Here’s a few photos from last nights zombie-walk and launch day. Everyone had a great time, and we thank all of the folks that have made this possible.

No, we can’t take credit for all of the zombie folk — wish we could though. Maybe next year?

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Buy a t-shirt. Enough said.

Via -Corpses Gone Wild

I’ve been watching a film about the prolif­er­a­tion of atomic weapons, and I find it to be most disturbing. Atomic weaponry is nothing to be proud of, and I find it to be reck­less to promote it as such. What the hell was wrong with Amer­i­cans in the mid 20^th century? What insanity gripped these poor fools?

I under­stand that this was a different time, but some­thing that really gets me, is the atti­tude that we, as a WWII (and post) military-industrialized society are in the right by promoting the use of such devas­tating tools of warfare. To have a pres­i­dent (Truman) tell someone that we are ordained to destroy, which is prepos­terous to think, smacks of policy from recent Bush years or his contem­po­rary Obama. Humanity is not predis­posed to oblit­erate itself. The persons repre­sented by this film are nothing short of acutely stun­ning in their igno­rance. Nothing justi­fies the anni­hi­la­tion of “virgin targets” mainly consisting of civilians.

At one point I was watching a priest speak about how he thought it was neces­sary to keep “protec­tive devices” on hand. How divine and pious of he — encour­aging living in fear with guns and canned bean prod­ucts in a glori­fied base­ment. I am inclined to think that the 50’s and 60’s were a ridicu­lous time, in which reli­gious extrem­ists vied to lead a once great nation on a destruc­tive campaign to mili­ta­rize the country further.

It’s silly to think that we are so willing to go along with the whims of fools. The system­atic attack on free and humane thought repre­sented in this video, are testa­ment to what reli­gious extrem­ists have worked towards for decades.

As a socialist, a humanist, a secular thinker, I am appalled by our atti­tude towards the world, and am saddened still in knowing that people such as those in this movie, are still in office today. Fear is a disgusting thing, it stunts growth and rots the mind. Only manip­u­la­tive bastards promote fear over reason.

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I’ve been a huge Google fanboy until late, and it’s design prob­lems like this that make me think that Moun­tain View has lost it.

Why in the holy fuck do I need another menu with copy and paste in it? The system already has one, why dupli­cate it? WHY?!! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

This annoys me even more than the omis­sion of the system dictio­nary shortcut of “⌃⌘D” which I use all the time to expand my minus­cule vocab­u­lary. I don’t want to Google every fucking word that I need a point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion on. WTF Google? Further more, don’t get me started on having to install some jank-ass PDF reader to have a shit­tily rendered copy of my bank state­ment displayed with glorious, wretched Times and Arial font. ¡No me gusta!

Not only does it bring this weird half Windowsey feel to the Mac, but it also has this old metallic look to it as well. This is seri­ously, one ugly browser. Even Firefox is coming along with its new theme, but it looks like Google and Opera are really in a neck and neck battle to produce the worst eyesore of a browser ever. I don’t even have the heart to screen shot Opera, I cannot let it onto my machine — it burns us.

I think Google has lost its touch with the web. This latest proposal on how to main­tain the web goes so far as to prove it. As much as they want to spew about being for an open and free web, this speaks against it.

I will abandon the web if it goes the way of cable TV. I don’t have cable right now because of the limi­ta­tions of the form. I do not want regu­la­tions on some­thing that I enjoy using “free and openly.” “Free” and “open” are not buzz­words, they are states of mind, they are prac­tices. One cannot say that they are for freedom and then say that they are against in the same breadth and not expect to be called out.

Google, quit bull­shit­ting us with your “Don’t be evil” slogan. Busi­nesses are all evil to some extent, and Google is no excep­tion. There is not a company that I know of whose primary func­tion is not to make a profit, and profit is, by nature, evil. I’m not going to get into my pseudo-Marxist beliefs, but money is the cause, the prover­bial root of all evils. Money is a tangible way of quan­ti­fying one’s supremacy without phys­ical force and it moti­vates like none other.) I’d go so far as to wager that should ventures like the internet not be so prof­itable, they would be of no interest to most entre­pre­neurs or investors. Busi­ness men have no busi­ness in tech, inven­tors, scien­tists and users however, do. We’ve already lost our univer­si­ties to busi­ness men, lets not lose the web too.

