Flutterby™! From 2001-05-01 to 2001-05-30

Everyone else linked to this yesterday, I only got around to reading it late: Cringely likens the .com boom to the cargo cults, with the seekers using the trappings of what made technology successful while ignoring the underlying substance.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Reason #4452762 that trusting data to other people is a bad idea: I had been reading comics on Philly.com. They dropped that service without warning this morning. Yes, I can go find all these on the web elsewhere, what ticks me off is that the list of comics to display that I'd entrusted them is gone now too. Since Netscape broke RSS by taking away the DTD recently, that's two reminders to make sure that you have local copies of everything.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Our friends over at Good Vibrations have proclaimed that May is National Masturbation Month! Participate in the Masturbate-athon and come for a cause! May's edition of the Good Vibrations Magazine doesn't limit itself to just that topic, however.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Via Backup Brain and a few other places, RFC 1149, a protocol for IP over avian carriers, has been implemented.

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Cool Science ]

Planned Parenthood to start selling own brand of condoms.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

So I dropped over to Clean Sheets, was... ahem... thumbing... through their masturbation celebration gallery, and came (sorry) across the work of Marci McDonald. Some really neat blending of the female form with flower motifs.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

I was in a funk, and took a bike ride. As I climbed from Five Corners up to Bon Tempe lake I noted the lack of wildflowers, and was kinda depressed that the green season was over so quickly and we were deep into the brown. Then I paid a little more attention.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life ]

Via Scripting News, Eric Raymond warns against a Microsoft anti Open Source PR campaign.

A few hours ago, a friendly journalist tipped me that Craig Mundie of Microsoft is going to make a major speech in New York tomorrow attacking open-source software -- specifically, attacking the GNU General Public License. This speech is probably intended to define Microsoft's party line on open source, and to shift the terms of the debate over it to one that Microsoft thinks it can win.

/. also mentions this, and points to a New York Times article on the Microsoft PR campaign.

[ related topics: Free Software Dave Winer Microsoft Open Source ]

These little dudes were hanging out on some remnants of a gate above Terra Linda on last Sunday's hike. Yes, I know, those images didn't scale well at all, you've gotta zoom them to see 'em.

[ related topics: Photography ]

David Steinberg on Yahoo porn

Because people are too embarrassed to openly and proudly enjoy pornography, Picasso's sexy work or, for that matter, any kind of reputedly unconventional sex, the myth that "nice people don't do that" manages to stay alive and well, fouling everyone with sexual guilt and sexual shame. As a result, life -- not just sexual life -- becomes a little smaller, a little less vibrant, a little less profound, and a little less genuine for all of us.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

A those wacky... well... what the hell category does Louisiana fall into anyway? Louisiana legislature passes resolution condemning Darwin:

"Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently superior to others," reads the Legislature's statement, which was approved 9-5 by the state's House Education Committee.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Yes, Flutterby is becoming graphics heavy. Kiki graciously ran the Firefall last night. Bob Mackey got into this great pattern of watching for the fuel bubbles to appear on the surface and grabbing them just as they ignited. This resulted in some pretty good pictures, despite the fact that I was shooting with the Canon S100 which has a huge lag between shutter press and image acquisition. Next time I find someone who's willing to play that seriously for the picture I've gotta have my film cameras along, and some fast tungsten balanced film.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography ]

Bob Mackey also talked about a project he's involved in to build an ultra light sailplane with some solar power stuff: Pure Flight. Not much at the web site, the world needs more digital cameras, but it sounds very cool.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Mike got a picture of Eric at work; I thought those big fancy expensive rack mount ball-bearing slide cases were supposed to make life easier.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits ]

...and a beer chaser. Look! Dan thinks he's a nature photographer! What this picture doesn't show is that she had a gaggle of chicks struggling up the bank after her, and was amazingly calm given that a big predator on a large squeaky conveyance (me on a bicycle) had just stopped to observe. There's a second shot with her head raised, but the lighting's not as good.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Via Daze Reader, Top Five Reasons Obscenity Laws Are Inappropriate To The Digital Age. Also, go read Pursed Lips today on the Yahoo porn situation.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I played with taking pictures at night without the flash. Got some interesting results. There are also some shots from my trip down the Ocoee.

