Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

I think when my own personal history is written and I tell people about what I was doing in the summer of 2006 in LA one thing will stand out. That I stood by blocks away while the South Central Farm got bulldozed. It’s not a 100% binary issue, since it does involve to some degree squatting, but not like squatting and making a crystal meth factory, more like squatting and growing edible plants. So for that, I feel sorry, I think it could’ve been done a different, more interesting way… why not warehousetop farms, why wasn’t there a proper migration plan laid out for the individual farmers. Why didn’t people take the time to do the right thing. Sure plants can grow back (and will in my opinion, somewhere somehow), but the very act is so disheartening.

But on another note, if you’ve heard the words net neutrality and don’t really know what it means. Imagine if your favorite toll road all of the sudden started charging variable tolls, with certain large corporations (the telephone companies here on out referred to as the telcos) choosing who pays what size toll. As it stands now, the telcos compete to offer service to both providers (ie Yahoo, Google, About.com) because these service providers need wires to hook up to the internet (this is done in big ol’ data centers or in Yahoo and Google’s case the telco wires usually go straight to their own server center) Anyway, then you and I (or our work) pays the telco to hook us up to the other end of that line, so we can see internet services anywhere from here to Zaire (with North Korea excepted (they don’t want to join in, but we would accept them if ready) and maybe some others… for example Iraq didn’t actually have internet properly (as in the .iq country extension) until after our invasion and some gutsy entrepreneurs went and set it up.) Anyways, as you can see a telco gets money from both ends, anyone who connects has to pay. And everyone pays based on some scale or other, but now they’d like to set the scales such that the people who pay them the most get the fastest transport through their lines. This would be like if 18 wheelers could slip the toll booth operator a $50 so that you could go 40 miles over the speed limit. Sure, they’d get where they’re going faster, but my oh my, things would get dangerous to the point where you’d see a lot less small cars on the road.

And lets remember that google, like a small car basically started out in a garage (actually a dorm room, but close enough)

Here is the link to the main hub for people fighting to save net neutrality (as in everyone on the net plays by the same rules in terms of speed):

Save the Internet

Note it’s couched in sort of breathless terms, but it’s true, when the post nuclear apocalyptic visionaries at RAND set out the first blueprint for what the Internet (then called ARPA/DARPA net) should be in order to survive a nuclear holocaust, this idea would’ve seemed pretty queer.

I apologize for the half truths, mixed metaphors, etc. etc. in this post, but I hope I got some one to get the concept of net neutrality that didn’t before. And peace to the displaced south central farmers, I am truly sorry that I didn’t even try to really help out.

Here. Not at all self explanatory, so maybe I’ll be able to write it up a bit later… you can see me hiding in there rocking an achewood shirt amongst all of the sweet people who made such awesome stuff. Honestly I feel like a Milhouse when Bart let’s him know the secret password and come up to the tree fort (note this is a meta simpsons reference, not actually referring to a specific show or anything, only the characters.)

I’ll update this with more (including flickr jazz and maybe the video if it gets youtubed)…

Is it ok computer? ummm well anyway, the www.machineproject.com / www.scrapyardchallenge.com thing I did today was officially the funnest (technical term synonym being: most fun) thing I’ve done for an entire day since oh… I don’t really know, definitely a long long time. (Our workshop at my lab was pretty darn fun too come to think of it, but less anarchic) It was just stupid smart fun. I didn’t know what to expect. There will be videos, pix, etc. etc. Every single person there (who went to the end) did something totally awesome and original. I’m going to work on getting a variable voltage -> midi box put together (it’ll go to the front of my things to solder queue) so I can play this instrument I made. Which… is a red office chair that you play by scooching around on it. And I wasn’t really thinking about the playing it with your butt aspect when I made it (originally the design was to incorporate an endless potentiometer on the rotational axis, but the pot didn’t fit right! and I didn’t want to dremel it down) The result was definitely way funnier to watch, at least I think… although people said it looked like I was in pain. It was just weirt because I had to really sit on the dang thing to make it work. And _really_ sitting takes effort.

Also met ~15 or so people who, if impressions based on spending one day working super hard side by side (and sweating a bit, cause it was hott up in the machine project), do really really great things.

