<dykes.d().digital>

transcore; flickr lifetime membership?

it seems to me that transcore ought to refer to a genre of music, and not a transportation systems company.

anywho - you can all breathe a sigh of relief, 'cuz i'm back. with a head full of thoughts on intentional communities. the the beginnings of some of those thoughts will get fleshed out and are accompanied by a growing collection of photos from michfest 2004.

i'm quickly running out of space on my Flickr account and i'm going to have to start dealing with that right soon. i will gladly pay for my pro account once the promotional period ends - maybe i can pay extra for twice the amount of photos? maybe i can trade some promotional work or some programming? maybe the Pro account can be delimited by photo size/server space instead of by the absolute number of photos uploaded? maybe the Flickr folk will see fit to create an extra tier in their Pro account structure for an "uberuser" account with unlimited photos allowed? :) i need a lifetime membership! complete with grandfather clauses for my descendants...

**** update: the pro account is actually delimited by size and not by amount of photos. the 500 photo limit is for my shoebox (shoebox = favorite photos). i have up to 1G of space PER MONTH for uploading my own photos. yeeeeee haw!! LOOK OUT! :) now, if i can just figure out how to prevent Flickr from adding my own photos to the shoebox... ****

in a perfect world, i want to run my own Flickr installation... it would be cool to have a 'local' version of Flickr made up only of folks from Ithaca, or some agreeable subset of the upstate NY region. i am so all about thinking more locally - it is one huge new life goal.

at some point i hope to have time to work up a nice photo-essay about michfest using Flickr. i also have ideas about combining text-based mapping with Flickr: imagine the kinds of ASCII maps you would see in a text-based gaming reality like a MOO or a MUD, but the map contains a number of links that will take you to photos or collections of photos taken at that site. i already have plenty of material to start mapping Ithaca. i imagine it's going to be some nit-picky work to generate the text map, though. got to carve out some time, somehow, on top of recovering financially from 3 weeks of no billable hours...

i reluctantly admit that academia is looking more attractive these days. there is at least the smallest glimmer of envisioning going back to school someday. but not until i feel i have a strong grasp on valuing the non-intellectual, the non-academic, the non-linear. i'm not quite there yet - still lots of de-programming left to do from being raised under the rubric of the 'american dream' and the (backwards) american value system. i'm also at this point far more interested in participating in my interests than in studying them. more immersion, more living in the world needed before i have the audacity to begin pursuing a teaching career. seeing teaching as a noble profession is, embarassingly, a new revelation for me. teaching and motherhood are 2 big jobs i am learning to value. it certainly helps to know some amazing mothers in my life.

going off the grid

i'm about to embark upon a journey into the woods and away from technology for a few weeks. don't get me wrong - i love technology, but i also crave some immersion in nature. throw in some live music and great people, and there is much promise for a series of holy moments headed my way. i've hit upon the biggest limitation of the toshiba vm-4050 camphone - it only holds 30 photos at a time. i'm constantly at the "almost full" and "full" stage with the phone. i'm going to be limited to 30 best photos between cell phone dumps every few days. that's probably just as well, and the only way to get me to cut back on my flicker addiction.

i am going to work at the michigan women's music festival. no, i'm not a separatist, and no i don't support the trans policy. i go because i've been going for years and i have friends there who are like family. plus, there is nothing like being able to run around topless and shoeless, rolling around in the grass, listening to good music, and quite importantly, not working. i need this break, lemme tell ya.

i'll be moblogging whenever i have cell service, every few days or so likely. those shots will all be up on flickr, and some subset will get posted to my personal blog. other than that, enjoy the silence...

camphones discovered to be more highly addictive than crack

thanks to caterina for mentioning me on the flickr blog. i'm totally honored. i'd like to thank the academy, my mother, and most importantly, the toshiba vm-4050 camphone.

meanwhile, the hydrant collection has grown.

honestly i want to thank the flickr folk for designing some spot-on software and fostering the spirit of true collaboration. i have only been a member of flickr for a very short while, but it already feels like a community. this social software is powerful stuff.

bush is the king of bullshit

it never ceases to amaze me how politicians are amazingly adept at the art of saying absolutely nothing. i spotted this photo caption on the front page of the New York Times yesterday that included this quote from bush:

"We are turning the corner, and we're not turning back."

aha! before, i was wondering what the hell this country was doing. now, i feel informed. if this is objective journalism, then give me a blog to read any day.

