You are viewing 
radzero
You are viewing radzero
 |
|
| Reality Experiments Lain 20 most recent entries |
 |
I hate you.
Never in my life did I bother to address how much hatred that I had for a company until now. Even my bank, which has repeatedly tried to financially rape me, have never known the extent that I hated them. I would have never thought that you could be lower than some faceless fat cat on Wall Street, but there always the rats in the sewer.
Why do I hate you? Because you want every digital suka to bum rush me.
Like most people under 25 I grew up with the technology. I'm older than most people on here I admit, I grew up with the Internet of Usenet, Gopher, and Telnet. I'm a 30 something, male, living in the U.S. What more could someone want? That's what email and IM is for, to ask.
If you wonder why I have an avatar as my image is not to be cute, it's a mask to hide beyond my a/s/l. I had some control of my image. Few people outside of the city ever saw my face, let alone know who and where I was. For some people that was good enough, others is not worth mentioning.
Beyond what is contained in this letter is a privilege to know me personally or to ever know me. To break my trust is to disavow your existence. On the Internet that means I will block you, you killfile you, whatever it takes.
I signed on Facebook like I have on several other sites, to maintain some control over my digital persona. Not to have my idiotic “friends” post my RL image for EVERYONE to see. Or to data mine me and use it whatever you please, however you want. Google and Yahoo! least pretend to give us an illusion of privacy; you know who we are, but you can't seem to stop blabbing about it.
You're a snitch, not to the cops but to every Tom, Dick and Harry of the digital world. Cops are fair play, but the others...if you were a man you needed to be shanked, Stucky Mack style by an urban thuggee.
Alas, you are not. You don't even give us the favor of dying except in bankruptcy.
You know, some of my friends gave up and left Facebook. They got tired of managing a profile like it was a part-time job. Every article that I read said to clean up my profile and to lock down my account, because you can't be trusted. It hard enough to find work or even to go out on a date, but not everyone needs to know my relationship status or when I graduated high school. Your founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said in an interview that "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." If that is the case then why is there such a uproar about the privacy settings? Why make it hard to control them, or even find out where most of them are? Maybe they're open with their friends, be 20, 200, or even 20,000. But that doesn't mean they're open to the entire planet. We are not Heidi Montag, we don't want to tell about our reality show on YouTube (though I watch CommunityChannel because it's funny in a disturbing way) unless we want to, and yea, you have the choice of reading my blog. Or not. But at least ask. Or not Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com 1 comment | post a comment
Over the past week I've been using Jolicloud, a fork of Canonical's Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR). I tried to wait around for Google Chrome OS, but seeing that it's not going to be out for another few months this seems better than to continue using XP.
The reason that I choose Jolicloud over UMR was that the UMR didn't have a Mozilla's Prism integrated within the unit. Yea, I know that it sounds odd, but that's the reason. I'm not too keen on the social networking function of Jolicloud, but the feature has a lot of potential and might make the Jolicloud different from Facebook or Twitter in the social networking game.
My girlfriend bought a refurbished Eee PC 900 from Microcenter a month ago. She thought it was cute, but once she got home and started to play around with it she started to scream. Ok, the thing had to go, but she would have lost $30 in restocking fees. She knew that I needed a laptop for walking around and just over two pounds this seems to be the best option, least for me. She went back to Microcenter and got an Acer, and until last week I thought that she had the better of the two machines.
Meanwhile, XP is starting to turn into tar on that 16 Gig SSD. Boottime and shutdown was getting longer and longer, to the point that it was taking a full ten mins. WTF?!
I was trolling through Mozilla's webpage did I see a blurb about Joilcloud and other than the XP version of Firefox(too many memory leaks), I loved their products. Why not give them a run?
