This evening, things got well enough under control that officials lifted all evacuations in the area. There's still a raging fire burning up a mountain, and even when it's out, mudslides will now be a problem for people living around there, for years to come. I hope it was worth the thrill of shooting off guns at the dump, whoever you are.
So, our important stuff is back in the house, which I'm told is now as safe as the Subaru it was crammed into. All our servers are alive again, and the rest... will be dealt with in due time. :^)
We have two fundraising suggestions for the mayor, or for... whoever. After all, there's a great deal of effort and treasure being spent fighting this blaze.
- T-shirts: "I survived the great dump fire of o-twelve" etc
- A punching post
...The second one might need some explaining. Basically, we find the dumbass who started this whole mess (before he gets more ammo...) and tie him to a post. All residents of the towns he tried to burn down get one free punch, and additional punches are a dollar a pop. Fire fighters get a full minute free, those who were evacuated get an extra free punch (kids get double!) ...Well the details aren't that important, but you get the idea.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Ready to Evacuate
I've got the reader's-digest version of my life (and my wife's, of course) packed up in the car, and am prepared to grab the cat and flee should the need arise. Whether that actually happens will come down to which way the wind blows. Truly!
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=20945567&nid=148&title=eagle-mountain-fire-expands-to-more-than-4000-acres&s_cid=featured-1
In any case we're safe, the stuff we wouldn't be able to replace is packed, and life's good, just sort of on standby. :^)
update, Saturday afternoon:
No evacuation notice here as of yet. All is still well, if a little smoky-smelling outside. Links to up-to-date information:
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2928/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eagle-Mountain-City-UT/251442428207349?ref=tn_tnmn
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=20945567&nid=148&title=eagle-mountain-fire-expands-to-more-than-4000-acres&s_cid=featured-1
In any case we're safe, the stuff we wouldn't be able to replace is packed, and life's good, just sort of on standby. :^)
update, Saturday afternoon:
No evacuation notice here as of yet. All is still well, if a little smoky-smelling outside. Links to up-to-date information:
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2928/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eagle-Mountain-City-UT/251442428207349?ref=tn_tnmn
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Dear Restaurant Owners
Stop catering exclusively to rednecks and hillbillies by playing country music and/or hanging TVs on the walls in your establishments. Life is already too easy for these people; they've been wrecking things for the sane for some time now.
I go to your businesses to eat, not to be nauseated by twangy whining and have my peripheral vision harpooned by wrong-aspect-ratio sports talk.
I go to your businesses to eat, not to be nauseated by twangy whining and have my peripheral vision harpooned by wrong-aspect-ratio sports talk.
Dear Technology Columnists
Stop calling webOS "dead". The world of technology is not full of "products", it's full of "projects".
Read and digest the documentation over at http://openwebosproject.org/ or at least play with http://enyojs.com/ for ten minutes. This stuff is very much alive and useful. There aren't any Palm/HP Pre or TouchPad devices to be found in stores right now, and that's a shame, but by the end of the year we're going to see webOS running on more devices than you've ever imagined.
That's the thing about opening a platform - it becomes un-killable. A project doesn't need to burn up sales charts in order to be solid, fascinating, and entirely not-dead.
Read and digest the documentation over at http://openwebosproject.org/ or at least play with http://enyojs.com/ for ten minutes. This stuff is very much alive and useful. There aren't any Palm/HP Pre or TouchPad devices to be found in stores right now, and that's a shame, but by the end of the year we're going to see webOS running on more devices than you've ever imagined.
That's the thing about opening a platform - it becomes un-killable. A project doesn't need to burn up sales charts in order to be solid, fascinating, and entirely not-dead.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Picross
Shameless plug ahead...
I've made a Picross game for webOS devices. (TouchPad, Pre, Pixi, Veer...) It also runs happily in a modern web browser, including those on iBerry and BlackDroid and AnPhone and whatnot.
web demo:
http://penduin.net/bits/picross/
webOS app:
https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=net.penduin.picross
The idea behind the game is that the process of solving a puzzle, using numerical clues, creates a pixel-art picture. I didn't invent Picross; someone much more clever did. But, I turned the idea into an HTML5 toy, and spent many insomniac hours thinking up 8x8 pictures, then testing and re-testing them to guess at their difficulty and make sure the clues weren't ambiguous. I recruited some help too; my wife contributed a handful of puzzles, as did a coworker and an enthusiastic early adopter.
Like all my little pet projects, it's open (GPL3) and you're encouraged to peek inside and learn from or build on it. I do sell the 99-cent webOS app with all of the (384, but who's counting) puzzles and the builder tool enabled, but when I say it's open I mean it - it's not hard to enable that stuff anyway if you're broke/cheap/webOS-less. :^) For BlackBerry PlayBook users, I'll probably release the game and demo in the BlackBerry store too at some point, but for now the web version runs very nicely.
