Category: blogging

Where write about writing, and my website sounds familiar.

Posted on

hate and bass

I just don't get it.
Midnight now, definitely time to go to bed. I do this all the time… stay up for no good reason. Just sitting here, surfing the net, reading about this and that.

Related to my entry yesterday about comment spam, it seems Google heard the blog-collective’s cry and has decided to do something about it. I’m hesitant to call it a solution, because all it does is remove the “reward” spammers get from putting links in comments (Google calculates a webpage’s “PageRank” by the number of other pages on the web that link to that page, so getting your URL on as many webpages as possible yields an elevated PageRank and the resultant higher prominence in search results). I guess, eventually, when there’s no direct benefit from polluting comments with spam, comment spam will cease. But for a while, those bots will still be running… and the spam will still be there. Still, it’s cool to see that WordPress has signed on to support the feature in a future version, I love WordPress.

On the way home from work today, I arrived at a red light in the middle lane of three lanes. Shortly, I was flanked on either side by teenager drivers. The new Decemberists album was on the stereo, filling the truck with high-pitched, warbly, folky nasal crooning backed by soft acoustic guitar. The two sideways-hat-wearin’ teenagers were having a good ol’ fashion whiteboy bass-off, trying to outdo each other’s bumpin’ – and I was caught square in the middle. So there I was, entombed in bass and poseurs… realizing how un-young I am. I had a brief urge to flip on over to the frequency modulated bands and put on 97.1 BEAT or 101.5 BLNG or whatever’s hot with the yunguns these days… but I resisted. Wait… I’m old enough to joke about not being a teenager, right? I mean, for Jah’s sake… I’m pushin’ 30 y’all.

I dunno how many people know about Google’s Zeitgeist, I read about it a couple years ago. It’s really awesome to watch internet search trends over time, or maybe it’s just me. Statistics are rad, there’s a voyeuristic feel about them – not the crazy statistics I took in college that was all triple integrals and 4th order differential equations; nay, that kind of statistics sucks. Anyway, they’ve got some cool data that’s kinda fun to poke through. To round out this paragraph of two unrelated thoughts: I exchanged mail again with Bob from yesterday, you know the guy who runs TWOBITS.com? He sent me a link to his personal webpage. Check out the “Roadie” story, it’s a fun read – as are they all. And, we’re done.

Goodnight peoples… until tomorrow.

Posted on

put your hands up!

Drop that hammer! We're haulin' you in son.
Hey guys, welcome back. Sorry if any of you encountered a 404 error while checking sounds familiar yesterday, I was mucking with the .htaccess file in an attempt to block the glut of referrer spam I’ve been getting lately. Long story short, it didn’t work quite as I’d wished… since it effectively took my site offline. But now I’m back, by the shack of a soul boss most turnin’, stormin’, sound o’soul!!

Tonight when I got home, I fired up Thunderbird to check my oft-neglected “primary” e-mail address. Among the usual spam messages and “FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW:” prefixed messages from my uncle, I saw something potentially interesting. The mail was titled: http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/files/pacman_repro_underlay.zip, which I recognized as the URL to a file hosted on my Pac Man pages. Some background: some time ago, a visitor to my Pac Man site used his Adobe Illustrator skills to create a reproduction of the Pac Man cocktail cabinet underlay artwork. The reproduction was outstanding, a dead ringer for the NAMCO original. The kind artist offered to let me host the file on my server, and asked for nothing in return. He figured, as I did, that we were doing the MAME community a favor by offering the file freely. Now, onto the e-mail that flickered back at me from my monitor:

Dear Dave,

While I appreciate the plug on your page at:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/itemized.html

there is a link to your page at:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/hardware.html

where you are offering a free copy of our copyright artwork:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/files/pacman_repro_underlay.zip

Please remove the link as soon as possible to avoid further action. For your info, we sell the MsPac-man CT underlay pre-cut for a Pac-man table.

Don’t take this as an attack on you or your great website; I get people referencing it to me all the time and I see that you haven’t done anything with your pac page in a while, It’s just that we pay the rent off graphics sales and NAMCO gets their pound of flesh on every piece. The ONLY thing we get from them is protection from counterfeiters.

Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.

Bob

PS Please don’t blog our correspondence; it’s for your eyes only.

