It was a little windy on the first day of Burning Man…. errr…. a 4 hour white-out. So I climbed to the top of the Man structure, hoping that it would be above the dust. A few years earlier, I had climbed onto a 12′ tall flower-thing and it was astounding; it was like I was on top of a cloud bank, just a dozen feet above the earth! But not this time…
It was Sunday night of the Temple burn… Charlie had a car. Rigger’s art, Bizzaro Saguaro was in Illumination Village. Put them together and you’ve got an art-car ready to drive out to the Temple!
On the way out to the temple, we were in another white out. The whole car (all… 20 or so of us) roared with laughter when we saw that Charlie had gotten lost and we were headed straight for Center Camp! Not one of us could have done any better, crawling along at 3 miles an hour in a dust storm. We arrived on the scene just as the temple was being lit. We hung around for about 20 minutes… this year’s temple was built with a very airy frame… such that it just wouldn’t fall over! It was cold and WINDY so we took off… another 20 minute leisurely drive in the wind back to Ill Ville.
My favorite “Safety 3rd” moment is pulling a beer out of the trunk…. Yes, that’s the 2 propane cylinder hooked up to a quick-release manifold and ball-valve powering the cactus on the hood of the car.
This is the kind of perfect insanity that makes Burning Man worthwhile. A 20′ tall, 50′ long, mobile, flaming trojan duckie. I walked around it and was amazed at the the care taken in it’s construction. It’s a beautiful mammoth vehicle.
Apparently when the editor on BoingBoing doesn’t like your post, instead of doing something reasonable like discuss or refute it, it gets “disemvoweled“.
This is the most insulting thing I’ve seen in ages. It’s akin to the moderator of a discussion putting a dunce cap on your head and then saying with a straight face and a titter, “continue, we’re all listening.”
This happened to Travis. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, an editor at BoingBoing stripped his comment (#1) humorously critical of Hillary Clinton of vowels while the very next comment with almost the same wording critical of George W Bush was not stripped.
Cn w gt pctr f Hllry Clntn’s cmpncts smrk whn sh ws ccsd f th xct sm fdrl crm n th TrvlGt scndl ?
(de-disemvowelled: Can we get a picture of Hillary Clinton’s compunctious smirk when she was accused of the exact same federal crime in the TravelGate scandal?)
Seen the same smirk on Dubya as well. Must be endemic to this administration…
In browsing the site, I see that this apparently happens a lot. Mostly because they “just didn’t like the tone of their voice” 1, 2, 3…
Their moderation policy says pretty much, “Don’t like our censorship policy? Get your own website.” The exact quote is
Q. I can’t believe that Boing Boing, of all places, would be using censorship. What happened to freedom of speech?
A. Boing Boing is steadfast in its support of your freedom of speech. We believe that you, O Reader, should be able to have (or refuse to have) anything you want on your own website, as long as it doesn’t deprive others of their rights. Yay, freedom of speech!
By that same token, freedom of speech also means that the people who write and edit Boing Boing have the right to have (or refuse to have) anything they want on their own website. If one of the things they don’t want is a comment that you have posted, they aren’t depriving you of your freedom of speech. You’re free to put that comment up on your own webpage.
Fuck you, BoingBoing. If you claim intelligence but can’t take the heat have a reasonable discussion, you don’t deserve to be spoken to.
I right now vow to not click on or look at any ads on BoingBoing for 1 year.
Installed Chrome this morning. I like it a lot. Fast. Exceptionally well thought out. Very nice new unobtrusive features. I envy the programmers that so deserve to be proud of it.
They’ve got some issues to hammer out with it. Little things on some of the pages I go to. But it’s beautiful. One little example: When I go to post.php in Wordpress, Chrome starts scrolled to the bottom of the page. Sometimes all of the Chrome browsers hang for a few seconds at a time.
What should be done with the soon to be empty radio spectrum, freed from analog television transmissions?
Dearest members of the FCC,
I strongly encourage you to allot a large portion of the soon to be freed up analog television white space to unlicensed data services.
You may have noticed how incredibly beneficial and popular the unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz spectrum has been for our society. Please let that kind of progress continue. There are many more radio services, some of which haven’t even been conceived of yet, just waiting to become feasible.
I am sure that you have received many more letters telling you about the myriad possible uses for this spectrum. Please read them.
I am sure that several companies are whispering in your collective ear, giving you all manner of reasons why the spectrum shouldn’t be unlicensed. Planting fear, uncertainty and doubt, “FUD” is a time honored tactic to subvert the will of public policy makers. Please do not fall prey to this tactic.
I received an unsolicited telemarketing call at 9-3-08 11:42 am from a woman identifying herself as being from “The Premiere Health Organization” or “Premier Health Care” or “Health Enrollment Center”.