Happy Puzzling!
I've made a Picross game for webOS devices. (TouchPad, Pre, Pixi, Veer...) It also runs happily in a modern web browser, including those on iBerry and BlackDroid and AnPhone and whatnot.
web demo:
http://penduin.net/bits/picross/
webOS app:
https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=net.penduin.picross
The idea behind the game is that the process of solving a puzzle, using numerical clues, creates a pixel-art picture. I didn't invent Picross; someone much more clever did. But, I turned the idea into an HTML5 toy, and spent many insomniac hours thinking up 8x8 pictures, then testing and re-testing them to guess at their difficulty and make sure the clues weren't ambiguous. I recruited some help too; my wife contributed a handful of puzzles, as did a coworker and an enthusiastic early adopter.
Like all my little pet projects, it's open (GPL3) and you're encouraged to peek inside and learn from or build on it. I do sell the 99-cent webOS app with all of the (384, but who's counting) puzzles and the builder tool enabled, but when I say it's open I mean it - it's not hard to enable that stuff anyway if you're broke/cheap/webOS-less. :^) For BlackBerry PlayBook users, I'll probably release the game and demo in the BlackBerry store too at some point, but for now the web version runs very nicely.
Happy Puzzling!
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Evil Potato
My wife got me a truly exceptional present for Valentine's Day, one so perfect it needs no explanation:
...Well okay. According to the spectrum of confused reactions this got at work, maybe it does need some explanation. It's a provide-your-own-potato kit, but more importantly, it's GLaDOS, the insane artificial intelligence from Portal, in humiliating potato-powered form, as seen in much of Portal 2.
I could explain further that Portal and its sequel are video games, crafted with wonderful dry humor. They are played in first-person, which means my valentine can't watch them in action without getting motion sick, but she has overheard much of the game's story and my resulting laughter. And now, we've got Portal's antagonist stuck in a spud in our home, ready to insult us and scheme about murder anytime.
So romantic, it brings a tear to my eye. ...Or is that the neurotoxin?
...Well okay. According to the spectrum of confused reactions this got at work, maybe it does need some explanation. It's a provide-your-own-potato kit, but more importantly, it's GLaDOS, the insane artificial intelligence from Portal, in humiliating potato-powered form, as seen in much of Portal 2.
I could explain further that Portal and its sequel are video games, crafted with wonderful dry humor. They are played in first-person, which means my valentine can't watch them in action without getting motion sick, but she has overheard much of the game's story and my resulting laughter. And now, we've got Portal's antagonist stuck in a spud in our home, ready to insult us and scheme about murder anytime.
So romantic, it brings a tear to my eye. ...Or is that the neurotoxin?
Thursday, February 09, 2012
The People of Utah: Mr. Ice Fisherman
I overheard a (Mormon) guy talk about an ice fishing trip he took recently. This is either a quote or a very near paraphrase:
"It's fun for the first hour, but then you're like, it's really cold here and there's not much to do."
...Well, I suppose those things would be true if you forgot the beer, or if your religion forgot the beer for you. What's next, beerless inner tube rafting? Silly Mormons.
"It's fun for the first hour, but then you're like, it's really cold here and there's not much to do."
...Well, I suppose those things would be true if you forgot the beer, or if your religion forgot the beer for you. What's next, beerless inner tube rafting? Silly Mormons.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Censorship, Freedom, Soapbox
I don't want this blog to be primarily a political soapbox, so I won't harp on this topic again at least until the next specific outrage. But I have my own two cents to say about the specific power grabs Hollywood is currently pursuing, and about the shift of power to the elite in general.
In the 1990s, the DMCA was enacted in the name of fighting "piracy". It was wrong, it was overreaching, and it was immediately abused. It remains so today. The discussion should be about how much of it to dismantle, not how to give those same for-profit actors even more power over a fundamentally democratic, peer-to-peer network.
In the broader picture, here on Earth, speech and money are not the same thing. Corporations and human beings are not the same thing. The discussions should be about how to protect speech from money, and humans from corporations, not how to grant human rights to non-human entities while denying them to humans.
The great equalizer in an alleged republic like ours is that every citizen has his vote, and his voice. But this has been overturned: the strength of any citizen's voice is now directly proportional to his wealth. If your individual ability to spend political money makes a blip on a scale populated by billionaires, then you've got a voice. If not, then you have only your vote, and in fact that will be influenced by the voices you're able to hear. The wealthy voices. The voices which can coerce an otherwise deadlocked government into supporting broad, unaccountable, no-due-process censorship. These are voices we should fear, avoid, or at least hear with the heaviest of skepticism.
