These cheese curls are more like cheese straights.
Here are some websites featuring interesting optical illusions I ran across when I was looking in my emails for something.
http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/unplugged/spot-fake-objects-among-real-ones-195357959.html
The link to more anamorphic illusions on youtube in the latter article is fascinating.
This should not be so difficult:
ls -ald */
barry1:/srv/www/htdocs2/xblkx # ls -ald */
drwxr-xr-x 7 blk root 4096 2010-12-01 00:29 wp-admin/
drwxr-xr-x 5 blk root 4096 2013-11-03 21:01 wp-content/
drwxr-xr-x 7 blk root 4096 2010-11-30 22:26 wp-includes/
Someone recently asked me if I have any favorite constellations.
I like Sagittarius and Scorpius. I like how both move in the sky and sort of rotate. The Milky Way runs right through them so those areas are very rich in objects. I guess I don’t really have a favorite, but I have some favorites. I really like Orion. I love the Pleiades, even though it isn’t a constellation and my vision isn’t good enough to resolve any stars in it. But you might be surprised which constellation I like the most if I have to choose… Delphinus.
Of the stars I like, it would be Antares, Vega, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschemali.
Ophiuchus, Microscopium, and Gemini annoy me.
New Moon. Eclipse. Blog launch today.
Sometimes, even though I love my ability to produce meaningful words fairly reliably, there are people I admire who can write more emotionally than I can, or who can write music, or deliver words or make cultural references in a way that I only wish I could.
So I’m going to quote someone I adore, and there aren’t many of those
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to play this for you.”
My own introduction to the launch of my site are analogous to her words:
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to share this with you.”
So here we are. My colors might be awkward and my server might crash from time to time, but no one will *ever* delete your comments, claim to own them for using someone’s service, or take this website from you.
I have a lot of data, a lot of my writing from the past that will take a lot of time to completely fill in, but this is The Beginning.
This is a site I own, and those of you who want to interact, those of you who have encouraged me to write can now be a part of it. I am so honored that you choose to be a part of it and that the technology exists to make this happen.
I write a lot of stream of consciousness, and sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with a story.
Yet I have had so many people encourage me to write. Chris Stein told me to try to write science fiction after I sent him a synopsis of a dream I had of him.
I also want everyone to know why, on October 19, I chose November 3 as the launch date.
It’s because November 3 has become a defining moment for me.
I like to choose dates (when I can) that have some significance. There are four reasons.
Numbers and dates and natural phenomena experiences (the full and new moons complete with apogee and perigee in my calendar etc.)
The first reason is that November is a magical month for me. It took a long time to realize but it came to me late one night when I finally figured out after 30 years what “Angels On The Balcony” is about.
Care to guess what day that happened?
My interpretation (revelation) when I discovered what “Angels on the Balcony” is about, suddenly, was on November 3, 2010, after 30 years of trying to figure it out, I did that at 5:09am EST.
The 3rd (!) reason is that November 3, this year, is New Moon. Chris Stein told me it’s just as powerful as the Full Moon. It’s so perfect.
The last reason is even more interesting.
It was November 3, 1989 that a series of events were set in motion that led to my meeting Chris and Debbie not quite 9 months later.
They had a Def, Dumb & Blonde gig that night at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia. I arrived early enough to stand in the front row. I was in the midst of the singularity of almost knowing them (but I didn’t know it was coming yet).
I’d been doing Fan Mail for two years and because we had email since the mid-80s, I had already developed a real friendship with Gunter from Perth.
I was so blown away by this show that afterward, I drove an hour to Bethlehem to use a computer at Lehigh (since at that time, that was the only form of email or internet). I wrote Gunter a message and told him to “do anything” to come here. He did.
That trip and the ones that followed developed some of the connections that led us to meet Debbie and Chris and to later become friends.
All this makes November 3 like a new beginning, a transformative moment. The 21, 22, 23, they are also very special, but the 3rd is really symbolic of a new beginning.
Earlier today, around 2am, I saw a Facebook post on an awesome DH/Blondie fan page, to a link to an article:
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/andy_warhol_paints_debbie_harry_on_an_amiga_computer
It is really fascinating to me to read this today.
Last night, I was looking for something… which unfortunately seems to be a central theme of my existence, but I found a printout that was given to me by someone who was once a good friend a very long time ago. It was at the very beginning of my new career in 1996. I had just changed jobs. I’d left one that I truly loved for another that paid a lot more and that I truly believed in..
I’d accepted it for a new opportunity, and I had a passionate career and me and the people I worked with made real contributions to technology. We created things that changed your lives although our names weren’t attached to it unless you knew how to get to it.
Just as I started on that new adventure, I found out that I was hired by people who worked at Commodore. They were based very near where I live now. The people I worked with designed and manufactured the Amiga. The computer that Chris Stein had before I met him. The computer that Andy Warhol used to create that image of Debbie Harry, one of the first digitally manipulated artworks ever. Perhaps the very first one… I don’t know for sure.
Andy Warhol did that on Commodore Amiga.
The person I mentioned, who used to be my friend, was a technician of some sort at that event. I don’t remember the details, but I remember he told me he saved that file.
He saved to disk Andy Warhol’s artwork of Debbie Harry — and proved it to me.
He wouldn’t let me have a digital copy of the file back in the late 90s, but he did make me a color inkjet printout on quality paper, and I just found it when I was looking for something last night.
Here is *my* scan of that image:
I remember being in awe to work with people who had invented this computer when there were no computers.
And being amazed at the foresight of this person who, instead of shutting down the computer, first saved the image to a disk (and made a copy).
That was the caliber of the people I worked with then.
Engineers were on their way up in the world. It was almost another Renaissance.
Politics and bullshit, deception, and the concentration of wealth eventually killed us, but those people who hired me, who I got to work with, they were the real deal, visionaries. Extinct now that that environment is destroyed.
But I remember.
I remember someone in a cubicle across from mine, who saved Andy Warhol’s image of Debbie Harry to a floppy disk and made me a printout.
It was around then that I couldn’t repair Chris’s Amiga 2000, but I did try. Then I built him a PC and taught him how to use it.
This is mostly a note to myself about how to do that, so I don’t forget.
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/taxonomy/term/1/0?page=9
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man8/fdisk.8.html
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man1/dd.1.html
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/2-methods-to-clone-your-linux-hard-drive/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
http://www.switchroot.com/how-to-recover-deleted-files-with-scalpel-ubuntu