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If you’re looking at signing up for Mozy, you might as well pay a little less for it. I’ll split the referral fee I get from the Mozy people if you use my referral code. AND you’ll get a 10% discount if you use the promotion code “JULY” when you sign up.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. First, sign up for Mozy with my referral link (I’ll split the fee I get and send you $10-20)
2. Then, when signing up, there will be a box where you can type in a promotion code. Type “JULY” and get 10% off an annual or biannual subscription to Mozy!

The above code is only good during July 2009. If you found this link and it’s not July 2009 any more, look on my blog for a current Mozy discount code.

I have generally thought of  ”Arse Elekronika” as just a humourous play on “Ars Electronica”. Kind of a “heh” thing. But the call below is very curious indeed!

(via, and)

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Call for Papers, Performances, Machines and Sponsors.

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Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called “Culture” in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the “Culture” are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete – on command
- mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person’s bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs – and control over the associated nerves – to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established.
Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species.
And that’s why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough.
“Bizarre enough for what?” — you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don’t you think, replicants?

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Please send us [arse2009 AT monochrom.at] your papers, ideas, machines!
Deadline: July 31, 2009!

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Festival Schedule:

October 1: Film festival(*), opening ceremony and Prixxx Arse
Elektronika(*) Gala
October 2: Literature, fiction, reading
October 3: Talks and discourse
October 4: DIY workshops
(*) Separate calls will be out shortly.

A Scanner Darkly 6-25-09 – cool… but sad and twisted.

Stranger Than Fiction. I liked when Harold Crick ate his first home-made cookie 43:15–43:35.

The Bucket List. Maybe I should have found it sappy, but I didn’t. I enjoyed it greatly.

If you sign up for a 1 year Backblaze online backup with my referral link, I’ll split what I get from Backblaze and send you $5 via Paypal. That’s a 10% discount.

And yes, you can try the service out for free before you commit to buying it :-)

Here is how to claim this referral money:

1. Click on the Backblaze link to the right or here.
2. Sign up for a free trial of their service.
3. If you like it, sign up within 30 days for a 1 year subscription.
4. Email me at with your name, the date and time you started your 1 year subscription, and your paypal email address.
5. When Backblaze pays me in 2 months or so, I’ll send you money!

That’s it! Pretty simple, eh?

Feel free to write comments here about Backblaze or this discount program. And please check out the rest of my site :-)

What is Backblaze? Backblaze is an automated online backup system for your computer. It is similar to Mozy. I have a popular discount program with Mozy as well if you prefer that service. I haven’t used Backblaze myself but a few people have told me they like it very much.

If you are looking at getting the automatic online backup tool Mozy, you might as well get it for a couple dollars less. Sign up with my referral code and you’ll get 10% off an annual or biannual subscription!

Here’s what to do:

1. First, sign up for Mozy with my referral link and I’ll give you $10-20 via Paypal)
2. Then, when signing up, there will be a box where you can type in a promotion code. “JULY” gets you 10% off an annual or biannual subscription to Mozy!

The above code is only good during July 2009. If you found this link too late, look on my blog for more current Mozy discount codes!

That’s Rodin’s Gates of Hell at a garden museum at Stanford. I went there last Friday before going to SubZero. You can see The Thinker up top. Yes THAT “The Thinker”. He was originally designed to sit atop this piece so that be could ponder the sorry souls that were going through the gates.

The piece is astounding. I would say “simply Astounding” but there is nothing simple about it.

And that’s Adam and Eve standing beside the gates. Interestingly, The cowering Adam is the piece in this garden of naked people with the most fully formed junk. All the others have “tastefully” partially formed naughty bits.

Do you want to know the secret to search engine optimization (SEO)?

Create useful, unique content.

That’s it.

There is no more to it.

Now stop reading.

And start clicking my ads!

Muhahah!

You are still reading!

I have teh google juice and I control your mind!

Now click! Click for all time!

Doing:

* Sunday & Monday: repairing SWARM orbs for Google IO, finishing sound design, shelling etc.

* Tuesday: Charlotte’s office hard drive failed. Spent the afternoon and evening recovering

* Wednesday: More hard drive recovery, finished sound design for Orbs. Performed at Google IO with SWARM! (you couldn’t hear the music over the DJ :-(((((((((((((((((   )

* Thursday: Attended Google IO, priced out computer for Charlotte’s office, attended Professional VFX Compositing With Adobe After Effects class at Crucible, sat in on German class at Noisebridge with Charlotte for a few minutes

* Friday: more computer help for Charlotte, working on lesson plan for a Crucible class I’m teaching, tidying hundreds of loose-ends emails

The class I’m teaching at the Crucible:

Youth Extreme Gizmos

Learn kinetic techniques to design, engineer, and construct a mechanical sculpture, contraption, or gadget with lights and moving parts. Using new and salvaged components, you will learn how motors, lights, and switches work, how to create mechanical structures, how to create different types of motion, and how to incorporate switches to operate your very own fantastical contraption! 