But we don't.
We keep looking for the next quick fix, the next promise of competence in a pool of puppets, the next lie we wish were true. And we keep ignoring the truths we don't like. We respond to marketing better than we do to fact, maybe because it's more seductive, maybe because we're just plain stupid. In poetic and political terms, we deserve the government we're getting, because we did nothing to prevent it. The government I refer to is of course not made of senators and presidents and governors, it's made of CXOs and boardrooms of corporations, accountable not to voters, not to justice, not even to popular opinion, but to profit.
Perhaps I'm just old now (I'm certainly younger than the old white men making the claims and decisions that bother me so) but I no longer can reconcile the world I live in with the loudest voices within it. They seem alien and factually null. But they've got nearly all the power, and can seemingly co-opt anybody as necessary.
Well there's my two cents. I need to give my brain a break from this stuff, it's just too draining. I'll translate that into giving my (admittedly puny) readership a break too. If I've made you depressed, my advice is to read up on something awesome and optimistic for a while, for example NASA's newly-launched Mars Science Lab mission.
In the 1990s, the DMCA was enacted in the name of fighting "piracy". It was wrong, it was overreaching, and it was immediately abused. It remains so today. The discussion should be about how much of it to dismantle, not how to give those same for-profit actors even more power over a fundamentally democratic, peer-to-peer network.
In the broader picture, here on Earth, speech and money are not the same thing. Corporations and human beings are not the same thing. The discussions should be about how to protect speech from money, and humans from corporations, not how to grant human rights to non-human entities while denying them to humans.
The great equalizer in an alleged republic like ours is that every citizen has his vote, and his voice. But this has been overturned: the strength of any citizen's voice is now directly proportional to his wealth. If your individual ability to spend political money makes a blip on a scale populated by billionaires, then you've got a voice. If not, then you have only your vote, and in fact that will be influenced by the voices you're able to hear. The wealthy voices. The voices which can coerce an otherwise deadlocked government into supporting broad, unaccountable, no-due-process censorship. These are voices we should fear, avoid, or at least hear with the heaviest of skepticism.
But we don't.
We keep looking for the next quick fix, the next promise of competence in a pool of puppets, the next lie we wish were true. And we keep ignoring the truths we don't like. We respond to marketing better than we do to fact, maybe because it's more seductive, maybe because we're just plain stupid. In poetic and political terms, we deserve the government we're getting, because we did nothing to prevent it. The government I refer to is of course not made of senators and presidents and governors, it's made of CXOs and boardrooms of corporations, accountable not to voters, not to justice, not even to popular opinion, but to profit.
Perhaps I'm just old now (I'm certainly younger than the old white men making the claims and decisions that bother me so) but I no longer can reconcile the world I live in with the loudest voices within it. They seem alien and factually null. But they've got nearly all the power, and can seemingly co-opt anybody as necessary.
Well there's my two cents. I need to give my brain a break from this stuff, it's just too draining. I'll translate that into giving my (admittedly puny) readership a break too. If I've made you depressed, my advice is to read up on something awesome and optimistic for a while, for example NASA's newly-launched Mars Science Lab mission.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Censored.
I've babbled about the rise of the wealthy and the corporate at great expense of the populous, a number of times. Well here it is again.
Today, myself and a few other folks who care about individual freedom are blacking out our websites in protest of some truly horrific stuff that our corporate overlords have in the pipeline, namely SOPA and PIPA.
(If this is new and/or confusing to you, there's another good article on slashdot.)
Watch the videos, read the commentary, and if you value anything about the internet as it exists today, voice your concern.
[edit: the following section is added years later, in November 2018.]
That last link is broken, but these battles continue. The laws and acronyms have new names but all the same terrible ideas are still buzzing around. Take a look here for some solid info on what's happening and what you can do about it:
https://www.wizcase.com/blog/ultimate-guide-internet-censorship/
I was on the fence about whether to add this link, since it has popup ads for VPN subscriptions (in addition to a section which also has affiliate links to sign up for such services) but there's real information to be found there, besmirched as it may be by commercialism. VPN's are not a bad concept, of course, and in practical terms they're almost necessary now; I just hate that capitalism is doing its best to both destroy the internet and sell it back to us.
Today, myself and a few other folks who care about individual freedom are blacking out our websites in protest of some truly horrific stuff that our corporate overlords have in the pipeline, namely SOPA and PIPA.
(If this is new and/or confusing to you, there's another good article on slashdot.)
Watch the videos, read the commentary, and if you value anything about the internet as it exists today, voice your concern.
[edit: the following section is added years later, in November 2018.]
