2020 Hindsight

Ursa Major

Major Ursa How-To Yesterday's posting of the big dipper made with the updated Bryce 4.1 sparked a question-- how'd I do dat? Here's my rambling answer

Frankly Speaking Brent Simmons's fable tells The Truth about Nets and Dogs. Go read it!!!

Snail Mailman How hard could a mail job be? Very. One person's experience being a temp mailman.

I looked right, left. I even looked up. This was one of the times that I have been stricken with a feeling of true horror. How could a mail truck disappear?

Local News More L.A. Times coverage on the citizenry protesting the child molester outta town - The police helped to get him a one-way plane ticket outta state. (if you're just tuning in, this is a very local story. There are two previous articles in the L.A. Times: First Report, Follow up analysis)

To Die For Clinton vetoes the legislation to repeal estate tax. This is very disturbing.

`This bill is wrong. It is wrong on grounds of fairness. It is wrong on grounds of

fiscal responsibility,'' Clinton said ....

Oh, I think that this government is so utterly the role model of fiscal responsibility! Please, please, toss away the law, and please tax us and show us how fiscal responsibility is really done, all you people in Washington! I wanna believe! You're the role models! You know best! Tell me, I wanna know! I need to know!

It is estimated that the two tax cuts together would cost the federal treasury more than $350 billion over 10 years.

There's a little problem here about the presumption of possession. Who owns what? Who has the right to take things away? That sentence above makes it sound as though it was the treasury's money to begin with. Hello? I guess my property is not really mine. I cannot dispose of it as I will. I guess it all belongs to the government, and I'm thankful that they let me keep as much as they let me actually keep. Hmmmm... in other contexts, if someone takes something of mine without my permission, it's called theft.

This Bill is wrong all right.

Man, with such things like this taking place, I really wish that there were more interesting alternatives than Gush and Bore come November.

Now I'm reading an article in The Economist about this.

Indeed, the estate tax’s high rate suggests that it could have big disincentive effects. The top rate of 55%, combined with a top income tax of 39.6%, means that high income-tax payers, who intend to bequeath any new dollar they earn to their descendants, are taxed on it at the rate of almost 73%.

Sorry to hear about the death of your loved one. Guess what? You get to inherit 27 cents on the dollar of your loved one's estate.

Bought It Up Well....they say this tax is only for the top 2% of people in the country. I know of one person who'll be subject to it when that time comes. And this little animation tells how he's been earning his estate. (Flash required)

Internal Combustion

Congratulations!!! to Martin and Sandra Spernau! and Welcome! to Raphael Nicolej Spernau who was born today.

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My God, it's full of Stars!

late afternoon update I made space for Bryce 4.1 on my disk drive and fired it up and figured out how to get the starfield stuff to show. Once I got it working, I started hunting in the sky for the Big Dipper (a hidden null sphere with camera tracking is really good for incremental moves of the camera around the sky). Amazingly enough, you Brycers who are wondering if it works, you gotta put the Starfield amount slider pretty damn low to see things like Big Dipper versus all the other stars out there. The starfield amount for this scene is 1000 (pretty low on the scale)

But oh, what fun it is!

(yes, the scene file for this scene will be on the book's Seedy Rom!)

Garret commented that it looked a lot like sunset in Santa Fe, except for more teal blue. Did it look more

like this?

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Are you getting sick of my whiney references to this damn book? Well, I did something about it (besides continue to work on it). I've been working on the eye candy chapter, and phoning Brycers and talking about the process of creating scenes. It's been fun and enlightening. There's always that element of serendipity. "No, I didn't plan that part, but isn't the result just great?" Part of me is jealous of these folks to simply create without having to document each and every damn step of what they do.

That pie in the sky quote that I gave for the Corel Bryce 4.1 press release speaks from the place of one who is free to work and to play in Bryce, and not from one who's writing about it and has to go and catch all the errors in the writing.

So I got inspired by one of the "here's how I did the scene" descriptions, by an extremely talented Bryce artist named Clay Hagebusch, and over several iterations, I made a place full of heat and fury and inhospitality. It's utterly satisfying.

Angry Sky:

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L.A. Times: Sex Offender Protests Called Troubling Trend. Some neighbors continue to protest after the guy was run off.

