So instead I wrote this. It’s about how I think it will be good to just have all my photo backlog uploaded safe, public, and forever. How I can use my DSLR again without such a burden of responsibility. It’s about getting my life a little more sorted. And not being such a nostalgia freak, even when the territory get pretty darn nostalgic. Short and sweet.

General

I like small musical instruments, unusual hats (size x-large or large), interesting vinyl records from the 50s and 60s, any sort of animal artwork, toy dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures), and cool sunglasses.

Specific

Well, hm. This is sort of embarrassing. Did any of you read that post I made back in November, about my upcoming website redesign? I was so excited. So eager. So naïve.

So… if you hadn’t noticed by now, it’s been awhile since then. Most elements of my design were actually implemented; others were forgotten as life went on (as it tends to). So I’ve decided that good enough is good enough — as usual. I seem to be growing more practical and less apologetic in my old age. At least as far as apologizing for personal web designs done in my free time as a  hobby, skill-building exercise, and meditation on imperfectness.

Anyways. This is the New Stuff:

• GLOT letters at the top are dynamic div areas (pure pixels!), style-able with CSS
• author portrait with color-changing vertical stripes behind it
• post titles used the 04_19 font; now they use Grixel Extended
• tags attached to a post now have the same color and have a mini-tag next to them on hover
• “about me” spiel is revealed on portrait hover
• recent comments appear in the sidebar (in pixelated form)
• Tumblr quotes, delicious links, Last.fm songs in the sidebar
• my WeHeartIt images used as filler in the sidebar
• number of comments shown in a comment bubble
• posts outside of the default category (Wordglot) are now specially featured on the front page
• Flickr photos show up below the main column on the front page
• ditto for Twitter tweets, too
• Creative Commons license and contact link shown prominently in the footer
• post pages now have a more interesting mono-color scheme
• possibility to set a featured image as background for a post
• the “not found” page is really cool — try it!

And this is the Broken Stuff:

• spacing is off in lots of places
• colors can combine in near-unreadable contrast
• the tags page… is bad
• vigorous testing was not vigorous
• I haven’t even checked it in Internet Explorer. Really. That’s how much fuck IE.
• comments have no pictures and are a gray box
• no, seriously — there’s not even a place to comment at all yet

Comment below and let me know what you think!

• any shirt that looks like those pictured
• bow-ties, like real bow ties that you tie on, especially ones with patterns or polka-dots, are cool
• 2 terabyte hard drive for cheap received!
• a magical easily-obtainable driver’s license for wifefriend Lynae
• accordion (note: a very complicated choice that I’d really like to make myself… at some point in the future)
• this toy caveman is pretty awesome, and is all of $7 (for the thrifty present-giver)Although… you know, as long as I’m mentioning it here, the toy manufacturer (Papo) makes a really great Plesiosaurus and Allosaurus, too. I have their Oviraptor and it’s top-notch. Consider it mentioned.
• iPhone 4, for better or for worse, cf. “I must have the iPhone 4 […] I need the one with more gee-bees”
• iPhone-to-FM transmitter, car mount, case that can safely get run over by a car
• a new comforter — because apparently 5 years should have been considered a good run
• Better Internet – we’re considering a local Wireless ISP (WISP) named MonkeyBrains.net that requires an up-front investment for an antenna. We’re still deciding on this one, and it’s not glamorous, but an upgrade from 3M/b download to 30M/b for less per month is a heck of a win-win.
• The Secret Museum Of Mankind, Vol. 5 – you know how often I go for physical CD media, so this better be special. Indeed it is — I have the first 4 in the series, and they’re amazing, but for whatever reason this is missing from the Internet and thus my collection.Check out this 1939 track from South Africa, from the only recording studio in sub-Saharan Africa at the time, and the origin of the melody for “Lion Sleeps Tonight”:
  Download audio file (Solomon Lindas Original Evening Birds – Mbube (South Africa).mp3)

Since November. Drew it on the 20th, here it is:

There’s nothing wrong with it yet. It’s still in that wonderful stage where nothing is broken, per se, just not gotten-to yet. But why do it in the first place?

Well, it’s exquisite process of brain-development and creative excercise and human development. I set out to learn things sometimes, then I learn them.  This time it was CSS3 and HTML5 and some Javascript. Hopefully, maybe, possibly, that pays off some day.

Very little is started, but one interesting thing I’m adding is more pictures. Below is an image from my WeHeartIt feed, which will automatically be displayed in the sidebar (just like this!):

Nifty, huh? Back to work.

