Music is in the air… I see it everywhere —
…
Later —
Belt it out like you haven’t before
Let it out and perspire some more
This is what it’s all about
Live the life without a doubt
Weed songs —
I have my entire music collection on shuffle. The past 4 songs I’ve heard were specifically about marijuana (Bone Thugs & Harmony, Dre/Eminem x2, Kottonmouth Kings)..
*waves*
Free —
If I
Make a song
With words that make you worry
Will you
Lock me up
And buy yourselves a jury
If I
Gather the ones
That feel the same as me
Will you
Call us terrorists
And say we can’t be free
Stuff a blanket down my throat
Throw me off a one man boat
Tell them all I couldn’t stand
A white, a black or a Mexican man
Wake up, sleepies
Let’s write our treaties
It’s further along than you think
I’m in the sea
So hear me
Tomorrow we might not be free
When I listen to non mainstream music —
I feel similar sensations each time.
Many times, independent original music is presented in different and unique ways.
The levels might not be “standard”, for instance.
Maybe the musicians are doing the recording themselves. Maybe there’s a single room mic capturing every instrument, every harmony as they intermingle in the (same) space that occupies the human beings creating them. Maybe one of the instruments is very slightly out of tune.
At first, I feel an awkward transitional stage. ‘It’s not what I expected’, I might think. I have an urge to stop it. This, I believe, comes from a lifetime of mainstream music consumption. I’m expecting a McDonald’s hamburger, and I’m getting a hamburger from a small town independently owned burger shack. It’s unique. Nothing else in the world will taste like this hamburger. It is it’s own standard.
Then I get what’s happening. I feel a slight bit of shame understanding that I’m judging an art form based on what is genrally accepted. I feel like I should give the song a bit more time to get accustomed to.
And then I realize the song is incredible. Many times a new favorite.
I still love my McDonald’s hamburger (hey, everyone has their own McDonald’s hamburger). But it’s always the same thing, right? There are a billion different hamburgers. Why eat the same one every time?
I Am —
I am
The two sides
Fit snugly together
You are
Just one side
But you got it better
I don’t
Wanna sit aside
And just waste away, but
When I
Set my sights
My time’s going down the drain
Slow down
Speed up
If you don’t play the game
You’ll waste away
But I wanna fly away
I’m fucking my sanity away
I wanna waste away
I am
Beside me
Watching me move
You are
Inside me
With nothing to prove
Bounce back and forth
You
Sit still and clench
But I
Keep myself in perspective
But I
Keep myself in perspective
Perspective
But I
(08/02/2011)
Conspiracy Theory #2: I put black tape over my cell phone camera —
When cell phones started becoming mainstream I always sort of avoided them. Maybe it’s the part of me that resists change (I loved my pager, after all). But I remember even back then in the late 1990’s, I felt like the benefits of having a constantly-on radio on your person for the sake of communicating with others without resorting to (gasp!) popping a quarter into a payphone wasn’t exactly worth the risks to my personal privacy.
Triangulation is easy, and who wants to think about their cell phone company tracking their moves, even if it’s not so literal (I am well aware that no company or gov’t agency will pay someone to sit at a computer and watch my every step). Throw in the possibility of abuse by any number of people who have (or demand) access to this information, now or any time in the future and you have a recipe for complete mobile surveillance. I don’t feel like I have anything to hide, or that I do anything “illegal” or “wrong”, but that surely doesn’t give anybody the right to collect such sensitive and personal information about me.
I get that the ability to do these things with a cell phone is part of the technology that you can’t simply throw out (radios just work that way). But maybe I’m thinking that network providers should be forced to be totally transparent with their operations, given that they deal with such sensitive information.
Open source network operations?
Now a days, every cell phone comes with a camera(s). In fact, I’m not sure if you can find one without one (besides the “John’s phone”, thanks Gnor ;) ). You know what I don’t get? Why is there no simple mechanism (or even a software switch) that disables them? The title here says “Conspiracy Theory”, so my mindset is this: Every time I look down at my phone on my desk, the kitchen table, the couch, outside, I’m seeing this camera lens staring at something. When I’m on the toilet checking my e-mail (oh shut up, you know you do it too), I can’t *help* but wonder, even if it’s a passing (heh) thought, that the camera is activated and sending pics/videos/whatever somewhere that I’m not aware of.
Yeah yeah, I’m a fucking narcissistic conspiracy theorist nut. But I’m also a network and computer systems engineer + administrator. I know that it’s possible. In fact, there’s software already out there that makes it trivial to do this on your own with other peoples’ cell phones. IIRC there’s something out there that exploits (or did exploit at one point in the past) a security vulnerability in the iPhone over Wi-Fi, and activated the camera, and sends the video back to the offender’s computer.
This kind of stuff isn’t impossible to do, and so why *wouldn’t* powers that have access to millions of peoples’ little camera lenses and network connections try to exploit it for financial (or other) gains? I don’t think it’s that far fetched to assume there are systems like this already in place. Whether or not we have explicit knowledge of these systems is sort of irrelevant IMHO. I err on the side of skepticism when it comes to my personal privacy and freedom. Call me a conspiracy theorist, or call me a patriot. What’s the difference? America fought a bloody war over this kind of stuff not too long ago. I’d hate to see history repeat itself because we forgot to remember it.
