Update on the Appletalk over IP thread from yesterday: I set up my 8500 as a server, opened a port on the router and was able to connect up-from inside my house-over IP. I still can’t connect up from work however. I also found that you can’t leave your digital camera out in the sun- all the photos I took Saturday were corrupted.
Update on 3dsMax: I built my first model yesterday, and I was able to do a bunch of stuff that previously was impossible to figure out. And I actually had fun with it. Stay tuned… (today I’m working on promotional stuff for the rollout party of Emperor tonight. Also, inside sources tell us that as of yesterday, the demo has been downloaded over 20 thousand times since being posted last week.)
I found this article via camworld about an MIT professor who was ambushed on Donahue when invited to come and speak about violence in video games. It’s too bad he wasn’t able to explain his ideas in detail, but that’s modern media culture, baby.
I got an email from my friend Todd last week, who commented on my
half-formed August 30 post about personal freedoms:
“Adjusting Amendment 1 or abolishing it as we know it today is taking
a basic freedom guaranteed for so many generations away from me and
future generations….I refuse to be dictated to about what to think
is right or just cause for persecution of those who oppose the
mainstream.”
Right on. I couldn’t say it better myself.
Jen also had a comment, about the Cusack/Max article on Salon yesterday:
“People don’t like to see things in anything else but black and white because at heart it means that they might be forced to acknowledge their own failings and possible evils.”
Which is a very, very good point. I can understand Spielberg bailing on the project for obvious reasons- his commitment to the Shoah Foundation is not considered lightly, and the Holocaust is a very sensitive subject- but the folks who backed away should stop and consider what they failed to offer the public as a means of discourse and self-reflection.
I spent a good portion of last night alternately getting a backup Mac server up and running, and listing the CD’s I own so that I can A. figure out how many I have, and B. start trading stuff with my friend Rob to augment our individual collections. I now need to figure out how to share the Mac out through my DSL line– I’m going to give this a whirl again tonight.
Work is going steadily on the freelance project, and we have business cards, letterhead, advertising, a sellsheet, and a ton of other materials. I’m thinking that the official rollout will be sometime in the next few months, and for that I’m happy. There’s other stuff in the works that I need to jump on tonight, as well as some possible stuff down the road.
The trellis is up and secured in place, so now I get to the part I’ve been dreading- drilling a plate into the sill of the house under the back door for the stair platform. I’m trying to decide whether I should do that or just build a support and anchor it to the ground. Either way, I’m going to have to cut off the vinyl siding under the door, and I will be able to see what color the brick is behind my house for the first time in 5 years.
I’ll Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It Dept.: John Cusack and two other producers have spent the last year or two scraping funding together for a movie about the young Hitler in Munich, exploring who he was as a man before the Third Reich. One quote from the article really was interesting: “Walter Benjamin said when you fuse aesthetics with politics, you get fascism.”
The three producers interviewed all share a strong interest in the subject and have researched the subject extensively. Also interesting was the reaction Cusack got from Maureen Dowd of the Times— she had never seen the movie but came out against it. Personally, I’m interested in seeing it.
I found a link to the work of Adrian Tomine, who writes some very good comics. I’m going to look into finding this one up at Atomic Books sometime.
Remember Pearl Harbor. Don’t see the movie, which I’m told sucked; read this book by Gordon W. Prange. From what I understand, nobody that produced the movie did; maybe you’ll learn something.
Some little jerk walked past the Scout this morning and sprayed a red line down the side with spray-paint. I hate this city so much. I can’t wait to move out of it.
An interesting quote from Richard Parsons, the (now) CEO of AOL Time Warner:
Q. Do you think the Web can remain free?
A. No. No, I don’t think so. Not if it’s to achieve or realize its ultimate destiny as the global interactive marketplace that it can be.
Go to hell, Richard. And take TIME magazine and all your spamming AOL subscribers with you. Do you understand anything about the Web? The best part about it is that it’s free, you ignorant fool. The best thing about it is that I don’t need to pay narrow-minded greedheads like you to publish whatever I think or feel; I own this site and you don’t. Mouthbreather. Keep the ‘interactive marketplace’ on your pretty AOL sites and leave my web alone.
2:46 PM – </vent mode off> OK, I’m feeling better. Life is good. Please process the above vitriol through the “had a crappy morning” filter. Running was good, and I had a good time with Jeff and Dwight.
This morning I read that the Mr. Showbiz site is defunct- Disney pulled the plug on it and redirected it to the ABC site, which now pops up two ads. F–king mouse. Not that I looked at it a lot anyway, but every once in awhile I wound up there, linked off another site. On a related not, some of the first links in Google for the search term anti-disney come up with some disturbing sites. The first guy-and I’m not linking to his site-seems to have a problem with the “Gay Issue” (his capitalization) but he doesn’t want to cover it for fear of losing sight of Disney’s “other sins”. Some of the others are just silly.
Mapquest has this service where they show you satellite photos of the address you plug in when you come to the map view. So here’s my house, somewhere in the center of that last shot.