Read more about the current NAMCO lawsuit.
http://www.TWOBITS.com/sued/

I was kinda caught off gaurd, but I’m not going to say that I haven’t wondered before if I’d eventually get a “cease and desist” letter regarding the copyrighted artwork. I always figured that if there was a letter, it would have come from NAMCO directly. A quick check of the TWOBITS.com website shows they do indeed proclaim that their “officially licensed graphics” are “Manufactured by TWOBITS.com under license from NAMCO Ltd.” Taking a minute to re-read and digest the note, I realized that it wasn’t really threatening at all… and seemed more like one man appealing to another to stop doing something that was impacting his bottom line. I immediately called Ben to tell him I was famous… and he agreed with my position, which is summed up in my response:

Hey Bob,

No hard feelings… to be honest I wasn’t really aware you guys were paying any royalties on the artwork. Not to be accusing, but I figured you were in the same boat as the rest of us – using the graphics without permission. I mean, everyone and his brother says their graphics are “licensed,” even the guys at the booth in the flea market. As much as I like being able to offer the file as a service to the MAME community, I’d hate to take money from the pocket of someone who went to the trouble of getting permission and is paying to do it right.

So, to sum it up – the file is gone. I didn’t mean any harm by posting it.

However, there is one part of your message I find haaaard to abide… how can I not blog about my encounter with big brother? Seeing how we see each other eye-to-eye here, would you still deny me the retelling of this story?

Thanks, take care.

dave
www.pharaohweb.com

So, that’s that. I took the file down tonight, and have replaced it with a link to this entry. In the end though, I guess my rebellious side had to make a concession to my empathetic side… because while I managed to comply with the request to remove the file, I simply couldn’t resist documenting the exchange on this page. In the end, I’d still recommend taking your business to twobits, for underlay artwork or any other of the rad DIY arcade accessories they offer. I can’t ding a guy for working to protect his income. And even though the file I hosted was in no-way pilfered from their graphic (it was painstakingly re-created from scratch), I don’t think that’d hold up in court. And yeah, I do feel kinda bad for writing about it against Bob’s wishes, but I’m hoping that since the whole thing was settled amicably he’ll be willing to shrug it off as “what I do.”

One last oddity that came from tonight’s events, the mail I got from twobits was addressed to myself, and Sharaun, and had our last name to boot. Not that big of a deal maybe, but I pay fee to “mask” my personal info from the prying eyes of WHOIS. I asked twobits about how they got the info, which I’m assuming was obtained by querying my WHOIS proxy service, but I thought it was interesting. I guess if you have a legit need to contact the registered owner of a domain (such as that owner is using something you hold the rights to without your permission), the proxy service is bound to cough up.

Pac Man talk over, website admin nerd-talk coming.

Migrating to WordPress as my blogging tool of choice was a great move, the system is easy and works great. The only drawback is the fact that because WordPress is so popular as a blogging system, it’s become a huge target for all kinds of spamming. Comment spam is the number one problem, where bots scour the web for the PHP submit methods of WordPress and input spam comments with links to poker websites and whatnot. Luckily, there are some killer plugins for WordPress which block comment spam based on keywords and IP addresses, all the while becoming “smarter” with each piece of spam identified. Each “holdem” ridden stream of consciousness, each “viagra” peppered extract from rare philosophical texts, each “low mortgage” and “weight loss” laden nonsensical rambling… they all work to make my comments even more spam-free.

Lately though, I’ve noticed an interesting comment spam phenomenon – an increasing amount of “benign” comment spam. I made up the term “benign spam,” but it seems to fit here. These are comments that usually say something like, I like your website I will share this with friends, or, Wow, this is a great web site. I am so glad I found it, thank you. It is funny, I was just talking to my friend about their web site, and they said they like your site too! And that’s all they say. They contain no links to porn or gambling sites, and usually list no author other than “Anonymous.” Being that they’re not linking to any websites, not pitching any product, or redirecting traffic – I have no idea what their goal might be. A simple Google search shows that these are not just a sincere comments from some English-as-a-second-language reader, but some kind of template comment spam.

I can only guess at their intent, but I’d say they are probably testing the “strictness” of my spam filter; seeing just how innocuous the structure of the comment has to be before it gets through the filter. Once they do this a thousand times on a thousand blogs, they’d have a pretty good idea of what most filters qualify as “spam.” Then they can restructure their spam messages most like the comments that didn’t get filtered. Otherwise, I have no idea what they’re all about… unless they’re just scouring the web for open and spammable commenting scripts. Maybe there is no motive, maybe these are just pure evil people wanting to pollute my database with inane comments about nothing. Stupid spammers, scourge of the internet.