Anyway…so let’s just assume that there are systems in place that do this. Why don’t smartphone/tablet OS developers simply put in a switch that disables the camera, you know, cuts the power, just like they do Wi-Fi and cell data? Why not provide cell phone cases with simple shutters, even if not to protect us from the boogie man, to protect the lens from being scratched by your keys in your pocket?
The Nokia N900 has a physical slider-shutter for its camera lens. This is genius. It’s simple and effective. My cell phone case doesn’t have this feature (in fact, I don’t know of any other phones that do), so I’ve resorted to little black squares of electrical tape that I just stick over both front and back facing cameras. Whenever I want to use them, I just pull them off. It doesn’t leave any sticky residue, either. Works great, and let me tell you, the feeling of knowing 100% that this can’t be circumvented is enough for me. Mission accomplished?
Now I just have to worry about applying the same concept to my microphone. ;)
Another systemd rant —
Systemd seems to take control away from the console user. For instance, with Sysvinit, if I encountered a problem with a startup or shutdown script I could normally CTRL+C out of it and the system will continue on its merry way.
Today, I shut my computer down to air-dust it. When I hooked it back up and turned it on, it quickly mentioned about having to run fsck and then gave some other (normal) errors about my video adapter. From here, it simply sat there with no indication that it was doing anything. After about 3 hours (my wife and I went outside to wash and wax our cars), it was still sitting right there, with no additional log output to the console. So much for early-boot-logging, if you can’t view anything, right? I was completely in the dark as to whether or not the system just plain locked up. I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, and the system started running toward the shutdown goalpost, and then somehow locked up doing that as well. I had to hit my ATX reset button. Luckily, the next boot went all the way in.
I can’t help but feel the same “locked out” feeling from my own console that I used to feel with MS-DOS. It’s a peculiar feeling, really. When I first started using Linux, I was weirded out by how you could hit <Enter> during almost anything on the console and it would carriage return. I felt like using tools like more, less, grep, etc. was like swimming in the middle of a lake, kicking fish around underneath me. Hard to explain, really. BUT, I got used to it. Very used to it. I felt then that I was in total control of my system, being able to break out of almost anything, pass commands via bash or busybox, because PID 1 was essentially a skeleton that allowed each bone to do its job on its own. If one bone failed, you still had the whole rest of the skeleton to keep the body upright. SystemD is like the T-1000. It may be ultra hardcore, but throw a little liquid nitrogen at it and hit it with a slug and watch the whole thing shatter into little tiny pieces.
Another qualm I have is that, due to the parallel nature of how startup items get processed, and this might just be my own taste, but when I log into X, other things in the background are still starting up, making my graphical login experience much more like…should I even say it? Windows. There. I said it.
Seriously. If I wanted my login to be hampered by other shit loading in the background, I would be paying out of my pocket for an M$ OS license. I think there is a very good reason for at least waiting for things to load before allowing a graphical login, for aesthetics sake. With sysvinit, I mean, one thing at a time, right? The greeter is last…so the system is lightning fast by the time you log in. I really don’t give a shit about fast bootup times – one of the reasons I use Linux is that I hardly ever reboot. Uptime is bragging rights. Systemd’s position is apparently that reboots are frequent. That’s just plain sad, really.
Systemd doesn’t currently give the proper tools (at least as far as I know – someone prove me wrong?) to deal with hung jobs (such as one time I encountered smbd having to wait up to 5 minutes to shut itself down, with no option for me, the administrator, to alter it at that point in time..I had to sit there like a fool and wait. It was like being stuck at a red light that won’t change). It assumes it is smart enough to handle unpredictability with its children, but at least for right now, it is the parent who thinks it knows everything. Thinks.
I am hopeful, however. I do believe in the project, as long as it is a fair and open process (no pun intended).
Conspiracy Theory #1: Selective Facebook post manipulation —
What if Facebook swapped words around in your posts/replies to make you look like you can’t type (thus others would partially dismiss what you’re trying to say) if you posted something that they (or their superiors) didn’t like?
On that same note, what if Facebook modified posts for certain people who view them? Would be very easy to manipulate (and not show modifications to the poster), they’ve already been proven to modify the kinds of posts appear in your news feed… what’s to say they don’t have a secret set of functions to automatically filter and modify content depending on who sees it?
The Handi-Knife —
Got this as a present – a multifunction pocket knife, complete with that much needed cheese spreader you know and love.
The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary —
I was rooting around my old BBS installation tonight and, while looking through the file bases found a document. A digital artifact, if you will.
Before they were popularized as “Emoticons” by hundreds of AOL junkies, and eventually replaced with emojis, way back in the beginning….they were “Smilies”.
This document, “The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary”, is the original reference manual for turning emotions into parentheses and colons and asterisks.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary
——————————–
:-) Your basic Smilie. This Smilie is used to indicate a sarcastic or
joking statement since we can’t hear vocal inflection over a modem.
;-) Winky Smilie. User just made a flirtatious and/or sarcastic remark.
More of a “don’t hit me for what I just said” Smilie.
:-( Frowning Smilie. User did not like that last statement or is upset
or depressed about something.
:-I Indifferent Smilie. Better than a frowning Smilie but not quite as
good as a happy Smilie.
:-> User just made a really biting sarcastic remark. Worse than a :-).
>:-> User just made a really devilish remark.