That last link is broken, but these battles continue. The laws and acronyms have new names but all the same terrible ideas are still buzzing around. Take a look here for some solid info on what's happening and what you can do about it:
https://www.wizcase.com/blog/ultimate-guide-internet-censorship/
I was on the fence about whether to add this link, since it has popup ads for VPN subscriptions (in addition to a section which also has affiliate links to sign up for such services) but there's real information to be found there, besmirched as it may be by commercialism. VPN's are not a bad concept, of course, and in practical terms they're almost necessary now; I just hate that capitalism is doing its best to both destroy the internet and sell it back to us.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
The Curse of O-Eleven
We've had an interesting year. For values of "interesting" that border on comedy-of-errors. And for values of "comedy" that border on "tragedy". We actually started (and stopped, and started again) keeping a list of things as they went awry. I won't bother posting that, but here are a few highlights...
Things that destroyed themselves (or each other, we suspect):
- TV
- DVR
- Dish receiver (suspected of killing a crappy TV and a beloved DVR)
- Dryer
- Refrigerator
- Car (ruled a sudden suicide - melted its own engine)
Things that simply broke:
- Kim's tooth
- Kim's elbow and wrists (not "simply"; there was a spectacular fall)
- Bathroom light bulb (also not simple, burned Kim's fingers first)
- Neighborhood sprinkler control system
- UPS (details here)
- Internet access (including several entire weekends)
Things found in unusual, fun places:
- Detergent: entire bottle's worth, laundry room floor
- Orange pop: half can's worth, Kim's purse
- Wasps: old car's mirror
This year also marked a number of "firsts":
- Kim turned 30 (plans to do this many times)
- Owen published his first phone/tablet apps
- Owen made his first pony tail (Kim's hair, see her broken arm above...)
- We bought (instead of received for free) a television
- We now have the first "nice" car either of us has had
Plenty of other stuff happened this year, which we either can't think, of or refuse to speak of ever again. But from this point on, anything that goes wrong can no longer be blamed on the Curse of O-Eleven. We'll have to blame it on the upcoming end-of-the-world instead. ;^)
Happy 2012!
Things that destroyed themselves (or each other, we suspect):
- TV
- DVR
- Dish receiver (suspected of killing a crappy TV and a beloved DVR)
- Dryer
- Refrigerator
- Car (ruled a sudden suicide - melted its own engine)
Things that simply broke:
- Kim's tooth
- Kim's elbow and wrists (not "simply"; there was a spectacular fall)
- Bathroom light bulb (also not simple, burned Kim's fingers first)
- Neighborhood sprinkler control system
- UPS (details here)
- Internet access (including several entire weekends)
Things found in unusual, fun places:
- Detergent: entire bottle's worth, laundry room floor
- Orange pop: half can's worth, Kim's purse
- Wasps: old car's mirror
This year also marked a number of "firsts":
- Kim turned 30 (plans to do this many times)
- Owen published his first phone/tablet apps
- Owen made his first pony tail (Kim's hair, see her broken arm above...)
- We bought (instead of received for free) a television
- We now have the first "nice" car either of us has had
Plenty of other stuff happened this year, which we either can't think, of or refuse to speak of ever again. But from this point on, anything that goes wrong can no longer be blamed on the Curse of O-Eleven. We'll have to blame it on the upcoming end-of-the-world instead. ;^)
Happy 2012!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Uninterrupted Power Supply, Interrupted
Preface: a UPS is something a guy like me plugs his servers into. Picture a big heavy battery combined with a short power strip. If the lights flicker, stuff plugged into the UPS stays on.
Admittedly, I bought my last UPS in a rush. I don't actually remember doing so, but I must have picked it up somewhere last-resort-y since it has emblazoned upon it the logo of a certain squad of geeks who shall remain unmentioned. So it was definitely not the best ...purchase, I could have made.
But let us ponder a simple question not even of electrical engineering, but of common sense.
When the device eventually fails, should it become:
a) a heavy, non-battery-backed-up power strip
b) a brick through which no electricity passes whatsoever
I'll give you all a few minutes to think about that, a few more if you work for a blue-and-yellow price-gouging store or their branded-Volkswagen-driving subsidiary.
Did you get it? Do you think that a device, whose entire purpose in existing is to provide uninterrupted power, should be designed to fail in such a way that power will still be supplied? If so, good for you! You have the intelligence of a human being. Have a cookie!
If you got it wrong, then no, I don't wish I'd bought your damn extended warranty, so stop asking! The last thing I want at this point is another identical UPS with aspirations of one day growing up to be a brick.
Admittedly, I bought my last UPS in a rush. I don't actually remember doing so, but I must have picked it up somewhere last-resort-y since it has emblazoned upon it the logo of a certain squad of geeks who shall remain unmentioned. So it was definitely not the best ...purchase, I could have made.
