03.31.01
Posted in General
at 3 pm
That Morning, to get in the mood, I put on “Two Lectures” Nick’s spoken word release which is punctuated with solo versions of a wide range of his back catalogue. West Country Girl comes on first.
“With a crooked smile and a heart-shaped face
Comes from the West country where the birds sing bass
She’s got a house-big heart where we all live
And plead and council and forgive.”
It’s angry, ugly and worn down to the shaft. Nick says “I have seen it grow and mutate with time.” It’s evolved into something new.
By the time our drive from Portland to Seattle ended, it was 6:00pm, and Amy and I went off to forage for food in the rain. It was that light Seattle rain that mostly hangs in the air waiting for you to fall on the drops, not the other way around.
We returned to the theater area and tried to meet with Leslie and the Coil fans but the Cloud Room had been closed because of over-crowding. Having never been to the Paramount Theater, I had no idea that it would hold such a large crowd. For me, Nick Cave has been packaged up in little plastic discs, or presented as pixels. He’s never had a physical presence. 8 years of listening to a ghost. Ghosts are lonely. Listening to ghosts is a lonely experience.
“Who is this?” my co-workers ask. “Nick Cave.” “Who?”
Seeing the crowds in front of the theater spooked me. I figured that it would be me, Amy and Leslie and a few people she met. About a dozen of us in a small bar sitting around listening to Nick and a few people he met.
Scalpers. There were scalpers. Like a fun house mirror, my view was mutating, warping. I couldn’t believe that Nick Cave, a plastic pixel man was having his tickets scalped. That only happens to acts that have a large enough draw to be profitable.
Walking inside, I realized just how lucky I had been. 50 rows in the theater, another 30 in the balcony. 40 seats across. 3000 people? There must be some mistake. Amy and I find our seats at the front row.
After the opening act, Neco Case, the lights begin to dim. 8 years of listening to a ghost. And then the song became flesh. Nick stepped out on to the stage, winced from the spotlight and waved. He quickly sat down with his note-stuffed copy of King Ink II and launched into West Country Girl. Heavy chords began the concert.
Clearly I had missed the other dimensions of this man. I’ve read transcripts, heard bootlegs and retyped interviews till my fingers smoked. This was something far more interesting.
Moving on, Sad Waters and Henry Lee graced the ear, soft. Then… The Mercy Seat.
Shivering goosebumps.
God Is In The House gave a much lighter touch to the concert. Wild World was unrecognizable, but Warren playing Rowland playing lead guitar was perfect along with the aggressive lighting. Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, Do You Love Me Part II blew through too fast for my poor heart to take.
No More Shall We Part followed by Stagger Lee provided ample time to look at the ornate ceiling and walls of the theater.
But then it was back into the fray with Into My Arms and Love Letter. Melodic and hypnotic.
People Ain’t No Good and Ship Song were the first encore. Of course Amy and I had been waiting for the dogs and the moral grounds.
The second encore was a quick little spin through Empty Little Boat and Nick was gone.
—
Amy waited patiently with me at the back door of the theater. An hour later, Nick and Warren came through the door, waiting for the van to be ready. He took the time to sign everyone’s materials. I had brought nothing. I simply walked up to him to shake his hand. I looked at him, that one second magnified into hours, and stuttered a ‘Thank you.’ He nodded. Amy took a few pictures.
Thanks Nick.
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03.18.01
Posted in General
at 12 pm
Today will be such a fun one. I’ve got to get a start on my taxes. It’s about time that I really dug into them. I’ve been putting them off until I got my PSU check, which arrived Friday, so now I have no excuse. Today I want to get those at least partially taken care of, and I want to get some of my archives from previous years available on the site. Both of these should be pretty easy to accomplish, though they’ll probably take all day no doubt.
Not that the skies are beckoning me outside. It’s all cold and grey at this point.
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03.17.01
Posted in General
at 1 pm
Well, it’s been a fast week around here. Work has been moving along with our new hire, K. He’s got initiative, I’ll say that. He’s got a lot of good experience at some larger firms, and is really interested in getting our processes more cohesive and encompassing. I think it will be very interesting to see how things shape up from this point moving forward. I really hope that this will give me the chance to define my role more accurately.