>;-> Winky and devil combined. A very lewd remark was just made.
Those are the basic types. Here are a few of the less common variations:
—————————————-
%-) User has been staring at a green screen for 15 hours straight.
(-: User is left handed.
:*) User is drunk.
[:] User is a robot.
8-) User is wearing sunglasses.
8:-) Sunglasses on head.
::-) User wears normal glasses.
B-) User wears horn-rimmed glasses.
8:-) User is a Little Girl.
:-)-8 User is a Big Girl.
:-{) User has a mustache.
{:-) User wears a toupee.
}:-( Toupee in an updraft.
:-[ User is a vampire.
:-E Bucktoothed vampire.
:-F Bucktoothed vampire with one tooth missing.
:-7 User just made a wry statement.
:-* User just ate something sour.
:-)~ User drools.
:-~) User has a cold.
:’-( User is crying.
:’-) User is so happy, s/he is crying.
:-@ User is screaming.
:-# User wears braces.
:^) User has a broken nose.
:v) User has a broken nose, but it’s the other way.
:<) User is from an Ivy League School.
:-& User is tongue tied.
=:-) User is a hosehead.
-:-) User is a punk rocker.
-:-( (real punk rockers don’t smile).
:=) User has two noses.
+-:-) User is the Pope.
`:-) User shaved one of his eyebrows off this morning.
,:-) Same thing…other side.
|-I User is asleep.
|-O User is yawning/snoring.
:-Q User is a smoker.
:-? User is selling a C-64 (cheap).
O-) User is a scuba diver.
O :-) User is an angel.
:-P Nyahhhh!.
:-S User just made an incoherent statement.
:-D User is laughing (at you!).
:-X Users lips are sealed.
:-C User is really bummed.
<|-) User is Chinese.
<|-( User is Chinese and doesn’t like these kind of jokes.
:-/ User is skeptical.
C=:-) User is a chef.
@= User is pro-nuclear war.
:-o Uh oh!
(8-o It’s Mr. Bill!
*:o) And Bozo the Clown!
3:] Pet Smilie.
3:[ Mean Pet Smilie.
E-:-) User is a Ham radio operator.
:-9 User is licking his/her lips.
%-6 User is braindead.
[:-) User is wearing a walkman.
(:-) User is bald.
;*{)) Mega-Smilie… A drunk, devilish chef, with a toupee in an up-
draft, with a mustache and a double chin.
Note: many of these can be typed without noses to make midget Smilies.
————————————————————–
:) Midget Smilie.
:] Gleep…a friendly midget Smilie who will gladly be your friend.
————————————————————–
An alternate set of smilies has been suggested in order to raise the
efficiency of communications on Usenet:
:-) -: Smilie with an erection.
:-) 8 – Female.
:-| 8( )- Pregnant Female.
:-( :- Impotent (Or let down).
:-) -8 Blue balls.
;-) o===8 Braggart.
:-\ 8o After a cold shower.
;-) ===8 Circumcised.
8-O –* Just before doubling over with pain.
:-) -^-: In need of some corrective surgery.
:-) :-… Taking a leak.
:-} -oo-: Taking matters into hand.
:-{ -__-: After slamming the toilet seat.
:-o ^^^^: After zipping up fly too fast.
Now that we’ve seen them, let’s learn how to use them:
>> Newsgroup: alt.singles
>>
>> Hi. I’m new to this group. I’m a very well endowed guy ;-) o===8
>> and am looking for a girl with large hooters :-) 8 –
>> to have wild, uninhibited sex with. :-0==8
>
> Look, mister, you obviously are just some desparate geek :-) -8
> trying to relieve yourself over the Usenet. I’d hate to :-O -oo-:
> think of what would happen if someone walked in on you. :-{ ^^^^:
> In fact, you’re probably just mastering the simplest tasks
> of managing your “manhood”. :-) :-…. –> :-{ -__-:
Eventually, of course, we could communicate entirely with these smilies,
and eliminate the bulky overhead of words, such as the following:
>>> Newsgroup: alt.single
>>> :-) o===8 + :-) 8 – ? (Proposition)
>> :-o -8 –> :-o -oo-: ! (Alternative suggestion)
> :-o –* (Ooh. That hurt)
And, of course, Flames:
:-( : – (You call those breasts? I’ve seen bigger lumps in oatmeal!)
:-0===8 (Oh yeah? I bet that you…)
:-( :- (Not with you I don’t!)
I hope that these smilies will lead to more open communications between
people on the Net. :-) –:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
(Download “The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary“)
Find Me —
Find me
When you least expect it
Don’t try me, I’m undetected
Catch me
And it’d all change
Chase the wagger a bit more, baby
So find me
In the air around you
There’s nothing more true
But you wouldn’t believe it
So find yourself
In the darkness of your chambers
Nothing can remain here
Except your rotting memories
Why a C64 theme? —
The C64 theme has to do with my childhood. When I was growing up (from age 5 to… 11?) You would normally find me in the living room, laying stomach down on the blue carpet, Commodore in front of me. We had it hooked up to our big old wooden framed television set. I’d be playing Shamus, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Zork…
Zork provoked my imagination unlike much else in my life has. The colors that are so reminiscent of Commodore 64 computers reminds me of a time that I was immersed in my own mind, creating visual landscapes and characters that I only read about from the screen as I played with my older brother. The choose-your-own-adventure gameplay was perfect. It allowed me to familiarize myself with reading in an exciting and engaging way.