But let us ponder a simple question not even of electrical engineering, but of common sense.
When the device eventually fails, should it become:
a) a heavy, non-battery-backed-up power strip
b) a brick through which no electricity passes whatsoever
I'll give you all a few minutes to think about that, a few more if you work for a blue-and-yellow price-gouging store or their branded-Volkswagen-driving subsidiary.
Did you get it? Do you think that a device, whose entire purpose in existing is to provide uninterrupted power, should be designed to fail in such a way that power will still be supplied? If so, good for you! You have the intelligence of a human being. Have a cookie!
If you got it wrong, then no, I don't wish I'd bought your damn extended warranty, so stop asking! The last thing I want at this point is another identical UPS with aspirations of one day growing up to be a brick.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Freakyforms
Since before I can remember, all through school and well beyond, my notebooks and whiteboards and every hotel memo pad I have ever encountered has gotten filled with scribbled creatures. In elementary school, Kris and I filled a notebook with aliens whose names all end in "ork". The closest thing to a "party trick" I know is to have somebody scribble some random lines, and I'll make a drawing out of them. Nearly every time, it turns out to be some sort of weird-but-cute, possibly human-esque, creature.
Nintendo has just released a $7 toy (as a download for the 3DS) which not only encourages me to create all the critters I can dream of, it brings them to life.
Non-creative types don't get it at all, and perhaps the only audience for this kind of thing is a sufficiently weird person like myself, but I don't care how many peers I have; this thing is pure magic.
All the critters that make their way out of my brain and onto the screen spring to life and are at my command. They walk, swim, fly, and drive around a world inhabited by other stuff I've drawn, collecting gems for Ork or making deliveries for the Shmoe. Collectibles, secret blocks and hidden treasure chests are everywhere, often revealing yet more stuff to draw and customize as they're found.
I've been known to animate a handful of my drawings. Some have even found their way onto the web. But now, anything and everything I can scribble can be automatically animated and made interactive. I still want to tell stories and do some old-fashioned animation, but the bang for the buck here is unreal.
Thanks, Nintendo, 'cause releasing a new Super Mario, a new Zelda, and a new Mario Kart all within a month here apparently wasn't getting you quite enough of my money. ;^)
Nintendo has just released a $7 toy (as a download for the 3DS) which not only encourages me to create all the critters I can dream of, it brings them to life.
Non-creative types don't get it at all, and perhaps the only audience for this kind of thing is a sufficiently weird person like myself, but I don't care how many peers I have; this thing is pure magic.
All the critters that make their way out of my brain and onto the screen spring to life and are at my command. They walk, swim, fly, and drive around a world inhabited by other stuff I've drawn, collecting gems for Ork or making deliveries for the Shmoe. Collectibles, secret blocks and hidden treasure chests are everywhere, often revealing yet more stuff to draw and customize as they're found.
I've been known to animate a handful of my drawings. Some have even found their way onto the web. But now, anything and everything I can scribble can be automatically animated and made interactive. I still want to tell stories and do some old-fashioned animation, but the bang for the buck here is unreal.
Thanks, Nintendo, 'cause releasing a new Super Mario, a new Zelda, and a new Mario Kart all within a month here apparently wasn't getting you quite enough of my money. ;^)
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Election Day
As usual, I advise you to get out and vote. This time I will also add, "while you still can".
Of course I don't expect the institution of voting to disappear anytime soon. There's voting in all kinds of places where there is no actual representative government. The US is simply en route to becoming one of those places. Not that voter suppression efforts aren't also underway.
My guess is that historians and intellectuals, so long as either are permitted, will remember 2010 as the moment the fatal blow was struck to US Democracy. "Money is speech", said the supreme court. "Corporations are people". With that, the influence of us 99-per-centers is on its way out, and the richest of the rich have carte blanche to buy up control and run things as they see fit.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
This is actually not a partisan matter, but depending on your views, it's bad for different reasons.
This state of affairs is clearly bad for us progressives, since it means if there's no profit in X, X won't get done. Medicare, social security, education, any and all regulation intended to keep a spark of human fairness alive... If nobody gets obscenely wealthy from it, it's out. Privatize any and all remaining programs. "Privatize" is simply another way of saying "unaccountable government for-profit".
For the "conservatives" (an odd term since they do very little conserving) the picture is no less bleak. Make no mistake, corporate-sponsored government is still government. You hate taxes, but I'm guessing you also hate being nickel and dimed by fees, getting gouged by inflated rates, and being trapped in unfair contracts with no alternatives. And if you think the "free market" will save you, remember that all pretense of fair competition would be long gone if the richest companies had their way. Think it's hard to start a business now? Let's see how it goes when those you'd be starting up against get to write all the rules. You can elect and recall people who tax and regulate you. When corporations pull this stuff, there's not a thing you can do about it.