"There is understandable emotion when it comes to this issue, but in many cases it may be counterproductive to drive an offender from a stable environment," said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University.

Berlin said sexual offenders are less likely to repeat their criminal behavior if they are allowed to make a "fresh start" with a stable job and a return to family life. Public notification and the scorn that follows can have the opposite outcome, he said.

"Is this guy a safer person now or is he angry and embittered?" Berlin asked.

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Slicing the State Race Pie L.A. Times: Minorities become Majority in State, Cencus Officials Say I remember going to Northern Europe a while back and being surprised because everyone there looked so...so... northern european.

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Policia Muerte Salon: Panama wants to stay out of the drug war . This story is heartbreaking. Panamá got control of the canal zone back on the first of this year (The U.S has been involved with this country since 1904--nearly a century--and the canal was completed in 1914), and is adjusting to its autonomous state. Now with the drug war, the question before the country's leaders is whether to allow U.S. military forces back.

It's a toss-up between autonomy and a depressed economy: The country is one again left to itself, but soverignty comes with a reduction of income from all the jobs and monies lost since the U.S. pulled out of the Canal Zone.

When I was in Panamá in the spring, I had all manner of thoughts about how the narrow strip of land is a bridge--between North and South America, and between Pacific and Atlantic. The land's history is one of opportunism and greed. Gold, conquest. Piracy, pillage, burning. There is Panamá Viejo, burned by the pirate Henry Morgan (sorry, no pictures of it; when we drove through it, I was napping in the back of the van!). Off of Portobelo somewhere lies the body of Sir Francis Drake.

There was a backyard conversation about the economic challenges and conditions that I later scribbled notes on. (5,000 jobs directly lost; 30,000 jobs indirectly lost from the pullout based on what I was told. "Every time the Group of Seven meets, I worry." "Globalization and the removal of tarrifs to encourage local consumption and production means that there's plenty of goods in the stores, but no money to buy them.")

So many repercussions of dealing with the big, big, powerful entity to the north...and hardly any time to get stable by onesself before the big entity returns with a new wrinkle in its game. A quote from the article:

There is a saying, 'When the elephants struggle, it is the grass who suffers.' We are the grass in this case."

(here's the explanation for Policia Muerte)

Cooling

There's been a definite cooling trend in So Cal. Lotsa overcast. What's more, I think it even rained a bit in the last several hours!

Easy Wheee! DaveW leaked plans for an easier-to-use weblog tool--Manila Lite.... Seeing as how I recently revisited Beginner's Mind and Manila, it's a *great* move!

Moved and inspired Al pointed to a story by Patti, about a friend who needs help. I read it and was moved. Moved to action, that is. It's wonderful to read about unflagging friendship in word and deed, and feels good to contribute a little.

Bryce 4.1 is now out ... bugfixes, some new mapping modes, cool custom starfields. It was an 8MB download; I haven't updated it just yet. The Press Release (I've got a quote in it!)

Poser Creative Mac: Steve Cooper (a.k.a. Kupa), CEO Curious Labs, talks about Poser's future.

Not in my back yard! Yesterday, while doing some errands, I drove by the park that's right by an elementary school. There were signs in the grass in the park, protesting the presence of a registered sex offender who recently took up residence there. Today the L.A. Times is carrying a story about the whole thing. The references to posting stuff around the neighborhood is true. A flyer describing this guy was posted at the mailboxes for my condo complex. Other than reporting the local news, what's my take on it? I don't know; haven't taken time to think about it. . . but if location, location, location is a watchword, then the location he chose is a particularly dicey one: on a street with a park, across the street from an elementary school. If you know you gotta stay away from children, why live there?

nil

I'm flipping the page because I want a new day to be here. But I've not much to say.

So it's a tabula rasa day.

More book stuff. Will it ever end? Friday was the drop-dead-deadline for the printer to receive the book in order to get the book out on bookshelves by end of September. Nope. We did not make it.

Oh joy, the date is slipping again. We won't make it this quarter. Words cannot describe the thrill. Can not de scribe the chill. If I were to elaborate, it'd all come out shrill. oh! and the word that rhymes with all of these others? Yep! You guessed it.... kill.

