nothing is absolutely so

2011-11-22T19:51:00.001-08:00

I'm reading a novel about international shipping and although the content is occasionally interesting, its very badly written. I can tell that much of it is based on the author's experiences but its all very clunky. It made me think though that writing about topic that doesn't usually attract a lot of attention could possibly be easier to be successful in. Perhaps I should start a career as an edgy young railway industry writer.I should have drank some coffee today, I don't feel like doing much of anything. November, I suppose.

Oh Hi

2011-11-16T21:59:00.001-08:00

Obviously I'm giving this blog another go. I went and got myself lost in the woods for another year approximately. Without sadly ever getting to the woods short of the Hart House farm (this is not going to be the 'what I did on my summer vacation' post, which would be pretty hefty). It certainly been a travelling year, spent time in a dozen states or so. Moved into a new house too one neighbourhood over. I'm also enrolled part time at York in Computer Science (doesn't seem likely that's the program I'll stick too). I'm constantly reading these days, but realizing how little sticks if you don't reflect on it- so partially that's what I'm trying to do here.I'd also like to try to work my through all the backed up anecdotes I have in my head from my most recent trip to New York, New Orleans and the length of the Mississippi river (heck I can even spell it now). We're vaguely considering publishing a zine for the house but it will require I strap myself down and do some real writing. On the plus side this new interface for blogger is quite pleasing and swift. That will hopefully vaguely stimulate some activity.I'm struggling for reflections from today but I did have a couple ideas. I'm still unhappy with the wiki solution I strapped together last year- although it was educational .. its really sloooow to use. I'd likely need to start paying more than I am to host my own server or will have to invest more time in tweaking. It seems unreasonably sluggish (perhaps Apache is configured improperly for how many virtual hosts are enabled). What I noted that does not exist as far as I can tell shallow-ly is a website that'll stick a NDP or mustache or FREEBYRON, etc. on your twitter icon. So I could make that. I'd also like to make a Grease Monkey plugin that'll scrobble my CBC Radio 3 tunes to last.fm. I'd also like to make something similar that would let me tweet and scrobble from the CBC Radio 2 playlists page. Because of how the HTML is structured its certainly possible.I'm going to go to sleep now so that I feel good about being at work tomorrow. Rather than having another Brandy Fizz which is pretty rocking drinky-drink.

Fwd: Fort York Cycle Bridge

2011-05-16T20:25:00.001-07:00

Huh?

---
From: Councillor Mammoliti <councillor_mammoliti@toronto.ca>
Date: Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: Fort York Cycle Bridge
To: Chad M <chadmounteny@gmail.com>

Thank you for your email.

Please note that I am currently experiencing a higher than normal
incoming email volume and am unable to receive your message at this
time. Kindly redirect your email to my staff and it will brought to my
attention:

Melissa Palladino, Executive Assistant: mpallad@toronto.ca

Tamara Macgregor, Executive Assistant: tmacgre@toronto.ca

Lucy Arnone, Constituent Assistant: larnone@toronto.ca

Kind Regards,

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti
York West, Ward 7

--
We Love Power and Hate Authority.

On the Menu this Week (or why you want to come over for dinner)

2011-05-15T12:56:00.001-07:00

My fridge is loaded down heavily now, through three successive shopping trips I've built up my cache of staples to the point where I'll again be in a good position to be coming home and cooking with only minimal vegetable accompaniments needing to be retrieved periodically. I've felt like I've came down with recipe(rocal) reverse-amnesia, in that whatever notion I have I'll short circuit my thought into the loop of I can't cook that again! eventhough the last instance might have been months ago. I'm going to attempt a solution through better documentation, and making sure what I like is implemented at regular frequency.

Anyways this week I want to make some sort of white bean, asparagus, cabbage and potato stew, or possibly a potato curry-like dish like I often get from Empire. Else maybe some sort of potato and bean wrap. I'll have a to check the date on the lonely packet of tempeh in the fridge or get another one- it would be great to have another go at the tempeh-yam wraps that I enjoy so much. This may also require a reacquisition of barbecue sauce- or a ketchup, hot sauce replacement.

Grilled polenta and vegetables with cheese perhaps wrapped I think is also something I'd like to put into regular rotation. What else I could make with yams isn't coming to my right now besides the red lentil and yam soup I've made a number of times, but I think am a little tired of right now. I had to throw out a large tub of it after it lingered in my freezer too long- it had become a less appealing specimen though because of overcooked mushy yams in the initial compilation.

Filled either with polenta, yams! (a notion), or potatoes and refried beans with julienned carrots and onions, red peppers and lemon. and lots of crushed pepper, all wrapped up- I think would be pretty tasty too.

I've got two packets of tofu that'll be expiring in a couple weeks so- a tofu broccoli spaghetti night will have to be in the future. As well I already grabbed what I need for some tofu coconut curry, which is going to be my dinner tomorrow night. That will be with white onion, snow peas and carrot slices over rice.