Of course, there are some things we can do about it at this point, if enough of us realize it in time. We have to understand that from this point on, a great deal of money is going to be spent lying to us, and trying to buy us.
An obscene amount of money. But it's a drop in the bucket to the top 1%.
We still have the vote, and the rich aren't in charge simply because they're rich. Not yet. The campaign will now be to convince us to tear down the things that stand between we the people and unbridled corporate greed. Labor unions and collective bargaining. Environmental regulation. Transparency. Public services and utilities. And most critically, education. The messages will be crafted by the best marketing money can buy. Much of it won't even look like marketing. Those of us seeking to be well-informed will have a steep, uphill battle, since the process of discovering who funded what is already disastrously opaque. We will be lied to every which way. In many races for public office, whether they realize it or not, every single viable candidate will have already been co-opted by profit-driven forces.
Besides the vote, we can move our money away from the giants and into local institutions. This is a pain, but there's help available. Since money and power now have a direct exchange rate, voting with our dollars is one of the few real retaliatory tools we have. Not that there's much stopping the big multinational guys from buying up the small local ones.
The endgame here is simple, and it is the goal of all business: profit. It will be the task of all citizens to be productive and create profit. Not for ourselves, mind you. Profit for those few who already have everything. In order to maintain the status quo and prevent an armed revolt, just enough civil liberties and profit-sharing will be maintained and well-promoted, dressed up in feel-good, patriotic and probably religious language. But liberty as we knew it will have passed. The fatal wound from 2010 is already looking pretty infected. Just look at all the teabaggers elected since "money is speech", currently making great strides in breaking down the government and handing over all the control and money to corporate giants.
Prove me wrong. Go out, vote, and for Pete's sake prove me wrong. :^)
Of course I don't expect the institution of voting to disappear anytime soon. There's voting in all kinds of places where there is no actual representative government. The US is simply en route to becoming one of those places. Not that voter suppression efforts aren't also underway.
My guess is that historians and intellectuals, so long as either are permitted, will remember 2010 as the moment the fatal blow was struck to US Democracy. "Money is speech", said the supreme court. "Corporations are people". With that, the influence of us 99-per-centers is on its way out, and the richest of the rich have carte blanche to buy up control and run things as they see fit.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
This is actually not a partisan matter, but depending on your views, it's bad for different reasons.
This state of affairs is clearly bad for us progressives, since it means if there's no profit in X, X won't get done. Medicare, social security, education, any and all regulation intended to keep a spark of human fairness alive... If nobody gets obscenely wealthy from it, it's out. Privatize any and all remaining programs. "Privatize" is simply another way of saying "unaccountable government for-profit".
For the "conservatives" (an odd term since they do very little conserving) the picture is no less bleak. Make no mistake, corporate-sponsored government is still government. You hate taxes, but I'm guessing you also hate being nickel and dimed by fees, getting gouged by inflated rates, and being trapped in unfair contracts with no alternatives. And if you think the "free market" will save you, remember that all pretense of fair competition would be long gone if the richest companies had their way. Think it's hard to start a business now? Let's see how it goes when those you'd be starting up against get to write all the rules. You can elect and recall people who tax and regulate you. When corporations pull this stuff, there's not a thing you can do about it.
Of course, there are some things we can do about it at this point, if enough of us realize it in time. We have to understand that from this point on, a great deal of money is going to be spent lying to us, and trying to buy us.
An obscene amount of money. But it's a drop in the bucket to the top 1%.
We still have the vote, and the rich aren't in charge simply because they're rich. Not yet. The campaign will now be to convince us to tear down the things that stand between we the people and unbridled corporate greed. Labor unions and collective bargaining. Environmental regulation. Transparency. Public services and utilities. And most critically, education. The messages will be crafted by the best marketing money can buy. Much of it won't even look like marketing. Those of us seeking to be well-informed will have a steep, uphill battle, since the process of discovering who funded what is already disastrously opaque. We will be lied to every which way. In many races for public office, whether they realize it or not, every single viable candidate will have already been co-opted by profit-driven forces.
Besides the vote, we can move our money away from the giants and into local institutions. This is a pain, but there's help available. Since money and power now have a direct exchange rate, voting with our dollars is one of the few real retaliatory tools we have. Not that there's much stopping the big multinational guys from buying up the small local ones.
The endgame here is simple, and it is the goal of all business: profit. It will be the task of all citizens to be productive and create profit. Not for ourselves, mind you. Profit for those few who already have everything. In order to maintain the status quo and prevent an armed revolt, just enough civil liberties and profit-sharing will be maintained and well-promoted, dressed up in feel-good, patriotic and probably religious language. But liberty as we knew it will have passed. The fatal wound from 2010 is already looking pretty infected. Just look at all the teabaggers elected since "money is speech", currently making great strides in breaking down the government and handing over all the control and money to corporate giants.