Well.... the book is not at the printer...it looks as though it will be at least another three weeks before it goes. Man, I really hope that the book will be ready for Bryce Camp at the end of October.

I was hoping to go to the bay area this week for a day of Seybold and some other things. Woulda been nice to catch the SeyboldManilapaloozaDaveNetopia gathering. I shall be home instead.

Garret, your one foot in front of the other statement of this morning is so appropriate. yes. My lungs still work. My eyes still work. My fingers work. Hey! and even my email seems to be working again. My car works. The money was there to pay the bills. And, on an unrelated note, I had a non-book-related meeting today that bodes well.

heh. without intending to, I used two other "ill" words: still and bill...

How appropos! A friend of mine just sent me a pointer to listen to the Tom Lehrer song: Masochism Tango. It's perfect for my ill mood!

How I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,

But much more for the feel of your whips, dear,

You can raise welts,

Like nobody else,

As we dance to the Masochism Tango!

Let our love be a flame, not an ember,

Say it's me that you want to dismember,

Blacken my eye,

And set fire to my tie,

As we dance to the Masochism Tango!

I....I....really am not into that kinda thing... but it seems that it's about all there is right now. Hmmm... Bryceochism.

cheerup Well, once I start whining, nice things happen to cheer me up. I got a call from a friend (who just started a manila site). He's at Fry's and can he get me anything? Yes! I've had DAT Tape on my list and not time to get more. Thanks to Bob, I'll have some spares! Whew!

Outta here! Kiss My Freckled Ass Goodbye Resignation letters: Words for the boss, both said and left unsaid.

It is with great joy that I resign my position effective immediately. I have accepted a new position which makes $10,000 more per year than YOU do, which brings great happiness to me, and confirms that the world is just.

Proxy

Four Little Words Salon: How the record industry used a tiny legislative amendment to try to steal recording copyrights from artists -- forever.

[Don Henley:] "On the one hand, RIAA creates all this flap about Napster and copyright infringement, while with the other hand, they've taken away artists' copyrights."

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Yesterday, Best.com sent me email about their problems with email, in response to the problem report I submitted:

Dear Customer,

We are experiencing problems with our proxy servers which is delaying the incomming mail. We do not have an ETA on when this will be fixed but the engineers are aware of the problem we are having and the are working on the servers. Sorry for the inconvinience it may have caused you. If you have any more questions or concerns please contact technical support at (888)578-8222.

Thank you,

Verio(Best)Technical Support.

Of course, the email was dated noonish on Friday and wasn't delivered to my mailbox until 8am Saturday. However, the proxy server received it saturday morning and took two minutes to plunk it into my mailbox in-bin...so maybe it was just composed and saved at noon on friday and sent out to all complainers.

Today I got some email from elsewhere that was received by proxy server and sent to my server a coupla minutes later (the usual good service they provide). I don't know if this means the problem is fixed, or if Sunday traffic is so slight that the servers can keep up. I guess I'll know more tomorrow.

Email snags like this might be in the category of illnesses or ailing limbs or fingers... Once it stops working (however temporarily), I pause and reflect on how I don't fully appreciate being ambulatory or dextrous. (Right Al?) I'm still weighing whether the illness that beset best's proxy servers is comparable to a sprained ankle or an infected cut or what have you. I want to blame *them*, of course. Sometimes I blame myself for the ailment, and sometimes it's just one of those things.

Your tax dollars at work A friend of mine told me that she's being audited by the IRS. She's scrupulously honest, so she's nothing to fear, except for the damn cussed inconvenience of it all. But in her former life working as a District Attorney in Major Frauds, she was investigating and prosecuting criminals who pulled off big-time scams. On one case, she sought to get an IRS agent to work on the case, where the criminals absconded with some 15 million dollars. The IRS didn't have an agent to assign to her case. But now they do have an agent to audit her. (Some sympathetic soul from the IRS had told her, "No, we can't work with you because we're too busy nickel-and-diming John Q Public.") Uh huh.

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Beginner's Mind I'm talking on the fone right now with my friend Bob who's just started his Manila site. It's like getting beginner's mind all over again. Such as: Why did the socket disconnect, and after clicking a button to post the story, where is that story?

