Off to Vermont!

Right now I use Mozy and I’m very happy with it. I needed it a few days ago when AVG Antivirus thought it would delete some files it thought were viruses. One of them was an .mbox file of a mailing list I ran several years ago that did indeed have a virus. The trouble is, it DELETED the file instead of putting it in the virus vault or the “Recycle bin”. It would have been GONE forever, fuckers.

And if you want to get Mozy, I will split the referral fee I get from them if you follow these instructions.

That said, Crash Plan looks very interesting. The demo shows a very pretty interface. You can backup files to your friends’ computers securely (so there’s no ongoing monthly payments). The $60 Pro version allows versioning. When my subscription is coming up, I’ll seriously think about using it. I know that if I had a total crash, I’d be grumbling at the time it takes to download the 90+ GB I have on the Mozy servers. They have a $30/DVD plan where you can burn copies of your data. That’d be quicker but still a bother. If the files were on a relative’s computer, I’d have them mail it to me.

Hmm, and with a linux install, maybe I could put my Dreamhost disk space to good use.

Crash Plan, Good Online Backup?

5 Works of Art That Can Probably Kill You
By Robert Brockway

It gives me a sense of tremendous pride and joy that my art made that list!

Here is the Serpent Mother portion of the article. If you click on the image to the right, you’ll see an image of the entire article. It’s funny and oh-so endearing!

————————————————–

The Serpent Mother is an interactive sculpture, originally designed by The Lotus Girls for the Burning Man Festival which, for those of you who don’t know it, is essentially a bunch of filthy hippies getting burnt off of their asses, stripping naked, and then welding monstrous devices out of scrap metal in order to dance around them. Kind of like combining a Phish concert with the A-Team, if that helps.

The Serpent Mother is 168 feet long, 20 feet high, includes 41 separate flamethrowers, and a hydraulic head and jaw. The sculpture is fully interactive. All flamethrowers and crushing jaws are controlled by the audience that, up until this point, has mostly been made up of ’shroomed out hippies who would sooner eat a steak than harm a fellow human being. It is now, however, attempting to go on a tour which promises to look a whole lot like the biblical apocalypse.

The artist claims:
From the website: “There has never been a sculpture like the Serpent Mother. The warmth of her fire and her circular design create an experience in which over 1000 people come together–drawn in by her embrace … She prompts her audience not only to interact with the art, but also with one another. Wherever she exists, she creates new communities … The Serpent Mother challenges the traditional art perspective by creating an interactive experience which is the opposite of passive viewing. Unlike an unapproachable painting in a prestigious museum which invites only an intellectual admiration, the Serpent Mother invites viewers to physically engage in her art.”

Our explanation:
The above explanation could be considered fairly accurate. It’s just that it ends that last sentence a tad bit early. It really should read “the Serpent Mother invites viewers to physically engage in her art, by lighting them on fire and devouring them, so that they might be consumed amongst the ravaged steel of her burning guts.”

The audience control over The Serpent Mother extends not only to the flamethrowers that run along her spine, but also to the hydraulics of the head and jaws–all fully operational. They also control the blue flame jets that burn from her teeth, as well as the directed bursts of steam she shoots from her nostrils. Watching this video of The Serpent Mother in action should make you more fully aware of the size and scale of the thing.

It is truly, awe-inspiringly massive. Also, it will serve as incontrovertible proof that the devil exists, as only he could finally combine three of the greatest fears of man throughout time–fire, giant snakes, and deadly robots–into one enormous monstrosity. Word is that the artists, in an attempt to more completely expose your darkest, most secret fears, are currently upgrading The Serpent Mother to make it shoot thousands of poisonous spiders that tell everybody about your impotence and how you cried that one time while watching The Little Mermaid.

Danger level:
The real danger of The Serpent Mother comes from its audience participation. As the video makes clear, there are no safety measures around it. Anybody can and does crowd around. It can be walked in, crawled through and climbed on with nobody there to warn you when the flamethrowers kick on. Who would be stupid enough to climb on it? Well, drugged out hippies for one.

For two, its head is mobile–controlled by a joystick in the audience. This joystick also works the jaws, flaming teeth, and jets of burning steam that we mentioned earlier. Thus far it has only been controlled by peace loving flower children, but we remind you once again that it’s going on tour and if there’s anything that Bruce Willis has taught us, it’s that organized terrorist cells are waiting literally everywhere to take over anything that could be used as a weapon.

The fact that you made it a snake–Jesus, you might as well just send a fucking handwritten invitation to Cobra Commander. And, you know, good luck handling C.O.B.R.A with your crack team of barefoot vegetarians, Burning Man.

Learn about some other things that you wouldn’t expect to burn your eyebrows off until it’s too late with Mr. Brockaway’s rundown of The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Songs. Then go read Dan O’Brien spew vitriol in the general direction of Hannah Montana.