Prove me wrong. Go out, vote, and for Pete's sake prove me wrong. :^)
Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween!
We carved our pumpkins...
We put on our costumes...
We had ourselves a very successful Halloween as Pirate and Parrot.
...and Cat.Monday, October 24, 2011
More Carving
As of this morning, Halloween Artist appears in the opening, "Recommended" section of the HP app catalog.
To celebrate, here are some designs courtesy of numerous anonymous Jamba Juice workers on Utah Valley University's campus:
No shortage of good jack-o-lantern designers out there. :^) Some pictures from older releases are making the rounds on twitter as well:
http://twitpic.com/74zvqw
http://twitpic.com/74e7ax
http://twitpic.com/74d900
http://twitpic.com/74d4u7
http://twitpic.com/74av37
Thanks for your interest (and downloads) everyone, and keep carving!
To celebrate, here are some designs courtesy of numerous anonymous Jamba Juice workers on Utah Valley University's campus:
No shortage of good jack-o-lantern designers out there. :^) Some pictures from older releases are making the rounds on twitter as well:http://twitpic.com/74zvqw
http://twitpic.com/74e7ax
http://twitpic.com/74d900
http://twitpic.com/74d4u7
http://twitpic.com/74av37
Thanks for your interest (and downloads) everyone, and keep carving!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Halloween Artist
I've put together an app for the HP TouchPad called "Halloween Artist". It was fun to develop, and it's even more fun to play with. It went from being an idea I was pretty sure I wouldn't have time for a week or two ago, to being available in the App Catalog as of yesterday.
Kids in particular love this thing. The idea is very simple: draw face shapes on a pumpkin, hit a "carve" button, and boom, your design gets cut into the pumpkin and has a nice flickering candle glow behind it. Undo if you mess up, save a JPEG file if you like the result.
There's a little demonstration here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_pYYDJCF8
...and a young friend of mine doing some beta testing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9SJGFrM7w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKh-4b8tdDU
This is, I guess, just the latest in my established line of cute Halloween projects. :^)
Kids in particular love this thing. The idea is very simple: draw face shapes on a pumpkin, hit a "carve" button, and boom, your design gets cut into the pumpkin and has a nice flickering candle glow behind it. Undo if you mess up, save a JPEG file if you like the result.
There's a little demonstration here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_pYYDJCF8
...and a young friend of mine doing some beta testing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9SJGFrM7w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKh-4b8tdDU
This is, I guess, just the latest in my established line of cute Halloween projects. :^)
Friday, September 30, 2011
Happy Blasphemy Day!
Yes, it's a real thing...
Let's celebrate today the idea that every once in a while, maybe we could be not so damn uptight about religion. I personally don't consider anything truly blasphemous, with the possible exception of operating a grill without a cold beer in your hand. I'm with Socrates here, the unexamined life is not worth living. So, I'd like to share some personal favorite life-examining "blasphemies" of mine with you, and what better day than today.
http://www.joelwest.com/tagged/Bible_study
Joel's a guy I used to work with. Great guy, and very dedicated. He's also extremely funny. This link is to a subset of his blog in which he explores the idea of not interpreting the bible as stories and lessons, but taking it as literal history and fact. Hilarity ensues.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/
"Jesus and Mo" is a favorite webcomic of mine. It's very smart, and very direct in holding up its societal mirror. It's also quite humorous, provided the reader has a sense of humor.
http://www.venganza.org/
Ah, the church of the flying spaghetti monster. Not much needs to be said about this; it's well-known enough that I can say things like "let's just pray to the flying spaghetti monster that it works this time" and people don't look at me with any more confusion or concern than usual.
I don't have much cleverness to contribute to this fine blasphemy day, but I will say that if forced to choose a god, I prefer organic, free-range deities to the ones kept in cramped, steepled cages. I just don't like the idea of cutting off a god's beak and pumping it full of artificial growth sacraments. Seems blasphemous.
Let's celebrate today the idea that every once in a while, maybe we could be not so damn uptight about religion. I personally don't consider anything truly blasphemous, with the possible exception of operating a grill without a cold beer in your hand. I'm with Socrates here, the unexamined life is not worth living. So, I'd like to share some personal favorite life-examining "blasphemies" of mine with you, and what better day than today.
http://www.joelwest.com/tagged/Bible_study
Joel's a guy I used to work with. Great guy, and very dedicated. He's also extremely funny. This link is to a subset of his blog in which he explores the idea of not interpreting the bible as stories and lessons, but taking it as literal history and fact. Hilarity ensues.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/
"Jesus and Mo" is a favorite webcomic of mine. It's very smart, and very direct in holding up its societal mirror. It's also quite humorous, provided the reader has a sense of humor.
http://www.venganza.org/
Ah, the church of the flying spaghetti monster. Not much needs to be said about this; it's well-known enough that I can say things like "let's just pray to the flying spaghetti monster that it works this time" and people don't look at me with any more confusion or concern than usual.