But I have other bad habits. One of them is putting a lot of work into an interesting creative project for a month and then forgetting about it. But that’s more of a personality flaw and not the message I’m here to get across.

Similar to my habit of saluting even when I know it’s stupid, I call people sir and ma’am. Why? Because it’s formal and therefore I can subvert it. See, cause I don’t have a real job in business or customer service, or something. So it’s ironic when I say it informally… right? Unfortunately, it’s also stupid.

Which is why when I was working the door at Bad Movie Night on Sunday and used ma’am, I was informed by an annoyed and emphatic miss that it should only be used for married women. Sorry, miss, and semantic distinction acknowledged. So with the next chance I get to fix it I did — by using “sir” instead. This also happened to be rather stupid because the next person was female, which, you know, I knew. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well either. Neither, I think, did my haphazard explanation of the problematic semantics behind “miss” and “ma’am.” Although happy to correct the error, I think next time I need to focus more on the apologizing and less on the confusing grammar. If the lady in question ever finds herself reading this, here it is more eloquently: I’m sorry to have klutzed my way into gender confusion; I can see how I might present myself like a clueless schmuck, and maybe I am, but either way I hope it won’t upset you in future. Sorry for the megillah and also for the Yiddish.

I could just change my habit to avoid gender-based titles entirely, and that’s what I’m considering. Seems perfectly sensible, all things considered. I just need something more fun than “the party of the second part.”

let it be know that Robert John La Londe-Berg is officially changing his name to Orin Robertjohn Zebest, that he is getting married to Lynae Ariadne Zebest, and that it’s happening tomorrow. It’s an ocassion which requires marking and here it is marked. Many readers will be coming, many will not, yet it’s worth thanking each and every one of you. Thanks, and wish me best for the future. It’s been a long time coming.

I wish to address your company regarding its recent DMCA takedown notices of “Downfall” parody videos on YouTube.

First of all, I want to say that there is a paper-thin legal justification for these acts and you should be ashamed for censoring free expression. These videos clearly come under U.S. copyright’s Fair Use provisions. It does not matter if the original film was made in Germany, or that the content used does indeed belong to you, the fact that they parody the original film means they are 100% protected in the United States. You filed takedowns through the American DMCA system and you’ve abused that system.

Second of all, this is an impossibly bad business decision. The great majority of these videos show the same exact clip of the film, and in no way discourage people from seeing the rest of the film. Quite the opposite — it should be obvious to any marketer that these videos were a vast resource of free advertising that strongly contributed to the interest in the film. Destroying that advertising, and angering legions of people at the same time, is preposterously stupid.

Lastly, and perhaps most important, there are unfortunate symbolic consequences. I must assume — since legal and business motivations are unlikely — that your lamentable decision was based on personal sensibilities. Certainly I might understand how a German company could be sensitive about clips making light of Hitler. However, not everyone shares your apparent feeling that portrayals of Hitler should be sacrosanct in seriousness. There are many who feel that videos like the ones you’ve had removed rob Hitler of some lingering symbolic power, and, further, that returning that power is most certainly an awful idea. I think you would agree that April 20th, Hitler’s birthday, was a very regrettable day for many of these takedowns to occur.

I have referred many YouTube parody posters to a video by EFF chairman Brad Templeton, and informed them that they can rightfully dispute such DMCA requests. I will be asking others not to buy or rent any films made or distributed by your company. I will also likely encourage or help people download “Der Untergang” for free if they ever wish to see it.

I urge you to reconsider your recent actions and, further, to make amends to these legitimate creators. If I were you, I would apologize privately after retracting all claims against parodies. A press release would be more expedient, but would attract more attention than I’m sure you want. Regardless of how you choose to act, please understand this — people are upset with your actions, and their concerns should be addressed.

Thank you for your time and attention,

-Me.