The call started with a recording that asked me to press “1″ for an operator. They are ostensibly selling PPO health insurance for $199/month + $125 enrollment fee. They claim to be using Ace Insurance (http://www.aceusa.com) as an underwriter and the Beech Street network of Doctors (http://www.beechstreet.com/)
I spoke with a woman who identified herself as “Jordan” and gave a callback number of 800-219-6643 x407. When I called the number, an answering system identified itself as “Heath Enrollment Center”.
To keep the call going for 11 minutes, 56 seconds, I gave her (almost) correct identifying information for myself.
Tomorrow morning I’m on my way to the desert for a week of craziness. Be back next Tuesday.
I’ve been working a lot on SWARM.
In the last few weeks I:
complied the audio tracks for the sound system (a mix of editing, creating, and working with a novel sound playback system)
fixed up the 6 sound modules… swapped out a bad amp, adjusted volumes on all of them, installed new firmware drivers for the mp3 players
made 2 new chargey plugs (some were lost)
tested batteries
installed IMUs (inertial measurement units) in 6 orbs: cut stainless steel pieces to be mounts, tapped holes (a PITA, I couldn’t finish, grr), welded in place, sprayed IMUs with clear paint, mounted, made ribbon cables, cut holes for cables
made gussets to reinforce the arms of the canopy on the mothership
helped manage arrangements with Virgin Festival (though they bagged at the last minute, jerks) (Niladri ran point and did a lot!)
managed getting insurance for Virgin Festival (that we didn’t need because they bagged at the last minute, jerks)
had lots of meetings and discussions to figure out exactly how to get our art to the Virgin Festival in Canada. (Dawn did a LOT of work. She’s become an international shipping expert overnight)
Got 1/2 way though (fimed, partially edited) creating a video piece for Make TV
Kept up with our finances. We continue to be in the black.
Went to a lawyer with Dawn to talk about licensing & patenting SWARM
A million little tasks like keeping our shop space livable with a cadre of messy mechatrons running around in it, finding new boxes for Virgin took 1hr+, paint for the IMUs 1hr+, ordering TIG supplies 1hr, finding a good deal on rechargable batteries and chargers for the remotes 1hr, …
As of Q1 2008, YouTube is not profitable, with its revenues being noted as “immaterial” by Google in a regulatory filing.[4] Its bandwidth costs are estimated at approximately $1 million a day.[4]
So umm, where’s the money coming from? Google might have billions but $1 million/day could suck that dry pretty quick.
Though I suppose starting a new kind of television is going to be expensive…
If you will be traveling and need offline access to your Mediawiki wiki, what should you do?
If you need to grab pages from a wiki that you aren’t the administrator of, you can try running a web crawler on it or try this Google Gears hack.
But if you are the administrator of the wiki (or you know the admin) you can make a Mediawiki2HTML dump. There is a Mediawiki extension that does it for you. Here’s how to run it:
cd /whatever/mediawiki/extensions
svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/DumpHTML
run a shell command something like this as a cron job (create the appropriate folders first)
#!/bin/sh
# Generate a new html dump of wiki.orbswarm.com LCS 8-17-08
echo “deleting contents of /home/swarm/wiki.orbswarm.com-html”
rm -rf /home/swarm/wiki.orbswarm.com-html
# DumpHTML.php expects to be run from the maintenance directory. The skin won’t get HTMLified if you run it from another directory
cd /home/swarm/wiki.orbswarm.com/extensions/DumpHTML
/home/swarm/php5/bin/php dumpHTML.php -d /home/swarm/wiki.orbswarm.com-html -k monobook –image-snapshot –force-copy
“You could buy every single person who will regularly use this boondoggle their own personal Prius, and you’d not only use less energy, you’d spend a hell of a lot less money doing it.” (via) (and)
Hallie’s Baby Shower
Celebrant: Hallie McConlogue
Baby: Pumpkin unit 1
Event Date: 2008-08-16Trailer Trash /punk/hippy themed baby shower at the encounter Studio. Come as you are or in theme.
Time:2pm - 6pm
Where:The Encounter Studio
555 De Haro St Suite 120
San Francisco, CA 94107
Look for the 2 stone griffins around the ivy hidden outter door in the back of the parking lot.
Call hallie for directions if you need em:
408 956-xxxx
Item
Description
Wants
Has
Needs
An evening of babysitting.
We can take as many of these as people want to give … warning we will hold you to it and Train folks as necessary. So add a couple of hours for learning if you have no baby experience. YOU ROCK! by the way… :D
Mostly we need unskilled labor that can take wierd direction and not freak out about Hallie’s weird labor consuming ideas about how to sound proof stuff and decorate.
This would be something I can sleep in comfortably while I’m feeding pumpkin. That means I want to build it custom for my neck problem. And add a motor to keep it going. It will be half rocking chair half hammock… with a motor and a perfect place for pumpkin at the boob.