I don't have much cleverness to contribute to this fine blasphemy day, but I will say that if forced to choose a god, I prefer organic, free-range deities to the ones kept in cramped, steepled cages. I just don't like the idea of cutting off a god's beak and pumping it full of artificial growth sacraments. Seems blasphemous.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Penduin's Ping Pong Paddle
The office got a ping-pong-slash-air-hockey table, and we all got paddles. They may be miniaturized sports, but I'm still massively bad at them. We all scribbled on our paddles to identify them though, so I do have something to bring to the table. :^)
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
The Yukon Blind Dream
I had many excellent teachers at UWRF, often taking the listed professor into greater account than the course description when signing up for classes. It's with no lack of respect for any of them that I single out Dr. Imtiaz Moosa as one of my absolute favorites. I may be a programmer by degree and vocation, but it's his philosophy classes I remember most vividly.
When I was in his classrooms, Dr. Moosa's eyesight was pretty lousy by most standards, but he could see. More importantly, he opened up students' metaphorical eyes by the roomful. This guy will make you think, hard, to the point of discomfort. And to me, that's a necessary and welcome element of growth.
Today, my dear old professor can no longer see, but he's as strong and bombastic (to use one of his favorite words) as ever. I recently got back in touch with him over email, and learned of a pretty extraordinary adventure he took this summer:
http://blog.mailasail.com/theyukonblind
There's a lot of reading there, but it's well worth the time. He and a friend chronicled their Yukon journey, along with some hints of the fascinating discussions they had. I feel like I knew Dr. Moosa pretty well, for a student anyway, but reading his co-adventurer's account showed me some new sides and surprises along with the classic, familiar moments:
Dr. Moosa and I talked a fair amount outside of class, with topics covering a full spectrum, but as I read the second-hand story of his vision permanently failing, I recalled a conversation we had that at the time seemed pretty insignificant. He and I both had pretty good-sized bald spots (though his was much more age-appropriate) and he was telling me how it was a source of embarrassment. My view was, and remains, "Well, it's only hair; I could be losing something useful". I remember him being impressed with my attitude, and maybe even a bit comforted. And now of course, he has lost something useful, and it feels like a pretty stupid thing to have said.
But it wasn't his hair or his eyesight that made him my favorite professor. If today we were to get into a good old-fashioned debate, and he were to bring my old words back to me, then I think I could argue my way around them. ...And that's as much his fault as mine. :^)
When I was in his classrooms, Dr. Moosa's eyesight was pretty lousy by most standards, but he could see. More importantly, he opened up students' metaphorical eyes by the roomful. This guy will make you think, hard, to the point of discomfort. And to me, that's a necessary and welcome element of growth.
Today, my dear old professor can no longer see, but he's as strong and bombastic (to use one of his favorite words) as ever. I recently got back in touch with him over email, and learned of a pretty extraordinary adventure he took this summer:
http://blog.mailasail.com/theyukonblind
There's a lot of reading there, but it's well worth the time. He and a friend chronicled their Yukon journey, along with some hints of the fascinating discussions they had. I feel like I knew Dr. Moosa pretty well, for a student anyway, but reading his co-adventurer's account showed me some new sides and surprises along with the classic, familiar moments:
He insists on walking without being connected to me, and is quite happy walking into the odd bush / tree for that freedom. I describe the terrain and scenery, and he just responds with: "I just love this".That's him, all right. It's even a good metaphor for those of us who loved his classes - we may not have had all the faculties to fully appreciate what he presented to us, but there's nothing we'd have traded for the journey.
Dr. Moosa and I talked a fair amount outside of class, with topics covering a full spectrum, but as I read the second-hand story of his vision permanently failing, I recalled a conversation we had that at the time seemed pretty insignificant. He and I both had pretty good-sized bald spots (though his was much more age-appropriate) and he was telling me how it was a source of embarrassment. My view was, and remains, "Well, it's only hair; I could be losing something useful". I remember him being impressed with my attitude, and maybe even a bit comforted. And now of course, he has lost something useful, and it feels like a pretty stupid thing to have said.
But it wasn't his hair or his eyesight that made him my favorite professor. If today we were to get into a good old-fashioned debate, and he were to bring my old words back to me, then I think I could argue my way around them. ...And that's as much his fault as mine. :^)
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