He wonders other things too.... This is that time before the mental model of what takes place here has been set--it's amorphous and confusing and I find it fascinating to witness (and to assist him with). I encouraged him to just write down what his questions are.. it can be a diary of a newbie. We experts can all re-experience Beginner's Mind.

He's looking at the name Manila and is commenting, "What is Manila? I thought that was a little plain envelope." He bypassed the "Manila? What's that?" stage, since he came to this whole process by word of mouth. Oh? you want to set up a web site? You can make one pretty easily. Check out mine. Now I'll log and in and then edit the page. Okay, now I'll make a comment about what we're doing. Then I click this button.... now my comment is posted on my web site! You want to set up one yourself? Here, let me type this url: http://www.editthispage.com/ What do you want to call your site? And so I helped him through the beginning stages. Only now, as he's trying to read the FAQs and figure out what he's got himeslf into, it's slowly dawning on him that this thing he's working with on the web is an entity called Manila.

(like I said, Beginner's Mind)

This is the interesting, fascinating, and sometimes aggravating part about something new. Where do you start?

I took him back to the first message on his page, where there's the link to Manila Newbies, the Getting Started part. Okay, so now he's happy.... he's got somewhere to look, and, after getting a bit wound up on a few things, he's a tad more motivated to read all about it.

And yet, I was poking around at the Manila Newbies FAQ which is the destination when you click the Help button from the menu that appears when you edit your own site. The second question on that list connects to something called the QuickStart Guide. Oh, okay, I thought... this will be a good guide for him. But I don't know how to navigate to it from that initial link on the It Worked! page. There are two slightly different things on Manila Newbies-- Getting Started and QuickStart. And you can't go directly from one to the other.

Oops. Navigational dead ends. Wondering, "Was that the thing I was just looking at? How do I get there again?" When you're starting out, it's all confusing. Well, all this goes to show that Beginners Mind can end up being a pain in the ass.

Payback with Interest

I just went to the final Saturday morning summer Writer's Workshop at Vroman's Bookstore. Today we heard from Sheila Bender, the author of A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery. She talked about...you guessed it, the process of journaling for self-discovery.

Although there are a plethora of books out there about the topic of journaling, many of which approach it from the "getting in touch with yourself" perspective, she addresses writing and the craft of writing as well as the self-discovery part. Her approach is to be able to write without torture.

All in all, what she had to say was very provocative, even though I wasn't too enamored with some of her discussion of how to get started if one is not really into journaling or regular writing. (I'm already writing pretty regularly, both by hand on the page, as well as writing here, in ascii, in this little weblog.)

She led us through a little exercise to show us how writing is a process of discovery, and how you never really know what you'll come up with until you actually do sit down and write and come up with it.

The topic was Admonitions. What admonitions had we been told growing up? The "don't do this" "beware of that" kinds of statements. First we spent two minutes listing some. Then we chose one and wrote a bit about it--about following the admonition, about what happened if we deliberately disobeyed it... stuff like that. We spent about five minutes writing.

I really wanted to read mine afterwards, but was out of her line of sight, so she didn't call on me. That's okay, I'll "read" it for all of you!

Payback With Interest

It's hard to put this in an admonitory form--the admonition is couched in an entire conversation:

"Mom! Rob hit me!" (Well, yes, I'd hit him first, but he hit me back harder.)

And Mom said, "When you hit someone, you get paid back with interest."

I knew there was some economic lesson there... something that addresses the topic of escalation, how conflict grows and gets out of hand. Of course, I also had to learn what interest was.. it was that little extra that the bank paid in our savings accounts.

My mother did not say. "Don't hit." Or (what I wanted her to say) to my brother, telling him not to hit me. (I want to stick my tongue out at him from behind my mother's back.)

She somehow imparted a truth to me. Yes. People hit. It happens. With each blow, the hits are harder. Tempers simmer, then flare and burn. And if I do choose to go for it and hit someone, I will get hit harder in return. Hitting my brother will not solve the problem to my satisfaction.