[ related topics: Photography ]

So now that I'm looking about for a job, I'm talking with various people about life and work. And occasionally I'll get questions over some spaces in my formal education. This generally isn't an issue, 'cause my resume is fairly strong, but the interesting thing is that everyone who sees value in formal education says they see a college degree as an indication of someone's willingness to do the shit jobs and the busy work. Even in that huge thread over on Hack The Planet (you have been warned) most of the pro-High School arguments were of the "it teaches you how to conform" argument. My answer to the folks looking to hire me is generally "If you've got politics that bad your company isn't long for the world anyway", and that if that's what they want they should look to my year and a half running a stat camera and swinging boxes in a print shop as their benchmark, but my question to them, and to the world at large, is: Where are we going as a society when dealing with shit jobs and make-work, rather than instilling a passion for learning and knowledge, is the primary function of our educational system?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Photography ]

If you're in Seattle, you have no excuses. On Saturday, June 2^nd, David Steinberg will be giving a talk at The Wet Spot titled Real Sex In Front of a Camera, on his experiences in making the transition from editor of erotic photography to photographer himself. I don't know how much of the contact info they want generally posted, so if you're not on one of the mailing lists drop me email and I'll send you a phone number. And we need to encourage him to give the talk in the Bay Area too!

I was fascinated by the dynamics inherent to sexual photography. How does a third party, with a camera in his hand, encourage a couple to feel unselfconscious enough to share with the camera and the outside world the subtleties of their most intimate and private connection?

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Congrats to Dori and Tom of Backup Brain fame on their marriage. Even though I'm not a fan of the institution myself, two people expressing a commitment to their friendship deserves a little public adulation.

Ziffle forwarded me a pointer to The Love-Ed Solution which looks like a tale that blends a utopian vision and a free-love sexuality in some... new and interesting ways. I think I'm going to have to put it on my reading list just because it'll be so useful for blowing minds...

[ related topics: Ziffle Books Invention and Design ]

In a just slightly disturbing parallel with the .com phenomenon, the San Francisco School District has lost $15 million.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

I don't think I've mentioned it, but somehow I managed to live in Fairfax for 5 years and miss the music scene. Recently Bill dragged me out to 19 Broadway to hear the Mike Marshall Band, which was awesome, especially given that it was a Monday nighter. Next Monday night Charlene and I went to hear a band Ross was sitting in with, and on Sunday we dropped in to hear Dori and Dave. That last one is great, it seems like a bunch of old lounge players and studio musicians from the area just drop in and jam, and they're all obviously having a lot of fun.

[ related topics: Music ]

In that essay on Yahoo porn that I linked to, David Steinberg mentioned the Erotic Picasso exhibit. Salon has an interview with Gérard Régnier, curator of the Erotic Picasso exhibit on, among other things, why this show will never run in the U.S.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

That link immediately below only has a teaser if you're not a Salon Premium member. As the "for pay" sites on the web proliferate, there will probably be more links to sites that cost money. Already some people like free registration sites like the New York Times to be noted, anyone have feelings on this? Despite their declining standards, Salon seems to be popular enough that in my circles everyone's tossed 'em $30.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Via Tastes Like Chicken, what happens when you gloss over the preflight checklists, a totaled Continental MD-81.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

I've noticed two things that might be correlated with the new Bush administration:

1. The anti-pornography forces are starting to get loud, not just with their pull on the whole Yahoo thing, but in high profile public meetings with Bush administration officials.
2. California's "a few power plants down for maintenance" has turned into a full-on national energy crisis.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture ]

Ran into Peter Babakitis today at San Anselmo Coffee Roasters. He's just finishing up a movie of Henry V, shot on digital and edited on Macintoshes, and was showing me some of the comp work and effects he was working on. The clips he showed me looked pretty good, partially because he managed to tap into the reenactment culture, and they all showed up with their own costumes and equipment to be extras in the film.

[ related topics: Movies ]

With the recommendations that I take a vacation, and Todd's accounts of his recent trek up the Oregon coast (which he's gonna post a link to from here, right?), I've realized that much of the joy of a vacation is the mindset which leads to the neat conversations. Since I live in a place lots of people come to visit, I figure the difference is I need to be more touristy. Today while getting a haircut (first one I've had in [mumbledy mumble] years) I talked to a man who was in the merchant marine, and he recounted some of his experiences in the Pacific during World War II. So, your assignment for today is to go out and ask a random stranger about their story. Got me movie previews and a first-hand account of a kamikaze attack today.

[ related topics: Todd Gemmell ]

Sunbrothers Studio is doing the roses again: This Saturday, starting at 9!