You can find a whole site full of Robert Brockway’s writing at IFightRobots.com.

A Work of Art That Can Probably Kill You [grin!]

Valentina Ristorante

Here is how to fix your squeaky brakes: just get your brakes very hot. That will clear the glazing off of them. Every now and then I have done this and my brakes stop squeaking. One way is to drive down the highway at about 50 miles an hour while holding your foot on the brakes pretty hard for 2/10s of a mile. After a riding like this for a short bit I notice that the brakes feel a little different and I am done. After they cool off, they feel the same only they don’t squeak anymore. just yesterday, I held the brakes on for two full blocks while driving through the Mission. No more squeaks.

:-)

How to Fix My Squeaky Brakes

[Joseph] Pujol became the first flatulence musician. It was a skill that eventually made him the most well-known and highest paid entertainer in all of France.

Farting out of Context

He went to China recently, up the Yangtze River and some of those “brand new” cities that are being built there. I had heard a while back that China is building a city every week (!!). He had gone into one of these cities of like a million people or so. He described how every building is built to eight stories tall because at nine stories you have to put in an elevator, so there are all of these 8 story walk-ups. He saw a person there and he actually asked, “why did they put you in this old city?” because everything was broken down. All of the concrete on the sidewalks was cracked and everything looked… old. he met this gentleman who lives on the first floor of this eight story building. it was a farmer who had been transplanted there by the state into an apartment building. He was one of the many refugees from a dam expansion. Actually, it was the farmers niece’s apartment. so he was in the first floor of this eight story building and there were all of these really large cracks in the wall. That just can’t be good, being on the first floor of an eight story building that is three years old and it’s cracking and it looks like it’s going to fall apart. “So -that- is why”, I explained, “you should not buy Sun Tech panels.” And there is also the bit about how they’re probably dumping all of their toxic solar panel waste into that same river. That sure makes the panels cost less.

China is being built like Harbor Freight builds tools. I can imagine them saying, “Chromium is too expensive to put in steel, so we won’t use it. We’ll be fine without it.”

How China is building cities like Harbor Freight builds tools

I love it’s mission in life…. seek out friends and play with them objects and bang on them with a joyous noise.

I’m in love with a Yellow Drum Machine

Mailed off several boxes of photos from Morley’s house. Productive…

Went to the Box Shop. I was greeted with 3 different people wanting help from me :-).

1. Figuring out how to keep a Mac Mini cool on the playa (put it in an ice chest in a waterproof box, replace the ice daily, (to be experimented with))
2. batteries for Mutopia (loaned from the vast pool of batteries that Peter Luka gave SWARM)
3. Welding together some petals for this firey flower. I practiced and then was able to TIG weld the thin stainless steel for the first time. :-)

Finally got FL Studio. I’m excited about making 6 part music for SWARM. One thing I’m going to do is transcribe some poliphonic african drumming music I learned in college and have each orb play an instrument :-). That music from Professor David Locke’s class is STILL buzzing around in my head more than 15 years later.

Over the last few days, I’ve cleaned house in a few ways.

I went to my neighbor Samantha’s apartment and her place looked so gosh darn airy and serene. I vowed to make some of that happen in my apartment so I’ve cleaned the house and put lots of things AWAY. Clearning the sight-lines is the best… I cleaned the tops of bookshelves so you can see more wall and glass-doors. Charlotte got into the act and cleaned such that it’s easy to open and close the doors between the kitchen and living room. I was really struck that in Samantha’s place, all the doors were workable; in our place, we’ve blocked open one set and blocked closed one set :-(. That’s got to be some feng shui no-no. In any case, it feels better to have a clean place.

I’ve been cleaning at the Box Shop. SWARM’s work space had become a mess. Under our work table was this scary jumble of parts with no order. I found all the items that don’t belong and told the mailing list “claim it or it gets discarded”. Some items were claimed and some are destined for the trash bin. I put all the scrap in a scrap bin, put all the long items in one pile, got some parts boxes and put parts away. I threw away like 5 large cardboard boxes and 30 tiny boxes. I found that we have duplicates of lots of bolt-y things. Hopefully, that process now has a chance of reversing itself. Everything fits in 2/3 the space and is much more findable. There’s a ways to go with sorting through electronics items that we might or might not use any more but things are way way better.

What’s up

Here is how to get $10 free money when signing up for Stamps.com. If you don’t follow these instructions, I won’t be able to credit you.

1. Go to http://www.stamps.com/freepostage/
2. Click on the Sign up button.
3. At the bottom, it asks “How did you hear about us?”. Make sure to select “Recommended by a friend”.
4. A line will appear that reads “Have a promo code?” Write in the following: C-7W3H-NXV
5. Email me at telling me
   1. The date and time you signed up
   2. Your Paypal email address

It will take about a month before I receive credit from Stamps.com so I’ll pay you in two or three months. Please do not expect a personal reply for at least 6 weeks. Don’t pester me unless it’s been 3 months… after all, it’s just a couple of dollars.

