03.11.01

Thoughts leftover from dreaming

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.

03.31.98

SuperBoy

Posted in Career, Media, People, Tech at 6 pm

Slow day today, though it should have been more busy. Got my machine at work set up to do some file sharing over the net, though it doesn’t work perfectly for plug-in file transfers, but I like the graphics that I worked up for it. http://orion.omsi.edu/

I also started a small page for a friend of a friend. It’s just starting out. Can you tell where I stole some ideas from? Why develop two sites when you can just make one? http://www.omsi.edu/~rosso/superboy/

I was also looking through some of the work I’ve done before… like the one I made for Amy. http:///sorry.it’s.private.com/:)

I renamed my hard drives to Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, after the stars that make up the shoulders of the constellation Orion.

I still haven’t put together the archiving solution for the page… It’s on the to-do list. Along with the Forest Puzzles to-do list and the Cave Inn to-do list and the Zoo to-do list and the PSU to-do list… Need I continue?

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03.26.98

avant-garde

Posted in Apple, Career, Media, Tech, Web at 6 pm

I’m slowly transfering my work machine to be based on MacOS 8. I’ve had it the 2 gig sitting in my machine for quite a while but have been slow to transfer over my preferences and set it as my startup disk. I finally moved my TCP setup over and I’m starting to get Malph re-setup piece by piece.. I know I could just copy over the Preference files, but it’s nice cleaning things out by hand. Though time-consuming to be sure. But damn, it’s _so_ responsive. Of course I haven’t installed all my fonts yet, either… 🙂

Forest Puzzles is looking good. In fact, here’s the URL for it: <http://www.omsi.edu/~rosso/forpuz/> That’s not the final place for it, so don’t bookmark it. However Busytown has reached it’s final destination at: <http://www.omsi.edu/busytown/> which is aliased to a longer more logical pathname as the site structure goes. It’s still got to get through Paramount’s okay (they own the rights to the characters), but it’s looking good.

I’m switching over to Netscape 4.0 as well. I’ve been sticking with 3.0 for a while, because I use the mail client to read my personal e-mail (and Eudora for my business mail). I really feel that Communicator is way overblown. I wish you could install just the parts that you want. For me, it’d be the browser and the mail client. OpenNS 5.0 perhaps?? Maybe I’ll try to find a different e-mail client, though Eudora is such a landmark, it’s hard to think of another one to use. Wait, didn’t Bare Bones come out with one? Time to do some research.

Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space has been a constant soundtrack for my life lately. It’s really a beautiful CD. VW recently used the title track in a commercial. This fits in with the concept that TV commercials are more (avant-garde) musically than commercial radio. Isn’t that sad?

This week shaped up to be pretty active and productive. These are two words that haven’t been part of my vocabulary for a few weeks lately. Winter doldrums? Hopefully I’m looking at an upturn here. I’ve certainly got enough projects that could use some work. And a partner who could use some attention.

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03.16.98

Quake Army Knife

Posted in Career, Media, Tech at 10 am

Ah Monday, day two of my workweek. Slow morning, though I’ve got a dept meeting at work at 11:00. Gotta get going.

I installed and played with a demo version of Quake last night. I think I’ve got a feel for how the game works, now I just gotta check out the tools for building custom maps. There’s a util call QuArK (QUake ARmy Knife) which looks like a good place to start. I wonder if I’ll have to pony up the money for the full version of Quake II to make this work. I hope not.

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03.15.98

Dark City Minus Five

Posted in Media at 12 pm

Just got back from seeing the film Dark City.

If you haven’t seen it, see it now. It’a stunning visual experience.

Amy decided and I agreed that the movie would have been much better without the last 5 minutes, like most American movies. Wonderful stuff otherwise.

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03.14.98

Quake in OMSI

Posted in Career, Life, Media, People at 12 pm

Ah… Saturday Morning. Running laundry downstairs and trying to keep Simone off the top of the entertainment center.

Amy and I went out for a drive last night. We ended up in Longview, Washington. She gave me the grand tour of the town, which seemed more like a deserted movie set than a place where people live. It seems everyone goes to bed there at 11:00 pm on Friday nights.

Amy showed me the houses she used to live in and all three of the public schools she went to. She said it’s strange to think of other people living in the same house that she grew up in. I imagine it would be pretty weird, since it’s never happened to me. My parents still live in the same house they’ve always been in, since I can remember.

I decided a new project I’d like to tackle is building a Quake level of OMSI. I’ve been looking for utilities that I could work with. It looks like they’re all Wintel based, so I’m going to try to hijack some CPU cycles from a machine at work.

In addition to having a really cool layout for a QuakeWorld, I think I may be able to use it as a navigation aid for visitors. I’ll have to look into it. If you have any tips that would help me out, please let me know!

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03.13.98

I Believe in Desktop Patterns

Posted in Apple, Life, Media, People at 6 pm

Friday morning/Afternoon, and I’ve finally gotten caught up on my e-mail, somewhat. At least it’s down to under a screen full in my general in-box. My Nick Cave stuff is still pretty heavy though.

It’s been nice expect for the construction work outside. I’m planning on spending the day with Amy, trying to relax. Yesterday was pretty busy, so when I got home, I debriefed Amy on it for nearly an hour straight. I’m not usually talkative, but I just wanted to get it all out of my system. I’m glad she’s so patient with me.

On my “I Believe” pages for Apple I added a few desktop patterns for people without web pages. They’re pretty garish as desktop patterns go, but some people like them. <http://www.zephyr.net/rosso/believe/>

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03.09.98

Water Works

Posted in Career, Media, Web at 3 pm

Monday morning and I’m back into the fray. Had a department meeting with Marilyn and Stacey that lasted quite a while.

I took the WaterWorks web site on OMSI’s pages and cleaned it up a bit, added a couple of needed pages and links and cleaned up the file structure. It’s an interesting resources though the graphics area really lacking: <http://www.omsi.edu/sln/ww/>

Feeling really busy and yet little to show for it. I guess I’m still trying to get a few pieces into place so that the work I’ve been going can be put out in the open. It’s the waiting that’s the hardest part – Tom Petty

I took one of Amy’s O-+> CD’s to work. The Hits 2.

Good stuff.

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03.08.98

Sunday Through Thursday

Posted in Career, Media, Web at 11 am

Dealing with HTML really makes regex a lot of fun. It seems as though the pattern I set up has just gone all over the place. I’ve had to comment it out in order to get perl to run the script at all. Well it looks like it runs now. But I still want the regex to work.

Amy and I didn’t get to watch Shine because the tape was messed up. Whenever the tape was playing normally, the screen went to its ‘this-image-is-so-messed-up I’m-just-going-to-show-a-blue-screen’ screen, but you could see the video when you had the tape moving at fast-forward or in reverse. I guess I’ll take them back to Hollywood Video today.

I work on a Sunday through Thursday schedule by my own choosing. So I’m headed into work this morning.

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03.07.98

The Long Way Home

Posted in Media, People at 12 pm

Back home. We’ve rented two movies: Shine and Barton Fink. I’ve only vaguely heard about these two films, so this should be an adventure. I’m still looking for True Love and Chaos, an Aussie film that has a Leonard Cohen/Nick Cave cover band in it.

Another film I’ve heard about via Siskle and Ebert was “The Long Way Home” about the Jews who were displaced in the three years between the end of WWII and the inception of the state of Israel.

I’m on a number of mailing lists including Bong, the Depeche Mode list and Goodson, the Nick Cave list. both have been rather ugly lately. Why does it seem that 80% of the Internet is made up of hormone over-dosed 16 year old males?

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