Objectives:
Now I'm going to tell you a bit of truth: I hate writing. But I felt that I had to do so, because the instructions for Joilcloud were really not clear. Also I'm going to bring up some points to make the netbook experience better: Asus, Canonical, and Jolicloud. Given that I'm going to take the install in parts over several days, a post every other day. Also I'm not going through whole install, that's on Jolicloud's website, only those points that were pitfalls for me, annoyances and downright troubles. I'm promising that I will keep a linear mode to this tutorial/review so you won't get lost.
Where is the best place to get a copy of Jolicloud?
Once you get your invitation and log into Jolicloud's website you have four options for download: three websites and Bittorrent. My advice would be Bittorrent. I downloaded from the websides about ten times, only to have the install failing to boot from my USB card. The reason is the files was corrupted. But at 600 megabytes and slow servers it's a wonder the files were unpacked at all. If you can't get a download from you ISP because they blocked or messed with the ports(Comcast), call them up and yell at them, call the FCC to complain, then ask a someone without those restrictions to use their bandwidth. I'm using AT&T so I have no problems with Bittorrent.
Damn USB drives.
You got the install on the hard drive, and the USB creator for software. SD card and USB drive for hardware.
Next: Installing Joilcloud on a SD card and getting the damn thing to boot. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
This is the first of about 32 weeks of my final year at Wayne State University.
Does this mean that the flower detail is over? For the moment it does. You can only smell the flowers for so long before you realize that you done nothing else than to sniff and wonder why is the insect biting you.
My summer vacation went something like this: I decided the last week of the Winter semester that I was going to get another concentration, this time in Photography. I spoke with the undergrad advisor (Ms. Porter, woot!) and found out that I have only six credits left to complete this. It help that I took a number of photography courses before hand and that even took one class out of major. So all I had left was Directed Study, if I wanted to graduate on time I had to take all six credits this summer.
I took the class and since I was an Electronic Arts major I was asked if I was to do a documentary film montage. I've done enough of them to know that they're bothers if you aren't ready for work. Note: I only planned on 15 to 20 minutes of product, and had all summer to shoot it. First problem came in getting equipment. That was a nightmare, especially when the previous coordinator of the Electronic Arts area just up and left. Next was getting people in front and behind the camera; needless to say that was an effort that amounted to a whole lot of nothing. One thing you learn in film classes is that you can't do everything and there are some things that you just don't want to do. This is not so much a problem if one is making video art, you can get away with one person running behind the scenes. A coherent documentary requires more effort, i.e. more bodies to raise the product value. You would think that a movement based around urban social activism would be happy to have those who want to document it.
Hmmm...no.
What to do? I spent most of my summer out in the pastures and fields of East Lansing, photographing and filming, what I can't say because I have no access to video editing equipment. But from the stills the pictures look nice, and under the right circumstances something can be done with it I'm sure. What those circumstances are remains to be seen.
In conclusion I have a film scattered on CompactFlash cards and MiniDV tapes with no way of editing them. I'm burned out with trying to dead lift this movie and wish that I was never involved.
But I have six credits of A's and completed my second concentration. Not bad for a summer full of conceptional art. But I do dream in making art, you know.
Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
I should say something about the Pride festival going on in Ferndale, just right outside the coffeehouse that I'm at, but what can I say that you would be able to read about in tomorrow's paper? If the purpose of Pride is to create an openness and acknowledgment of the LGBT community then it has succeeded. But what happens the day after the festival is over? In Michigan there's an amendment in the state's constitution banning homosexual marriage, and California just enacted a proposition similar in language, but an overt duplicate in action. We still have a long way to go in America. It's comforting to see people walking around, mostly same sex pairing, doing the things that heterosexual couples have taken for granted. People just walking, standing and sometime sitting around, listening to crappy bands, buying useless trinkets, and eating carnival food. This could have been any street fair in S.E. Michigan. Maybe except for the two bears kissing near the Star of India restaurant. When the 4th Street fair was going on such things like kissing (and others that that I will omit) did happen, a fair number of gay people living on the block. As for the Dally in the Alley, and the various other fairs and festivals throughout Detroit and its environs there exist a number of people who think the LGBT community shouldn't exist. These are the people who place roadblocks and switchbacks, effectively blocking equality on this front. In doing so we allow intolerance to seep into our culture, creating this strange exercise in doublethink with our values and ethics. Meanwhile we silence a large segment of ourselves for a moral code as outdated as chariots. Next year I hope to not only bring pictures, but rather boring details of happening in next year's Pride. For now, I have to be content to starting outside watching others have fun while I read The NY Times' Book Review. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
A friend (called Ms. Smith) got a job offer from a hotel in the UK. Only problem is that the address was wrong, the offices in concern to immigration where in error. Really guys, the UK didn't have an “Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986”, that was all America. I would at least thought that not only someone would take out time to find email from the Hilton chain, but at least getting the name of the hotel correct. Meanwhile I heard from another friend (Mr. Jones) going to Russia that the problem with Russians getting into the States had more to do with people smuggling and sex trafficking than economic refugees. I find this hard to believe, but given that Ms. Smith is under 30, has a degree, and speaks better English than me, you would think that she would not have a problem getting in the U.S. and trying out her luck. Wrong! The process of getting into the U.S. is as byzantine as any in a western bureaucracy. Some people just skip all that and just walk up through Central America, over the wall and beyond the desert and police, forgoing bureaucracy that seems to welcome another form filled out in triplicate than to grant visas. I wondered if this is the same in other countries? I looked at two, the United Kingdom and Canada. The both have these points-based calculators that tell the prospect immigrant their chances of getting into the countries for work. Verdict: if I did a study abroad program I might have a shot in immigrating to Canada. I don't have a chance in getting in the UK. Mostly it has to do with my age. I'm 37. It seems you get no love from the UK if you are over 30. Canada is not a ruthless as the UK in this respect, at least got some points from them. English is a big deal. In the UK if you speak no English your application would be tossed outright. Canada asks if you speak the two mother tongues ( French, English), but if you s speak either one competently is not going to be that much of a problem. Education is a biggy. Everyone will give you something for a Masters degree, but you can forget having an Associate degree. A BFA is a mixed bag; Canada is still more lenient with New Media and Graphic Designers being highly sought after. You heard of that rap song “Cash rules everything around me?” Well, it true with immigration as well as with pimping or drug dealing. Strangely, the Canadian government demanded more in previous income level and as maintenance money to conserve one's lifestyle. Maybe it has to do with being in the cold weather? I don't know, but the needed was barely enough to get an apartment in some highly sought after afters. And that seems to be my feelings about these immigration schemes. I don't know who are they looking for, but it seems like they are looking for either Rockefellers or Einsteins , maybe both. But that's not going to stop organized crime, nor it is going to stop people from overstaying on their visas (which is far easier than to go through the desert). The only people it's seem to stop are people like me and Ms. Smith, those who want to work legitimately. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Today is Memorial Day, one of the oldest commemoration days for the war dead in the West that's still celebrated. It falls on the last Monday of May since it was started in 1868 to honor the Union Civil War dead. Now it's about remembering any service member who falls as a combater, in the past as well as the present. Least that's what they say. You have to wonder how much memorializing are we really going to do on this day. Most of us has had some loved one who served, survived and passed on, but are we at least going to go to their graves and at least honor then with a flag? Probably not . I just had a relative who served in Vietnam and died three weeks ago, and I'm not planning to see him. I have my own reasons. But there's a plenty other folks from World War Two to the present conflict that deserve some thought, but my lazy ass is typing this. When I was working retail, today would be the day that would kicked off the summer sale season. The mall would be filled with shoppers (as is is now) eager to find some deal, get fat on greasy foods, bask in the general laziness of working 9-5 Mon. to Fri. while less fortunate workers cater to their needs. Maybe the only though to the day would be to offer discounts to those presently serving and veterans. Meanwhile the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq still rolls on. Whatever your ideas, pro or con, about those two conflicts, like most Americans I don't care. Maybe to care about the military in America can present completely different views outside of the patriotic hard sell:
There was a wire photo that showed the interior of a building where one Marine had some idea what the average American was thinking. Maybe he's right, except I'm going to have that mall experience without leaving home. I'll shunt this until Veterans Day, and celebrate in my own, special way. America is like the dependable dog that you love, knowing that every so often its going to urinate on your living room rug. You buy a carpet cleaner and move on. 'nuff said. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Late last summer I was taking a painting class. Like why I was taking a painting course being a digital art major I can't tell you, it was a departmental requirement. For eight weeks I went to class whenever I wanted to, but usually stayed over for hours after class to paint and on the weekends would spend some time in the studio. I did well on my assignments, but because of my attendance I was going to get a C-.
