Wide Awake and Screaming

And then it was perfectly okay

2009-10-14T04:36:12Z

You know that scene in K-Pax when Kevin Spacey's character is hypnotized and he dissolved into a screaming, howling creature that is singularly focused on dealing with the unimaginable?

Yes, that was me getting tacos this afternoon.

They were good, however, and the lovely A and I munched the cheap food and returned to the apartment, victorious in our efforts to find sustenance.

Then it was out to see Ed Wood at the Enzian Theatre, ran into a number of beautiful people, and then bailed for home. Bed is calling, will finally sleep without drugs tonight as I've managed to recover from the nasal infection/cold/hell that I'd been suffering from...

And it's going to be perfectly okay. Maybe the Earth has chosen to spin on a 90 Axis from the one writing this, but after looking around I spent some time counting blessings and benefits, and was surprised that the number was as positive as it was.

Cyrano...

2009-09-24T17:46:38Z

Mais on ne se bat pas dans l'espoir du succès

"One doesn't fight in the hope of winning."

One fights because there is no other option -- one fights because to go quietly is unthinkable.
One fights because giving up and living a half-life is far worse than dying.

Why I will stop shooting digital images

2009-09-17T15:35:16Z

Because I stopped making accidents. I made lots of joy and surprises and lots of blurred images and risks, and I even tried lots of things that didn't work. But shooting digitally gave me too many options to redo the shot, gave me too many opportunities to try again for a second shot, to make the fifth shot better, to make it perfect by ten if ten is what it took.

None of that is inappropriate. But I'm tired of so much control. I want to fuck up and not be able to do anything about it. Because I will either get tired of not making better decisions (in the frame, in the exposure, in the content, whatever) or I will be satisfied with whatever image rears its head and begin looking for something new in what I left for myself.

My best shots have been "accidents," in that part of my mind took over and told a story in an image that my consciousness wasn't listening to at the time. Digital kills that dead for me, because that conscious part of my mind is what looks at a 3" screen and then hits the Trash icon twice.

So how...

2009-09-07T16:48:49Z

How do you actually start writing?

That's a different question than "How does one actually start writing?"

How do *you* actually start writing?

At some point they wise up, or they hit the Ocean

2009-08-05T17:06:43Z

I'm really tired of the way guilt-based belief systems fuck up my friends.

A few years ago I realized that something I'd been upset about for a while was still kicking my ass the moment I let a couple of shields down, and instead of going out and killing it (unsuccessfully) again, I thought for a moment.

Yay wisdom. Should be available in pill form.

If I had grabbed an infant's foot and bludgeoned its mother to death in an unholy frenzy of rage, I could see still being in prison for it. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised at doing a dead-man's jig off the yardarm at neep tide. If I'd punched a cop I'd have been out years ago. Years. Any C or even B class felony, and I'd have a good chance of walking around having done my time. Okay, no voting or handgun ownership, but maybe that's a good thing.

Maybe even gotten some ink, who knows.

So. I looked at the guilt and told it to fuck off until I had done something worth it. I've done my time, paid my debt, and I was free to go.

So now, when I see people chopping off parts of their intellect or pride or happiness over some guilt-based belief system that will never forgive them for simply being human, I feel something between pity and disgust and have to just walk away.

Nothing you did then or do now is worth that price you're paying. People who are impressed and supportive are simply helping you punish/kill yourself for something you could have walked away from any time you bothered to wake up.

So wake up, already.

Day one working from home

2009-07-30T02:48:19Z

Not bad. Primary challenge is going to be keeping voice call quality up where it needs to be.

VnV Nation concert the night my tax refund showed up in my checking account.
The hangover lasted three days. Seriously. Once-a-decade level of drinking.

Many things going through my brain right now, sort of like...

Take a nun. Put her in a wetsuit, one of those think neoprene types, and have her put on swim flippers.

Blindfold her and give her a couple of marine canned-air horns, one for each hand. As she steps forward down the course she must blast a one second warning with the airhorn in the opposite hand. If possible, she is also to yell a Hail Mary.

The course she must traverse is made up of kiddie wading pools, each filled 4" deep with a different variety of Campbells's Soup. There are about a hundred of them.

