderful tiny experience. i keep my business to myself offers a sharp, rythmic, quirky, perceptiveness in a collection of links, quotes and poem's that i really like. in other news, most random referral award goes to lolita+cal+poly+porn, which i'm sure was actually one of my roommates. # rumor has it heidelberg, the world's largest manufacturer of sheetfed presses (and undoubtedly the market leader in printing industry mind share and brand recognition) is up for sale. i'm told that the print vendor's holding firm (dutch utilities mega rwe) is looking to divest themselves of their printing systems group, despite strong performance through 2000-2001. heidelberg's sales continued to increase during that fiscal year despite operating losses of 9.5 million (euro) which were attributable to expenses associated with the five year DRUPA conference. if you know anything more about this or can find it popping up in legit news outlets, let us know. # 05.09.02 oh yeah, if you like the john mayer track, or even if you don't, give a listen to this accoustic cover of radiohead's kid a. the boy gets credit for even trying that one. and he does it well. {thanks to kevin for turning us on to that} # MUSICA NUEVA! first, go feel byron's media. especially under the milky way galaxy, which he failed to mention is used in the party scene in donnie darko. then come back and check out our new stuff. as promised, an mp3 from john mayer. it's called neon and it's fun. a little jazzy and a little mass-market hipster. grab it and decide for yourself. finally, i've updated the homemade section. prosaic's resident teen-angst-a-rific jail bait kevin has sent in his own cover of radiohead's how to disappear. i thought it sounded a little different than the album so i asked kevin to explain himself: "i learned it not too long ago. i can play it really like the song, but i like to play my own version with only 3 chords. the real version uses 3 chords, and then switches to a variation for each one every measure. i hope you understand what i mean. its kind of like, instead of playing C C C C Em Em Em Em (how i play it) it goes C Cadd9 C Cadd9, Em Em1 Em Em1 um, we sure do, kev! if you like it, let him know. # recently, i've been suffering from a nasty bout of insomnia. but rather than tossing and turning, last night i opted to go nocturnal. so i stayed up most of the night, putzing around and keeping myself entertained. i wrote an applescript to automatically name, catagorize and sort my porn. how's that for good times? # i hear you. by popular demand, the much touted extended entry popup window is gone. don't i feel all microsoft and shit. # 05.08.02 david has suggested that maybe the [more...] window isn't as lovely as i had imagined. i'd like to know how people feel about it. if it's not convenient, let me know. # o'reilly's is carrying a fascinating article by jon udell, who has discovered what might be the most interesting new development to come about within blogging yet. you'll read the article, no doubt, because you're all good little boys and girls who care about the larger, emergent trends being created by the blogging community and the biological parallels they carry. but if you didn't, you'd want to know about the latest think in links. public referrals. basically, when you go to these backlink equipped sites, you can see who has linked to them. seems pretty ok, sure at first, but on further examination, you can see the implication this begins to have. with this, we've finally crystallized the feedback loop that began with blogdex and matured with that site's social networking tools. feedback loops, you'll all recall, are vital to the propagation and evolution of information and the systems that carry it. so keep your eye on this. with the big web services push going on, be sure to look for a everyman's-tool to bring it on board for smaller sites. or, if you're an empowerer of the everyman, write a tool yourself. spread the word. # tyler called me this evening to ask a favor. you see, he'd met this old woman. she asked if he, being a nice young man, could help fix her computer. she doesn't know much about macs, you see. and because tyler is a nice young man, and because this old lady was wearing a PFLAG button on her blouse, he said yes. tyler wanted me to come. he doesn't know much about macs, but he's a nice young man. the kind who can't say no to elderly women with PFLAG buttons. but who could? besides, it was to be an adventure, and we all need those. the kindly old woman lived over the hill, about 20 minutes away. we drove up the grade and after a near death u-turn, were able to locate the one lane bridge. and the one lane road. which wrapped around the mountain. across the creek. up the hill. through the dirt. 3 miles back, into the woods. we emerged through the overgrown trees and brush, driving down this unpaved one lane road, to find the largest, most glorious house, nestled against a hillside, at the edge of a clearing. she opened the door immediately. i'm so glad you could make it! and of course we were too. it was old to say the least. tyler talked, keeping her busy. i worked. there was an imac too. we fixed it as well. two hours later, as the sun was setting, we finished our work. our new friends asked us to stay for dinner. we really must be going, we replied. a rain check, we suggested. she made us promise to come back, suggesting we visit for a nice hike. the property goes back 14 acres and there's a creek with some lovely trout. our PFLAG mom works at the booth, once a week at the farmer's market. she is always there with her husband, chatting with the locals and passing out the pamphlets. we're just nice old folks, so they can't ignore us and keep walking! she gaily informs us. indeed, who could? # 05.07.02 last night i had a dream. this dream was way too weird to actually tell, much to epic to put to paper. too distorted. it grew like a cake, layer by layer. each layer, each event, was heavier, more profoundly important than the last. problems arose, but each one was eliminated by something bigger. it became this thing, huge and teetering, a tall tower made of the carcases of dead ideas or feelings. all the characters were self centered. everything they did, every thought they shared, was completely for themselves. it pushed and pulled at the plot through that. one person's problem was big and impossible and then it was washed away because someone else had a problem and didn't care about anyone else's problems. sort of like life. it played out not as a dream, but as a script or screen play. i've got it all written down, the notes taken and the files foldered. perhaps this one may actually become something. # did you see being john malkovich? did you think it was totally insane? check out this review of writer charlie kaufman's latest absurdist film, human nature. # jessie has a good rundown