A C- is worthless; you didn't flunk, but your grade as a requirement would not be accepted. I met with my instructor during his office hours and he explained to me what was going on. I thought about it for a moment, looked at him in the eyes and said:
We were silent there while he pondered his next move. “You know if I do it then it's a gift, and I want you to think of it as such.” We said a few more words and I left. A few days later he posted a C.
We gifted each other. He saved me the misery in taking another painting class and I saved him the embarrassment of having a student like me in a more advance painting course. It evened out.
If it was me as an instructor I would tell myself as a student good luck with that. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Two weeks ago (really, this happens when your too busy to even think) I was reading Dan Savage's column in my local paper. I was bothered by his response enough to blog it (maybe to break my fast of consuming art creation for graduation). The problem with his advice is he's not really addressing what's troubling him in contrast to some of his better traits. Dan blames this poor schmuck for his dating problems when it's far more convoluted.
There are those relationships in which we are not always on our best behavior, in that sometimes we are looking for someone and other times we are not. Maybe we are constantly on audition for our next mate and some point of brashness rules us out. Does that make an asshole?
Let me rephrase this. There's a really famous person that you would like to know, even be friends with. It so happens that you get the opportunity. You hang out with them a few times, and they are intense; they have a personality and you just can't help to avoid it. But in being around them they also transfer that intensity to their work. You experience it in their work, it was attracted you to them in the first place.
This could be any “hard to get along with” person, famous or not, but you know they wouldn't be who they are unless they were the assholes you thought them to be. There's a drive that transmutes the monotonous to the extraordinary that excludes all else. It seemed the more arrogant they got the better they became. Their behavior went into positive lockstep to their achievements. Some people are just intense without any positive outlet, to those around them I am deeply sorry. But others need it to do the things we want then to do, and secretly we even cheer for those people.
The line between being intense and being an asshole is very thin and extremely subjective. Like crossing the Rubicon there are those far enough over that line where even Stevie Wonder could see that they have a problem, and it has nothing to do with not carrying a tune. We see all the time, our girlfriend (or boyfriend) dating this thing from Hell itself, even going so far as to marry them. Yikes!
Power of Art by Simon Schama tells us stories about the dark side of intensity, where art is the alter on which all is sacrificed. Example if you knew what happened to Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Thérèse Walter or Dora Maar, you might think differently of Picasso. Picasso was an asshole, he was despicable, however he had a wife, two mistresses, several lovers, and just about all in the art world who knew him and loved him despite his shortcomings. Even lower forms of life is not so much a problem as we like to think. Good guys do lose, not because they are good, it's that they are weak and potential roadkill compared to the assholes that surround us.
The Japanese have a saying: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” In Japan to stand out is not to invite scrutiny, but self reflection. It applies aptly in this situation more so there, Americans when it comes to dating are far more conformist than we care to admit. To this we are the assholes for wanting something different when we haven't fully experienced it to make an informed decision Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have responsibilities to stockholders, but they also have responsibilities to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Scamman's Spring Beauty, a flower seen on the arctic and alpine tundra, hidden on the windward side (opposite from where the wind is blowing) among the broken rocks of mountains. Funny thing about this plant, it's delicate yet hardy, thriving in the most hostile ground. If you take it up from where it was the plant dies in a few minutes.