*HOOONK*SwishSplatFloorp"HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE"
*HOOONK*SwishSplatFloorp"OUR LORD IS WITH THEE"
*HOOONK*SwishSplatFloorp"...wait is that cream of mushroom?"

That's what the brain feels like right now.

Still a few bugs in the system

2009-07-17T21:53:48Z

I've gotten a Google voice number. Before committing to it, however, I decided to test it. Using my skype account and the admittedly poor laptop mic and speakers, I left this message:

"Hi there, this is Robert, trying to get in touch with you. Hope everything is okay, Let's see how this does. Thanks, bye."

No problem, it came through pretty well but it sounded like I was on a bad laptop microphone, which I was. Excellent.

The transcription, however:

Hi there this is Robert crazy in love with you I hope everything is okay wanna setup thanks bye.

...

Okay, I love me. Seriously, I do. So, Google voice is f*cking PSYCHIC.
An entire new frontier of possible plot lines just came into being.

A system that works: Update

2009-07-16T13:35:37Z

Syncing things across the platforms was getting pretty annoying. I needed things to be available from anywhere, because Working from Roam has demonstrated that information tied to a specific system or location is more hassle than it's worth. My communications and tasking had to move "into the cloud."

So, latest iteration that works:

I use Thunderbird for my email on all my systems.
Added Lightning 0.9 to Thunderbird for Calendar.
Added Provider for Google Calendar 0.5.1 Lightning to sync with Google Calendar.
Added Zindus 0.8.5 to sync with Google Contacts.

Put Google Sync 0.5.13 on work Blackberry which syncs contacts and calendar.
Use MyPhoneExplorer 1.7.2 to sync Thunderbird with my Sony Ericsson phone.

If I can get to any browser with an internet connection, I can work.
The phones act as backups in case anything stupid happens.
All contacts are synced at the Google level, and are available offline.
The system is stable, and all software involved is open source.
All data is encrypted at both the local storage level and network layer.

Me and Nicola, we hang out.

2009-07-10T14:48:33Z

At least in a shared birthday sense, that is.
Excellent to see Google's appreciation of him!

Without further ado:

Tesla the Brilliant

This is the year I build a Tesla coil, dammit.
Much thanks to the well-wishers and remembrances so far, as a bard* says,

Things can only get better

You will have no idea what this means, but trust me, it's cool.

2009-07-08T01:35:55Z

I figured out Linux iptables & iproute2/tc based traffic shaping, and got skype/web/youtube/music streaming/downloads to all play nice with each other at the same time. This all took place on my Linux edge device, which has three network interfaces.

This means I can pull down as much torrents as I want, 24/7, and not fark up A's browsing or anything.

Posted for friends who asked

2009-07-06T12:29:38Z

This is the band I played for us on the way to MetroCon:

Band: Backlash, Album: Heliotrope, Song: Splinter

Project Pitchfork set list from WGT

2009-07-02T18:11:58Z

So I went to this concert and it was the first time in a long while that I wound up watching the singer turn into a dervish right before my eyes, intense and screaming and emotionally involved and an amazing transference of energy and passion.

So, wrote them and asked. This is the set list:

If I Could
God Wrote
Requiem (feat. Myk Jung)
Carnival
Nasty Habit
Revolution Now
Human Crossing
Conjure
Carrion
Mine
Alpha Omega
Drone State
K.N.K.A.
En Garde
Existence
--
Darkness
IO
Souls
--
Timekiller
Rescue

I'm tracking down the lyrics now, K.N.K.A. was f*cking brilliant in person. I have some hope that maybe CombiChrist at the Firestone this Friday won't suck ass, but Orlando has risen to the occasion so many times before that it's a tough sell.

The wailing and the gnashing of teeth

2009-06-30T16:45:47Z

So, brain crescendos have come to town, and I am no exception, it seems. While the sails whip around and yardarms are knocking the less sensitive to their doom, I am lashing myself to the railing and keeping a keen eye on the horizon.

We're about to be boarded, we are. That's when they show up, when you're under the dark moon and the wind sings fierce...