ICANN: the movie.

As if having more money than brains wasn't a problem to begin with, now you've gotta worry about that fine British engineering: Rolls Royce issues recall after car explodes. $360k cars aren't what they used to be:

As the technician drove away from the pump and hit a switch to roll up the windows, the explosion blew out the windows and damaged the convertible top and interior.

(Snicker: The automated category picker suggested Microsoft as a topic for this entry...)

[ related topics: Humor ]

Douglas Adams dead at 49. They didn't mention if he remembered his towel.

[ related topics: Books ]

I try never, ever, to link to a weblog without stealing a link from it, 'cause I don't want to drown in "link to my site" email, but Todd Belton is a special case. While he's trying to ignore Pihua, the latest incarnation of his online journal, and figuring out what to do with Mouthorgan while good content keeps leaking out there despite his best efforts, he's also started Utopia with Cheese, a weblog without as much focus as those other two, but in his style is still entertaining.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

Via Hack The Planet: Gracenote under pressure. I need to do a little bit of research, but I do need to clarify my feelings on this matter, especially the patent issues which aren't delved into in this article, because there are some career choice impacts here...

[ related topics: Intellectual Property ]

The Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery has pictures of your favorite amino acids and drugs. Really. And they're cool!

[ related topics: Drugs Cool Science ]

Topspin passed along Bert Hickman's Quarter Shrinker:

The large current that's induced into the outer rim of the coin may reach a million amperes or more. Since the initial energy is in the range of 3,500 - 8,500 Joules, the instantaneous power is awesome, and for a brief instant is roughly equal to the electrical power used by the entire city of Chicago. The repulsion forces between the work coil and the coin create a huge radial inward compressive force on the coin that easily overcomes the yield strength of all the metal(s) in the coin, causing it to plastically deform the coin into a much smaller diameter.

[ related topics: Cool Science ]

DEA fakes arrest claims, "but kids can believe us when we say drugs are bad for them", a spokesperson might have added.

A former supervisor told the Herald that 70 percent of the arrests the DEA claimed from 1998 through 2000 were phony.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up ]

Just took a little time and finished Susie Bright's How To Read/Write A Dirty Story. I don't want to be nasty, but with the direction that the Best American Erotica series has taken and the self-indulgence of Full Exposure, Susie has quickly catapulted herself from "I'll buy anything with her name on it" to "I'll wait for the reviews from people I trust." There are a few potentially interesting exercises, but for the most part this is yet another "how to write and get published" book, and the world does not need another one of those.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture ]

Aargh! So Charlene's using another computer here to do some web surfing, and she asked "Where'd my document go?". Some asshole excuse for a search engine had JavaScripted stuff all to hell, replaced the home page with itself, and blew away her "back" history. Now she's frustrated and saying "damn it" and "fuck" a lot. I obviously made a mistake in enabling JavaScript on that platform. JavaScript sucks.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Had an interesting and fun evening last night that I can't tell you about 'til I run my description past one of the other people involved, but part of it involved dinner at The Helmand, 430 Broadway in San Francisco. Let me highly recommend. Very yummy and surprisingly affordable. The business card says there's a related one in Cambridge Massachussets, too. If you happen to be down near City Lights or The Lusty Lady it's worth a stop.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Food ]

It seems to me the big failure of the web boom won't be all of the stupid ideas that failed, it'll be all of the great small ideas that could've supported a 5 person company, but instead have been built into 50, or even 500 person companies because they had to try to grow to match the faith put in them by their investors, and are now finding it impossible to support all that infrastructure. For instance, I don't know how long Sendmail is going to survive, but I think the folks who write Ghostscript will probably make a living for quite a while.

[ related topics: New Economy Open Source ]

San Francisco: an idiosyncratic guide for the goth-geek-freak-hipster-nerd.

The first thing you should know: don't go to Fisherman's Wharf. You may think that you've got a strong stomach, you may think that you can handle any cutsey, tacky, mindless little thing that popular culture can throw at you, and that you're just going to shrug it all off as amusing kitsch... but why take the chance?