I guess I’m an extremist – who thinks we should ban all mention of penis-enlargement, low interest rates, texas holdem, and xxx-teen from the ‘net. OK, we may need some of those xxx-teen sites… to… keep the teens from being exploited and all. Poor teens.

Website admin nerd-talk over.

And that’s it folks, enough for tonight. Before I leave you, you should check out this site. It’s totally amazing… you can play every video game for NES, Genesis, Gameboy, and MAME (arcade) online via Java applets.As for me, I’m going to bed… and hoping I don’t awake in the morning to some kinda slander lawsuit or something. I mean, it’s late… and this new Radio Dept. EP isn’t doing a whole heck of a lot to keep me awake. Plus, it’s lonely back here in the “data center.” G’night, until tomorrow.

Posted on

man this entry blows

Vote Shiite, Sunni sucks.
Good evening blog, glad to see you in good health. What’s that? You’ve been plagued lately by online poker and Viagra spam? Well, not to worry blog, although you may get ~20 “holdem” and “bigger member” spams per hour, I’ve installed some nice anti-spam features that prevent all but the craftiest spammers from getting a comment through. I know, I also wish that your usage stats were once again meaningful, rather than a record of spambots trying to post comments. It’s the nature of the internet, blog, that’s just the way it goes.

Argh… why does the “war on terrorism” have to look so much like a war on Islam? Word around the web is that we’re posturing against the next member of the “axis of evil,” Iran. It was interesting that the rumour of covert US forces in Iran was this morning’s story, and this afternoon the “Americans evenly split on how they feel about the Iraq invasion” story was the lead headline. But have no fear, the orderly and completely representative democratic election this month will set Iraq squarely on the road to non-barbarianism.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I’ve lost all faith that this vote is anything more than a sham, a parade by the administration for the sake of perceived progress. The news is rife with stories of polling places kept secret out of fear of violence; 60% of voters think they’re voting in a new Iraqi president (they’re not); candidates can’t campaign for fear of death; and more than one million absentee voters are registering from over fourteen countries. This election is nothing more than a dog and pony show, I don’t understand how it will accomplish anything at all. Not everyone can vote, people who are voting don’t know what they’re voting for, and the candidates can’t get their message out even if they did. I guess I’m pessimistic.

Enough about it already, I realize there’s nothing for complaining.

Having my entire music collection here at work with me is awesome. I can listen to such a wide variety of stuff during the day. I’ve got about 80% of my CDs ripped to MP3, so I have almost my entire collection on-hand. I need to get around to ripping that final 20% (which consists mostly of Beatles’ bootlegs), so I can be done with it. After I’ve got everything ripped, there’ll be a period of “cleaning” up the tags and directory structure. But for now, it’s awesome to be able to pick from the same selection I’ve got at home while at work. Just tonight, for example, I got the complete Miles Davis Montreux recordings (a 20CD boxset clocking in at almost 2GB when digitized)… how cool is that to have on-hand when I feel like rad jazz? (Ugh, after downloading this beast it seems like it’s all from the 80s and is with Miles’ electronic band… I dunno if I can get into this…)

I relented from my hardline stance of not doing work-work in the evenings (my much cherished off-time) tonight, mainly because I didn’t make full use of my time at work today… and I’m once again pressed for time this week. Finally made my reservations for the first of my two upcoming trips to Taiwan, the initial jaunt commencing in late February and lasting a week. The second trip comes sometime in late March and lasts 2-3 weeks. I got worried at first, because it looked like my favorite swank hotel was completely booked up the week I was going. The thought of not being able to stay in that now familiar environment really bummed me out… I like that hotel, I feel like the king of the castle there. Anyway, I did manage to book a room for the week, and am now looking forward to the trip, and subsequent sky miles. Too bad I couldn’t arrange something where Sharaun could join me…

Man this entry blows. Goodnight.

Posted on

poor horatio

Let's go down to Myer's Lake for a picnic.
Dear reader, a varied post lies ahead… written at different times throughout the weekend. I make no claims about its contents being interesting, or even cohesive for that matter. I only offer what I write, and I tend to write a lot of crap. Please bear with us here as we strive for some decent content, but for today – we’ll take what we can get. And now onto the stuff.