Two faraway and fantastic friends have written asking me for my pilot skills for the port of New Orleans. Come August I may visit her for a day or two, learning to swagger on seashells again, sleeping in the car outside the Cemetery gates and living on searing heat washed down with icy cold.

A course set, and I'll be there soon.

Mind yer step, darlin', she's a stern mistress that kills fools gladly.

If only it were true...

2009-06-26T20:39:31Z

Alas, it's a hoax.

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders. When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt. Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit.

Five words

2009-06-26T01:45:26Z

Michael Jackson Tribute Zombie Walk.

That is all.

*Bows*

Something to look forward to

2009-06-23T13:13:14Z

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, with Mr. Depp as a frankly amazing Mad Hatter.

How someone can be that menacing through a photograph is really, very inspiring.

No God, Know Peace

2009-06-22T15:15:19Z

Thanks for the blackberry links!

Note: People that believe in unprovable things are really frightening to me right now. Sometimes I step off the Merry-Go-Round to Hell and just watch the people and horses go by, mentally. This feeling of disassociation what's going on presently, and everything just seems a bit odd.

I've found someone to pay shipping to take the Dynaco ST70 tube amplifier and FM3 FM tuner off my hands.
Next will probably be the Energy Encore 5.1 loudspeaker system with powered sub, hopefully. I'm debating tossing in the speaker stands with them, but probably will do so if they don't move sooner.

If you upgrade, then you replace what you already have with better. Fine, all well and good, assuming you don't want to change, at a basic level, what you have and what you're doing. Otherwise, it's time to clean house.

Context management

2009-06-21T16:21:39Z

If you're primarily updating via a Twitter client, then I'll add you on twitter and drop you here -- the context is lost through LJ, so it's tedious.

-----

That said, MetroCon was pretty excellent! The Achilles' Heel of such things seems to be the sound, however. First Kinetik, now these jackoffs cannot figure out how to get a band's music to a large audience in a timely fashion! 2.5 hour delay, and then Abney Park had two anemic channels and some fuckwit desperately clicking on a laptop to try to make it louder.

Called himself ShadowFax. Yeah, right Gandalf's horse.

Pathetic.

Anyway, the band looked very pretty and gave it their all, so kudos to them for the effort -- I'll have to see them in a better venue! The instruments were modded up nicely with copper, glowwire and LED's, and they seemed to work extremely well. The most interesting part for me was that costumes were well done: Instead of being the usual "if I move this will disintegrate" attempts, these were performance based and extremely functional! I took many notes on construction. Amusingly, it seems belly dance outfits on a non-gelatinous and lithe performer are able to transcend the SteamPunk/Sci-Fi/Fantasy genres with ease.

The Castle and the drive home were good and bad, respectively, and I woke up in Orlando, a little depressed. Jesus, but who wouldn't be with this heat? Breakfast and cooking are the order of the day.

And thus the Luddite is pulled into the future

2009-06-19T17:26:55Z

I guess that I've finally arrived -- I'm being issued a corporate Blackberry with a data plan. I only got to chose the color, all I know about device is that it's a Curve and has GPS. Blackberry savvy readers of this journal are invited to advise me on useful tools and applications.

My Sony Clie is brooding at me, but hopefully it will recover.

Bok Tower

2009-06-08T14:00:59Z

Cool place, had to make the best of a rainy day, but I think I did.
It was definitely a high-school gifted-class field trip sort of feeling, but I remember those fondly and had a very cool time.

The Results of Raindrops

This was my first time playing around with the macro settings on the Leica, please let me know what you think!

No, mister, I can feel it -- The dice are rolling!

2009-06-07T00:03:46Z

Confirmed that I'll get to work from home "before Q3." So, by the end of June, apparently. Lease is up in September ($2k to break it -- don't ask, just stupid...), and the possibilities are pretty damn vast right now.

Today is Stephen Wright appreciation day.

2009-05-26T12:42:41Z

I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards.
I got a full house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright

I remember hearing Stephen Wright for the first time, before I listened to him. At first I thought part of my brain had finally made good on its promise and that the audible hallucinations (the most common type) had begun in earnest. It's like that, when you find someone who perfectly echoes what you're thinking or feeling at the moment at the tender age of flying high on life, Ozzy style.