Zork suggests that for a video game to be good, it must capture the player. It must bring them into a virtual world, an alternate plane of concentration where you may dive in head first and actually believe for a minute you are in the game itself. For a text based adventure game, like many will surely agree, Zork did it best.
As is said, ‘those were the days’.
Of course, we didn’t know how to save the game (we loaded from tape) so we would always stay from the beginning, making our way ‘behind house’ and down the staircase, sword, knife and garlic in hand. Sometimes we would explore outside, and one time we found a bug in the version of the game we had. We would type ‘run’. It would ask, ‘what do you want to run?’ To which you would reply, ‘me’.. This would somehow trigger a bug and we would end up in a cave (which we had never gotten to before). Much excitement in early ‘hacking’ as it were.
The C64 will always be special to me, and mostly due to this specific game and the early memories I associate with it.
Dementors —
Sorceror
Dark sea of awareness
glowing coat of awareness
Flyers
Predator
Keep inner silence
They will be bewildered
They will leave
Envelope, suffocate
This is their job
Eat a baby’s glowing coat
Leave only a spine, a sliver to keep us alive
Keep us in your fear
Our awareness
Will keep you
Away
Our awareness
Will keep you
astray
I deny you access to me
You must leave
Leave me
I do not fear
I am my own
You need to go
Find your happiness
Polar shift, electrify your change
This is so strange….
(DON JUAN)
8/2013
Oh, Outlook —
No matter how many times I tell people ‘Do NOT use Outlook’, they don’t listen. No, they just don’t listen. They go and use Outlook because they ‘like’ it, because it’s what they’re used to.
And then they come crying to me when they get a corrupted .PST file. Again. And again.
*facepalm*
UPDATE: It may be that Outlook crashed the disk. Bravo, Outlook. *slow clap*
(Yeah I know it was probably hardware from the beginning. Mm-hmm. But I mean, probability. Man…yeah. *runs*)
Professionally Recorded Music vs. Capturing a Live Performance —
PREFACE: I’m not pretending to actually know anything about the topic of audio engineering. There, I said it.
—-
Live performances vs. professionally recorded music. Which is more genuine and true to its form?
There’s a guy that I’ve run into three times now at the post office. He only hangs around inside where the P.O. boxes are when the rest of the post office is closed. He stands in the corner, strumming his acoustic guitar and singing folk songs. He’s not bad. He’s actually pretty damn good. I have thought to bring my recorder with me to the post office in hopes to see him there again. If I do happen to achieve this (and am lucky to run into him) it will be much more than just the music that I capture – it’ll be the performance that will shine through. The experience itself will present itself on the sonic image. The walls will bleed a perspective otherwise nonexistent in any other scenario.
Professionally recorded songs are usually high quality, mixed and mastered individual tracks that are layered on top of each other to present the most accurate aspects of a collective musical piece. This usually throws in the dynamic of a studio engineer that inevitably influences the final product. The engineer’s knowledge, ability and personal style play big roles in how a song ultimately sounds regardless of how the musicians themselves perform. This is obviously a factor of live recordings as well, but mainly if you work on it in post.
Live performances are difficult to mix if you are streaming live to listeners. You must be either very quick at adjusting levels or set up in a way that will not drastically change (such as room mics). Either way presents benefits and drawbacks. Any FOH sound engineer will know what I’m talking about.
I personally believe that room mics provide a fundamentalist’s ideal “honest sound” to any live performance as they capture not only the music but, if placed correctly, the audience (if there is one), the true sound coming from the players’ instruments and amplifiers and the resonance of the space they are playing in. There is no track separation so you are getting all of the sounds, intermingling and flirting with each other in the same space. You can’t get much more honest with this method because it’s literally what what your own ears would hear if you were there in person.
If you are good enough, you can mix individual sounds of a live performance through a mixing board and make it sound much better overall than simply with room mics. This doesn’t mean just hooking into a console’s outputs during a live show, though. You must understand that live sound mixing for the house / space you are performing in for an audience and mixing for a recording which will be played later are two completely separate things. I learned this the hard way – by listening to really bad live streams and recordings that were made this way. No – what you need to do is take (and I know I’m going to get some of the terminology wrong) the signals *before* they are mixed for FOH and bus them to a matrix tape. Here you have an alternate (but duplicate) set of individual signals that you can mix together for recording/streaming. Why is this necessary? An example I always hear is mixing drums. Pretend a small rock show is happening at your favorite downtown pub. Are you going to mic the drumset, let alone amplify them enough to be at the same levels as guitar, vocals, bass? Depending on the place, drums are loud enough to not be amplified at all. If they are, they are usually amplified at lower levels than the other instruments as they are already naturally so loud. If you recorded this specific house mix and listened to it later, you’d hear really loud vocals, guitars and bass…and very faint drums (possibly only what gets picked up by the other mics).
Combining the two (and doing it well) will give you a sort of nirvana of sound – an orgasm of the ears by combining the definitions of both true and honest sound.
For a long time I thought that using room mics are the best way to capture live performance…but balance, grasshopper, balance is key.