If you know me, or have been reading this wordy webpage for a while, you know that The Andy Griffith Show is “pretty much my favorite” television show. As much as I like it for it’s bumpkin humor or Aesopesque underlying messages, I like it more because it’s a glimpse at some kind of utopia… at least, a utopian vision that closely aligns with my own. Simpler times; a close-knit community of friends; a rural existence based firmly on morals, a desire for peaceful clean-living, and a common-sense respect for others. A place where people are still close to the things that make them happy: the land they work, the friends they have, and the beliefs they share. No… the show never really goes into any of that, those are just my extrapolations. That’s my Mayberry, as stupid as it sounds.

In the tradition of last weekend’s “what I’m listening to” sidebar addition, I spent 10min Saturday adding a “random post” link at the bottom of the “archives” sidebar section. Used a nifty little WordPress plugin to get the job done, pretty cool. Even I get a kick out of clicking it sometimes, I write some stupid stuff. So check it out, and remember – if you see some whack formatted posts that got messed up in the WordPress transfer, lemme know so I can fix ’em. Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Sunday, I got what I thought was a great idea. I’ve had this 120GB external hard drive sitting around for a while, not really doing much with it but copying the occasional thing over to it as an extra backup. Double-checking the current size of my digital music library and finding it to be 106GB, I decided to copy the entire thing over to the external drive. Then, I setup a script that can compare the two drives and keep them in sync, always ensuring that the external drive is up-to-date. I plan to take the drive to work with me. Now, instead of having to sift through piles of DVDs to find something to listen to at work, I’ve got it all on-hand. I’ll bring it home every few days to sync it with the master collection on my RAID array. Now… if I could only find a way to plug it into the car stereo and be able to take it on the road…

When technology really gets smart, here’s how I see it going down: I’ll have a central repository for digital media in my house, it will be large capacity, redundant, and fault-tolerant (RAID5). I’ll have a small iPod like device, but based on flash memory, which will also be large-capacity, enough to hold a mirror image of my entire collection. Vehicles will support the standard interface to this portable device, a plug-in interface that supplies power and signal-out and will be as ubiquitous as the 2.5mm headphone jack is today. The portable device will have built-in wireless capability, and will use my sleeping hours to keep in sync with the central collection. Physical size is important, the current iPod form-factor and weight being the largest that’s acceptable. Storage size must always seem to be overkill, 500GB-1TB if it this thing were real right now. As a rule of thumb, it should always be about 30% larger than what’s thought of as “big,” because if you just aim for “big,” it’ll without a doubt be too small within a year. The advantage of flash vs. moving spinning disks is essential, and when unplugged from a power source, the battery on this device will last 24 hours.

In addition, if I’m in a music store with the device, I can “purchase” an album and zap it through the ether onto my drive; same deal at the video rental store. If I’m at a show, I can purchase a board recording of the event at the end and beam it on. The device will support a “friendly” mode, where it will wirelessly seek fellow devices with similar tastes and enable file-sharing between them, integrated GPS will even allow two “friendly” enabled device owners to meet in real life if they wish. DJs at clubs will be able to offer their entire sets to be immediately “beamed” to paying customers. It will interface with PVR devices to take the kids’ favorite TV shows on the road. If you like a song you hear while in a store, you’ll be able to purchase and beam it to the device.

I spent a good bit of my weekend freetime reading Beside Still Waters, a book Pat loaned me thinking I’d be interested, mostly based on my writing from the other day. It’s a good book, if a little wordy. In fact, it’s a great book… seemingly targeted to what I’ve been thinking about lately. I wanted to write more about it, but I’ve not finished it yet – and wanted to reserve judgment until I was done. If you’re at all curious about that kinda stuff, I’d recommend checking out the book. And, I’m sure I’ll have more uninteresting stuff to say about it when I’ve finished reading it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

cell one

Listen and learn.
Sharaun asked that I stay home from work today, as she’s not quite ready to go it alone. It’s fine with me; really. The weekend was largely uneventful, you can read about it all out-of-order in the paragraphs I wrote below. Saturday was spent being Mr. Domestic… cooking, cleaning, and administering Vicodin at the proper intervals. Sunday we slept in, and in the evening Pat and Cynthia graciously came over and cooked lasagna, while Kristi and Erik chipped with a salad and some homemade toppings for the ice cream. I heard it said once (and I bet I’ve even said it on here before) that, in your twenties, your friends are your family. I couldn’t agree more.