I live in a fairly inhospitable place. I try to keep out of trouble. Moved a few other places, life seems to have dropped me back off here. And yet if survival is success then I'm doing okay. We'll see a year from now, like global warming my environment is changing. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Thin crust, extra cheese, mushrooms, green peppers and hamburger. In high school I took a death and dying course (end up getting a D) and learning about the process of dying, what it means for the subject as well as the observers. But the shitty thing about that class is that it never began the discussion on how to live and what does it mean to be alive. I know that it is something a parochial school can't teach, but I didn't think they did a fair job about teaching death either. I didn't have to see what death was, I can now just walk out the door and down the street to see the walking, drugged out dead. Seeing someone alive (and happy being alive) is something else different. So to answer the question: what would I like written on your tombstone? Thin crust, extra cheese, mushrooms, green peppers and hamburger. But I know my family won't stand for that. Epitaphs, like funerals, are for the living, not the dead. Let them, like obituaries, be written by the living. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
After driving mostly all winter in the evenings and at nights on daytime running lamps, I finally got the car's headlights fixed on Tuesday. It cost me about $90 and most of my day to diagnose and fix. It could have been worse, the dimmer/multi-function switch cost $161, and that's without the labor involved to put it on. They did say there's something wrong with it and that the previous owner glued the switch back together. Whoever did it came up short, the running lamps were the only thing that worked on the vehicle except the high beams and only one of the pair worked.
I don't have the daytime running lamps, instead I have the regular low beams. The high beams still don't work and I was asked not to rock the switch between the regular and high beam. That's fine with me, least I don't have to find someone who could get me a better price than $161 for two automotive toggles and some cheap plastic. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Monday night I found out that I had to do laundry, so on Tuesday morning I headed over to my parents' house to use their washer and dryer. It took me most of the day to do it, spend hours moving clothes from washer to dryer, sorting dirty clothes(darks, whites, colors) and folding clean ones. Somewhere in all of this I had the car fixed, went to the bank, filled the tank with gas, went to the hardware store to get a part for the washer that I had to fix.
It was a busy day.
Before all of that I stopped by a field to take a HDR photograph, so in my downtime I have something to do. I walked into a baseball field at 2 o'clock A.M. with my camera and tripod and over 20 minutes took over 30 images at various exposures. I have a spare computer at my parents', used to be fast, but the processor being only a 32-bit monoblock it's showing age. But it runs CS3 without any problems and I had all day to process just one photograph. I put on the first load, then downloaded the images to the hard disk. Fired up CS3 and had it compile the raw files to a single image. From the progress bar I knew it was going to take a few hours, so I went to bed.
Later, after all that stuff above was done came time for adjustments. My idea is not to have the foreground as bright as the skyline, not because it looks unnatural, there's nothing except hibernated grass and weeds. Curves for brightness density, layer masks, color adjustments because though I have seen skies my share of photographic oxblood city sky we all know that it just not so.
The results could be seen in the banner
image titled Motor City Casino skyline.
I still have lot of work to do on HDR, but for this image and
another, it's a start. Least the effort is getting me out in the
dark. There's something about being alone in the dark, very film noir. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
I have five little things I do. Most are not everyday things, some are. But they are little things, and I hope they make the world a bit better.