Stamps.com referral discount

WATCH THE TRAILER

SF-based, female-driven and fuel-powered art collective The FLAMING LOTUS GIRLS announce a benefit with the screening of “Dust And Illusions”, by director Olivier Bonin for our mega fire-art project MUTOPIA, destined for the playa of Black Rock City 2008. All proceeds go directly to the Flaming Lotus Girls.

PLEASE SAVE THE DATE!! JUNE 28th 2008 at CELLSPACE.
2050 Bryant St., San Francisco, CA 94110. MAP IT

Door Cost: $10-$20 Sliding Scale

Doors open: 8pm

Movie at 9pm. Make sure to come early, 100 seats limit.

Meet the director at 10:30pm after screening.

Film Synopsys: Once a year, on a vast Nevada lake bed surrounded by mountains, the Burning Man festival brings together tens of thousands of people who are attracted by the festival’s promise of seven days of “decommodification,” “community,” “artwork,” and “revelry.” But increasingly, many question whether Burning Man’s mainstream appeal threatens—or even upends—the festival’s utopian vision. Through a series of in-depth interviews of the festival’s founders, organizers, and participants, DUST AND ILLUSIONS traces the festival’s history, while examining whether the festival is a victim of its own success.

Thanks for all your support!!
Your Flaming Lotus Girls

Flaming Lotus Girls Fundraiser: Dust And Illusions 6-28-08

Firefox 3 is super snazzy

Beer: Now Cheaper Than Gas!
“Drink, Don’t Drive”

Drink, Don’t Drive

1. First, sign up for Mozy with my referral link (and get $10-15 free money)
2. Then, when signing up, there will be a box where you can type in a promotion code. “JUNE” gets you 10% off an annual or biannual subscription to Mozy!

Mozy June 2008 Discount

And yes, that’s the Neverwas Haul

Handfasting

And the space! That’s Charlotte and I in the lower left, talking with Michael P and his friend.

Sue and Aimee’s Wedding

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And here they are actually getting married on the Neverwas Haul

Yes, Charlotte and I dressed up for the wedding!

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Corey slays the dragon for his love, Hallie

Corey and Hallie ride off in a steam powered carriage.

The Marriage of Corey McGuire and Hallie McConlogue

Comparing TJIC’s blog ranking to Lee.org on Alexa

Trav said he had only 15 readers. I disagreed, did the math and then…. agreed.

15? You must have many more lurkers than that. I get like 1000 page views a day. How many do you get?

Oh yes, that’s right. you have no idea because you don’t have any stats tracking. ;-)

Hmm. Maybe you’re right… click here

Wow…
.000097 / .00121 = .08
my 1000 page views * .08 = your 80 page views/day
your 80 page views/day / your average 6 posts per day = 13.3 readers.

OMG, you really -do- have 15 readers.

Then again, I’m betting that his readership is less likely to install the Alexa toolbar.

Alexa Rank

• Admin Drop Down Menu (v. 2.1 ) by Ozh.
• Brian’s Latest Comments (v. 1.5.10 ) by Brian Meidell.
• DoFollow (v. 4.0 ) by Kimmo Suominen.
• Exec-PHP (v. 4.7 ) by Sören Weber.
• Flexible upload (v. 1.13 ) by Antoine Choppin.
• FLV Embed (v. 1.1 ) by Yaosan Yeo.
• Google XML Sitemaps (v. 3.1 ) by Arne Brachhold.
• Permalink Redirect (v. 0.8.4 ) by Scott Yang.
• Plugins list (v. 0.2 ) by Davide Benini.
• Recent Posts (v. 1.05 ) by Nick Momrik.
• Related Posts (v. 2.02 ) by Alexander Malov & Mike Lu.
• RSS Footer (v. 0.7.5 ) by Joost de Valk.
• Search Everything (v. 4.5 ) by Dan Cameron.
• Smart Archives (v. 1.9.2 ) by Justin Blanton.
• Spam Karma 2 (v. 2.3 rc3 ) by dr Dave.
• Subscribe To Comments (v. 2.1.2 ) by Mark Jaquith.
• WordPress.com Stats (v. 1.2.1 ) by Andy Skelton.
• WordPress Database Backup (v. 2.1.5 ) by Austin Matzko.
• WP-PageNavi (v. 2.30 ) by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
• WP lightbox JS (v. 0.8 ) by Safirul Alredha.
• WP Super Cache (v. 0.6.4 ) by Donncha O Caoimh.

My Wordpress Plugins 6-6-08

From the website…

Rent control has been a road block for Landowners, but it does not stop them from taking advantage of renters. For example:

- 2 bedroom apartments being advertised as 4 bedrooms
(calling the living room and dining room bedrooms),
charging twice the value of the apartment to maximize profits.
So, this guy didn’t actually notice he was moving into a tiny city apartment?