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

I went to Perverts Put Out! last night. Even though it took me an hour-twenty to get there (If you're a touron going into the city and miss all the "left lanes are FasTrak only" signs that start on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, do not try to back up out of the freakin' toll lane! Pull through, then go inside the building and talk to the nice people!) and parking sucked so I got there 20 minutes after it started, I had great fun! Lots of laughter, some poignant moments, some erotic, some biographical. From Kirk Read's "I moved in faster than a stereotypical lesbian joke" to Carol Queen's tale to Charles Anders being his usual self, it was really fun. Next one is apparently July 28^th, I'll fight you for reservations.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Starting and stopping things causes wear and tear. So what happens when you shut down power plants to cause shortages to jack the price up? Why, you have more power plants down for maintenance.

Just Say Blow: Students for a Drug-Free White House asks a question of wossisname:

The Bush administration has announced it will deny federal financial aid to students who won't answer questions about their drug histories. Since this policy comes from a man who spent an entire campaign refusing to talk about his own drug record, we have one simple request:

[ related topics: Drugs Politics ]

Via Pursed Lips, (although in my defense I think I would've found it eventually...), Heather Corinna talks about adult-adolescent sexual relationships in Rage of Consent.

If we were to rear our children in environments which empowered and supported their sexuality and self-esteem, and were supported as parents and mentors in doing so ... if we made sure they received lifelong and comprehensive sex education, and we treated them like young adults, placing the responsibility and accountability for their actions on them ... that old rug, the "moral protection of the feeble innocents," would be pulled right out from under us.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Ethics ]

Updates, at least from me, will probably be a bit slow this week as I expect to be semi-swamped. At best they'll be like the two below, snitched links and a bunch o' copied text.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

Howl! Ziffle passed along this gem of Amazon categorization.

[ related topics: Ziffle Humor Books ]

What do you use your Palm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi...3903/pdabuzz/104-8007068-8542308 for?

Supreme Court upholds first amendment in cell phone bugging case. What made this interesting to me, besides the fact that it's news that the first amendment was upheld, was what this might mean when COPA, specifically some of the child pornography bits, comes under scrutiny:

...the court ruled narrowly on whether a publisher who came by useful information legally may be punished because the information was gathered illegally.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Sexual Culture ]

Students elect lesbian to prom king, class president and parents baffled at this show of acceptance.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Wow. Can't talk about it much, but recent events have made me a huge believer in Perl, Tcl, and other quick and dirty languages that are good for brevity and prototyping. Especially as I'm watching people doing debugging and trying to think in C.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source ]

Stolen from Randomonium, the Museum of Depressionist Art

[ related topics: Humor ]

I don't usually go for the goth thing, but Adrien Welch's work in this week's Clean Sheets has some interesting images and some very nicely done retouching.

[ related topics: Erotic Coyote Grits ]

Bob Dylan is 60 today.

Yes, I am a thief of thoughts

not, I pray, a stealer of souls

I have built an' rebuilt

upon what is waitin'

for the sand on the beaches

carves many castles

on what has been opened

before my time

a word, a tune, a story, a line

keys in the wind t' unlock my mind

an' t' grant my closet thoughts backyard air

it is not of me t' sit an' ponder

wonderin' an' wastin' time

thinkin' of thoughts that haven't been thunk

thinkin' of dreams that haven't been dreamt

an' new ideas that haven't been wrote

an' new words t' fit into rhyme

[ related topics: Music ]

A Walking Tour of the Barbary Coast is an interesting quick history of the red light district in San Francisco, from the current annual SF Bay Guardian annual Sex issue. Their 10 sexiest people in the Bay Area is also an interesting list worth reading.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Opera 5 for Linux was officially released last week. I guess I didn't notice because the last beta was working so well I didn't check the website for updates as often.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Via Pursed Lips, go read David Chess's musings on Miller vs. California.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Dang it, I missed the picture, but given that I hang out with people who use "yoni" in regular conversation, I found the Yonique yogurt truck that I saw on the highway yesterday amusing.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Phil and I have been experimenting with "team programming", one of us typing, the other looking on. It takes a strong ego, because there's always someone else there to see mistakes, but yesterday and today we've developed a decent system that we're fairly sure both of us understand. I'm not sure that this is the way to develop all code, but when fleshing out larger frameworks that will be filled in with detail code later there's a lot to be said for it, especially when one programmer is a strong coder, but is unfamiliar with a particular environment's quirks.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Salon is pissing me off. I know they've been declining for a while, and I subscribed not because I think it would make a difference given their horrificly bad management, but because I felt a touch of whimsy, but today... they ran an article which miscast a 12 year old's fascination with computer games as a porn fixation, which finished with the amazingly clueless 'And while he sleeps, maybe I'll whisper in his ear, "Hey, sweet boy, could you stay a kid just a little longer?"'. Now I realize that most mothers apparently have lobotomies that happen sometime before conception and last 'til a little after the kid goes off to college (well, how would you explain it, then?), but do the editors of Salon have to help this poor woman show just how little she understands human beings? I mean, c'mon, what-in-the-hell does she expect is happening with a 12 year old boy? Why this amazing desire to deny reality? Sheesh.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

