You are behind the white house. A path leads into the forest to the east. In one corner of the house there is a small window which is slightly ajar.
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
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.
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
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*)
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.
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.
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
—
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
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.”
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.
+ 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chill
Just got back this morning from fetching water from the popular Rattlesnake Spring. Usually a once-a-month trek to fill our drinking/cooking water reserves up (9 x 5gal bottles, 45gal total). I got started a bit late this morning (6am), but nobody was there for the duration of time I was there. Took me about 6.5min per 5gal..I usually don’t time the water flow, but I guess I’ve been there enough to where I am curious to start casually tracking it (especially with the drought that’s going on right now). The picture above is a fairly good representation of the flow this morning (though that picture was taken in August 2012).
‘Getting water’ is sort of a special thing for me. I take pride in knowing that I am providing my family with untreated, natural spring water to drink. The atmosphere (besides the traffic) is usually very nice. It is a time when I just relax and try not to rush things. A sort of meditative trip, if you will. I’ll enjoy my coffee and/or trees and just try to immerse myself in the fact that I am taking a conscious effort to better my (and my family’s) health by spending time and gathering clean water. Sometimes I even do some Tai-Chi amongst the trees.
The people you meet are either very conversational or keep to themselves (usually stay inside their car with the windows up until it’s their turn). I find myself one of these depending on the time of day and my mood. One thing is universal, however – everyone that I talk with that has been here before raves about the water. Not one person have I encountered (or heard of from others) that had a bad experience with it. It is apparently checked yearly for quality and marks much higher than the ‘standard’ for water quality. I met one fellow a while back that had worked for the county water district for 15 years and attested to the absolute quality of the water coming from Rattlesnake Spring. I’ve met a number of people that claim it is ‘miracle water’, water which has cured cancer in people they know, bring their family members, pets and livestock from constant sickness to perfect health… that’s about as much proof as I need.
I’ll happily dismiss scare tactics used to try to convince that all untreated water is dangerous. It’s hard to dismiss the overwhelmingly positive response from so many different people I’ve met first hand. I completely understand the possible hazards that can come into aquifers and ultimately out the little spout (which was created supposedly sometime in the 1950’s) such as animal / human feces, urine, dead carcasses, etc.. but for as big as the mountain is that holds this water, I have a very hard time convincing myself that I will personally come in contact with any of that. When Jack was a newborn, we would boil all of the water for his bottles and keep it separately. Other than that, I keep our bottles sterilized, clean and out of the Sun. My next step will be to replace the plastic (a combo of #3 and #7..ugh) bottles with glass.
This is the original song I was referring to in my Shamus song post (originally called, “Creep of the Shadow”). They share few musical similarities but both have their inspirational roots in the old Commodore 64 version of the game, Shamus.
I was doing some spur-of-the-moment research on music culture and how it could possibly be manipulated to serve a less than authentic end. I came across this paper and sort of fell in love with it. It very eloquently puts a lot of thoughts I have had in the past, into real words.
I’m adding Adorno to my people list. He seems like a very interesting character with some good insight on what I feel we’re knee-deep in right now. </conspiracytheorist>
I used to (casually) use screen, but then desired something that would display multiple terminals simultaneously. I also wanted to be able to type and have it echo into all terminals (useful for updating multiple servers and other general sysadmin stuff). I remember a couple different people (likely including, but not limited to greenfly, ttkay or twm) over in #nblug mentioned tmux. I did some searching and found that it could do all of this, so I kicked the ole brain into write-mode and start learning its personality.
Tmux is really nice. When I build my underground Command and Control center (or NOC for you “standards” types..visualize those quotes as little furry bunny ears) that looks dangerously like the one from War Games, tmux will be what’s on the large screens, some displaying multiple panes (^b + % or “), cycling through various information on the WOPR^Wserver farm. I’ll sit at my terminal and simultaneously (^b + :setw synchronize-panes on) run through other aspects if something strange pops up. 31337. Other screens will display live video feeds from the perimeter and other interesting geographical locations. And yes, everything will be in green terminal font. Because if you don’t do it in green terminal font, don’t fucking do it.
For now, my C64 will do just fine.
This riff’s working title comes from the Commodore 64 version of the video game Shamus. My older brother and sister and I would play this game growing up. I still get nervous anticipating the arrival of The Shadow. This loop shares similarities with a song I created in MadTracker a few years ago.
A delicate little tune, starting in the higher registers and filling out with a solid lower end. One of my favorites.
Ha.