of new and upcoming movies. but he missed what might be the most far-reaching event in movie history: the powerpuff girls movie. # 05.06.02 whoa! it seems as though apple has had their code jockey's strapped to those desks recently, because today's WWDC keynote is turned out to be quite exciting, especially under the hood. rack mounted servers should appear in a week. dynamic IP discovery, tied right into streaming mp3s. ground level handwriting recognition. all screen drawing is passed off to the video card (if it's new enough). aol-sanctioned chat program, integrated. a revamped sherlock application. quicktime 6. improved mail features. and the address book has been opened up to all applications including the new chat program. it should sync with bluetooth phones and pda's by the end of the year. {updated} # 05.05.02 what did i have to do on sunday? plenty. but instead of doing it, i spent the afternoon hacking away at a project. i've implimented a feature that i've long wanted around here. i've added an extended entry popup. so next time i have a really-long-three-page-musing to share with you, it wont take up the whole main page. just look for the [more...] link at the bottom of an entry to get the whole text. let me know if it doesn't work right... # so i'm thinking today about fads and movements and scenes. at lot of different, crazy stuff happened in the 80's. a lot of it had a very strong influence on what came next. i think that a lot of it is exerting it's pull on us right now. but i can't be sure, because i didn't really experience the 80's. sure, i was alive, but i lived in a backwater place. whatever intricate patterns carry the ideas and theme's of a time, they somehow move around, but not through, my home town. that got me to a bigger thought - how do we form these intricacies we call culture? really it's just a larger pattern stitched together from disparate sources. but there's a common aesthetic to it. how does an entire country (or world) come to the same conclusions in near perfect unison? how are ideas and fads propagated? what is this machine that interconnects all of us, allowing us to share a similar interest at a similar time? # HANGOVER SUNDAYS going out. i forgot how damned friendly i get when i'm drunk. wanna count the phone numbers in my jean's pocket this morning? god. i'm a lush. it's been a while since i've been drunk enough to feel it in the morning. i'm warming back up to the world with a fruit smoothie beverage and The Strokes. and online shopping. god. i'm a geek. let's take a minute to tackle this lush concept in greater depth. everyone know's i'm spoken for. it's not like i was out there last night crusing guys. i did get three or four phone numbers. two straight guys and a pair of lesbians. half of them i'd met somewhere before. so last night i wasn't really such a skank. but i choose my words very deliberately. when i'm drinking socially, i become everyone's friend. i'm all over the place and i'm talking to everyone i can meet. and i do it fanatically. desperately. there's something there, driving me. it's a need to feel interesting, to feel popular, to feel accepted. it's the crumbling of my wall, the compromise of my defenses. the exposure of my most basic insecurities. growing up, i dreamt of running away. i would pack a bag and jump on a bus, maybe a train. i would leave and go as far as i could get. and when i got there, to that far off place, i would stop and i would live there, alone. it wasn't, as is so often the case, because i wanted to get away from people or events of circumstances. it was because i wanted to get away from myself. and i wanted to learn how to be alone. i've never been good at it. yet it's something i've always wanted, always desired. to be left alone. to be alone. i've since learned, and i no longer feel the need to be alone. because, most of the time, i can control that desperation, that need to feel accepted, to feel wanted or desired. but when my wall comes down, all i want is for someone to tell me that thing that i want so badly to hear. no, last night i didn't cruise, or get cruised. last night i wasn't propositioned or hit on. i didn't try to cheat on my boyfriend. last night i let myself become vulnerable. # 05.04.02 reading my roommate's latest copy of spin magazine, i saw a familiar face. sometime around december of last year, someone gave me this (cute) boy's album, and i realized that john mayer is probably going to be the next big thing. and all of a sudden, it happened. the critics like the album, and he's suddenly grown a huge fan following. (with a face like that, screaming girls are inevitable.) interestingly though, he's getting other praise as well - from elton john. (john interviewed john for interview.) the spin piece i read says the two had dinner together on valentine's day - he's been surounding himself with hottie's recently. anyway, expect a john mayer mp3 to show up around here soon, so you can decide for yourself. on another musical note, i was reading about a new group calling themselves chomsky. can you sell pop rock under the same label as the political linguist? i'm planning to look into this band a little and report back. # 05.03.02 and the people rejoice: sparky's back! excerpt from today's conversation:
UltraSparky: Have you been pretty stuck since the wreck? # 05.02.02 you know what? i think mark is always talking about sex. now he's chatting it. # 05.01.02 do you see that countdown at the top of the page? as i write this, it says fourty-five. that's fourty-five days until i have to join the big party. fourty-five days until i have to have a job. fourty-five days until i have to have a place to live. fourty-five days until i have to finish my senior project. fourty-five days is a little over 6 weeks, folks, and that just ain't a very long time anymore. luckily, i'm not doing it alone. # around the web: bart is having adventures in italy, while peter remembers one of la's darkest moments. always-fun johnathan (greenplastic's radiohead guru) is doing many things, including experiencing moral dilemma over at chart no.3, and the lovely miss shauny of what's new pussycat is suffering from lesbian assumptions. and why can't i stay away from ernie's latest and greatest, the blind date blog? it's almost as much fun my favorite under-cover reality relationship tv show: cheaters! # monday night (cheap movie night at the palm) i saw the ultra fun y tu mama tambien. it's a wild romp and it's sex-tastic. tonight i rented the obtuse and difficult donnie darko which i really loved. it was frustrating, but that's half the fun. what's the other half? why, jake gyllenhaal and a brief appearance by one of my favorites, james duval. so, erm, can anybody tell me what happened? # « April 2002 | archive index | June 2002 » built with movabletype |
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