Music vs. Music Videos —
When I listen to music, I focus on the sound, the song. The strumming pattern of the guitar chords, the melody of the vocals, the bass, the solos, the drums. The structure of the song and its harmonies, its mode(s) (to the best of my still rough ability) and essentially how it makes me feel. If it’s a song from when I was young, there are feelings and memories associated with when I listened to it back then. Music is very interesting to me in that it can provoke my mind like this.
When I watch a music video, I primarily focus on the band, or the characters in the video and its plot. The video itself might tell its own story and this is obviously more up front.
Music videos feel to me like a literal translation of a song. To me, this may or may not positively influence my overall perception of the music.
Not to say that music videos are a complete waste of time, not to any extent. I very much enjoy watching music videos (I *am* from the 90’s MTV generation after all). When a music video at least contains elements of a musical performance (shots of the (full) band playing the song for instance), this gives me a much more complete portrayal. Music should be able to stand on its own feet without a visual aid, but if done right, a deserving and unique dimension can provide a unique perspective. But it’s got to match the music – otherwise it comes across as artificial and unnecessary.
systemd vs. *nix Culture —
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on systemd for the past few days. I honestly didn’t notice it creep into my own Debian Jesse system much until I went to reboot and it hung on stopping smbd – for some reason it felt necessary to wait almost 5 minutes (with a counter) for it to die before doing something about it. I could not break out of it, couldn’t even switch to another console to try and help it along. I felt, for the first time, locked out of my own system.
I then read that systemd has much more functionality than just an init system. This scope-creep seems to bleed into the territory of cron, at, system logging (binary logs? Really?), network management, console logins and others. While I can see benefits of things like binary logs (easily filtering for a specific daemon, for example), I fail to see how it would be so difficult to develop a more ‘traditional’ way of accomplishing the same goals (grep, sed, awk?).
In essence, why does systemd intentionally pull out the rug from underneath what has “just worked” for so many years? Why does systemd feel the need to duplicate tools that already exist?
I won’t take part in the personal bashing of systemd developers. I think that people who do this are simply immature. I do, however, think it is irresponsible for such an elaborate system to trump on what is widely known as *nix culture. I feel that the view of existing tools and methodologies has been disregarded and labeled as “old school”. This is the kind of mentality that really turns me away from accepting it as a replacement.
*nix culture has roots deeply embedded in what I feel is the core of computing as a whole. It has its own traditions. It has its own jargon. It relies on and weaves together single-purpose *nix tools to accomplish goals that other nameless operating systems could only dream of accomplishing with such ease. It is a culture of continually honing one’s skills with an existing toolbox to provide a lifetime of technical mastery. *nix culture is not afraid of a very, very steep learning curve because seasoned sysadmins have learned over the years that once you master a tool, you can be confident that you’ll be able to use it for years to come.
For systemd to truly become part of the Linux ecosystem, I believe that it must work within it and not attempt to create a completely new one. To put it metaphorically, the concept of transportation is MUCH more than how fast you get there. The systemd car might be fast, but will never be able to travel on roads only a bicycle can.
—
LOGGED: 2014/12/01 (irc.freenode.net, #systemd)
<lns> Why is POSIX compliance not a goal with systemd?
<zdzichu> lns maybe becaise Linux surpassed POSIX by leaps and bounds?
<lns> zdzichu, from what I’ve read Linux is 99.5% POSIX compliant.
<zdzichu> lns what’s your point?
<zdzichu> car can achieve 100% speed of bicycle
<zdzichu> but can also go much faster
<lns> zdzichu, you could also say that a bicycle can ride on many roads that a car cannot
—
Chime —
Time
Time heals no wounds
But the ones you choose to heal
Chime
Watch the years go by
But this is still so real
Gain
Nothing but remorse
In how to feel
Again
Contemplate the end
Kill but don’t defend
Fall and rise again
Hold your baby on the tree branch
Read the leaflet
Choice, you see it
…But you’re so bitter
And I’m a sinner
—
Elaborate hoax
Lather you with soap
Fill your mind with smoke
Don’t ever let it go
Don’t ever let it go
Transcripted Voicemail —
it’s-space(?) when I came-i-don’t-go(?) over there with and answer any dental vehicle but I don’t not able to plug in for myself of something that’s just i’d(?) contact the center-so(?) we’ll probably be over the-way(?) so I want to see if they see if they both they-face(?) single see if they really won’t know.”
A case of the Mooondays —
I feel like the right side of my brain is being smothered by the left. Gently, with grace. Maybe just enough that I don’t notice most times.
Maybe my recollection of the past brings forth the reality that I am wildly out of balance. Too much analytical, logical thinking, not enough creativity. I want to be creative. I want to play a 3 hour bass solo.
Upgrading to Windows 8? —
You’re doing it wrong —
+ Funny thing is, you’ve known it all along
+ Music that permiates your ears
+ Reminding you of the truth
– Right vs. left
– Hemisphere
+ Multiverse
– Is it a curse
+ Or are you just riding it out
+ Writing it out
– Might not give you more time
+ To come up with another
+ You whisper in my ear
– You are what I fear
+ Inevitable instance
– Consistance
– Consistance
Ignorance, Fear, Assumptions, Empathy and Data —
Working as an independent I.T. consultant puts me in a unique position. I work for many different businesses and individuals on a contract as well as non-contract basis. Each situation I encounter is different, but some share very common attributes (especially when it comes to data).
