Lee.org

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…

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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 2 propane cylinders hooked up to a quick-release manifold and ball-valve powering the cactus on the hood of the car.

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Marcus is a friend and unicycle enthusiast. It’s astounding seeing him ride on the esplanade.

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I want one of these for Christmas

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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.

#1 posted by TJIC , July 28, 2008 11:37 AM

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?)  

#2 posted by VagabondAstronomer , July 28, 2008 11:38 AM

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.

No, wait…

I just removed BoingBoing from my RSS reader.

Burning Man 2008 was a blast. It’s taken me weeks to recover mentally. As is usual, I now need a vacation from my vacation ;-)

You’ll find several images on here. I haven’t found my video camera yet. It’s in the garage somewhere. When I do, I’ll post some more footage.

Look at some of my Burning Man 2008 images

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.

Do what is best for the American people.

Thank you,
Lee Sonko

FreeTheAirwaves.com talks more about this issue.

I am on the Do Not Call Registry. I’m getting more and more telemarketer calls. It’s now something like 5 per week.

I just filed the following Do Not Call Registry complaint:

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.

I then filed a Do Not Call Registry Complaint.

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)
• Kept up with SWARM’s In the Media updates
• 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, …

I’ve been thinking a lot about the final scene in the movie Big Night.

I made a perfect omelette for breakfast this morning.

And another for lunch.

It’s a good time to start anew.

Resist the urge to watch the wookie and jawa dance to ABBA Kenny Loggins and jump to 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

local version:

(via)

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…