Ever since D. left a gaping hole in the leadership position, I’ve been drifting in and out of that role, along side A. It’s been tough, and a bout of depression in the past few months has done nothing to help it. Had I been a bit more stable, I probably could have handled things a bit better, and ended up in a stronger leadership position. But I never really wanted to take that on fully, never really put my heart into it, for a number of reasons.
I won’t be teaching a class this next term, and that’s kind of strange. But I did get my check for this past term. Now I’ve got to see how much of it will go to taxes. After that’s paid off Amy and I can look at socking it away for a EuroTrip this summer.
—
I think I’ve finished with version 0.9 of Aim and Fire. A&F is what I’ve named this pair of scripts that I can set up easy to modify web pages for clients. It grew out of a project for one of Amy’s recent clients. I’m really quite happy with it. It may not be the most robust system, but I think it will work pretty well for most cases.
—
I’ve been feeling a bit more creative of late. I really want to work up some more design. I did a new desktop image at work. These things are my most common method of doing something visual, graphical, creative. My journal entries give me the chance to do some self-directed writing, but they aren’t a real creative forum for me. I’d like to expand more in that area. Yet another thing to add to the “I want to” list. Still got to get through my French lesson as well.
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03.14.01
Posted in General
at 6 pm
We’ve got a new employee at work now. Person number 6 in our little crew. It will be interesting to see how my role changes now that he’s here. I’m sure once he get’s going, he’ll be taking on a lot of the management stuff for the group as a whole, which is fine by me. I’ll be glad to have someone dedicated to that sort of thing.
—
I’ve been listening to “All that You Can’t Leave Behind” nearly non-stop this week. ‘New York’ and ‘Elevate’ are two standout tracks.
—
My class at PSU finished off last night. I’ve passed that class onto a new instructor, so I can zip up and file away all those files, I guess. It really felt like this class has been a struggle for me. I don’t think I’ve given the very best class for the students, though the reviews that I get are fine. But it did push me in a few different places and made me examine some of the approaches that I bring to this digital media realm.
I’m thinking of dealving into Flash far enough to teach a class in it. Looks like there are a number of openings in that area. I’ve played with Flash but never to the point that I felt comfortable in the environment. Perhaps if I put some more focus into it I’d do a bit better. (But I suppose that could be said of many thing in life, eh?)
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03.12.01
Posted in General
at 4 pm
Amy and I were at Powell’s last night, she looking for Holocaust literature, me in search of French instructional materials. After a couple hours there, we began walking to the check out. Out of the corner of my eye I see a display of maps and atlases. As I’m walking by and scanning the State atlases, I see the name ‘Peter’s Projection’ printed on a rolled up map.
I think, “Hmmm, that’s interesting.” I begin to recall the number of different projections of world maps that are available. But thought is fleeting and I’m onto another trickle of conciousness. No streams, just trickles.
—
So this morning I’m at work and we’re having a conference call with a client in New York. They’re a world-wide health-oriented non-profit that we’re building a web site for. Towards the end of the call, one of the guys on the client’s side says, “On the Regions page, what map are you going to use?”
I replied, “We’ll pull a piece out of our clip art files. Is there something in particular we should be thinking about?”
“There’s a particular kind of map that our group and other groups use…” he trails off. “I can’t remember the name of it, but…”
I ask, rather innocently, “Do you want something like the Peter’s Projection?”
“Yes, that’s the one, exactly.”
http://www.petersmap.com/table.html
http://www.diversophy.com/products/use_peters_map.htm
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03.11.01
Posted in General
at 9 pm
Original Posting: 2/19/2001 09:40:34 PM
I’m cleaning. I’ve been cleaning out my old Macworld magazines from 1992-1996. Now I know these aren’t the oldest things around, but it’s really a trip going through the older articles. Especially interesting are the product debuts: The Newton MessagePad, the Powerbook Duos, QuickDraw GX, and oh yes, Macworld raved about the IIvx.
Ah how time flies. The PDA that was a bit too large and five years too early? The Duo docks that if in place now with FireWire and USB would be incredible for iBooks and TiBooks alike. QuickDraw GX was really striving to be Quartz, the layer just below Aqua in MacOS X.
The IIvx? Well, let’s let dead dogs lie…
I think I’ll keep one issue from each year for now. 5 copies ought to provide quite a time capsule the next time down this memory lane.
