SXSW 2005 and activism

I came down to Austin for SXSW 2005 Interactive. It’s the first time I’ve been in a couple of years. I’m always surprised when people remember who I am from year to year.

This time someone said hello that I hadn’t really talked to since I was like 18. It was Jon Lebkowsky. I met him, along with a bunch of other folks, in Atlanta to talk about EFF. Seeing him again reminded me of how high a priority political activism once was in my life.

del.icio.us feed

I’ve found religion with del.icio.us. I keep my bookmarks there.

Kula Shaker Lyrics in Sanskrit and Translated

It’s a shame Kula Shaker is no more. They had a great pop sensibility that fused Indian rhythms and instruments with rock. I’ve always wondered what he was singing in those songs. The site has pictures, Sanskrit and explanations of the lyrics.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Watchmen in 2006 [ via korvac ]

Headed in the right direction

I snagged this picture back in Huntsville one afternoon. I’m really surprised by how well the camera captured what I was looking at. I was looking through the small group of photos I made to use for headline images and this one grabbed me. The clouds are parting, the sun is coming out and I’m heading in the right direction. It really captured the spirit of how my life is going right now.

Documenting America one block at a time

I am happy where I work now but I thought it’d be fun to make a goofy application for a job at A9 traveling cities in the US taking pictures.

I am interested in the block view driver position. I find myself having to calm a down a bit as I write this because I have spent the last ten years of my life practicing for this job. As you weren’t there for the last ten years of my life, allow me to catch you up. I have done solo drives to every state, except Rhode Island. That includes a trip to Alaska to just a smidgen south of the Arctic Circle. I’ve driven and hiked through remote Bureau of Land Management areas or the dense streets of Boston. I have camped, slept in bus stations or stayed in hotels all across the country. Each night in a new place I would meticulously record my routes in personal journals and my thoughts about where I’d been. I’ve faced down snow storms with white-out conditions, tornados, flat tires, being locked out of my car, washed out roads all with nary a scratch on my car (quite a feat as one travels through the Yukon wilderness). While my passion for travel contiues to this day, particularly by car, I’ve made a map of the highlights of my travel between 1997 and 2002 at http://gnumatt.org/greencar.html. I’m familiar with digital cameras and GPS technology. I still remember the day I won my first GPS in a giveaway years ago. I immediately bought batteries and proceeded to run around in the parking lot measuring my speed and tracking my route with the GPS. While I’m no William Eggleston when it comes to documenting the colorful ephemera that drifts through my life, I continue to work on my photography skills and feel comfortable troubleshooting any digital camera problems. As far as my technical skills I started with an Amiga 1000 in 1986 and have built a career of sorts for myself around the Internet and in particular the web. As you can tell from my resume I’ve been working with the Internet since 1993. While I began doing Unix system administration and networking I’ve tried to focus more on backend development the last few years.I sincerely welcome the opportunity to discuss the block view driver six month contract position.

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Julie

Where have I been? I feel like this space has become a stranger to me. I started this entry back in January. I’ve been wanting to write about Julie but I’ve been so busy spending time with her I’ve not had a moment to put pen to vellum, so to speak. I’ve also wondered what to write. Things with her are still changing and as soon as you describe something you start to put limits on it.

Should I stay or should I go now?

In some sense, I consider marriage a laboratory for going down there into the scary bad places. […] To me, there is no more vivid arena in which our frailties are revealed and our foibles enacted.

Salon’s advice columnist, Cary Tennis, put together a soul baring essay on his personal experiences with alcoholism, and a ragged life frayed at the edges before he married at 40. Most importantly he talks about how these experiences inform his advice to to people who ask The sex is gone — Why should I stay?

My friend, my Amiga

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

The Amiga is still fighting the good fight with the release of Amiga OS4.0.

February 17th, 1986 changed the course of my life. I received an Amiga 1000 for my birthday. From early December to my birthday in February my father died, my mother remarried and I began living in my step-father’s house. I was lost and had no idea what was happening around me. I had never heard of the Amiga before and didn’t really know what to do with it, but it promised so much.

The Filth

I’m a latecomer to the Grant Morrison oeuvre. I enjoyed Arkham Asylum when it came out. However, I didn’t get around to reading The Invisibles until last year. That one blew my mind apart. Today I read through his latest The Filth and what a hoot. The opening pages of the book start out with a sort of Patient Information warning like you see on medicine.

What is The Filth? The Filth contains the active ingredient metaphor. The rectangular, multicolored comic books marked “The Filth” contain 500 mg of active visual and thematic metaphor per issue. Comic books also contain the inactive ingredients paper and ink.

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