- realtors bribing senior tenants to move out so they
can jack up the rent to “market value.”
Hmm, good idea

- renters fixing their apartments themselves instead of calling
the Landowners afraid inspections will force them out.
So this guy would rather continue to live in a place that -should- be condemned rather than use the existing laws and force the landlord to make repairs? Ok… umm…

I like that the website has a (insane) poison pill statement

The FBI in the Bay Area with help from the police have been known in the past to spread disinformation to prevent popular movements from interfering with business as usual, (COINTELPRO era and beyond). DO NOT TRUST any rent strike statement you see that is racist, authoritarian, anti immigrant, sexist, factional, or contradicts anything you read in this statement. With the economy in the state that it’s in today a rent strike could very well scare many wealthy Landowners and realty companies (look up COINTELPRO).

Removing Landowners’ control over properties they don’t live on would be real property reform. They definitely shouldn’t control or profit from land they don’t need (use your imagination). Striking rent could be the beginning of this process. Our ability to organize our community will determine how successful striking rent will be.

I went to his recommended website and found this list of how terrible CitiApartments/Skyline is.

* Showing up at tenant’s doors late at night with a couple of big guys, for “inspections”
The law says they have to be “announced” and appear at a “reasonable time”. Dude, just tell them to come back tommorrow!

* Snooping around tenants’ apartments on false pretenses like inspections, and then looking for things they can use against tenants
What illegal activities were you hiding?

* Telling tenants “we can do this the easy way, or the hard way”
So you did something that caused the building to be condemned, got caught and the landlord asked you to leave. It was time to quit yesterday. Why didn’t you just leave?

* setting up tables in the lobby with a photo copier and demanding ID from tenants
Huh?

* putting notices up saying tenants aren’t allowed in the building
Wha?

* refusing to repair elevators in buildings full of seniors
If the elevator is in the lease, make them fix it. If not…

* telling tenants they will call the FBI, homeland security, or immigration on them
Ok, what did you do? Really?

* (in at least one case) showing up at a tenants’ door wearing fatigues and a firearm
The landlord has a license to carry in your San Francisco neighborhood? Man, you live in a shitty neighborhood. You should really move!

* pretending they didn’t receive rent and then issuing evictions for lack of payment of rent
You didn’t pay by check and you didn’t get a receipt. Ok.

* issuing evictions for roommates “in violation of lease” when roommates are legal tenants
Are they? What -exactly- does your lease say? Your friends can’t crash on your couch forever, really.

* refusing to pay interest on security deposits
Dude, it’s like 1% interest.

* telling immigrants or people of color that their “money isn’t good here”
???

* videotaping tenants as they walk out of their doors
That sounds like a good thing, since even the landlord, who is packing, got mugged with your rent money.

* letting bedbug epidimics run unabated
Umm…. get a new bed? Bedbugs are hard to get rid of, really.

* doing construction on buildings in such an irritating way that tenants are forced to leave
Yes, you’re right, they should use hammer muffs.

* demanding meetings with tenants at the church and market office
Those Bitches!

* trying to impose draconian house rules on tenants
Like…. “Turn off your faucet before you go out of town”?

* trying to require that tenants tell them when they’re leaving town
See previous item.

* issuing evictions when tenants leave town for the weekend
Evictions take weeks. And why are you getting evicted? Oh yeah, you left the faucet on for 3 months while you were out of town.

* issuing evictions for messy apartments
Dude, if it smells, you really should clean it up.

* requiring tenants to hand deliver their checks
Or their cash, as the case may be, right?

* failing to fix the heat
San Francisco law is quite clear about how much heat an apartment should get. If you want a sauna, move to Iceland. They have lots of those there.

* claiming tenants are “nuisances” and then offering them market rate rooms in other buildings
Wha?

Here’s the new chant for our picket line:

Free Housing! No Rent!

Free Rent! No Housing!

San Francisco Rent Strike

Last night at about 7:45pm Charlotte and I walked in to the voting place at the Synergy School on Valencia. When I was signing in, I told them my political party, “I’m the Libertarian” and the lady giving out paper ballots said with surprise, “You’re the first one today!”

We ended up staying until the polls closed. I watched and was the last Libertarian as well.