1. Here’s an original black and white image of the top of someone’s head. I happen to be quite attached to this one, so we’ll use this.The ideal image has an interesting outside shape with lots of fluffy bits. The background needs to be a solid color, one that contrasts with the subject’s hair (or whatever the fluffy bits are).
2. Usually, when working with Photoshop or similar image-manipulation tools, the easiest and best selections have sharp, distinct edges. If your subject is completely bald the regular-ol’ wand tool is the way to go. But I think such lines wouldn’t produce as interesting an icon and, well, most people do have some hair. The solution: the background can be quickly and smoothly removed using a tool like Vertus Fluid Mask. While it’s not free, older versions can readily be found at a large discount. Paint the areas you want to keep, and those you want to delete, and liberally splatter BLEND over everything else. Blend really is great for hair. Preview sections as you go using the T key. It’s easy once you learn the few keyboard shortcuts. Voilà!
3. When you’re done, you will have an image with alpha transparency. This is what allows any program (that understands it) to make your image look good against any background. You need to select the pixels according to how transparent/opaque they are. But, since there’s no alpha channel (or alpha layer), and since there’s no direct way to select based on transparency/opacity in Photoshop, we have to be clever. Make two duplicates of the new background-removed layer. Invert the colors of the one on top.
4. Change the top layer’s transparency to exactly 50%. The two layers will cancel each other out and make middle-grey. Merge your two duplicate layers into one. This layer has no color contrast at all, no details. It is, in fact, a nearly precise reversal of the elusive alpha transparency.
5. Using the levels tool (ctrl+L or cmd+L), make the color completely black. Slide the input level all the way to the right. Although 246 is shown, you can and should go all the way up to 253.
6. A black image makes a much better selection. So here is where you can finally select the alpha transparency. From the layers tab, switch to the channels tab. Ctrl+click (or cmd+click) on the RGB channel to select based on transparency.
7. Once you have this selection, you have the key. To make an outline (left), simply fill the selection with a solid color. I use color stripes over my icon, and I like seeing the unique shape against all backgrounds, so I cut out a simple image of solid stripes (center) from my selection and get a translucent image in the shape of my head. When you combine with the original photo (right), these give a smooth-edged, recognizable, quite personal icon that resolves well even at small sizes.

It’s easy and fun to play with the outline and experiment with all the different things you can do. You’ll discover there are all sorts of cool things one can put on a face. To conclude, here’s a collection of what you can create with this technique:

This record is weird and you’ll probably like it. Before I say anything else, I’ll give you the opportunity to trust my words and just go download it. I’ve long been an advocate of knowing nearly nothing about a song or album before listening to it so as not to sully the innate purity of one’s judgment. It saves you the trouble of being seduced by the idea of some kind of music only to later realize that, hey, this Brent Spiner album really sucks. But — since if I’m going to bother sharing some music I really ought to explain why — I’ll go ahead and give an idea of what “Silicon Valley,” by Raven Kane and Klaus Netzle, is like.

“Video Invasion” by Raven Kane & Klause Netzle
Download audio file (Raven Kane & Klause Netzle – Video Invasion (preview).mp3)

There’s no way you could find a record quite like this. It isn’t much like anything I’ve heard, although one can easily place it in the 1980s epoch. For me, the best thing about it has got to be the earnest, catchy, often absurd lyrics — with topics such as office equipment, video technology, and artificial intelligence. It’s very firmly in Neo-Luddite on all these issues. You will, in the course of listening, encounter a joyful cognitive dissonance if you ponder how many electronic instruments are used (although, to be fair, the album’s subject is enhanced by all those clicks and boops). Even though the electronics are a campy marvel of the 80s aesthetic, the lyrics are incredible. As an example, I’ve transcribed the lyrics of one of my favorites:

“The Robot” by Raven Kane & Klause Netzle
Download audio file (Raven Kane & Klause Netzle – The Robot (preview).mp3)

(lyrics of “The Robot” – parentheses denote spoken words)

THE ROBOT
radical reclamation
impersonal declaration
march of the intellect
invading the realm of man
(invading the realm of man)
THE ROBOT (x 2)

Guard, defend, preserve humanity! (x 2)
Take caution at the hint
of a world where robots may replace
the entire human race
(replace the entire human race…)
THE ROBOT (x 2)

How can the passions of man be replaced by steel and artificial minds?
The spirit, fire and farts(?) of man cannot be replaced,
shall not be replaced.
Will they be replaced?
(will they be replaced?)
By the ROBOT.