As I said, I will abandon the web just as I did TV should it be segre­gated into two halves — the idea of a public and private web goes against the spirit of the internet and kills inno­va­tion. Using the guise of hospital services, and govern­ment needs, is the same as saying the reason we need regu­la­tion on content is to protect chil­dren from porn — false flag warfare. Expand the networks and sell band­width appro­pri­ately if you must, but do not limit the web. The web is a public utility, not a private garden, and amuse­ment park.

There is only one web, just as there is one planet, both governed by one species — us. Let’s fight this, before it’s too late. The world doesn’t need more NBCs and CBSs, we need more exper­i­ments, more commu­ni­ca­tion. More open, less closed.

Behold, this is what can be done in an hour or so of looking at your­self and deciding that you no longer wish to have a piece of punc­tu­a­tion repre­senting your work on the web. Sure, the internet can bring out the most narcis­sistic tenden­cies in all of us, but who doesn’t want a cartoon of their face that looks swell on their hipster phone’s home screen? I sure don’t, right? WRONG!

BTW, none of that shit was done in Photo­shop either — I fucking hate that shite. It makes my head explode to dig through all of the options in that motherfucker.

Acorn from Flying Meat was what I used to do the touch-up and coloring.

Opacity gave me the effects, like shine and whatnot.

I did use one Adobe product though, Ideas, which is pretty badass at the cost of free (and my dark-hearted soul).

Hope you like the changes. I am doing every­thing I can to make this dump look all respectable and whatnot. Now if I could just do some­thing about the cobwebs and the stupid spool I’ve been using as an coffee table, I’d be classy for sure.

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I spend a lot of my time thinking about food, who doesn’t? I’ve cooked for years, both profes­sion­ally and leisurely — seven­teen to approx­i­mate it further. I’ve always wondered what people taste like.

I have this conver­sa­tion at least once a week.

I am better, more comfort­able, at least in regard to being online — it’s like I’m settling into a new home or a chair. Things cannot be the same forever. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I cannot write without a laptop, unless it’s of a short form nature. As poorly as I type, a touch keyboard makes my skill level infi­nitely worse. My iPad’s spellcheck despises the vocab­u­lary of anyone who writes at or above a 5^th grade level, and the case I have isn’t ergonom­i­cally conducive to writing. Given all of this, I am feeling pretty good.

I’ve swept away a lot of the dusty bits of blogs past that have been both­ering me for so long. I no longer feel the need to wave a flag or produce anything — if I do, it is for my own good. There’s a sepa­ra­tion of media as well. I have re-embraced Tumblr and plan on using it for some of the more trivial bits I find on the web. I’m back to a regular sleep schedule and dinner is a meal to be had at home and eaten the next day for lunch, and BTW, vegeta­bles are on the menu (I was eating like my room­mates, which is to say bad).

I’m drinking less alcohol, more milk. It seems that after thirty years, I still have a thing for Quiky. Time manage­ment is still an issue for off days, and I am still loath my living quar­ters, but hey, one thing at a time.

My previous URLs and hosting are set to expire here in the next couple of days, and I hope to let them die a peaceful death. The shant­cast might reap­pear at some point with a new spin, but let’s not do too much right off the bat. Baby steps, baby steps, What About Bob? style baby steps.

This is a test of the
Emergency Podcast System.

This is only a test.

Podcast: Play in new window | Down­load

Above is a screen shot from my kludged together MyFi setup.

I’ve used a few things to put this together.

The steps are simple, and the results are great consid­ering the costs if you have the mate­rials close at hand. I know this will come in handy for some other people too.

Sláinte!