The Libertarian in The Mission

Here are some performance hints for the Mediawiki LocalSettings.php file I am running right now:

## Compress output if the browser supports it
# I commented this out in favor of wgUseGzip below. I -think- it offers better
# performance. LCS 5-6-08
# if( !ini_get( ‘zlib.output_compression’ ) ) @ob_start( ‘ob_gzhandler’ );

# Enable the basic file cache for static pages for non-logged-in visitors
$wgUseFileCache = true;
$wgFileCacheDirectory = “/home/.author/leedh/lee.org/[my temp folder]“;
$wgShowIPinHeader = false;

# I set wgUseGzip to be true and commented out the bit about ob_gzhandler
# above. I -think- this makes for better performance. LCS 5-6-08
$wgUseGzip = true;

$wgEnableSidebarCache = true;

#default is 1, changing to a higher number will be a little bit
# nicer to the database
$wgHitcounterUpdateFreq = 10;

$wgUseETag = true;

I also run my own PHP executable on Dreamhost and PHP_Fast_CGI. I didn’t take the time to install my own PHP. This is a bit of a hack but it works fine. I control the php.ini file… read below. The part I like the most is that I don’t have to manually upgrade PHP every so-often. Dreamhost will do it automagically. Here is an excurpt from the .htaccess file of the root of my website that tells all the PHP programs on my site to use my PHP and PHP_Fast_CGI.

# This is to run my own PHP and PHP_Fast_CGI. Since this is in the root
# of my web site, the whole website will run this way.
# note that I modified php5-wrapper.fcgi to run my own copy of PHP
AddHandler fastcgi-script fcg fcgi fpl
AddHandler php5-fastcgi .php
Action php5-fastcgi /php5-wrapper.fcgi

The contents of the php5-wrapper.fcgi file in the root of my account is:

#!/bin/sh

# Run PHP with 2 persistant processes
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=2

# Run PHP
#exec /usr/local/dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi

# Run my own PHP with increased limits
exec /home/.author/leedh/lee.org/cgi-bin/php.cgi

The php.cgi file in the cgi-bin directory is the PHP executable fetched from where it normally lives on the Dreamhost server at /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi. Once a month I run this script to make sure I have the latest PHP. This script also fetches the php.ini and modifies it so I can upload files using PHP up to 100 MB instead of the 7 MB limit.

#!/bin/sh

# This script copies over the latest php5 to my folder so I can run PHP locally.
# running locally lets me use my own php.ini (in the same directory as php.cgi)
# So then I can set the max post size and max filesize to larger than 7 megabyte
s!!
# Hurray!

CGIFILE=”$HOME/lee.org/cgi-bin/php.cgi”
INIFILE=”$HOME/lee.org/cgi-bin/php.ini”
rsync -a /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi “$CGIFILE”
# REMOVE THE FOLLOWING LINE TO CREATE THE UPDATE-ONLY SCRIPT:
cp /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini “$INIFILE”

perl -p -i -e ‘
s/.*post_max_size.*/post_max_size = 100M/;
s/.*upload_max_filesize.*/upload_max_filesize = 100M/;
‘ “$INIFILE”

Enjoy.

Mediawiki, Wordpress and PHP Performance Improvements on Lee.org

…Unlike Massachusetts, California does not have a law prohibiting marriage in the state if your home state would not recognize the marriage. Thus, allowing same-sex marriage in California will open same-sex marriage up to a lot more people than the Massachusetts change did.

…In addition, any same-sex couple from outside of California that gets married in California may find themselves unable to get a divorce. The reason is that divorces are generally governed by the law of your state of domicile. Thus, even if a Maryland couple gets married in California, they could get a divorce only in Maryland. Since Maryland would not recognize the marriage, it would not issue a divorce. Thus, the couple would truly be married for life, unless one or the other of them moved to Massachusetts, California, or another state or foreign jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriages.

One comment on her blog mentions

… Strange that in legalizing same-sex marriage, they’re indirectly promoting the sanctity of marriage (married por vida). Wonder what that will do to the arguments that same-sex marriage diminishes the sanctity of marriage. :)

Ha!

Same Sex Marriage But No Same Sex Divorce

href="http://lee.org/blog/archives/2008 --> href="http://lee.org/blog/2008
href="http://lee.org/blog/archives/2007 --> href="http://lee.org/blog/2007
href="http://lee.org/blog/archives/2006 --> href="http://lee.org/blog/2006
href="http://lee.org/blog/archives/2005 --> href="http://lee.org/blog/2005

etc…

Search and Replace Wordpress Plugin

This show was quite a lot of fun. The piece I found most fun was a piece involving real dancers. A dancer was moving around, dancing this repeating pattern and I saw a placard around her neck that read something like “1, 1 2, 1 2 3″. On the wall there was a sign that read “Put signs on the dancers if you can” There were signs like “Take a break”, “Double time”, “Slow Motion”. I had trouble getting the sign on the moving dancer until Charlotte noticed the pattern. She pointed out when the piece was going to end and I got to put my sign around the dancer’s neck. Groovy.

It was at the Climate Theater.

Night Light at the Climate Theater

Taylor Square is a new public artwork created by Paul Ramirez Jonas and installed in front of the renovated Engine 8, Ladder 4 fire station in northwest Cambridge, at the intersection of Huron Avenue, Sherman Street, and Garden Street. Taylor Square is the smallest public park in Cambridge, measuring only 57 square feet, and has locked gates. It is a communal space through the distribution of 5,000 artist-designed keys and the invitation to the public to duplicate them endlessly.