8-12 year olds, June 15-19 2009

Cost: $235.00 (Tuition: $180.00, Materials: $55.00), Members: $217.00

Youth Radical Robots

[KIN15-Y]

Build a simple remote-controlled robot . From the wheels up, you’ll create your robot’s shape and personality from salvaged components, mechanisms, and electrical components. You’ll also learn soldering, mechanical construction techniques, and how to remove and repurpose these items. Each student will receive a kit of motors, wheels, and a remote control toy. 

June 15-19 2009

Cost: $295.00 (Tuition: $220.00, Materials: $75.00), Members: $273.00

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.0. It’s useful when writing long items… a few paragraphs or more. Here is a list of phrases you can tell DNS to do good things:

select that/ correct that – correct the last thing you said
correct [word] through [word] – correct a string of words
(hit – on the keypad) – pulls up correction window

Show-dictation-box – pops up a text window that will paste when it’s closed. Good for Firefox.
Edit-selection – You should select something, say “Edit-Selection” and it’ll be pulled into a dictation box.

Cap … - next letter is capitalized
caps-on - Capitalize the First Letter of Every Important Word until “caps-off”
caps-off
All-caps - next word is in ALL CAPS
All-caps-on - EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALIZED UNTIL “All-caps-off”
All-caps-off
No-caps - next word is in all lower case.
No-caps-on - no caps until “no-caps-off”
Cap-that - capitalize the first letter of each word in the last phrase, or the selected text

open-quote - “
close-quote – “
open-parenthesis - (
close-parenthesis - )
open-bracket - [
close-bracket - ]
at-sign - @

scratch-that-[X]-times - multiple undo

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Moving the cursor and mouse

mouse-grid - brings up the mouse grid. Then…
mouse-click
mouse-double-click

move-up-[n]-lines
move-left-[n]-characters / words
go-to-top / bottom
go-to-beginning-of-line / end-of-line

insert-before-[word] / after

select-[words I want]
select-again - tries other choices

select-[starting word]-through-[ending word]
select-all
copy-all-to-clipboard
paste-that

backspace-[n]

scratch-that
undo-that

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Actions

To kill a voice-recognition action that has gone awry, click the little red X inside the Result box. That will also turn off the microphone.

To spell out individual letters or numbers, pause, say “spell-that”. Wait for the spelling menu.

I am seriously skeptical about this whole 140 character revolution. That said, my friend Marah is going to be a presenter at the 140 Characters Conference in New York City June 16 and 17.

Play some games.

Relax

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

I’ll split my “Refer a Friend” rebate with you. I’ve been using the Mozy online backup tool for several years and I like it very much. Just go to my Mozy Discount page and we’ll both do well and get an excellent backup product.

Laughing Squid recently had an article highlighting San Francisco Street Art & Graffiti Photographer Steve Rotman.

Here are some large excerpts and then my comment:

Continue reading ‘San Francisco Graffiti’ »

This is a followup to my first post: Nonyx Nail Gel. It’s gotten so many comments that it’s hard to sort through them.

Please make followup comments here.

And don’t forget to read the original post and other related posts including Fungal Nail Infection Treatment and Zetaclear.

The International Space Station may be a colossally expensive bridge to nowhere, funded on the backs of the people of the world…

… but it’s going to be flying overhead tonight from 8:50 to 8:55. Since they installed the latest bunch of solar panels, I hear it’s like the second brightest “star” in the sky. I’m going to check it out with Charlotte.

Cool.

I am looking for a cool, quiet place near SF to try my hand at making cured meats.

Do you have a basement with a tiny space in the corner?

Wouldn’t you like to see some curing meats hanging there? I can pay my rent for the space in home made prosciutto, lonza, mortadello, and salami!

The spot should be cool, dark, generally out of the way and not near a car. No one likes gasoline flavored meat!

I was working on inserting Google Calendar into the SWARM blog and… :-(

This feels a little like an “overshare” but hey… I’ve been documenting the treatments I’ve received for my fingernail and toenail fungal infection. Phew, I’ve tried a lot of drugs over the years for this stuff. In high school I had it on my right index finger, then it moved to other fingers, then disappeared from my fingers and on to my toes. After 20 years of treatment (yow) my right big toe is still “yucky”.

Two other blog posts about this:
NonyX Nail Gel – with a hundred great comments
Zetaclear – don’t buy Zetaclear. Here’s why

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Continue reading ‘Fungal Nail Infection Treatment’ »

Use this code to get 10% off annual and biennial MozyHome Unlimited and MozyPro.

Just type “MAY” into the referral box at signup to get the discount.

But wait, (as they say) there’s more!

Get $11 to $20 free money from me for signing up!

Oh and check it out, Mozy got their one millionth subscriber recently. Groovy. Of course, that probably includes every person who ever tried the service for even 10 minutes. Nevertheless, that’s a lot of signups!

Click here to read my blog entry and watch a video were the telemarketing carpet cleaners from 888-587-5482 threaten me.

Their invoice reads “Carpet Steamers | 888-587-5482″