Now here's the funny thing... When I went to the workshop, and even as I started making my list of admonitions, I didn't *know* what I was going to say, or to learn. In fact, even as I began to write, I didn't know what the punch line was (er... um.. pun unintended!). I just found the "payback with interest" the most intriguing of the admonitions that I'd listed. Then I just began to describe the situation. It was only at the end that I saw the sense of it all... and, here in August of 2000, I derived new meaning from a conversation that took place in the early 60's. Hmmm... some lesson lay in a life bank account somewhere... and today I just collected the interest!

Check the Headers

DSL Info including a security check, speed test and other things. Also applies for Cable modems as well.

Another speedtest page.

(man, the speedtest I took last night and the one today have markedly different results). The FAQ does address the question, Why do I get different speed results each time I run the Bandwidth Speed test?

Bookbinding Sept 23, Friends of the Thousand Oaks Public Library will have an all-day fair called Bookmaking--evolution from stone to paper. Lotsa participants, including some from the Society For Calligraphy.

Best? or Worst? Kate and Dave P have been discussing Best/Verio. my email account is through Best.com as well. And I had a complete slowdown in all mail received last night. Stuff came through this morning but it's kinda slow again. Checking through email headers, I've found delays ranging from 4 hours to 1.5 days in email to be transferred from one Best.com machine to another. (received from outside world by proxyN.ba.best.com which is then transferred to shellN.ba.best.com server where my account is located.) Man oh man, their service has usually been pretty good for me, but this is a major drag! Yes, I made a report. We'll see how this goes....... :/ Here's my little test message on outgoing mails:

Check the headers

check the headers

how's the view?

how's the view?

Are the servers relaying

Or are they delaying

ick ick ick!

ick ick ick!

Just called tech support to follow up on the report I filed, and there's an outgoing message that says that there's unusually high volume of email on their Best servers and that there'll be delays of up to 24 hours. Yikes. On the one hand: At least they're aware of it and trying to fix it. On the other hand: Isn't this the height of vacation season? Why the sudden influx of high volume?

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Contrarian Support Conspiracy Theory? I see that Salon's got an article on the Ralph Nader "Priceless" political ad (I pointed to it on Ad Critic a few days back). Master Card is suing Nader. Of course, many more people are seeing the ad because of the fracas. Maybe, secretly, MasterCard is doing this as a way to show support for Nader's candidacy...It's kinda like the ways that the President can not out-and-out veto a bill but pigeonhole it and let it die--MasterCard can support Nader while appearing to do the opposite.

Sounds interrrrresting! I checked out Dave W's pointer to a site called TunePrint, which will do for sound files what Digimarc does/claims to do for image files. Unique fingerprint. Verrrry interesting in light of DaveW's latest DaveNet, where there's the text of an email he received from the TunePrint guys.

I have an announcement to make. . .

I was just looking at the Summer/Fall Catalog for Ghost Ranch (I'll be going to a workshop there later this fall) and I was visited by this memory from the Bryce Retreat @ Ghost Ranch that I put on there:

When we had the event, we were not the only group at the ranch. There was the biking group, there was a men's encounter group, there were some other groups I've forgotten about. But our group was "that computer group." We astonished all the regulars working at the Ranch by what we were doing. The staff would tell one another, "You *have* to go and see what they're doing in Lower Pavilion [the meeting room where the lab was]. I've never seen anything like it!" We had erected a 24-compter lab in one of the meeting rooms for the duration of that week (I'll never, never put together an impromptu lab again!) But Ghost Ranch is special--the lab wasn't locked; nor were our rooms in the building called Corral Block. In fact, no one knew where the keys to the place were!

During mealtimes, in the cafeteria, there were announcements made by vvarious people. They ranged from persistent, nearly-daily reminders about the availability of horseback rides to announcement of the student internships and the need for volunteers to work at the ranch, to the occasional one for the bicycler group that the trailer that would be picking up the gear would be located at such-n-such place at thus-n-so time.

After a few days, the announcements got old. So, as the leader of the Bryce Retreat group, I figured that I'd even things out and make some announcements of our own during a mealtime.

I stood up and announced the following in the hearing of all the people who were at Ghost Ranch.

These announcements are for those who are here for the Bryce Retreat:

For those of you who will be hiking this afternoon, and may find the altitude here a bit overwhelming, you can reduce the height of your terrains by resizing them along the Y axis.