Each key, embossed with the phrases “Taylor Square” and “Copy Me”, were mailed to Cambridge households along with the artist’s words, “Here is your key. It is one of 5,000 keys that opens Taylor Square, Cambridge’s newest park. The park and the keys are a work of public art that I made for you. The park has barely enough room for a bench and a flagpole; please accept this key as its monument. Add it to your key chain along with the keys that open your home, vehicle or workplace. You now have a key to a space that has always been yours. Copy it and give it away to neighbors, friends and visitors. Your sharing will keep the park truly open.”

Further distribution of the keys and, thus, the sustained life of the park is the task of the public. In the artist’s words, “Taylor Square belongs to the public. It is closed, yet simultaneously open, re-emphasizing that the ownership of public space resides in the public itself.” The keys for Open are a tangible symbol of this relationship between public space and the public.

Paul Ramirez Jonas’s work has included museum and gallery exhibitions and public art projects throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Studio Program in Sweden, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the International Studio Program in Sweden, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, among others. Ramirez Jonas lives and works in New York. For more information, visit: www.automat.com.

Public-Private Art. Nice! Taylor Square

A pretty convincing answer comes from Maciej Ceg?owski. In short: government space-cheese. They could be doing potentially useful things, but instead “…the skeleton crew on the ISS has been fixing toilets, debugging laptops, changing batteries, and speaking to the occasional elementary school over ham radio.” I want my ten billion dollars back.

This is a really good article. Read A Rocket to Nowhere.

The Space Shuttle Makes Me Sick

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The ends of the telectroscope had been sealed off for more than a century, forgotten… almost.

Find out more about the Telectroscope here and here. I found out about the Telectroscope when looking over my blog logs. A Metafilter article talked about both it and my Alameda-Weehawken article.

The Telectroscope!

Where to Buy Dry Ice

Envy: When you can’t have one, pissing people off who do is the next best thing.
.

Inspiration: Sometimes you just have to seize the moment.
.

Stereotypes: They’re based on reality
.

Birth Control: Because if you aren’t careful, one of these could be yours.
Way way more follow…

They see me rollin: They hatin, patrollin and tryin to catch me ridin dirty
.

Fail: That’s why you always get picked last, fatty.
.

Teamwork: Share victory. Share defeat.
.

Survival: When you are in deep trouble, say nothing, and try to look like you know what you’re doing.
.

Individuality: Because the rest of the world can just kiss your ass.
.

Hitler: He’s alive, bitches!
.

Manwich: Shut the fuck up and eat.
.

Epic Failure: And that shit is permanent.
.

Cybersex: Yep, this is ‘18yohottiegirl’ you just masturbated with.
.

Damn: They got smart.
.

Unique: Just because you are unique does not mean you are useful.
.

Blasphemy: A ticket to Hell has never been funnier.
.

Overconfidence: This is going to end in disaster, and you have no one to blame but yourself.
.

True Happiness: It’s easier to find for fat people.
.

Chances: Don’t be a pussy. This guy seems legit.
.

Epic Fail: Seriously, how the fuck did you manage that?
.

Free Online Porn: Corrupts everyone. Even thoose that have no idea what they’re looking at.
.

Cowbell: You need more of it.
.

Homeboys: Fag In, Fag Out.
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Blending In: You just can’t do it.
.

Coolness: You may be cool… but you’ll never be 4 popped-collars cool.
.

Creativity: If life give you no money for hats, you make a fro-hat.
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Voyeurism: You failed…
.

Flying Sharks: That’s it, we’re fucked.
.

Flying Tanks: Fuck your flying sharks.
.

Flying Kittens: Fuck your flying tanks.
.

Flying Dogs: Fuck your flying kittens, tanks and sharks.
.

This: Will not end well.
.

Abandoned Clown Train: It’s freaky as shit.
.

Domestic Violence: Because sometimes, you have to tell her more than once.
.

Wharrgarbl:Wharrgarbl.
.

Relax: It’s just my armpit.
.

Envy: it wears a coat and hangs out in hallways.
.

Rock Bottom: You’ll Know It When You Get There.

Motivational Posters

You have a unique sense of fashionable hats and a discomforting closeness with your firearms. You may be the object of adulation for a small group of people.

Take the Which Firefly guy are you? Quiz at HeavyInk.com

Ha!

This seems to cut 1-2 seconds off loading time. Nice :-)

added <?php flush(); ?>
just after </head>

I put this in my .htaccess file (at the root of lee.org). This helps a lot when revisiting my site :-))
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-Shockwave-Flash "access plus 1 month"

YSlow Wordpress Performance Improvements

Don’t tell Charlotte. She wants a motorcycle but refuses to get one because she knows it’d be WAY too dangerous for her. And I should definitley NOT get a jet pack!
NOT
NOT!
NOT!!!