When it comes to an apparent crisis, I empathize with my customers. I somehow find it necessary to subconsciously share the fear they project to me as if I were literally in their shoes. Maybe this is because deep down, fear is a motivator. It definitely doesn’t help when I am blamed for the crisis in hand just because I am the ‘hired hands’ for their network. It also doesn’t help when broad claims are made such as, “I haven’t touched anything since you were here” or, “It didn’t work right since you left”. Why have I found 5 new software programs installed since I was there last? Where was my phone call when it first happened? Why did you wait 3 weeks to call me to let me know, now so completely irate and frustrated? Why is your lack of communication now somehow my emergency? Why am I the one you find it necessary to vent all of your frustrations on, sometimes so obviously overinflated that there must be bleed-over from aspects of your life which have nothing to do with me or even your computers?
Maybe it’s because American businesses do not value people in the I.T. field. I remember attending a meeting / Christmas party when I worked in I.T. for a large California bank holding company. The I.T. manager for all branches told us troops that we needed to treat the bank employees like they were our customers. He also said that I.T. support was generally seen by people outside of the I.T. department as an unnecessary expense. As if the network spontaneously built itself and computers should “just work”. Sorry, but when technology took over the business world, someone did the heavy lifting. Business America has been ushered into this new era of the switch and the transistor, but nobody said it was magic. Computers are machines. Networks are highways and Interstates. All of these things must be maintained, especially when they are used all day, every day.
Running Windows certainly doesn’t help, either.
(That reminds me of a quote I wrote in my Palm Pilot a number of years ago, “A computer without the Windows operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head”)
So the next time something goes wrong with your computer, don’t try to justify blaming the I.T. guy just because he had his hands on your computer at one point in time. Don’t start formulating ideas based on your ignorance and fear, but if you do, kindly keep a mirror on hand so you can explore all angles.
The Liberating Journey into an Anonymizing, Private VPN Service. —
I love it when people say, as if a mantra on privacy, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” I’d like to think the mantra should be, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, they shouldn’t be spying on you.”
All my communications are belong to ME.
I signed up with Private Internet Access and set myself and the rest of the house up with secure, encrypted, privacy having, security getting big tastiness. Err, private VPN service.
A private VPN service works as a corporate Virtual Private Network does, though the end goal is more along the lines of anonymity and privacy. It takes all of your Internet traffic and encrypts it so your Internet provider (and other less-than-reputable individuals, companies + government agencies) have to work *much* harder to spy on you. First, your computer (or in my case, router) makes an encrypted connection to a VPN server/service online. Default routes and DNS servers are modified on your end. All requests from your network thus traverse the encrypted VPN tunnel and the servers at the other end make the same requests on behalf of you, sending the resulting data back over the encrypted tunnel.
The end result is a greater individual sense of online privacy, anonymity. Liberty and freedom. Oh, how sweet it is. It’s like, it’s like…America used to be. Think about it – using technology to liberate.
Like I said, my router actually makes the VPN connection. This is very beneficial from a setup and maintenance standpoint as I only have to configure my VPN account once and it applies to all devices on my network that traverse the big fluffy I in the sky (since all of my devices go to the router for Internet access). All data that traverses outside of my local network and to/from the Internet traverses through the encrypted tunnel.
Off the top of my head, my home network has 11 devices connected to it (with others coming and going, such as family + friends with wifi phones/tablets/laptops/whatever). Installing a VPN client on each device would not only be an administration nightmare, but the service allows for up to 5 simultaneous VPN connections at once. So instead of running short of client connections, I can use a single connection for a cover-all for my home network via my router and have 4 left for devices, say, connecting to the net outside of my local LAN (phones over less than reputable 3G/4G data networks, for instance).
Not to say that having an “anonymizing” VPN tunnel is the end-all privacy solution. You have to trust the VPN provider’s technical ability as well as their moral standing. I find it very comforting to know that their service supports Linux OS (gasp! They even make a dedicated client!). They are also sponsors of projects such as the EFF, Freenode and Gnome. With street cred like that, it’s hard to dismiss that they are serious about their customers’ privacy, security, and maybe most importantly, business ethics. Never the less, using something like this doesn’t mean you’re immune, completely anonymous online, able to do whatever you want without a single trace. There are plenty of other ways to get spied on. I feel like this, however, is at least one more step in the right direction.
I’ve found it interesting that, after connecting my router DD-WRT flashed router to PIA via it’s built-in OpenVPN client that my overall speed and response time online actually seems to have increased. This could be due to my ISP prioritizing certain types of Internet traffic (QoS). Since VPN traffic is many times considered “business” related, they likely put it ahead of normal HTTP/POP3 and other commonly used protocols. Kind of makes me laugh that I not only have helped protect my family and business from the all too common invasions of privacy online, but my connection is faster because of it. Take that, greedy ISP! =p
A good friend of mine was the one who really pushed me toward getting a private VPN. He already had one and was touting how well it worked on a frequent basis. That frequency, along with the constant news stories (this one was the straw that broke the camel’s back), along with the curiosity of being able to defend myself and my family against industrialized Fourth Amendment rights violations, finally got me on board. And for paying $40/yearly for service, I think it’s the best thing I’ve bought all year.
Cheers to a better sense of liberty and personal privacy in an increasingly surveilled nation.