PCSVision speed much improved

so i did grumble yesterday about Sprint's PCSVision service being down without warning or notification, but today i am extremely pleased with the result of that downtime for system upgrades. My photos used to crawl through an upload (20% completed...tap tap tap...40% completed...yawn...oh it's done - what day is it?) and now they're flying. Way to go, Sprint!

public service announcement: candy makes your mullet shine.

oh yeah it does.

i know that i have a serious Flickr addiction because the Sprint PCSVision network is down until 9am tomorrow morning so i can't upload any photos from my phone until then - and i'm having withdrawal symptoms. i'm uploading some digicam shots and browsing everyone else's most excellent photos, instead.

btw thanks but no thanks for the warning, Sprint. There was no messsage or indication of this apparently scheduled downtime for system upgrade/maintenance. i had to call tech support to find out - and even the technician i talked to was unaware that PCSVision was down for scheduled maintenance. She had to put me on hold to find out, which i assume meant she had to look it up in a solutions database somewhere. Why the heck wouldn't Sprint inform its own employees about downtime in one of their major systems?! Earth to Sprint: set up a private blog so you can inform all of your employees about "must know" news item like that - or better yet, make it a public blog so that your customers can find out in 2 seconds from your website what otherwise takes 10 minutes on hold to find out from technical support. Capish?

love is a radical act

so call me an activist. i'm feelin' the love. thank (insert higher power of choice here) for those liberal hippy freak love activists, peaceniks and insatiable creators around the world.

when you just can't get enough blogging

there's always mo' blogging.

think twice before cloning

thanks to Fred for sending this photo. it's funny that i'm posting this because i literally had 4 conversations today about cloning myself as a solution to the problem of not having enough time to pursue all of the amazingly cool things in the world simultaneously (polymaths, represent!). maybe i'd better think twice about putting that on my technology wish list...

Fred writes:

This is a photo a friend of a coworker of mine took here in Hamburg. It was an election poster for the recent European elections. The caption reads:

"You decide. Don't give cloning a chance" by the Green party.

ultra-mini review of the Belkin iPod voice recorder

it sucks.

ringtone ripoff

are people really paying $2.50 apiece for ringtones?! i'm mystified. i mean, you can download the whole damn track from the iTMS for 99 cents... WTF? yeah, yeah, novelty, i suppose.

is there a collection of open source ringtones i can tap into somewhere? can i download a MIDI file i've created and have it rendered in pixelated audio glory by my phone? give me something to work with here, people.

flickr is slickr than the Fonz's hairdo

flickr, how do i love thee? let me count the ways.

1) i am posting to my blog from within flickr right now.

2) flickr gave me 5 different blog post templates to choose from.

3) Flickr has a desktop application that allows you to batch upload photos from your desktop into your Flickr photostream. RAD! it saves oodles of time over Movable Type's one-at-a-time dialog-box walkthrough method. i have been ranting about wanting to drag and drop photos into my blog and this is a damn fine precursor to that.

4) the service is mad easy to use. it works not unlike the insanely intuitive del.icio.us social bookmark collector; you can categorize your photos with tags in the same way, and lose outrageous amounts of time surfing through other people's photos that use the same tags.

5) i haven't set it up yet, but i will be able to post directly from my camphone to my blogs. How rad is that??? [update: : it works!]

6) people are doing mad crazy things with the flickr web services API, all of which goes straight into the really cool stuff that i must somehow find time to learn about category

7) flickr knows that my photos are taken with the Pentax Optio S because it parses the photos' EXIF Data and displays it so that you can know wayyyyyy more than you ever wanted to know about someone's photograph (though it doesn't know that this photo was taken with my new Toshiba VM-4050 camphone). i'm sure this will come in useful to the more serious photographers...

