Fuzzy Rainbows

Hike

2007-09-12T21:58:00.001-06:00

Hike with some peeps in the ECE department.

gchat annoyance

2007-08-13T20:51:00.000-06:00

If you happen to use gchat at all, then you should right now log in to gmail, click settings->chat->Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online.

I found out about this problem the other day after I had been emailing someone about renting a room at my house. Suddenly the next day, they showed up in gchat on my buddy list. When I looked I found that I had a shit ton of people added who were offline (many emails weren't even gmail accounts) and this kinda spooked me out. Tell your friends to turn this shit off, I can't see how it could be a useful feature.

Science reveals: Democracy dead

2007-07-16T01:24:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading George Lakoff's book "Whose Freedom." I highly recommend checking it out, it opened my eyes to how people think (at least a theory that is much more plausible than rationalism). The basic idea is that people form thoughts based on an unconscious metaphors which define how they are able to reason about a situation. Lackoff applies this theory to politics, and speaks specifically about the neo-cons attempt to redefine the language (and hence the political metaphors which control the debate) surrounding the word "freedom."

He finishes up with a real knockout punch, a nytimes article
which describes an MRI study in which they asked conservatives and liberals to take part in. The study consists of testing what parts of the brain are activated when facts are given which contradict the persons political ideology. What they found out was that when a fact was given which contradicts your frame or metaphor, you discard of it in a largely emotional process and don't consider it whatsoever.

The conservatives have discovered this some time ago, by saying one thing and doing another, and appealing to the conservative metaphors. The democrats are beginning to catch on, and they must attempt to reframe debates and stop using language which supports the conservative metaphors. But even if they succeed, is this democracy? How can we have a democracy where it matters not what you say, but how you say it?

Copyright fight

2007-07-07T22:13:00.000-06:00

Imagine a world where all information is freely available. You want to learn how to cook? Google it and 3 million hits come up. After refining your search to Northern Indian cooking, you find a particularly nice book or a youTube cooking show that you like. Feeling generous you tip the content creator with a micro payment.

Imagine a world where artists and engineers are commissioned to produce work, and upon completion this work is released into the wild. A world where Copyright means you have the write to copy anything, up there with the right to bear arms and pursue happiness.

The way I see it we have two options. One option, the way we are heading, is to heightened copyright infringement law, and expanded punishment. Remember all those slippery slope arguments about this that or the other? Well this is the slope sliding down to the abyss. Take a look at Gonzalez proposed legislation. Note the proposed brand new illegal act punishable by life imprisonment. Like the war on drugs, this new copyright war will be just as inane and towing the same prison filling baggage.

The second option is that we pass new legislation, which begins to expand fair use. Eventually when the public has time to invent a new compensation model for information, we can open up to a complete right to copy. The revolution has begun, even now major Artists such as Nine Inch Nails releasing their music for free, adding even the composition files enabling people to create their own derivative works with ease. In scientific fields the free flow of data and information can only help with progress. I hypothesize that the right to copy combined with the internet will likely spawn a new golden age in literally every scientific and artistic endeavor.

Start the copyright fight now, and refuse to use the RIAA and MPAA language and metaphors which frame this debate. If we continue to use phrases such as "Intellectual Property" and even "Piracy," I'm afraid we will have already lost. Here is another article which states my views much more eloquently.

Black Bill

2006-11-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

I decided to torture myself a little and downloaded Bill O'reilley's election day aftermath show. It is quite comical just to see how close Colbert has mimicked the guy, but nothing is as funny (or frightening) as the real thing:

"We've been saying for months that the terrorist are going to try to influence the election by stepping up the violence in Iraq, and trying to give the impression it was out of control. Now nobody can disagree with that, now that's true. But is it fair to say that the terrorists wanted the democrats to win?"

People watching this show are basically brain washed, it is amazing. I wonder if Bill consciously does this, or is it just an innate gift?

Impeachment?

2006-11-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

Now that the democrats put the smack down on the fucktards in Washington, what chances do we have for impeachment? I propose that if Bush gets convicted of war crimes (we would need to repeal the recent law absolving him of guilt), we could string him up on Christmas morning and have a double hangin, Bush and Saddam. If god would be so kind to maneuver that kind of sick justice, I would buy the biggest goddamn christmas tree I can find and start throwing out hallelujahs like meth at mega church!

More from the balcony. Too bad they are moving.

2006-07-18T09:09:00.000-06:00

balcony

2006-07-18T09:02:00.000-06:00

From the baclony at Cy and Jeff's place in Lugano

2006-07-18T08:58:00.000-06:00

Janneke and friends in Amsterdam

2006-07-18T08:56:00.000-06:00

Church of the Restaurant

2006-07-18T08:55:00.000-06:00

Restaurant in Copenhagen

2006-07-18T08:53:00.000-06:00

Bikes of Amsterdam

2006-07-18T08:50:00.000-06:00

House boats in Amsterdam

2006-07-18T08:40:00.000-06:00

Chris started today

2006-06-05T21:12:00.000-06:00

Scary I know...

Picasa for linux!

2006-06-05T20:48:00.000-06:00

This is a test of the picasa for linux...
Hmm it seems to wok damned well. Go get it.

Another reason windows bites

2005-10-01T22:20:00.000-06:00

Have you ever blue screened the recovery console? Have you ever seen the windows recovery console? If so, I pity you, I truely do. As of five minutes ago I didn't even think it was possible to blue screen the recovery console... but yeah.