As life goes on, I get more torn about using my weekends to sleep. It used to be that I’d look forward to Saturday and Sunday because I could sleep until 10am, or later. Lately though, I’ve been trying to get up at my normal hour even on weekends – all out of the desire to be awake and use as much of my offtime as possible… even if it’s to sit around doing nothing. It’s easier when the mornings are bright and cool, the kind of mornings that just call you to yardwork. Winter makes it more difficult, and rain makes it near impossible. When I roll over and hear rain, nothing seems more appropriate than another hour of slumber.

This weekend, I installed this cool little script that integrates with Winamp (my MP3 player of choice) and uploads data about what you’re listening to. So, when I’ve got Winamp open, it’ll show what I’m hearing real-time. I modified the script a bit to make the artist names clickable to a Google search. The style sheet was being stubborn, so the links are blue… even though I wanted them plain black. It’s a nifty little plugin and I can configure it to work through the proxy at work… enabling the world to see what I’m rockin’ to as I slave away for the man. You can check out the list at the very bottom of the sidebar on the right. I’m all about content… or something.

Being house-bound to look after Sharaun’s post-surgery needs isn’t that bad, or, at least wasn’t that bad today. I managed to get quite a bit done: de-Christmas’d the house, including using the one hour of non-rain all day to climb up on the roof and take down the house lights. Also managed to finally clean out the guest room (which also doubles as the “junk” room when we have no guests). Anyway, I also felt pretty good about managing things with Sharaun… making sure I kept a steady flow of Vicodin in her blood, making her some oatmeal for breakfast, a grilled-cheese for lunch, and some soup for dinner. Now, if that’s not a sickness-tailored menu, I don’t know what is. She seems to be doing well, putting weight on the surgered knee and doing the exercises her doctor recommended. Not much complaining either, which is good.

I’ve talked before about my tendency to let the mail “go.” Since I’m the one that does the finances, I’m usually the one who collects the mail. Lately, I’ve taken to doing this only once a week. I don’t need the mail anymore. For me, it’s gone the way of the print newspaper. I mean, I realize that there’s still a lot we need mail for (like receiving goods bought on Ebay and stuff), but I care less and less about the ceaseless crap we get. Every day, I could choose to refinance my house with any of the five mortgage offers we receive. I also believe I could hold the world record for most credit cards held if I responded to the pile of crap we get daily. Recently, however, I’ve gone beyond just neglecting to check the mail… I’ve started to not even read the dang stuff. I have a huge pile here in front of my monitor… just sitting there. It sucks, because I know there must be at least a couple bills in there that I haven’t even looked at (the damned stone-age holdover ones that still don’t offer online or automated payments). I don’t know what to do with it all. Bank statements for instance… for some reason I feel like I should save these. Why? I dunno. All I do is cram them in a drawer and throw them away eventually. Again, paper mail is dumb… sorry to ramble.

Although it may sound stupid, and uber-Californian, I’ve been thinking lately how I’d like to write a screenplay or book. I did some research online, and found out that there’s a lot of crap that goes into either, but I was more intrigued by the screenplay thing. I downloaded an OpenOffice template to aide in screenplay formatting (these things have formatting rules that are more strict than my 10th grade term papers), and read up on the do’s and don’ts of the whole process. The rigidity of the whole process took a lot of steam of my initial idea, there seem to be so many rules… I think reading a good book on the whole process would be advisable before every putting pen to paper (just a colloquialism people, you know I can barely hold a pen anymore for typing). Anyway, there are several really cool sites out there to help aspiring screenwriters, but one of the coolest I’ve found is johnaugust.com. Mr. August wrote the screenplays for Go and Big Fish, and he actually offers the real things as downloads on his site. He offers the original spec (speculative) scripts, final shooting scripts, and does frequent reader Q&As on his blog. Really cool, although I can’t really tell if I’m serious about trying to write something.