8) the visual design is sooooo nice. definitely drool-inducing. minimalist; simple - huzzah!

-----
update: the standard flickr templates work best if you set text formatting to none on the entry...

-----
update 2 1/2: you can view my flickr photos here.

Movable type: get rid of comment spam

i'm sure a lot of people figured this out before i did - honestly i haven't checked to see if anyone did. But for the uninitiated, if you get a spate of blog spam, and you have access to your mySQL database via phpmyadmin or via the command line, just delete the comments from the database and rebuild your site. You are not breaking any relations in the database by doing this. For example, if some idiot named (may small insects infest your loins, brother) leaves a bunch of comment spam, use this SQL query to get rid of the jerk's shenanigans:

DELETE from mt_comments where comment_email = "hrie@y7o.com"

Then, rebuild your site. Voila. Spam-free. Ya-hoo!

That is the 'putting out fires' method of spam eradication. There are also some really useful ways to prevent blog spam under Movable Type, of which i have been trying out Tip#1 to great effect. Try some or all of these hints to prevent any further penis enlargement.

convenient inquiry into 'delaying' the 2004 presidential elections

and so it begins.

the more cynical among us will see this as the Bush administration's baby steps towards establishing a dictatorship. having gotten to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night (finally, after having been turned away after waiting in the long lines stretching down the block here in Ithaca since it was released), there is not a single molecule of my being that would doubt this possibility. there is even a fantastic clip in the film of George Bush admitting point-blank that a "dictatorship would be easier."

-----
[7.12.04 2:27am]
* Nevermind that i am suddenly and inexplicably using wiki syntax on this blog. i just felt like adding an update to this entry and realized there is no easy way to to version control via Movable Type (which i will not be upgrading to version 3 - i'm going to move all of my other blogs to Wordpress as i find time to do it. This has less to do with the new pricing scheme than it does with the fact that i jive better with Wordpress).

* Phew, we made it out of that parenthesis. Let's move on. Anywho, the reason i began this wiki-slang-slinging on an otherwise perfectly acceptable blog post was that it turns out there had been grumblings about this meme much earlier. And, there are others who are freaking on this.

* Ending this post (again) with the bit of George Orwell's 1984 quoted at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11:

"it does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.

A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. the war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or east Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact"

* Oops, you only thought that was finally the end of this post. Oh, you were dead wrong. i wanted to also note that i found the above quote on Google answers which is a service where you can pay researchers a small fee ($1-$5, it looks like) to find information for you. i find myself wondering who the market for this is, and who is using it. i am trying to imagine a case where i would actually pay someone to do a Google search for me, rather than do it myself.

-----
[7.14.04 12:49am]
* But why stop now, really?

* This meme is definitely spreading.

* follow it on Feedster

-----
[7.14.04 1:57pm]
* Absolutely fantastic commentary from Bob Harris of This Modern World:

Yes, I do believe that Team Chimpy is likely to exploit any possibility of postponing our elections in one way or another.

Google my friend, my lover, my disease

Is it just me, or does anyone else find themselves afflicted with "Unable To Close A Browser Tab Syndrome"? I love my Safari browser but she is a 7-windowed, 187-tabbed hydra that will not die. I go there intending to close a few windows before it crashes, and I look up 6 hours later, blinking into the fluorescent lights, noting that my tab collection has only grown...

To whomever invented the term 'information junkie' - spot on, mate. I have a hunch I would find it easier to get off heroin. But let's leave that an untested theory, shall we? One thing about Google - she leaves more useful track marks.

flash meets electroclash

honestly, at first i tried to resist freezepop. but this video broke me. i had to give in and fall in love with them.