MS Outlook, HP printers are the bane of my existence —
If I never do PC tech support again, two things I would never miss would be dealing with Microsoft Outlook and HP consumer-based printers or all-in-one scan/print/fax devices. They both are absolute pieces of garbage. I mean, sure, they’re complex and they do a lot so you can’t expect them to be perfect…but it seems to me like the people who create the software are absolute morons.
Exhibit 1: Configuring secure communications within Outlook. How many times have I configured an e-mail account / profile in Outlook, and when scouring through relevant settings, enable SSL + TLS communications with the e-mail server, only to get a call after I leave, where the client is complaining that they are getting a warning in Outlook, ‘something about a security certificate’? And when I look at the problem, How many times do I fall for “let’s try installing the certificate in the Windows certificate store, then it’ll trust it” card? And when that doesn’t work, I Google others who have the same issue? And how many links do I click before I learn that the common consensus is to simply “Disable SSL / TLS”? Yes, Outlook, the e-mail server hostname doesn’t reflect the certificate CN. I know. This is because it’s a self-signed certificate by the hosting provider. They likely use this cert. as a catch-all for all of their domains. Can I have an option to “Ignore future warnings? for this? There was one article that advised to ‘trick’ Windows into bypassing this by creating a hostname alias in the Windows HOSTS file. That is an ugly hack, thank you very much. Why haven’t they gotten this together yet? Oh I dunno, maybe it’s because their best interest is to promote paying $300/yr for a certificate signed by a cert. authority. Sure, that makes things more secure. Not.
And WTF is up with HP consumer devices being complete pieces of shit? Why do they lose their identity? Why does Windows tag HP printers as “Offline” because of some bullshit HP hiccup in the device’s firmware or drivers, or (more likely) the management software installed in Windows? Why does it not re-check status every once in a while to see if it came back online? Why is the only solution to unplug/re-plug the USB cable?
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Why is HP standard issue driver software ~300MB? Do you have any idea how long that takes to download on an AT&T broadband connection? Why do I have to jump through hoops to find the ‘corporate-only’ drivers, which are usually ~5MB in comparison and provide 99% of the functionality my clients need?
I probably wouldn’t be as irritated with this kind of stuff if the companies behind them weren’t total money grubbing gluttons. Sure, pay $300 for MS Office 365, we’ll still ignore the common pitfalls in the software dating back to Outlook 2000. What the fuck. HP is no better with their ‘We’ll use the razor business model – give away the printers and charge up the arse for ink’. It definitely shows that they don’t spend much money on the printer hardware. Of course I have to say it holds up better than their management software.
Sintel —
Why is *everything* remotely managable these days? —
So I’m looking at this cool new encrypted USB drive and the specs are impressive – hardware-based AES-256 encryption, small form factor, large capacity, even a hardware read-only switch, and…from what I read thus far, no Windows/other drivers necessary to operate. Pretty cool. Something I’d be happy to use and know that everything on it is pretty safe from whoever might want to tamper with it.
And then I look at the features, and read… “can also be remotely managed, enabling business owners or administrators to wipe or delete drives remotely in the event it is lost or stolen.”
Ok. Now I don’t think I’m the only one that sees this as a big turn-off. Yes, all the rage these days is being able to “remotely manage” your devices “in the cloud” (visualize Dr. Evil’s finger bunny ears, please). Please correct me if I seem off-base, but being able to remotely access these seemingly secure, encrypted, sensitive-data-carrying storage devices seems like a fundamental security no-no. Especially if you’re entrusting the remote-access, “cloud based” function to a third party. It’s a PORTABLE USB DRIVE. Shouldn’t you not have to worry about remotely wiping the thing, if the encryption works? Isn’t that the whole point? Why add these useless features? WHY AM I GETTING SO MAD ABOUT THIS SHIT? Haha… man. I could go on and on, but I’ll just leave this at, “You *almost* won me as a customer.
Why I still use a Palm Pilot (gasp!) —
Ok so I guess I’m a bit biased – I’ve been using Palms (and earlier PDAs) for a long time. I’m 34 now, and I started using PDAs when I was 16 (yeah, I’m a computer nerd). I’ve been able to keep the same memos, address book, and date book for a very, very long time. Through many different Palm devices. As long as I back up the data, I’m good. I just bought a second Tungsten C here actually, as a backup in case my primary one gets lost, stolen or broken.
Specifically, I love the Tungsten C because of the keypad. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I learned Graffiti a long time ago but I’ve never liked it. I constantly tried to find the ‘perfect’ replacement that had an actual keyboard/keypad, and with Palm, those are very few and far between. The Tungsten C is the one for me. I’m not going for WebOS as I hear nothing is backward compatible with PalmOS. I don’t even use the wifi feature as their web browser is horribly outdated, and installing Opera is near impossible even though there are sites that show you how to do it. The wifi kinda stopped working on mine anyway, showing a consistently stale list of available access points…whatever, I just turned Wifi off and now I have a great PDA that is disconnected from the world (which is what I wanted anyway). (Update 2014: I have physically removed the WIFI daughterboard, partly for removing any possible remote access possible, to give it an ounce or two less weight, and…well, just because. Normal operation is not affected by performing this surgery, only if you attempt to enable WIFI will the device reboot.)