——– Original Message ————-
From: Rick Taylor
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 10:35 PM
To: Lee Sonko
Subject: Yves Rossy

http://www.jet-man.com/prod/index.html

You heard of this guy? Reminded me of your RC wings, thought you would be interested.
——– End of Original Message ——

Jetpack!

Get supplies here: http://le-sanctuaire.com/ 315 Sutter Street on the 5th Floor

Recipes: Read the “Hydrocolloid Recipe Book”

Sous Vide cooking (pronounced “sue veed”) is used by about 60% of the food on your plate at most restaurants.

Carrot Juice Caviar recipe: http://www.instructables.com/id/Carrot-Caviar/
a very interesting example as to what you can do with molecular gastronomy

http://forums.egullet.org

A blog I found on the subject
http://thegreatindoorsman.com/?cat=17

Molecular Gastronomy

Hi Lee-

I just wanted to thank you for preserving the original hamsterdance so faithfully. I click on it whenever I need to smile!

Get some old-school internet joy right here.

(The sound plays correctly in Internet Explorer but not Firefox. Hey, it’s a faithful rip of the original site)

The Hampster Dance

i made three, gave one to a friend and kept one. the one i kept was super cinnamon and was so good, it was a borderline cinnamon bread.

yeah that recipe is a total keeper…the secret are the folgers fresh crystals!

There you have it!

My Sister Made Terrific Banana Bread

Here’s a copy of his article in case the internet eats the original

Adventures in $40 eyeglasses
Matthew Haughey | Nov 29 2007

Glasses purchased online Last year, I stumbled upon a blog post about buying prescription eyeglasses online. It sounded too good to be true: you could get any frames you wanted quickly and cheaply, and the comments were filled with optometrists freaking out. Eventually, the author launched a dedicated blog for it called Glassy Eyes. When the site was recently mentioned on MetaFilter right around the time I was getting my 2-year exam, I decided to take the plunge myself and order some glasses online.

Why Buy Online?

As a lifelong near-sighted person, prescription eyeglasses and especially prescription sunglasses have long commanded a high premium due to the seemingly precise and scarce nature of creating them. Until a few years ago, I only had two options for eyewear: my optometrist (here’s an employee admitting they pay less than ten bucks per pair) or a 1-hour place like Lenscrafters (which is part of a multinational monopoly). About ten years ago, when I was fresh out of college and scraping by month to month with my first real job, I broke my only glasses and had to pay $400 for an emergency pair (that were ugly and I hated and I wore for two more years before I paid off the old ones and could afford new ones). For far too long, glasses have been expensive.

Today things are different, with Coscto and Walmart bringing prices down to the $100-150 range for frames/lenses and they serve as a good economical option to the mainstays. With the advent of online sellers, it’s now possible to get a decent set of specs for anywhere between $20-$100. The online selection is phenomenal as well.

Get Your Measurements Right

First thing you need is an up-to-date prescription. Though people usually get one every 2+ years, most optometrists will only honor them for a up to a year afterwards. If you’re getting one soon, you’re in luck, because you can go in knowing a little more than the average patient. When you’re done with the standard exam, ask the eye doctor or an assistant if they can give you your pupil distance. It’s a simple matter of looking through a binoculars-like device that measures the distance between your pupils. It should be a number in millimeters and be sure to write it down either on the prescription or on a piece of paper (if you get two numbers, that’s right/left which you can add up to be the PD). If you forget to ask or already visited an eye doctor recently, you can measure the PD yourself, by simply printing out a ruler and looking in a mirror (or taking a photo of yourself with the ruler below your eyes).

Armed with your prescription and your PD, you’re all set for ordering any glasses you want online.

Measure What You Have, Know What You Want

Goofy PhotoBooth shot of my new glasses It helps if you have two things: a bit of fashion sense and a measuring tape. I personally loved my last pair of eyeglasses (paid $500 at a fashion eyewear store two years ago), but they were a bit too short in the lens height department which became annoying as I could often “see” below my lenses during common everyday tasks. The glasses fit well otherwise and armed with my wife’s soft sewing measuring tape, I took millimeter measurements of all aspects of my old glasses: lens height, lens width, length of bridge (distance between lenses), total width of lenses plus bridge, and the length of the side arms.

Now that I had my prescription (with PD), and my frame measurements, I copied it into a text file and kept it open as I shopped online. I knew I needed lenses around 53mm wide, about 20mm apart, and the arms needed to be at least 135mm long. My old too-short lenses were only 26mm tall, so I was looking to get something with around 30mm of lens height. Some online shops let you plug all these numbers in and specify what you want to search on as the most important (I did “lens height must be at least 28mm” search), but most all online shops will display the measurements below each frame, which should help narrow down your searches.