THE ROBOT
cold, dull & passive
indifferent to the world around it
capable of inhuman tasks
incapable of human emotions
(incapable of human emotions)
THE ROBOT (x 2)
frigid, hard, and cast of steel
modeled to move the impossible
impossible to stop the modeled robot

watch it move, watch it move
how does he think?
what does he think?
(verse repeats)

THE ROBOT
radical reclamation
impersonal declaration
march of the intellect
invading the realm of man
(invading the realm of man)

THE ROBOT (x 2)
Guard, defend, preserve humanity! (x 2)
THE ROBOT (x 2)

watch it move, watch it move
how does he think?
what does he think?
THE ROBOT (x 4)

Man, it is fun to sing. I hope this doesn’t spoil it. I was actually hoping to do more research on this album before publishing, but guess what? There isn’t that much actual information on this record. I can’t find out why these two collaborated, what they were trying to accomplish, or what the reception was. I know that I’m  happy to have found it. I know that it’s good to keep it alive. And I’m happy to help others find it, too. With no further ado, click these two techno-phrophets for a Sharebee link:

Take photos of interesting things (things, not people) you see in public places. Publish and geo-tag the best ones on your Flickr account the same day. Tag them with ‘noticings.’ Score points for going to new neighborhoods, shooting persistently, or finding certain kinds of interesting.

I knew there was a reason I subscribed to Photojojo. They tipped me off 5 days ago. It really has brought out the documentarian in me, and I’ve been going on photo walks around my neighborhood every day since.

As you may know, I’m generally not good at sharing my beloved pictures in a timely manner… no matter how beloved they are. Anything that can be used to get leverage on myself is generally good. By that standard, I’d say noticin.gs has absolutely done it’s duty. Of course… we’ll see how long it lasts.

ACTA is falling apart, says Zeropaid. Oink got off. The latest strategy of co-operating with ISPs seems doomed to failure just as much as every other stupid thing they’ve tried. Their overzealous plans to make content hosts –well, anyone screen for copyrighted content are, if not impossible, just going to push people toward other options. Sure, Freenet sucks but it’s a decent idea. TOR is a hell of a thing.  nd those are just the rough drafts available if things get worse for sharers.  If there were a better motivation for the masses to adopt ubiquitous encryption, I can’t think of one. And I know how much governments around the world would like that.

Even if these blind and ignorant dinosaurs-on-steroids-on-acid did somehow get the thousands (millions?) of ISPs in every country on Earth on board, every new and harsher step just seems to alienate more people and convince them of a deeper evilness. It seems that they have a dual problem: 1) how to overcome human nature, and the wholesome desire to spread beauty, truth and joy 2) resentment for the scorched-earth/hardball strategies used trying to do so. The answer, of course, is just give up because that’s a ridiculously awful problem. The business model was broken and they never accepted it. It’s impossible — I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E. — to control things like they used to.

Here’s an idea: play nice. Don’t use your established position to crush new competitors and stifle ideas. There’s room for everybody, especially if new people are making new room. How about you encourage people to buy things by being a force for good, by respecting the customer, by putting out quality content? Why go through such elaborate steps to market crap just because you can have more control? Your modus operandi as a for-profit company is to make money, not maintain control. Accept that personal politics in the future will have a good deal to do with one’s opinions on the corporations and production methods one is supporting — thus the expression, vote with your dollars. Example: green movement, Food Inc, cc authors like Doctorow. Can you imagine what immense goodwill there is for the first big content provider to say the following:

“We will never sue our fans. We still want their money and for good reason — that’s what we do. Outside of our promotions, we won’t help share content for free because that’s the fan’s job. We know that it is, on the whole, good for society. We are morally, financially, and legally against anything that tries to buttress an outdated system at the cost of our own culture. We need that culture healthy so we can continue to survive. And this will make it better.”

Ok, so I’m a photographer. Today I was looking at this magnificent gallery of photos taken on the Suisun Bay Mothball Fleet. The photographer has a pretty nice gallery (although it could be a little smoother, photo transtions and such). And then I realized that her site actually links up with her Flickr. Huh, that’s a cool trick. I then found the very clever and useful Flickr Photo Album for WordPress plugin from Joe Tan. It allows you to put up galleries of your Flickr photos onto your own site — you know, like a “real” photographer.

My, my, it seems like I could get some real use out of that. For a while I’ve had a back-burner project to start selling some photos (although the feasability of that remains to be seen). I’ve always liked the idea of showing my stuff right here, where I can control the presentation. And, honestly — don’t tell ‘em I said this, though — I’m beginning to think a lot of people consider Flickr kind of a photographer’s ghetto, where every level of quality or involvement is allowed, and where the best aren’t necessarily advanced forward. Having your own gallery is more than simply a mark of pride, or effort, or professionalism, but also a mark of status.