An open letter to John Sizemore

Dear John,

Thank you so much for sending me 173 copies of your extremely generous prescription drug offer. The free exchange of email is such a wonderful thing, and it truly amazes me how you and so many other strangers can pinpoint my needs and desires with such fine-grained acuity. In fact in some cases, your group of truly altruistic purveyors of unsolicited email even anticipate needs I myself was unaware of. For example, I know now to be on the lookout for experiencing hair loss, and thanks to open mail relays I know exactly where to go when that happens.

Most of all, I thank you all for the vast improvement I have seen in my sex life. I have the stamina of an ox and truly, my penis cannot get any larger.

Cordially yours,
Doctor 'Spam Trap' Paradox

who's your daddy?

this product page at Propellerheads Software wins this year's prestigious "Best Use of an SM-related Theme in your Marketing Copy" award.

sad but true: my mac may be the best lover i've had

i'm linking to this comparison of Wind-hose as the whore to your Mac as the lover because it's freaking funny and i identify with it.

on the flip side, it reveals that annoying trend i often find in the casual-acquaintance men in my life, who want to pigeonhole me into some stereotypical role or other. my options are: lover/girlfriend, whore, mother, or daughter. it is often-times quite difficult to define/establish a role as platonic friend or, even worse, as knowledgable colleague or work partner. there was a time in my radical-feminist-lesbian-separatist youth when i believed all such men were ill-intentioned sexists. i no longer believe this (it's wayyyy more complex than that simplistic analysis), but nevertheless - i still tend to find that a lot of men i meet could use some work in this area. that there is a sense in which i often feel "sized-up" to determine whether or not sex is a viable possibility from the relationship, no matter how inappropriate the context.

is it just me...

or is it really hard not to get an initial reading of this software as the dildo browser??

it's so true.

Michael Chason, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, quips on his Google addiction [noting an addiction theme to today's research]:

"Writers of the past had absinthe, whisky, or heroin. I have Google. I go there intening to stay five minutes and the next thing I know, seven hours have passed, I've written 43 words, and all I have to show for it is that I know the titles of every episode of The Nanny and the Professor."

betty ford for bloggers?

who's afraid of the big bad bloggers? the new york times reportedly finds blogging a pointless addiction. all i have to say is... pass the crack and check me into a 12-step, i'm hooked!!

get a free anti-Bush sticker

from Move On:

rent arthouse films via mail-order

greencine.com (pronounced "green scene") looks promising. it's like Netflix for the arthouse crowd.

culture jamming

A label from a laptop bag that is made by a small American company for overseas customers:

Here is the translation from the French:

Wash with warm water. Use mild soap. Dry flat. Do not use bleach. Do not dry in the dryer. Do not iron. We are sorry that our President is an idiot. We did not vote for him.

i want ellen internet radio.

"My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is."
-Ellen DeGeneres

spamming the spammers

as one who gets a ton of (inane, ludicrous) spam, i lost my shit when i saw this hilarious collection of letters between a Swedish web designer and the supposedly poor Nigerian who sent her one of those 'confidential business proposal' spam letters. it's unreal.

Feel free to jack into my plug

Want to get promiscuous with strangers? (come on, admit it.) Offer your iPod to passersby on the street. Show them your soul.

The RIAA may not be hip to the idea that music is one of the few culturally-accepted and universal American forms of spirituality, and that people want to share their music with other humans. It is a form of communion. We will leave for another article the discussion about how spiritually impoverished the nation must be when jacking into a stranger's iPod is one of few and mysterious ways we've found at reaching into each other's souls, and continue on to dreams of evermore high-tech communion:

Author Douglas Rushkoff suggested that iPod sharing is a legacy of online file sharing -- essentially the same thing, except offline.

"It's kind of a stoner's ethic, really, the way you pass the joint at a Dead show," he said.

Sharing an iPod through its headphone jack is also a crude, low-tech version of what some predict is the real killer application of future iPods: transforming them into short-distance broadcasting devices by adding Bluetooth or similar radio technology, coupled with Rendezvous, an Apple-developed networking technology that allows devices to discover each other automatically.

read the article at Wired