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Posted in Life, Media, Meta, People, Tech
at 1 pm
Original Posting: 3/9/2001 10:00:05 AM:
If we make networks that can self repair, then loose the ability to shut all network nodes down, then the smallest portion of the backups/self-maintenece/self-repair portions of software become more robust, would we have created a system that could out live us as a race? What would distinguish this from being another race altogether?
I found a new Weblog/Journaling perl script called Greymatter, via Camworld that looks very promising. I could get rid of Blogger (not to ‘dis’ blogger, but I can’t truly customize it) and set up my archives again. If I do this soon I won’t have too many archives to transfer over. After all, Dwelling is coming up on it’s 3 year birthday…
I’ve decided that blowing air at people will be my way of admonishing them. It will be a particularly harsh punishment in the morning. I’m going to be a great parent. “Don’t make me come over there and blow air in your face!”
NP in my head: Brian Eno’s latest release, “It’s a Beautiful Day”
Now biting my hand: Simone.
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Posted in General
at 1 pm
Original Posting: 3/4/2001 10:55:45 PM
That’s the number of mails in my inbox. It’s the lowest my mail has been down to in 6 months easy. Most of the mails in there now are from January and February. I’m finally getting caught up.
For a long time now, my mailbox has been a pretty accurate barometer of my selfworth/selfcontrol/emotional state all wrapped up in one. A mail box of 36 and dropping is a good sign. A mail box of 90 and rising is a very bad sign. That’s where I was earlier this year and had been heading there since September or so.
It would be awfully shallow to think that my life consists of my inbox. Look at it this way: it’s an indicator, the proverbial canary that let’s the mine workers know when to get the hell out. (I’ve been feeling pretty shafted over the last few months. I dug this myself, but damn if it’s not difficult to get back out.) The Inbox is only one indicator. Here’s another: have I shaved? Is my facial hair neatly trimmed. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have to actually look at myself in the mirror that causes this ‘indicator’.
I am getting back out though. I’ve talked to a few friends, got some stuff put away and cleaned up in the apartment. (Organizing and cleaning things away provides me such a huge rush of accomplishment.). I got some of my web pages updated, figured out that my Ghia is “Zambesi Green” not Willow Green which I was suspicious of from the start, and even got invited to a lunch group next Friday.
I was also contacted to talk about another teaching opportunity with a different school. Teaching classes as a sideline is certainly enjoyable for me to tackle. Even if this opportunity isn’t a good fit for me, it’s nice to be asked.
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Posted in General
at 1 pm
Original Posting: 2/19/2001 09:56:56 PM
Looking back at that last part regarding the Duo Docks, I realized I’m totally off base. Waht really needs to happen is to get Wireless into a couple more ports. We’ve got wireless ethernet. That’s good. Now we need wireless USB. That will probably come from Bluetooth or something similar.
Then we need Wireless VGA monitors. Then we need a way of passivley powering the mouse and keyboards. Shouldn’t be too hard. If I recall correctly, the eMates had two powerstuds that were on the bottom of the case. Set the case down on the proper pad and the batty begins to charge. Carry it off and go. Seems simple enough to translate for other electronic elements…
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Posted in General
at 1 pm
Original Posting: 2/18/2001 01:37:52 PM
Could it be? Am I really starting to get back into the whole journal/blog thing? Things are a bit more stable now and I’m looking for an outlet, and a place to keep writing. I really do want to become a better writer. I’d like to write later in life, support myself through it. But it will take practice. I figure if I’ve got 20 or 30 years of practice, I ought to have some skills to make up for a lack of actual talent. :p
I’m thinking about this Browser Upgrade push that the WaSP is making. It really seems like it’s a bad idea at this point. I really wish they would have held off until Mozilla 1.0 was released. I know I won’t be dropping Netscape 4.7 for a few months still. Hell, I stayed with Netscape 2.04 until about 2 years ago. Went straight from 2.0 to 4.05 because 3.0 was way too bloated. My Mac at the time (a Centris 610) needed a RAM upgrade to run 4.05. It wasn’t till I got my G3 that I switched to Netscape 4.6. And only recently did I really start to take a liking to IE5.
I imagine looking back on these words a few years from now and laughing…
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