Thus begins the odyssey to create something worthwhile. Things I hope to incorporate eventually into my very rough, yet functional gallery:

• CeeBox for pop-up image enlargement
• javascript toggles to show/hide sets
• integrated commenting, so a visitor never has to leave the site
• browsing by tag
• javascript pagination — so there’s no tedious reloads
• Flickr collections, favorites, galleries, view counts, contacts (maybe)
• a classy dark layout

For the last two weeks I’ve been without Glot. All just an error, but whose is hard to say. I waited until three days before homepie.org‘s expiration to try and transfer it, which wasn’t very smart. After it expired on the 13th, there was an unanticipated 5-day waiting period from Tucows.com (my registrar’s registrar? I think?) and after that, the nameservers “didn’t carry over,” and we had to wait for them to “propagate for up to 72 hours,” and even that “didn’t work,” blah blah bleh. I just kept calling Moniker customer support and eventually I got high enough that somebody flipped a switch and BOOM everything works exactly as before. That sucked, but boy does it feel nicer now.

It sort of reminds me of something which happened around exactly this time last year.

One of the worst parts is that my primary email is located on the homepie.org domain — so even though it’s hosted on Google Apps, the magic of the internet couldn’t find it. I’m sure I’ve got a lot of newsletters to re-subscribe to, and a lot of people to inform that I’m not dead yet.

Regardless, it’s good to be home. Don’t let me do that again.

Apartment Games:

• Will I Require Pants? – A simple yet enjoyable game, suitable for many occasions. Play it next time you will be using a handsaw, running for the doorbell, carrying bags of garbage, talking on the phone with relatives, walking around the house at night, eating finger-food, sewing or doing needlework, or any of the many other situations where having (or not having) pants is so often uncertain.
• Does This Go Here? – This game is not as well-known as some, but I guarantee it’s worth trying. The object is to find something in the home that is out of place. But you probably won’t win with just any ol’ dirty sock wrapped ’round a ceiling fan—you should seek out the most wildly unlikely, head-scratchingly bizarre, pickle-jar-full-of-melted-cheese-inside-a-fishtank type combination. Great with kids.
• What Am I Supposed to Do With This? – Much similar in idea to the classic game “Hot Potato,” but picks up where it leaves off. The giver hands the receiver a “potato,” which is, let’s say, a large freezer bag full of pipe cleaners. No matter how seemingly unimportant or stupid, whatever it is mustn’t be thrown away! Instead, the receiver must decide what next to do with it. You’ll discover this is easier said than done…
• You Go Here Now – Like Tetris, spatial awareness and strategic thinking are necessary to win at this game. The challenge is to fit something into a space which really can’t possibly accomodate one more thing. How is that possible, you ask? When you finally find out, make sure to yell, “You Go Here Now!”
• I Come In Here For Something – Fun for all ages, and can be played anytime, with equipment you probably already have. All that’s needed are two or more rooms, a collection of stuff which cannot be stored in only one of them, and another (hopefully larger!) collection of mental distractions. Simply mix and begin play. Plan a series of such games for hours of entertainment.
• Find The Smell – One of my least favorites, unfortunately, since I’m generally quite good at it. This game is distinct in that winning isn’t always much fun (as “The Smell” is often something unpleasant/unwanted/disturbing), but still not as bad as losing. Rotten fruit, pet feces, standing water, household pests, building damage, questionable visitors, and all manner of dead things are usually good props utilized for play. Similar to hide-n-seek, but more viscerally revolting.
• Secret Weakness - Hard to explain the rules for this one. Can be played alone or with any size group. A sort-of riddle game, the idea is to find something (not previously expected) that makes you feel suddenly, gut-puchingly powerless. For example, if one player has a job with a strict dress code, use the last of his/her leftover purple hair dye. An elegant game when played correctly.
• I Need A Hug – Collect as many hugs as you require in the shortest amount of time, from as many people you find tolerable. Usually played after other games, like Secret Weakness or Find The Smell.

There you have it! Hope you enjoyed my list, and please, please, do send me more if you have them. I’m always up for more fun!

Because it took me  long time, because I’ve not seen it before, because I can, I’ll tell you all about this:

Orin Zebest’s permanent Twitter archive for his Twitter account, @Orinz on Twitter

Yes, that’s right, it’s a collection of every tweet (Twitter update) I’ve ever Twitterered. Because who knows? Twitter.com could be bought by Fox News Corp., or explode, or any number of unfortunate things. Or perhaps it’s just a pain in the ass to search through 120 pages for one interesting thing. So, through the miraculous process of tedious copying and pasting, I’ve made myself a good, everlasting monument.