Mega propers to the organizers of this roving band of construction Katherine and Jonah who not only now live in my former digs Park Slope, Brooklyn (repruhzent) but are getting their PhDs from Trinity College Dublin… and think about and do big things for a living. And Mark of the machine project who has built an amazing space… One thing I would’ve done differently… bring my friggin’ notebook. That was a rookie mistake there. As made exemplary here by the fading memory of the guy who actually set up the synth itself (MAX/MSP) and the names of a lot of other people although there were a lot of Marks (one Makr…) and so I guess the rest of us were the funky bunch (badum ching) … fading … darn… oh well, we’ll cross in flickr or somethin’ like that. (speaking of flickr, I took a few photos, but others got video, etc. etc. etc.) Too bad my instrument made me look like a damn fool. Damn fool. I could dream about becoming the next star wars kid, but I doubt it looks that purely true and awesome.

… in other news:
We all missed the world cup final… I hear that some famous dude tried to crack open a dude’s sternum with his head. It’s like Alien (aliens, alien^3, alien resurrection) in reverse! (oh man check it, with the french commentary, et pour quois?) I would hasten to bet that the one guy said something so wrong, so unrepeatable, that it would’ve made any red blooded man head butt him in the chest. (hah)

Clark 8 practiced tonight in a sweet sprint fashion and we f’ing killed it. If we don’t play a show it’s basically your loss (you being the world at large). Because we’re good, and I’m not just saying that cause I’m in the band. We kick it super hard and then head butt you in the chest. (Song to sing in your head while reading me writing like this: Red Hot Chili Peppers “If you see me getting high if you see me getting high, knock me down…”)

finally, I tried to play through the ‘in my tribe’ 10,000 maniacs songbook that I’ve had since time immemorial. I could play the songs, and lord if Rob Buck (RIP) and those guys pick some sweet, sweet chords, but I just started crying like a little baby by the time I got to about the weather (that’s three songs in)… it’s just too much, it like tore me up with homesickness and reminiscence and wow… Natalie Merchant when she was who knows how young wrote some of the most righteous words, perhaps I was just too young to get it when I was actually able to meet her a good 3 or four times. I think I was pretty deep into my too cool for 10,000 maniacs and their major labelness by the end of it, but my god, even “candy everybody wants” is like such a perfect meta pop song. Insane. (oh, btw her solo work and the 10k maniacs without her, sweet too) (for those of you who don’t know, I’m from Jamestown NY which is the home of Roger Tory Peterson (bird books, if you know), one supreme court justice (chief maybe) named Robert Jackson (thanks for the reminder Dad on the name) who had a good hand in forging the international law system post WWII that our country has now taken upon itself to forget about, Lucille Ball (she had this TV show or something ;) ), and the 10,000 maniacs, and about 28,000 maniacs doing amazing things within the city limits these days and some 230,000+ more living in Chautauqua county at the westernmost tip of NY state)

My batteries are shot so I’m sleepin’ now.

Ok… good things, got accepted to the MIDI controller scrapyard challenge tomorrow. Bad things… have a giant! assignment due Yesterday (metaphorically) and wednesday, and a bit of code to perfect ASAP. Good things, biked about 40 miles in the past 48 hours (including a spinning class, the SciArc RideArc 1 year anniversary ride a solo run from Pasadena to USC in the noontime sun today, I am now red.) Bad things… eh… nothing much more other than this assignment, the code bit will be pretty sweet once I finish it (it will be stylishly crafted and well thought out, because I can base it on some stuff other group members have done).

Good: paid a parking ticket yesterday. Bad: just under 5 months late… I think I really hate parking tickets for unknown deep seated reasons that I should talk to a therapist about.

Good: clark 8 will be practicing today and maybe tomorrow. Bad: we have no shows booked anytime!?! Help!!!!

This guy seriously needs a new shirt from metallica and a new iPod from apple. from: eternal time sink boing boing. I always feel happy to hear about people surviving lightning strikes, because the only person I knew well who got hit by lightning died (before his time).

In other news got my new glasses, no one thought they looked weirt. That’s good.

I am going to go grab my new pair of glasses (Marc Ecko Scopes that look like something Marc Cuban or early p-diddy in the shadow of Biggie (RIP) would wear, all that with a touch of amateur Air Traffic Controller). As some may know, my old pair got chewed up.

When I tried on/ordered these glasses about a week ago, I felt really against the societal mores about what glasses should be… now I’m thinking oh my god, how could I have gotten crazy glasses? People will expect me to have at least one gold tooth (minimum) now.

They will probably just look normal, right? End of story, buyers remorse feels worse without the instant gratification at the beginning.