Man, I’ve seen so many “top” lists for 2004’s musical output, and this dang TV On The Radio album shows up high on every one. I remember downloading it when it first came out, and hating it. But, with all these people saying it’s so good, I decided to give it another try. Guess what, I should’ve trusted my instincts… it’s not my bag at all. Toplists are sometimes really good at opening my ears to new tunes, and in some cases re-opening my ears to things too hastily shelved. Some of the albums that scored high across multiple top lists really surprise me. Fiery Furnaces?, that album blew. Bjork?, that album blew. Devandra Banhart?, that album blew. I won’t go so far as to disparage you, dear reader, should you like these albums… after all, you’re certainly not alone… however, you also have no taste.

Good night my friends.

Posted on

my moby dick

It's a cam! Duh!!
A triumphant return to work… not at all like what I was expecting. While sitting at home on vacation, my vision of the tasks awaiting me upon my return was of a giant mountain. However, actually sitting down at my desk and taking stock, I’m not in completely bad shape. Albeit, I have a lot to do in the next few weeks – but I think I’ve situated myself in a pretty good position to get things done in time. I guess the guilt of not working made the view-from-vacation seem more dire than it actually was, which is good. Right now it just looks like a couple busy weeks before any lull is in sight, nothing I can’t handle.

Sometimes I get tired of the endless circle that is the debate about the war. If you make one move to criticize anything about the war, be ready for the triad of war defenses: “This is war, bad things happen.” “You’re just a pussy liberal hippy who can only put down this country because real men are out there protecting it.” And finally, “What about all the good that’s come of it?” If you’re a staunch Bushie neo-con, be prepared for some patchily-rank longhair to come at you with “This war is for oil, money, and US interests alone.” “Bush is a megalomaniac, cowboy, look-how-big-my-dick-is, wanna-be Satan bent on world domination.” “People are dying for no reason.” And of course, “Where are the WMD?” It goes around and around. You question the war, you’re an ungrateful hippy; you support the war, you’re a baby-killing, right-wing fanatic.

Can’t we have some middle ground? Where is common sense in it all? Sure war sucks. Good stuff is happening in Iraq, bad stuff is happening in Iraq. Shit, good stuff is happening in my bathroom; occasionally, so does bad stuff. Why does it have to be so black and white? I don’t like war, but I wouldn’t spit on our troops. Where are my common-sense people? People who can have an educated opinion that’s not lunatic rhetoric. Not gun-toting, hippies-would-rather-see-America-raped-by-Islam-than-stand-up-for-themselves conservatives; and not vegan, hybrid-driving, don’t-touch-anything-alive environmentalist liberals. Where are the people who think rationally? Is it just me, or does international media seem to present a lot less polarized or skewed viewpoint than most American media? Here we get 110% foaming-at-the-mouth patriotic God-forcefed imperialism or 110% limp-wristed simpering liberal whining. Yeah OK so I overstated my case a little for the sake of writing… whatever… journalistic license, I think they call it.

As much as I don’t want to recycle unoriginal links… I saw this via MF the other day (although I know BB had it too, and I’m sure other morning-zoo fodder sites like Fark/Fazed will pick it up soon) and it appealed to the voyeur in me or something. Someone noticed that certain webcams all have similar strings in their URLs, and made a simple Google search which pulls up hundreds of unsecured, broadcasting webcams from around the world. On most you can pan and zoom around, and some even have sound. Check it out. And, to add a completely unrelated sentence to this paragraph for the sole purpose of creating a uniform paragraph height that is pleasing to the eye: I only just now gave PF’s “best album of 2003” a shot… and Ben was right, it is damn fine.

I work in a cubicle of shoulder-high grey fabric walls. If the “entrance” (1/4-wall side) of the cube is due-south, my chair faces the north-west corner. On the west wall there is a cabinet where I keep random stuff, including some pictures I’ve taped to the grey metal exterior. A couple of my wife an I in various mountainous locales. Two of my dad in front of the Space Shuttle, those always elicit questions… hey dad, if you’ve got pix of you actually in the shuttle, send ’em my way OK? Three Andy Griffith fridge-magnets, which someone actually once mistook for family pictures. Adam Bomb from the Giant 1st Series, and a Post-It note with an arrow pointing to Adam Bomb from the Giant 1st Series and the words “This is dumb.” On the east wall is my whiteboard, which I try to keep filled with a jumble of math equations and engineering-themed drawings, and three show posters from gigs at the Fillmore (Death Cab, Modest Mouse, and someone I can’t remember right now). Due north (to the right of my monitor) is a shelf filled with books and a Sgt. Pepper standup cutout Kyle gave me back in middle school. Somewhere else there’s a coathook, a couple neon lights, a tangle of wires, spindles of loose burned CDs, and all sorts of crap. I dunno, just thought it might be interesting to paint a picture of where I spend my days. My coal mine, if you will.