Just try installing a driver which happens to delete your /WINDOWS/system32/drivers/pci.sys and then try desperatly to figure out how to fix that shit. Yeah simply copy the file right? Well after screwing around a little I found that on the windows install disc it has the pci.sys file, but it is compressed. So then after poking around I saw this "EXPAND" function. Try it if you want to see the blue screen in action. I may have played around with the up and down arrows too which was printing out garbage before the blue screen.

At this very moment I am about to try the "COPY" command which according to ms's website, will decompress the file when copied off the cd. Ok, it seemed to work, but fyi, it decompressed but didn't change the name from pci.sy_ to pci.sys.

Also as a funny sidenote the command "NET" says this in the recovery console's help: "use NET USE to map a network share point to a drive letter." This would be pretty cool if it worked, maybe you could mount a samba share and copy some files to fix some shit and whatnot, but alas, this is what it says on ms's website: "Although the Help file states otherwise, the net command is not usable from the Recovery Console. The protocols stack is not loaded for the Recovery Console. Therefore, there is no networking function available." So at this point I don't know how anyone would be able to fix their shit if something serious went wrong. You can always use linux to read the drive... too bad ubuntu didn't have ntfs write on by default.

Lessons learned

2005-09-10T14:05:00.000-06:00

If we learned anything from the Katrina fiasco, its that you can't let poor people have guns. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/?CM=050908_katrinaOnScene&CE=linkNext

hardcore

2005-09-04T11:02:00.000-06:00

Deep in the underground, there is a sound, a sound straight from hell. In total darkness... the world will shiver.

Qwest Strikes Back

2005-08-14T21:54:00.000-06:00

Those damn unions are at it again, rattling their sabres trying to scare up more wages for the poor Qwest workers. Those poor workers are afraid of 16 hour manditory over time, and more expensive health care plans. Hell, with the extra 8 hours a week manditory, that should easily cover the cost of the health care plan increases. (Right now they have a measily 8 hours of manditory overtime a week).

I'm glad to see that these unions are finally buckeling under capatolism's warm blanket of prosperity. I mean what they heck are they for anyway?

Judy Miller, goat or justice?

2005-07-10T15:58:00.000-06:00

In case you hadn't heard, last week Judy Miller was sentenced to 120 days in prison for refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation. The investigation has been going for two years, trying to find out who leaked the name of Joe Wilson's wife (a undercover CIA operative) to the press (Robert Novak). Its a fairly complex scenario, and it appears that Novak has made some deal with the prosecution, since he isn't going to jail. But revealing the name of a CIA operative is a crime, and in this case it was also a dirty trick by the Bush Administration to render payback against Wilson for his investigation into the "Iraq buys yellow cake in Niger" story.

So now every damn newspaper in the country is crying fowl at Judy Miler's sentence. She didn't even write an article they say. They say that this sort of thing will prevent wistleblowers from talking to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

She didn't write an article because she is a Bush Administration lap dog, and co author of this fun article (among others) which helped the president get his war on. She obviously was in close with the administration, and this time she didn't write an article because she is protecting them, and NOT being a wistleblower. She is in fact, working against the public good, and it looks like she will pay for it.

I don't know much about Judy Miller, but I want to see Novak on the chopping block, and the Administration officials held accountable for their deviousness. My sentiments are mainly because I don't like those people, but I am also concerned for free speech and the integrity of our news media. Will integrity be strengthened here or weakened? I don't know. Check out these two articles for both sides.

NY Times

FindLaw

I know, I know, its not often that I agree with the law, but what can I say.

Idoru

2005-07-01T04:05:00.000-06:00

I settled down tonight to take it easy and go to sleep reading a book. Six hours later and here I am. I feel kinda sad now, like I should have taken more time and romanced the read a little. It was a damn good book and I highly recommend Idoru by William Gibson.

bitweb

2005-06-29T01:43:00.000-06:00

So I was thinking, what about a new type of web server that uses a p2p scheme to distribute load and which creates redundancy to avoid a single point of failure.

One problem is that the dns query will only (to my knowledge) return one ip record, so there is always that single point failure issue. Would it be possible to set up a dynamic dns p2p scheme where each node updates the dns record every few minutes/hours to help avoid this problem? I guess you would have to be careful that only trusted nodes could update because you could have your webpage hijacked.

Freenet addresses these issues but it would be nice to have a solution that just fits right into the current web scheme. Maybe even while you are browsing the page you run some java app that helps distribute the load. Imagine all slashdot readers distributing the linked pages, eliminating the slashdot effect.

New Mexico Is the Best!

2005-06-22T23:58:00.000-06:00

My humble beginnings.

Largest body of water in New Mexico

Second largest body of water in New Mexico

Exotic Invasions

Booty!

And back in colorado a nice sunset to end the trip

Idaho limited

2005-06-22T23:57:00.000-06:00

Here are a couple pics from my idaho trip.

A beautiful meal!

Anarchy!

Anarchy!

neato

2005-06-19T23:26:00.000-06:00

Yamaha FJR1300
You scored 5 moxie, 10 zeal, and 2 pomp!

You have the characteristics of a master street rider. On the way to
work, your love for riding sometimes leads you to take the long way.
The 50-miles-of-back-roads long way. You live for the perfect road, and
plan vacations around riding.

You need a bike that can handle your addiction to the twisties as well
as comfortably carry two on a weekend trip through the mountains. Your
bike is the FJR1300. Can I borrow it someday?

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 62% on moxie
You scored higher than 96% on zeal
You scored higher than 48% on pomp

Link: The Motorcycle Personality Test written by iocaine on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Fuzz on the other side of the Rainbow

2005-06-17T01:49:00.000-06:00

Well I'm still working on the positive stuff... I'll get back to ya soon.

Welcome!

2005-06-05T21:36:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my new blog where only the positive side of things will be discussed! I love everyone.