In terms of frame design, I knew I wanted a half-rim frame (metal/plastic top and arms, clear lens below) or a full plastic frame, and most every online shop categorizes frames for sale by their construction in this way. Knowing that you want frameless glasses or nerdy plastic retro glasses definitely helps making shopping online easier because some online shops can offer 500+ different varieties of just one style of eyewear. If you’re not quite sure what you want, you might want to browse a real eyeglasses store for a bit to narrow down your desires.

Ordering Up, Playing the Waiting Game

Once you find something you like and it’s about the right size, it’s time to order. Plug in your prescription details (if you can’t make them all out, most sites have helpful tips on deciphering a prescription) and pick out your options. The one option that will turn a $20 pair of glasses into an $80 pair is the lens choice. Be careful when picking out a lens because there are plenty of add-ons you might or might not want. Generally I pay for the highest level of non-glare coatings and I usually pick the middle of the thin-lens options (my personal prescription rules out the thinnest, lightest lenses). Most of my online glasses have run about $50 or so.

Shipment and fulfillment is generally pretty good. I ordered five pairs of glasses total, from four different retailers and started receiving pairs about a week later. The longest one was maybe three weeks, which is about normal for most optometrists, so in general ordering online was faster than higher cost traditional options.

The Verdict?

Cop glasses, with finger moustache I used to wear the same glasses for 3-4 years between changes so I’m finding it incredibly liberating to pick from five different sets of glasses each morning. I have a couple fashionable pairs for going out, a couple understated ones for working and I can even take a chance with a wacky retro frame if I’m in the mood. All told, my glasses cost me from a low of $26 to a high of $84 per pair, mostly depending on the options I picked for lenses. If I had to come up with any criticisms, the only (very) minor issue I had was one pair’s lenses (with identical prescriptions on both sides) were cut slightly different, so that when the light hits them, you can see a bit more of border on one lens over the other (like I said, it’s minor). I purchased frames from four different companies mentioned on the GlassyEyes site and every pair showed up intact and the prescriptions all seemed identical.

I’ve had such good success with it that I recently ordered some higher priced specialized sports glasses online, saving about 35% over what an optometrist office would charge. Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the process of buying glasses online. I’m happy to have several backup pairs and different styles to fit my mood. About the only drawback is that there is almost too much selection online. Picking out each frame took me about an hour, after wading through 150-200 results and checking measurements on the ones that caught my eye.

I encourage anyone looking to save some money and get a bigger selection to search online. Glasses are no longer a scarce resource costing many hundreds of dollars, they can be as simple as buying a DVD or book online, and cost about the same.

Some of the comments mention good results with Goggles4u.com, Glassy Eyes, http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2007/11/09/, Zennioptical.com, and 39dollarglasses.com

Where to buy prescripton eyeglasses…. online!

Here’s the email I got from them tonight

“A delicate blend of untamed nature dialoguing with new technologies, Lulacruza is a cornerstone in the musical DNA of Latinamerica.”

- Revista 23, Argentina

We’ll be playing in NYC at the beginning of June with an amazing video artist; and our incredible friend Dygn will be opening for us. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Lulacruza with live visuals in an intimate venue (please make reservations!) And forward this information to anyone in NYC who might be interested. Thanks!

Sunday June 1st, 8 pm
@ Monkey Town
Lulacruza
+ dygn
visuals by Lady Firefly

58 N 3rd Street (between Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Reservations: 718-384-1369 or go to www.monkeytownhq.com
$8 (they also serve delicious food)

*************
NEWS:::
Watch our new live mini-video/documentary: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RMRvefhAN_4
While in NYC, we will also be mixing our new album Soloina and getting ready for our South American tour in the Summer!

We hope the Spring is bringing you all a lot of beauty, understanding and expansion.
light resounding))))

ale & luis

www.lulacruza.com

“Seldom does a sound emerge so ripe and innovative. Lulacruza’s Luis Maurette and Alejandra Ortiz weave haunting female vocals with South American instruments and electronically manipulated field recordings.”
Visavis.com

“The universe of this duo spins around four elements: wind, earth, fire and especially water, creating primitive and vibrant songs. Like a nymph from the Andes Mountains, Alejandra hypnotizes you with a voice and lyrics that pay homage to Pacha Mama, mother earth to the Incas. Luis is in charge of creating the décor; an electronically processed primitive forest.”
Proyectounder.org

Go See & Hear Amazing Music in NYC June 1, 2008: Lulacruza

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

How to Avoid Paypal Fees

My name is going to the moon. Well, it’ll go around the moon a whole lot, never to actually land, but that’s beside the point. NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) is being launched later this year and I registered to have my name written on a (hopefully radiation-proof, non-volatile) memory chip.

Sure, it’s silly. Sure, some unnamed readers of my blog with autonomous anarchic zones landlocked inside Arlington, MA, USA think that NASA shouldn’t be sending anything anywhere. But hey, my name is going to the moon!

And yours can too!

To the Moon, Alice!