We discovered an outbreak of an MBDF virus in the lab in Lower Pavilion. There's no cause for alarm, however-- it's confined to the Lower Pavilion and Corral Block area, and we eradicated it with Virex.

There was a third one that I made, I think, but I can't remember what it was... but equally nonsensical and insiderish. I thanked everyone for their attention and went outside to the picnic tables where the others were, and we all had a good chuckle over the inside joke.

Someone told me that a woman at the lunch salad bar muttered a concerned explanation about the presence of that virus, though!

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Linked via Time's Shadow, a Reflection on Time.

Man constantly uses Time and expresses it in many ways, such as: I have Time; Time is short; Time is

long; It's Time to go and Time to return; It's Time to rise; It's Time to sleep; We have to save Time; We

waste Time; We kill Time; There isn't Time (is this close to truth?); Time is money (can money be

nothing?); et cetera.

Feverishly

Feverishly I been working -- semi feverishly -- on the final chapter for that Bryce book -- the eye candy chapter. It's fun because, compared to all the other chapters, it's a lark. I've been surfing to places and seeing cool Bryce images. So much great stuff out there. And a little administrative army to track it all.

Another fever. Thanks to Al's pointer, I read the account of Feverish Dreams. Wow.

Ya give me fever! Blues w/ some swing influence. I saw a band a coupla weekends ago, playing at a private party. I took pictures. They're around here somewhere. The band will be playing at a local in-the-park gig on Sunday in Monrovia. Library Park, 6:30-8. Raging Sun. They rocked. Pictures to come.

Sundry Schtuff

Interesting stuff going on over at Scripting News about Radio UserLand and all sortsa other things. Since I recovered from the bout of procrastination that led me to start the Macster weblog, I've, well, been less into that music thing. (It comes of having to concentrate on text and right now the default mode for that is silence.) So tho there's all this excitement about this development and that development, it's still a bit foreign to me. I'll get there, I'll get there. But I had to trash to 200MBs the MP3s that I downloaded in my fit of experimentation. Gotta keep the diminishing disk space available for book data.

A friend of mine got a 30GB disk for his powerbook. ~$500. I want one. But I can't make any big changes to system configurations at this stage. To do so right now would be insane.

Toward the end of last week, I needed to pull some old data off of DAT for the book. Somehow the process of searching for old data led me to my hopelessly arranged stack of archival CDs, which led me to look at the piles of schtuff here in my studio. I looked at it all and my heart fell again, to think of how I wanted, a year ago when I quit Meta, to spend some time and go through all these piles of things. I want to clean out my garage. I know that there is some worthless trash in those piles, shoved aside in a fit of "I need to do X *now* and I need to get *that* outta the way and I don't have time to go through it right now!"

Today on Anita's LOL I found a link to Clutterers Anonymous. Hey! They got a couple of meetings right in my area. Cool!! Going through everything is one of those WhenThisBookIsOver promises I make to myself. I sure wouldn't mind talking to others who wanna do the same thing, just for support. Yet I look at the 12 steps "we admitted we were powerless" and go hmmmm.... OH wow... talk about clutter! There's a page there on the site about decluttering resentment that clouds our minds. Resentment? Like about this book, maybe? Busted!

UPDATE! I did go to the Clutterer's Anonymous Meeting held closest to me tonight. It was good. Lots of different stories from people at different stages in recovery from clutter. Heh. There's a statement somewhere about those who clutter who "may be neat, but who go and rent or somehow obtain additional storage space for their things." I thought, hey, that's not me. But what of that desire for a 30 GB drive to put in my powerbook? heeee! (I'm *still* gonna get it!)

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eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! E-nough already! Love it! beautifully presented site.

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War Stories Jeff Cheney picked up on something in today's entry and it's led to each of us sharing our war stories (my story; his story) working for different software companies. We've both been product managers. Both of our stories use the 'F' word! (oh my!)

Newbie Delight I've just been showing my friend Bob how Manila works. He's got a site that he's just started: http://fatherbob.editthispage.com/ (I'm typing this URL like this to demonstrate how Manila will automatically turn it into a link.)