Lee.org

I used my airline miles to reserve a flight to New Jersey to see family next week…

First flight tip:  I went to American Airlines and was going to reserve seats last night but grumbled about having to redeem 50,000 miles + $60 instead of 25,000 miles to fly on the day I wanted (Sept 27th). Apparently, when you book < 21 days in advance, you get hit with a $50 surcharge, and I would have to fly 3 days earlier on Wednesday to fly for 25,000 miles. Grumble grumble. So I log on today and there are several seats available for 25,000 miles + $60. I took it!  I’m guessing that the inexpensive airline miles seats opened up “10 days” before the flight.  The flight is on the 27th and today is the 17th.

Second flight tip:  I went to SeatGuru.com  to look at the plane. Good thing. I had been automatically assigned seat E-31 on American’s MD-80. That is 1 row in front of the bathroom, very loud due to the engine’s proximity and no view due to the engine just outside the window. Reading this description, I recall sitting in this seat in 2004 on my flight back from Burning Man. It was awful, like being trapped in a basement under a power plant for a few hours. So I moved my seats. Apparently, AA puts people in those yucky seats by default. I saved myself 3 rides in the back of the bus by selecting my seats.

Third flight tip: Use credit cards that earn you miles. Right now in my wallet is an AAdvantage CitiBusiness Citi Mastercard. They will give me 25,000 miles if I spent $750 in 4 months. I’m 3 weeks in and have spent $550. I have another AAdvantage Citi Mastercard; I did the same on that card in May. I called to cancel and they offered me 5 “miles” for every dollar I spend at gas stations, supermarkets and drug stores for a year. So I’ll use the latter card for gas and the former for everything else. Of course, I’ll make sure to cancel my card before the anniversary date, when they charge me an $85/year membership fee. I’ve earned about 100,000 airline miles in the last 3 years doing this. I’ve found many of these deals at Citicards.com. I’m a little concerned about hurting my credit rating, flipping cards so quickly; so I’ve made sure to have a max of 3 cards at any time and I pay them off completely every month (habitual non-payment of credit debt is, as we all know, for suckers).

via Lady Bee on the Burning Man Artists-Announce mailing list, From Rachael

I wanted to make sure everyone here had heard about the current crisis being faced by one of the main art spaces in the Bay Area.  An incredible amount of Burning Man art has been produced there.  Read the note below to learn more about the closure (and future plans) of this great space.

NIMBY, a 40,000 square foot industrial art space located in West Oakland, California, was shut down by the City of Oakland for non- compliance to fire and building codes on September 11, 2008.  The inspection conducted by the City of Oakland was in response to a fire at the building on September 10, 2008.

For 5 years NIMBY has been the largest industrial art space in the Bay Area.  Over 40 groups, comprised of over 200 artists, use the  

space for designing, fabricating and storing large-scale projects.    

The closure of NIMBY is having a huge impact on the arts community in our area.

The City of Oakland is offering assistance to help NIMBY relocate to a new building.  City officials are being supportive in helping with locating available properties, and working with us to design a space that can meet the needs of artists while complying with building and fire codes.  While we are grateful for this show of support we must find considerable outside financial assistance to make this move possible.

We are working to create a new space that is larger and more versatile than the current NIMBY, turning this tragedy into an opportunity for expansion.  Included in the plans is a massive, permanent gallery space for large-scale works of art usually left in storage.  Artists will then be able to design, construct, and showcase their pieces between events in one space, allowing them increased exposure for their art.

In order for this vision to be realized NIMBY must receive support from the entire arts community.  Please visit our website  (NIMBYspace.org) for more details on the closure and to make a donation.  The entire Bay Area arts community is depending on the support of the national arts community to save NIMBY.

Below are links for just a few of the pieces that have been created at NIMBY.  Please contact me should you have any questions or ideas for partnering with our organization.

Rachael

Paypal:  nimbyLLC@yahoo.com

NIMBY site:  http://www.nimbyspace.org/

Some Art Created at NIMBY:

Colussus http://www.zacharycoffin.com/colossus/index.php

Steampunk Tree House http://www.steamtreehouse.com/

Cleavage in Space — A 40 ft Chandelier http://images.burningman.com/index.cgi?image=12425

Sim Nuke – http://www.simnuke.org/

Interpretive Arson — DDI and 2?R – http://wiki.interpretivearson.com/

The Disgusting Spectacle – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V652yOYHWdo

KSW Paddle Wheel Steam Boat – http://www.kineticsteamworks.org/
 

A few items currently in storage at NIMBY:

The Serpent Mother http://www.flaminglotus.com/serpent_mother/Serpent_image_gallery/

IT – http://www.michaelchristian.com/

An installation for Natural World Museum – http://www.artintoaction.org/

Sets for the Oakland Opera – http://www.oaklandopera.org/

I’m considering starting bngbng.net, a site wher……… Ha! It’s already been done! Check it out.

Well actually, I was hoping to do something a little different. I’d like to start a boingboing.net where people are free (as in beer on the fourth of July) to comment. It wouldn’t take much effort to build it.

Grab stories and comments from BoingBoing (it’s Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution 2.5). Just use our own comment system.

Rick T made interested noises… Anyone else?

I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “Self, why is Lee talking about Boing Boing but with no vowels?” I’m glad you asked. Check out this post I wrote about  Disemvoweling. And then  this.

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

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’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.

(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…

“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)