Simple, yes. The complex stuff I'll leave for heroes like you. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Would it be awesome if Utada Hikaru played with Zero 7? Fuck that crappy video that she did for her song "Easy Breezy"(what, not an Asian guy for the love interest) , it would be nice to do to hear something wonderfully chill like what Sia and Sophie did for "Destiny." For me it's not like Utada is better than the two, but her vocals would be more airy, while the two are more earthy. Not saying that what she's doing for herself ain't cool, but what Binns and Hardaker bring for instrumentals is something more radical than what most vocalists could ever imagine. A one project collaboration, that's all I want to here, and that might be all that's needed. Now we just need a Water and a Fire elements in our music collection and it would be like a soundtrack from heaven. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
After my afternoon sleep I spend the night redoing one of the web gallery templates for Abode Photoshop CS3 for my senior seminar presentation. To find all the components and to reformat them for use on this project took only 45 minutes. That was the easy part. The rest of it, the picture formatting specifications building an action, and modifying the work took an hour to find it in the course syllabus.
Never give your dimensions in inches if you're not planning to print. What is 8x11 inches on a computer screen? Would it not be better to say 792x576 pixels? Least if the picture is bigger than my screen I know that it will look “normal” on a larger monitor with bigger dimensions.
I would have to see what the gallery would look like on other computers, but it shouldn't be a problem. The problem was the directions, a scatological mess that I ever seen.It was trying to cover everything, including the kitchen sink and the water that might be contained.
I still don't know the purpose of this class, only to say that it's a fancy way for Wayne State to get students to part with their money.
Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Now for some mindless crap.... Recently I've been staying up. By itself that's not a big thing, there are millions of Americans who for one reason or another stay up. I don't know why, but they do. There reasons are as endless as the number of people suffering, it might be physical or mental.
But at least I know why I'm staying up, because I'm used to doing it. Because I used to chat at this time.
It's simple. I would leave my ICQ chat client on all night, I would be in the bed, and at the time I would have a service called random chat. You would cue up who you were looking for, then hit the button “Find a random chat partner.” After a few seconds it would do that. But I being in bed would short circuit any type of chat; I would look at who would try to chat with me in the morning, then send offline messages to them. Maybe a conversation would happen, maybe not, maybe a chat friend would happen, maybe not. This way I could replace the chat partners that would fall away after the novelty wore off.
A few years ago ICQ removed that service. Why I don't know, but it took me a few months of DSL to figure it out. In the past I had dial-up, so I never bothered to find out if there was a different interface and services. The computer would only be online for a few hours per day, but now the client is on most of the week, and no one to chat with. All the other chat partners have “faded”, where did they go is unclear.
An I have a client full of dark names and this story of why, for all the good it's doing me. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
I love Pralines ’n Cream, especially from Baskin-Robbins. It my mom's favorite, and was mine one day when I skipped a class in high school to sneak to ice cream parlor and points beyond. I was trying to be normal, just another day at the ice-cream store, what to order on a waffle cone? Pralines 'n Cream just kinda spilled out of my mouth, next thing I know I'm waiting for the bus and eating my cone. It was worth all the drama I got the next day for cutting class. It was wonderful, I so much love the belts of caramel between the pralines. Now every so often that's what I order. I could order Rocky Road or Chocolate Mint, but I love the taste and will always ask for Pralines n' Cream Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
So I get these goofy things in the mail from people, it's usually questions about myself. Most of the time I send them out to others, other times I don't. It's like a chain letter that seems not to go away, but you get them, fill it out and wonder what happened to it. The original from the person who sent it might have gotten piled up under a mountain of email (it's always about making my penis longer, but note not wider) and your not doing any justice for your own response in the Send box either. Go figure. Given that I don't like to write very much, I find it easier to just post such things on my blog rather than to email it out to people and get a varied set of responses. One guy that I know told me that he didn't what to know anything like that about me and he resented the idea that I would send something as vain as this. In that I do understand. Posting Q&A in my blog is vain, but that's the entire point of posting it here. It's vain and the hidden point of having a blog is that there is some vanity in letting people know what are you thinking and how are you feeling. Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com post a comment
Getting to know you?
1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Sean Connery Originally posted on photoscope.vox.com 1 comment | post a comment |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