Course, I still have to maintain it. And I couldn’t actually fit it all on one page, since after about 2000 updates the code gets so large my web server can’t handle it all in one chunk (I split it into three, there’s one for 2008 and 2007).  But it still looks nice; looks just like my real Twitter page,  just much, much longer. It was a labor of love. I’m pretty amusing, it turns out.

Anyways, the pictures I shot were good, but lacked that little something that makes ‘em special. Fiddling around in Lightroom I loaded up a bunch of presets designed to imitate old black and white film. This was a curious move. I mean, I’ve dabbled before, who hasn’t? But black and white pictures… they’re nice, I suppose… I understand why the form continues to thrive… just… does this look like a website for someone who shoots photos with no color? Really now.

Yet despite my completely natural disinclination, I think I made some spiffy pics. They have some real character. Here are the magnificent seven, from my lens to yours:

More photos in this post…

Me, I’ve come from a series of bad work situations. I went from one job I was unhappy at that paid me little to a job that made me very happy but paid me nothing. Then I had a few jobs where I was relatively happy, and where I was decently paid, but the bosses were either incompetent or incomprehensible, sometimes both, never neither. I stopped wanting to work at places that believed looking up information on how better to do one’s work somehow counted as play. I got kicked around and more than a little disillusioned.

Everyone should know by now that I do a lot of work for the little lady. Specifically, I do almost all her packaging and all her product photos—two things which are rather important for an online business. So I kind of ended up working for her (that’s what I like to tell people at parties, anyway). But it’s a little more complicated. Y’see, for everything but tax purposes, I’ve started to see it as our business. She makes the stuff; I’m the one that gets rid of it.

That’s fine in most ways. I’m happy. There are some ways which don’t seem to work as well, though. I’m still operating within her big shiny creative orbit, no matter how many sunbeams I bounce off into the far reaches of space. What I need, what I’m thinking, what she agrees, is that I oughta have my own thing too.

Real soon I’ll be stocking my own Etsy store. The refined talents of the but-for-a-moment-still Ms. Straw should come in handy there. Keep an eye on the GLOT, too, as I’ve got many plans in store for it. Wish I could reveal more, but I’ve revealed enough. Accelerate it, baby.

I’m so proud of the little guy. My brother Patrick, you see, has set out from the nest and (always one to imitate me) has traveled overseas. He set out for Ireland yesterday, hoping to find a job when he gets there… just fly over, then wing it. If that happens to sound familiar to any of you, than yes, it’s because I did something much like that in February 2006 with the continent of Australia.

He’s got his own blog now to provide convenient updates to those of us who chose to remain in the homeland (what’s that? Why yes, matter of fact *I* had one of those too). He also has a Twitter account for brief updates. Of course, I couldn’t have had one of those in 2006. But now, present day, who else keeps one? Oh, little ol’ me, is all.

He planned this pretty darn well, you know. Saved up money working as a chef and going to college for free. Has the chef skills, which are actually in-demand and employable, as opposed to… my exploration skills. He’s even managed to go to Europe twice already—without me that is—once, before I even had a passport. So I give him a lot of credit for figuring it all out.

Here’s to figuring out how to book a plane ticket, oh brother of mine!

This was T-1000; always the fastest, fattest, hungriest, excitable little freshwater figure-eight pufferfish this side of my heart. He stopped eating five days ago, and despite our best efforts… well, that was that. We had him more than a year (which is a record for fish-keeping, at least for Lynae). He is survived by his former tankmate, Crackers.

There will be a small ceremony tomorrow organized by family and friends, to be held at the Presidio Pet Cemetery in San Francisco. He will be buried with many small seashells, shiny beads and baubles—as we imagine his last wishes likely may have been.

(Credit for this artist’s sketch goes to Rhiannon, one of the bereaved.)

• Overclocked
• Postsingular
• The Difference Engine
• Accelerando

Now, these books all have something in common. I’ll give you a hint: it’s a technological post-human meta-rapture of near-infinite to infinite progress beyond the boundary of which no predictions made before could possibly hold true after. Not that that might ever stop anyone from guessing about… The Singularity. If you’ve never heard of it, apologies — you’ve been missing out on one of the more optimistic ideas about the human condition ever dreamed. Which is why I love reading books about it, no matter how impossibly inaccurate the predictions.