I’m just looking back and realizing this is the first time I’ve been able to keep up with a daily journal of sorts; with the exception of June, I was able to make an average of about 5 entries a week since the end of march. I’m thinking what I might do is take a snapshot of my Palm Pilot, where I kept track of what I was doing then, and post it on the June page, so I at least have a reference as to what I was doing.
Brushing up on some of the home networking sites now that I’m going to attempt this thing; I also found a few sites that support DNS services for dynamic IP’s, i.e. DSL or cable services. Going to buy the box for the wiring tonight and put it in while the paint dries on the stair risers. I can’t wait to get a good night in on the basement- I’m excited to make some progress.
12:31am – Anybody else notice that our Commander-In-Chief, the guy we barely voted in office (and who didn’t have a clue where Afghanistan was on a map until last November), while giving a teleconferenced speech to assembled international heads of state in a UN council meeting yesterday, pronounced the word nuclear “nu-cu-lur”?
So many people are crying about how phony they feel to see people waving flags and putting up signs that say “God Bless America”, etc. Know what? I think it’s great. I don’t think this completely fractured, divided, schizophrenic culture we call America has felt like a greater part of something in a long time- since probably around the early 60’s. I like to see that people have pride in something. Not their Mustang 5.0, not their nails, but something greater than the sum of their parts. What I do have a problem with is the new idea that we can’t criticize or question our government now that we are ‘at war’. I think, given this new feeling of patriotism sweeping the country, that now is the ideal time to question our actions in the far east, starting with how we got involved there back in the 70’s, and actually learn something about them. And I think we should start by questioning the guys who put the wheels in motion back then, namely Messrs. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush Sr.
I’m driving up to Conneticut tonight to stay with the Switzers, Mom’s friends from way back; the four of us are going to the wedding of one of Renie’s friends from high school back in our home town. That should be interesting. It has, however, been the first time I’ve seen my folks since, I think, June, so I’m really looking forward to that.
I’m tired.
Just heard about the Anthrax scare in New York at the Sam’s Club. I wrote to Jen: Kind of makes you think, though- Osama has no way of getting his ‘message’ out without the Western news media, namely, CNN. What good will it do if [he] starts trying to kill off the news media? On the other hand, he has everybody’s attention again. And, is Tommy Thomson, ostensibly Health & Human Services Secretary, a big lying sack of —-? I think so. I really wish the old 1970’s bulldog incarnation of Mike Wallace had just crucified this dude on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago.
I saw, on my way through Fell’s Point this morning, the Antique Man carrying a fully-suited mannequin in a silver fireproof suit across the street.
Ashcroft is busy attempting to take our civil liberties away. Hopefully, people will wake the fuck up and realize we are trading the things that make this country great to try and track down 15 guys. I’m all for doing what it takes to get the guys who are responsible for the WTC bombing, and possibly other attacks to come, but I don’t want the government reading my email, arresting me for encrypting my private material, tapping my phones, or randomly searching my car. here is an interesting download from the ACLU about privacy- I’m downloading it and putting it in the ol’ wallet.
I picked up the last of the supplies I can buy with this paycheck- a gallon of satin white, some rollers, caulk, wood for the inside of the closet, and wood to replace the one piece that pissed me off so bad this weekend. Tonight we install. And clean.
Hmm. Lots of different things happenning last night and today. Bush gave his address last night to Congress; his words were tough but I still feel that the guy is a wooden puppethead. I wish there was something in his voice that betrayed some form of emotion about everything- he just sounds like he’s trying to read off the TelePrompTer and not screw up the big words. Congress, as expected, applauded after each inflection; I think they were just glad he didn’t mispronounce ‘outraged’ and ‘unilateral’, and clapped in relief. Tom Brokaw, currently walking around with his head up the ass of anybody who fought in dubya-dubya-two, had Stephen Ambrose on to provide commentary, and asked him if he didn’t think that Bush’s address recalled Roosevelt directly after Pearl Harbor. At first, Ambrose didn’t answer, and I secretly hoped Ambrose was thinking, “No, you ignorant twit, Roosevelt was actually a living breathing human being who had an original idea and was elected on merit; this cardboard McPresident gets spoon-fed his opinions like creamed corn every morning.” But it seemed that Ambrose couldn’t hear Brokaw due to faulty sound feed, and when Brokaw repeated the question, Ambrose agreed with him. Oh, well.
Wall Street is selling off stock like they just found out it causes cancer; what the hell are they freaking out about? Yeah, we’re going to war. Yeah, things are different. Yeah, the airlines are in trouble. But anybody who thinks that Boeing isn’t going to be cranking up the production on some kind of new airframe to deliver nasty-looking bombs is smoking crack. Anybody who thinks that the government isn’t going to help out the airlines is shooting heroin. Anybody who thinks that the tech sector isn’t going to bounce back to produce all manner of sneaky devices to kill, maim, snoop on or steal from enemies of the US, whoever they might be, has their head in a pile of blow like Tony Montana in Scarface