A Chronicle article on the recent sex-worker's film festival focuses on the family values aspects.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

On Friday we went in to Jezebel's Joint ("the bar for Doms & Daddies, Strippers & Trannies") for the party celebrating the Bay Guardian Sex issue. Not quite the right venue, far too many people squeezed into a space that wasn't broken up into a way that let us hear the speakers, although there were a couple of fun lip-syncing trannies who got the crowd going, and a couple of good stories, Charles Anders knows how to hold an audience, Carol Queen retold the story I heard at Perverts Put Out last weekend. I do think I want to go back and hang out at Jezebel's more often, it was an interesting and fun crowd, and we had some good conversations.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Went into the city to stop by Felicity's Fetiche and a few other places, and ended up at the 2PM session of the San Francisco Sex Worker Film & Video Festival, "Sex Worker Skivvies" (ie: shorts). It was like watching demo reels with people who got more in-jokes than I. Of the fiction, Whipsmart was a funny look at the dominatrix with the roommate-from-hell; the first third of The Blind Date, a tale of a call-girl and a client who find out they know each other, was well written and performed with just the right amount of slapstick, unfortunately the rest was written on the nose, a little more subtlety would have made the point more effective. But it was fun to feel the audience reactions as the tired clichés were torn apart. Afterwards Katherine Bergeron said a few words about making Whipsmart as a film-school class project and talked about her teacher trying to impose a moral message that she thought was wrong. Sara McCool's Big Girls was a neat look at fat women in porn and sex work, including some interesting revelations on the power dynamics of some of those relationships. A few other pieces, all of which were quite watchable, although The Biter's Sex TV was as bizarre as you'd expect a French-subtitled Japanese comedy troupe to produce.

What was really striking, though, was being in the audience and hearing the murmurs of assent, the jeers, and the cheers and the applause as various takes on prostitution and sex-work in general were presented. Fun crowd, next time I think I'm going to try to clear my schedule to see more of it.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

As you scarf down the obligatory hot-dog today, take a moment to remember those who have suffered in the cause of freedom. Not just those who've given their lives or their bodies or their minds in armed conflict, but also those who've endured imprisonment, arrest, persecution and prosecution to help us win and maintain our freedoms domestically.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

A quick Annie Sprinke autobiography over at Spectator magazine titled My Brushes and Crushes with the Law.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I saw this on the headlines at a coffee shop, and was reminded of it via Yet Another Web Log, Danish researchers contend that the placebo effect is a myth after doing meta examination of several studies.

[ related topics: Health ]

Also via Yet Another Web Log, Celera's fruit fly sequence may be less than 50% accurate, which might throw into doubt their claims of "sequencing the human".

[ related topics: Bioinformatics ]

Hadn't seen this before angryCoder. The first link in is an interesting editorial about coders not doing anything but code. There was a time in which my life revolved around writing C code for DOS, watching the Simpsons and playing the Simpsons game on my NES. Occasionally, Dan and I would break away for a hour bouldering or killing ourselves on skates. Now, I always leave work early on Tuesdays for Ultimate and Thursdays to spend time with my daughter.

[ related topics: Games Coyote Grits ]

An awesome article over on Kuro5hin that doesn't quite go far enough: The Phenomenon of Channel One delves into advertising in the classrooms and the perversion of news. I was having the filtering argument with Jeanne, she asked Alec "can you get to porn from school computers?", I trumped the conversation with "can you get to Disney?". Which do you think is more damaging to children?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Jesus saves! He passes to Gretsky! Gary passed along an article on the popularity of modern Jesus statues, especially in sports playing poses.

[ related topics: Religion Humor ]

Giggle... The tale of the Craig's List "Gorgeous Guy". This woman sees a guy at a bus stop, so she posts a message in "missed connections"...

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

Study says sex education doesn't increase sexual activity:

"The overwhelming weight of evidence shows that sex education that discusses contraception does not increase sexual activity," concludes the report

[ related topics: Children and growing up Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]