The idea of the singularity is based on a the idea that the paradigm-shifting points in history are getting closer and closer together: 13 billion years is the age of the universe, 5 billion for the solar system, 1 billion for complex multi-cellular life, 125 million for mammals, 1 million for humans, 50,000 for fire, 10,000 for agriculture, through all of human civilization and on to the recent awareness of Moore’s law and beyond. And, if such tendencies continue (as tendencies do), eventually a point will be reached that change happens so fast as to be… almost impossibly fast. Fascinatingly powerful idea, right?

If you’re interested in the whole mysticism of it, Terrence McKenna thought of it as a “singularity of novelty” and had all sorts of ideas like how shamanism was a probable agent of evolution. “History is the shockwave of the eschaton,” stuff like that. There’s a collaboration he did in the early 90′s with an electronic band by the name Shaman that’s quite good:

Now, as to the dish-washing revelation. Seems to me that when something is fascinating to you (and this certainly is for yours truly), the reason that’s so is usually important. Y’see, seems to me that this whole business revolves around the idea of amplification, Law of Accelerating Returns, logarithmic time and all that—acceleration (…we have title). I realize I’m being overly down-home-cowboy with my words here, if only to avoid being all highfalutin’ about philosophy; but allow me this observation:

If one’s favored worldview predicates a faster, better, more transcendent society based on the likelihood that change is not only a constant, but one that has an exponential attached to it, it follows that one should build one’s own life to be faster, better, and more transcendent to hasten along that society.

A mighty fine sup’sition on the often finicky follow-throughs of a life lived for the future, if I do say so. A more folksy way to summarize it might be: “if you find yourself talking the talk, you better walk the walk.” Why has it seemed that my life is proceeding so slowly, then? Why do appointments get pushed back, why do things stay on my to-do lists so long, how do I go weeks without a major paradigm shift? I guess I need to accelerate things. To that end, and to close things out, I wish to make a few announcements. So here goes… a few important things:

• while I’m not going back to college, I’m going to go to some college; most likely for a summer program
• I semi-officially work for Lynae now, as Her Man Friday (mailing clerk, webmonkey, gopher, dishes-cleaning attaché, motivational speaker)
• I plan to start volunteering so as to get me more out of the house, and into the life of the city
• Lynae and I are looking for a house — her Dad is looking to get property in San Francisco and we’re looking to keep living here, so it seems a good fit
• there’s one other important thing, which can best be announced by looking at this picture of Lynae’s left hand:

We’re planning to get married sometime in 2010.

Which is why I’m giving it up. Not forever, please! Just for the holiday season. Yes, the season of Lent. I checked, and it doesn’t say you have to be Catholic or even Christian; you just have to give something up. Do you disagree? I hereby challenge you to give up your disagreement for Lent. This is just something people do nowadays to prove something to themselves. I’ve got something to prove: I don’t need Twitter to amuse me, to keep me informed, to fill up all the little nooks and crannies of my days. I don’t need it. I just enjoy it. Several times a day, every day.

Lent is only 40 days without. Besides, I discovered something in the course of actually reading the Wikipedia entry… Sundays don’t count! If they did, it’d be 46 days! Ha ha! Loophole!

L: It’s gonna be really weird if LiveJournal goes away. At the same time that I don’t use it a lot anymore, I do use it for my BPAL stuff. I’ll have to figure out a new system for that. But more importantly, I don’t know who I’d really be right now if I didn’t have LiveJournal. I made four, five entries a day, for years.

O: If you look at the web as an ecology, when a niche becomes vacant, something comes in to replace it.

L: No, I know that. But you felt the same way about Consumating. You were really sad when Consumating was gone.

O: I did. I did.

L: But this is kind of like… it’s kinda like if your mostest favoritest author died, or if… no it’s like if your hometown closed up shop and everybody left, and all the houses got torn down, even though you hadn’t been there in years. It’s kinda like that to me. The idea of not having LiveJournal to come back to…

O: You know what I was thinking about yesterday? I was actually thinking about dominant art forms—and the idea that there can be a dominant art form. You know, we had renaissance painters in the 1600s, and that was really new, that was the thing. The late 1800s, Victorians, poets were the rock stars. For most of the 20th century, since the 20s, movies have been the dominant art form. Absolutely. We build these huge monuments to them in every town, sometimes ten to a town. We have millions and millions of dollars of our economy tied up in this art form. The people who are involved—actors, directors—they’re huge celebrities, important role models for the rest of the culture. But I was thinking, you know, that particular dominant art form is getting a little played out at this point. The “golden age” was what, 60 years ago? What would be the next dominant art form? It would probably be somewhere on the web. I said, hmm… well, Flickr‘s certainly an art form. Twitter‘s kind of an art form, 140 characters worth…

L: I don’t think it’s an “art.” But, yeah.