My love for Palm’s simplicity in their primary applications (addressbook, memopad) and my love for the third-party apps I have come to depend on (Strip, Datebk6) is what keeps me from thinking “well, my cell phone has most of this functionality, why don’t I just use that?” I’ll tell you why. Because my wife washed my cell phone the other day. I’m probably going to upgrade my cellphone, and with the market/technology changing so quickly, I’d be crazy if I thought I could retain almost 15 years worth of data in a device that is going to become obsolete in a year. Palm sidesteps this with their older devices in that they are so PLENTIFUL to obtain and so insanely COMPATIBLE that you could pick up any old Palm and be able to restore your data easily. I own a technical consulting and support business, and use my Palm for appointments, tasks, addresses, notetaking, keeping encrypted passwords, etc… Thinking that a cell phone SHOULD do these tasks, I have found, is just insane. I want to keep them separate so I’m not tied to a certain cellphone for life. My Tungsten is my #1 receptionist – I rely on it for everything, even now in 2014. Palm devices have never let me down when it comes to tackling what a true “personal data assistant” should do. IMHO the Tungsten C is the best of breed PDA.
Waking up —
Do you ever feel like you have the answers to life and reality when you wake up every morning, only to forget them in a matter of seconds?
I woke up this morning and was thinking about vibrational frequency and how it relates to our physical bodies (and the rest of the physical universe). What was interesting to me was that I was under the impression that the higher the frequency, the “less physical” – but from what I have studied, the opposite is true (think delta/theta/alpha/beta brain frequencies).
I have also come to the theory that sleep is like turning yourself inside out. As in, your perception of the physical world, when you’re sleeping, often literally reflects waking life. Interesting to ponder in the first moments of consciousness.
Alas, crying baby. Coffee wife. Hungry son. I guess there are tasks at hand. Until next time.
Welcome to Reality —
Hello, and welcome to reality. Please buckle up!
The purpose of reality is to serve you in your creative endeavors. It is a static world, which means that your actions are everlasting and have the potential to affect everything and everyone around you. Unlike other realms, reality is “sticky” by nature; it is a landscape designed to exploit the potential of long standing focus and attention on your own creativity.
Reality holds many unique concepts which you will eventually become accustomed to. “Logic” and “reason” are two concepts that serve to make sense of everything you experience in reality. They will serve as motivators to do certain things and to follow certain paths throughout your lifetime. While they are extremely beneficial to harness, one must be careful as to how much ultimate value one places in them – too much of either one will only limit your ability to be creative.
“Time” is another concept unique to reality. Time serves as a measurement of sorts. It gives you a distinction of knowing the things you have done and the things you can potentially do. Time is a widely misunderstood concept by others in reality. The reason for this misconception is that of emotional and mental attachment. Many hold events of their past so closely to themselves that their ability to manifest potential events of the future are constantly weighed against them. This is a dangerous mindset as it hinders your ultimate creativity and your natural ability to achieve what you desire in reality during your lifetime. Please try to remember that time is nothing more than a measurement – a variable that holds the fabric of the nature of reality together. It should be seen solely as a motivator, and never as an inhibitor of creativity.
What I must also inform you of is the eventual fading of the knowledge of your origins once you enter reality. This natural process might potentially cause you to use the previously described concepts of logic and reason to define your true origins. Many that have forgotten have come to devise various elaborate conclusions which are (unfortunately) based upon unique concepts of reality itself, which might seem very paradoxical. They hold very closely these individual concepts, however, as it fulfills their desire to understand why they came to reality in the first place, as well as their “purpose” (another unique quality of reality). Like minds seem to find much comfort in a sense of belonging to each other by holding these common beliefs. What is interesting is that the higher the numbers that hold these beliefs, the stronger the influence these beliefs have upon those who have not embraced them. Please beware of those who attempt to convince you of their rationalized beliefs of natural origin – yet also do not hold them accountable for believing in something that might seem so trivial here outside of reality – as they, too, transcend out of reality at the end of their lifetime, they will quickly remember their true origins. It is not a negative thing to believe in origins that are not true while in reality, as it is the universal concept of creativity that allows these beliefs to exist in the first place. As long as these beliefs do not hinder ones ability to be limitless in their creativity, false beliefs do no harm. Unfortunately, hindering creativity is a motivator for some belief systems… but again, memories of reality will quickly fade as one transcends, and all will ultimately return to balance.
One concept that has been mentioned throughout this introduction that you will be pleased to know follows you, in full, from here into reality is that of creativity. As you know, creativity is the basis of everything. It is creativity that allows the concept of reality to exist, and is the closest thing you will be able to understand as a “purpose” of life itself. It is very important that you try to remember this as you enter reality. All will quickly fade while your attention starts to focus on the new and interesting and wonderful things reality has to offer – vibrant sound, bright light, enchanting colors and everything else will pull you into a lifetime full of wonder and amazement. Your ultimate ability to remember and embrace the concept of creativity will give you unlimited potential in your endeavors.
Thank you for listening, please enter the downward vortex with a smile – you are in for quite a ride!
-= The Darkener =-
This text Copyright (C) The Darkener and published under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution International license.
Entropy —
Music —
Music doesn’t require image. Music doesn’t want image. Music is sound. I wish we focused as much on audio as we did on our visual senses. Is this evolution? I beg to differ. A temporary disruption in input, IRQ bank full. Focus on what is at hand. Don’t be distracted.