In the self-serving statistics portion of today’s entry, I finally found a simple WordPress plugin that outputs the total wordcount for all entries. So far, not counting this entry, I’ve typed 224,278 words since starting this site. Compare that to the 211,763 words of Moby Dick… impressive. While I haven’t yet written my own Bible (1,029,084 words) I have managed to rival the bulk of a literary classic… which must mean my tome instantly qualifies as a literary classic, right? That’s what I thought! You can just mail my Newberry to work, I’ll hang it on my unadorned south 1/4-wall for the world to see. Thanks.

Sometimes I look over how much I write on this thing each day… and I can’t understand it. Where do I get the time? Hahahaha… and… goodnight.

Posted on

smoke and silence

Zealots need not apply.
As much as I love music, I sometimes crave silence. When it’s silent, you can hear sounds you normally don’t hear. The sound your spit makes as you work your mouth; skin rubbing skin as you wring your hands, your own breath in your throat. Smoking my pipe in silence has always been enjoyable to me, to be able to listen to nothing at all and watch the smoke waft from the bowl of the pipe. I can remember sitting on the back porch back in Florida smoking my pipe and reading the yellow-paged copy of The Fellowship of the Rings I bought from the used book joint. I liked to go out when it was raining… sit in the screened-in shelter and read and smoke in silence. Yeah… that’s what I’m writing about.

I’ve got to try and get to bed earlier tonight… this 1am thing is fine for vacation, but won’t work with a 7am rise-n-shine. One thing that staying up and sleeping late is good for is dreams. Over the past week I’ve had several memorable dreams, a strange occurence for me. My dreams always seem to mix old and new. Just this week, I was trying to protect a friend who hired another friend to kill an ex; was scuba diving with two acquaintances from college, and making a scale model of some geographical feature… an islet, or isthmus, or phalange or something. Whenever I wake up able to recall a dream, I wish I had one of those dream “interpretation” books, although I’ve looked at them and they’re about as specific as a horoscope most of the time. Still I would hate to miss the fact that dreams about scale models of fjords mean you’ll win the lottery if you only buy a ticket.

Something about the idea of a commune is totally appealing to me. Except, I wouldn’t call it a commune… I think the term “co-op” has a lot less Davidian connotation. Y’know, get some friends together… snag some cheap undeveloped land, and start communing on it. We could grow our own grub, build our own houses, generate our own power, maybe do some web-developing work for extra scratch (like the comet-cult), whatever. No job except tending the crops and animals, keeping the house, generating power, and fervently praying to the co-op’s chosen higher power. OK, we could skip the fervent prayer part… but I guess the “no job” thing is relative considering maintaining the cult… uh… co-op would be a full-time job anyway. Maybe I’ll just join the Rainbow and move to a national forest.

One the back-to-basics kick, I proposed a week-without-TV experiment to Sharaun tonight. I want to go one week without TV, seems like such an easy thing right? We could read more, talk more, maybe get out and walk around more or something (pre-surgery, of course). When it comes down to it I guess we “watch” a lot of TV. Even though I rarely “actively” watch, the TV is probably on every second we’re in the house… even if just in the background. Most of my killing-time time is spent on this computer, typing or surfing the web for nothing. I bet that’s not so uncommon nowadays… online time overtaking TV time as the dominant thoughtless activity. Anyway, I just wanted to see if we’d feel any great sense of “liberation” by cutting the cord and going TV-less for a week. I picked a bad time though, with her being laid up post-surgery and all. Although, she didn’t seem completely opposed to the idea in general… so maybe after she’s recovered a bit.

Ugh… every time I search through my old entries and find one of those strange WordPress-conversion artifacts (y’know, commas-turned-question-marks, letters with accent marks turned Chinese characters) I just cringe. I hate the fact that some of the older entries look crappy. Every time I find a post with artifacts, I try my best to fix it… but I know they still exist out there. Tell you what, if you see one… or find some ingenious way to search for them… lemme know and I promise I’ll fix every last one. OK? Thanks.

What a piecemeal entry… I’m sorry. It’s time to go to bed now, goodnight.