O: It certainly is; it’s a form of expression. I don’t think you can paint it otherwise. It’s something humans make that’s different from one other.

L: Not everybody who Twitters is doing it for art, though. That’s what I was trying to say.

O: Whether you do it for “art” or not isn’t really important. I don’t think that Hollywood does it for aaaart. They do it for money a lotta the time. That doesn’t mean it’s not an artistic expression in itself. And I think one of the big things that’s new really is programming. It’s not even… not necessarily what is made, not the art that people do, not the actual pictures on Flickr, or the entries on LiveJournal, it’s how you can actually make that. It’s the website itself. It’s designing that kind of community. It’s designing the interaction. Are websites then going to be the dominant art form? Are programmers going to be our poets? (Is code poetry?)

L: Well, that’s the thing. When you think about LiveJournal, it’s not anything without the software. That’s why LiveJournal isn’t as good now is because they changed their junk. I don’t know if that’s the “software,” but… the… program.

O: That’s right.

L: If we didn’t have the feature where we could friend other people, or see who’s friended you, for example, how would that change the community? How would it change the community if there weren’t communities where everybody could post?

O: When Etsy changes something and you now have a new feature that you never had before, that changes how everyone interacts.

L: So… you get that we have stats on our shops now, right?

O: I get it, I don’t get why it’s important.

L: That’s a big huge deal. You know where your shoppers are coming from. You actually know what markets you should be targeting. Before that… let’s say I put advertising on Modish. Even though I can use my (outdated) Shorty thing, and then I can see how many people clicked on that link… after they click on the link, I don’t know where they went in my shop, I don’t know what they looked at. I don’t know who those people are. For anybody who not using it, they can put up advertising and have no idea how many people are coming from that ad. They can say, “I put an ad on Etsy and my hearts went up 10% that month,” but that’s all they know. And they can’t necessarily correlate that with say, bringing in 50 new visitors, and getting 25 new hearts, and say therefore “this is a good ad.”

O: You can say, everybody who clicked on this ad stayed here about 30 seconds, everybody who clicked on this ad stayed two minutes. This ad’s better.

L: Right. It’s really quite… amazing. Remember I was just talking about having the shop link on Panopoly.org. It’s just so much better. Doing Google searches to see who links to your Etsy shop is incredibly difficult. You’d have to do a search for every single item in your shop.

O: There’s this idea in web media that you wanna build the “best of brand.” Ok, well Etsy has a lot of people. But because of the nature of the internet, you can probably keep the software secret but if the idea behind it actually works you can’t keep that a secret. You could describe Etsy in a paragraph, pay some smart people, and in maybe a month you could have a website that functioned quite the same. You could copy it. So why should these people stick with Etsy, why is this the best? What makes one movie better than another movie in the same genre? The art of it.

Server’s changed. After the seamless file copy from the old to the new, the nameserver pointers repropagate, and no one’s the wiser. Like *that*.

It’s their own dumb fault. I’d been hosting homepie.org with Lunarpages for four years and had few problems. Of course this year I’m a little strapped for cash, but since they were running a discount on hosting for two years, I was planning on taking them up on it (long-term planning, y’see?). $118 is a chunk o’ change, but this internet thing is important to me. So I asked for it as a gift. In fact, I asked my host if there was some sort of “gifting page” I could send people to. By way of response, they charged my card the $118. Oops.

Long story medium, I got it back, then a couple days later had an unannounced auto-renewal at the normal $95 yearly rate, canceled my service, canceled my card, had the charge go through anyways, negotiated the lengthy cancellation process, had to accept paying them for the domain fee… somewhere along the way a friendly girl named Lynae suggested that I just pack up and put all my stuff on her server. She’s using nowhere near the “unlimited space” or “unlimited bandwidth” provided for in her hosting plan, and she’s not quitting the internet anytime soon. So yeah. We’re just that much closer now. It’s even better than sharing a bedroom, I say. Wasn’t even that hard. Like pulling a switch.

Welcome to the new, cheaper, more convenient, same old Glot.