There there I was, waxing up the wife, like a surfboard, with gallons of vitamin E oil, making her belly shine like a pink bowling ball. Every once in a while, our baby would kick. It felt like he was rubbing back (more likely, he was fighting for space because I was caving in his roof, but I digress.) The more I rubbed, the more I started to recognize shapes. We know where the head is, it’s the BIG round thingy… but I swear, this long thing, just below and to the left of Hallie’s belly button, felt like an arm. And over where Hallie’s belly was churning like a pot of pasta, over near Hallie’s right kidney, that must be his feet! And with vision granted by the tears in my eyes, I caught my first glimpse of my baby. There he was, all curled up in the fetal position (imagine that!) as clear as day!
And this salt crusted face that was already beaming is now lit with a florescent glow I write you this invite.
Hey all, it’s me, Mr. Last minute. Sorry for the lag, but I’ve always been a busy bee, and now I’m a busy bee for three.
We’re having a baby! As you all know. So we’re having a baby shower, and it’s next weekend, and yer all invited. And we have a registry! And it’s, as always, optional, since, as usual, its too late to get anything in time.
But come, if you can.
The theme is “Robo-Trash”… Think white trash…think engineers…think Burningman during construction of AWESOME kinetic art (that can kill you) under the hot desert sun! Think Robogames with less nuts and bolts and more duct tape.. (key work, MORE!)
Meanwhile, all you robots nerds, wanna help me build my new Push Powered Robo Stroller? :-D And you expecting or unexpecting (those who are no longer expecting?) robot nerds, if you help me build mine, I’ll help you build YOOOOOOOOOOURS! (PS, there’s more of you than you think, we should start a club!)
I got this today. San Francisco is so [insert modifier here]
Subject: Zombie Migration Alert: This Saturday, August 16th
Zombie Alert: This Saturday
Friends and countrymen, it is with a heavy heart that I report on the state of Zombie Activity in our fair city of San Francisco. The time has come to once again activate the radio-attraktor towers to funnel hundreds of zombies through downtown to a secure location. This is a risky maneuver, as evidenced by carnage enshrouding last year’s event. Rest assured, we have made improvements to the technology.
We will turn on the radio-attraktor towers at 2:05pm on Saturday, August 16th. All zombies in the area will be telepathically compelled to march down a route which we will disclose in a future email. The radio waves will also cause undead to crave duct tape instead of human flesh. If you are unfortunate enough to be standing along the route with a duct tape “X” on your torso, you will be attacked and consumed by the horde, after which you will be one of them. Don’t wear your favorite shirt.
Please, please tell your friends and family not to be anywhere near the route at 2:05pm this Saturday! Have them sign up for updates ( http://eatbrains.com/announcements) or follow the movement live on Twitter with up-to-the-minute zombie migration forecast, Beijing Olympic protest style ( http://twitter.com/SFZombieMob). If we loose radio control of the mob, the result will be catastrophically gruesome!
I finally finally was able to install my own PHP and eAccelerator on Dreamhost. After all the pain and teeth pulling and agony and frustration and hoop-jumping, it was really easy.
I helped ship a house of boxes from San Francisco to Boston. They used Fix Price Move.
Here’s what my friend said who was taking delivery:
Fixed Price arrived today. After several maddening delays and an additional $600.00 (plus the $923 already due) they delivered. They have been a pain in the ass from the get go. Interestingly, the truck broke down in TX and the truck it was transferred to broke down after unloading in front of my house. Every thing seems to have survived the journey…
When Fixed Price arrived they had 3 boxes from somebody else’s load mixed into ours. The boxes were filled with old canned food and ugly flower pots and before I could tell that they were not ours I had some colorful words for you about sending us … out of date canned food. So far all’s well though.
$1.30lb delivered coast to coast. A bit of a PITA. At least everything didn’t disappear and get sold on eBay.
And all things being even, that’s about as good a moving experience as I’ve seen at a very good price.
TEN feet short of the finish line, Barbie Airplane was stranded.
The cheerful contraption — a Craftsman belt sander crowned with a powder-blue toy plane — had been careening down the 75-foot racetrack moments earlier. Then the sander’s rotating belt came undone, stopping it dead.
In the neighboring lane, Heavy Metal Waste, a circular saw souped up with skateboard wheels and flaming antennas, had already rocketed past. Cheers of victory rang from the bleachers.
“Time waits for no one!” heckled the announcer. So Randy Lisbona, a 47-year-old air-conditioning engineer from Dallas, hauled his broken-down belt sander off the track to make way for the next heat.
That’s how it goes at power tool drag races. The premise is simple: Take a hand-held power tool. Rebuild it into a racing machine.
…
Charlie Gadeken, who started the haphazard sport with a co-conspirator, Jim Mason, saw the races as a way to get more people involved in creating — and not just watching — mechanical art.
To make search results on my blog prettier and more useful, I have installed 2 plugins and added a search.php to my theme. The two plugins are Search Excerpt and Search Reloaded.
All this was at the (very good) suggestion of this post.
When I was a kid, this was one of the most “oo ahh”-able things in the world. They cost like $600. Now they have them at Weird Stuff for… essentially… free. It was a hoot holding one.
, July 28, 2008 11:37 AM