One more, then back into the fray:

A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet
Earth taken from space. On the back it said, "Wish you were here."
-- Steven Wright

Montreal, Kinetik

2009-05-18T21:14:47Z

Montreal
Montreal is French, Old, New, Funky, Fun, Fabulous, angry at my alliteration, home to an AMAZING Tea shop, winner of the "Best Vietnamese food Axis has ever eaten" contest, and smells wonderful for a city of its size and age. She danced with me gracefully, smiling at my missteps and forgiving my shortcomings. While not as ribald as her Southern Sister, New Orleans, she is more sophisticated, and her gaze carries more weight. She is Not To Be Taken Lightly, but she has no fear of this -- it is simply impossible to do so. Her cuisine is breathtaking, and need not rely on inferno-like heat to completely hold your attention for hours on end.

My missteps -- I slipped on a wet cobblestone and torqued my ankle, so running through the cold rain to an incredible restaurant was not as fun as it might have been, but OH so very worth it. I danced (some), walked (lots), drank (judiciously), smiled (constantly), and never really felt lonely, even when alone. I will go back and spend more time there.

Kinetik

Sound: 3-second train wreck of silence during a performance. Forgetting to turn on the lead singer's microphone until after he tried for 5 seconds to yell "HELLO MONTREAL!" No significant sound reinforcement below 50Hz. Mid-room speakers out of sync with performance by over half a second. 60Hz ground loop that remained in effect for an entire performance.

Performances: Depends on your taste -- mostly interesting, some brilliant. Project Pitchfork was better off in my memories and mixed horribly. Terrorfact is trying to be SRL and EN and failing at both, badly. Life Cried was excellent, Memmaker overcame the event's technical incompetence and rocked like Dolemites, skipped Winterkalte because I'll see them in Germany, NoiseFX tried but were hampered by crap sound.

Venue: You got a concert hall, and 4 other rooms about 20'x40'. Four vendors. FOUR. $20 a CD, $30 a t-shirt. Fuck. That. Noise. $4 PER OUNCE of Jeagermeister. One food vendor, a dude with a propane grill and a bag of hot dogs. One small bar with occasionally decent DJ's and a bartender that had a fucking clue, but just barely.

Value: Tickets = $130/person for three days. Hotel ($150/night with tax) was a $10 cab ride each way to the venue. Airfare = $350 (not bad), but seriously hassled at the airport by Customs.

Consensus: Tampa peeps "weren't feeling it." Neither were we. Had this been my "one big out of country trip to an event" I would be horrified, angry and depressed. As it is, I think I can still save this year.

And then it was printing airline tickets and grabbing the luggage...

2009-05-12T14:15:07Z

I love travel. I love getting away from the places I know too well and finding somewhere else to see, walk, smell, taste and hear. I need to see different stars, watch the sun rise at a different time, hear different things across the air that isn't smoke filled, humid, fecund or heavy.

This Thursdays is the Kinetik Festival in Montreal, and honestly I'm going to be auditioning it as a yearly event from now on. It's still in this timezone so that makes it easier than WGT in that aspect, but it's in French Quebec so hopefully there will still be enough challenge to make things adventurous.

I need to plan more event/clubbing getaways, now that Barbarella is finally, completely dead to me: They installed a Tiki Bar in the last part of the club where they let us dance. Honestly, I hadn't been in months. Visiting "I-bar" was like going to visit an alcoholic childhood friend who constantly tries to invent new reasons why they fail at life and it's not their fault. At some point, you walk away or they die. Onward.

It's the simple things that matter most

2009-05-06T18:18:50Z

Okay, I like sitting on the floor. Chairs can rock, but I like being able to sit on the floor with my legs crossed and work on something using the coffee table in front of me like a desk. Give me a decent floor pillow, and I'm good for hours.

Problem is, most coffee tables these days suck amazing amounts of ballsack, and IKEA is simply not an option because the store here reeks like a TacoBell at dinnertime the day the disability checks show up.

This is the only 'floor desk' that I've found that works for me. Should be here in 5-7 days.

I share the info here for those interested in such things.
CB2 is quickly becoming a favorite.