I've got some bread to butter this week for breakfast. If I'm really grooving getting back on the steel cut oats would be great too. Also, I want to have more evenings of pirogies and cabbage, so I'll probably hold back half a head for that purpose.

Another thing, I want get some more salmon pieces to steam and put on wraps- for it to be the best, I'll have to get more mexican salsa.

Virtual Appliance Automatter

2010-05-17T05:49:00.001-07:00

I just had a notion, to start a VPS service like Slicehost but with the agenda of the activist hosting services (resist, riseup). Providing cheap utility computing for power-spreading projects.

Thats not exactly what I wanted to write about though; I had the thought at work the other day of creating an automated mess that would constantly make an up to date virtual appliance of ubuntu in different flavours available to the web by torrent.

So script virtualbox to nightly bring up a machine, download and install updates, clear its logs - then export a virtual appliance, zip it, and provide a torrent of it. In this way a fresh machine for experimenting on would always be available.

Also I just remembered to look into getting firegpg working well with bsquirrel mail for easy secure webmail.

Immigration Raids at Dufferin Mall

2010-05-13T17:56:00.001-07:00

Dear Sir,

Today I received an email from the community group No One is Illegal. They've asserted that last week Immigration Officers visited Dufferin Grove Mall and stopped people while shopping and in their workplaces demanding that they produce documentation regarding their status in Canada based solely on their skin colour, accent and other racial profiling characteristics. Additionally, those that were that unable to produce documentation were arrested and are being detained without access to legal support.

This is quite outrageous to me that my neighbours and fellow citizens
are being harassed by agents of the federal government based on their appearance and culture. Since I can find nothing on the matter in the media- I'd like to ask if you could provide any information to me about any random checks being done by immigration officials in this riding. And if such raids are occurring what you shall be doing to prevent further race-based harassment of your constituents.

Using ISO repositories in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Server

2010-05-10T15:21:00.001-07:00

I found an ISO image on HP's support website that has a collection of
utilities to use with Ubuntu Server on HP Proliant Servers (ie DL360,
380). Rather than mess with FSTAB to keep the ISO permanently mounted
and available, I temporarily mounted the image and copied the
directory structure to my home directory like so;
sudo mkdir /media/isoimage
sudo mount /home/readability/HP_ProLiant_Value_Add_Software-8.32-6-2.iso
/media/isoimage/ -t iso9660 -o loop
cp -r /media/isoimage/ hprepo
sudo umount /media/isoimage
sudo rm -rf /media/isoimage

Now open Ubuntu Software Source list;
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add the following lines to the end of the file;
deb file:/home/readability/hprepo/ karmic 8.32/non-free

Note that 'karmic' will correspond to whatever distribution you happen
(and the repository is for!) to be using (ie hardy, gutsy, jaunty) and
the term '8.32/non-free' is the path in within the repository below
the distro folder that leads to the folder for whatever version of it
you're using (ie i386).

Now update the source list;
sudo apt-get update

You've been hacking again haven't you?

2010-04-06T01:43:00.001-07:00

So I sat down and poke around on uCs today for proabably the first time in a month. I didn't necessarily get a lot done and probably spent more time reading wikipedia pages than programming but, at least I feel as though my mind is directed for having a little gadget ready to show off at notacon. I think what I'm going to try to make is my own compact 'digital mode' transmitter that will be able to transmit text data and images over a short range using a toy fm transmitter. Through hours of poking today, I found a good library for sd cards that supports the badgeduino hardware I want to use. It also includes a uart module for easy troubleshooting.

The remaining tasks are;
Get AVR sending tones
Get AVR sending KCS (cassette data) tones
Successfully record and decode data (I had all this done before; the code must be somewhere?)
Feed data from sd card to tone ouput
Integrate FM transmitter
Build badge shield

Sorry, this is a bit scattered, I'll repair it later.

Sleep.

2010-03-15T01:30:00.001-07:00

He is not a table-pounding revolutionary, but a practical, hands-on retrofitter.

as they say;

2010-03-15T00:54:00.001-07:00

keep your eye on the ball

vi

2010-03-15T00:38:00.001-07:00

This is pretty useful;
http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif

my micro guide to using ssh, screen and irssi for winning

2010-03-14T22:44:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd scribble down the most useful pieces of ssh, screen and irssi in regards to a solution for keeping a persistent irc session on a remote machine.

First thing you'll need is a machine that's on constantly to remote into with ssh server installed and a user account for you to make use of. This information is easy to pick up elsewhere.
but if you need a hint;
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
will get ya goin' on teh ubuntu

from the local machine either;
ssh username@foo-remote-hostname
or
ssh foo-remote-hostname -l username
(by default the connection is established on port 22, if another port is used, the '-p' flag can be used)

now that you're in you can start a new screen session like so;
screen -S session-name

and then run irssi;
irssi
once you're in;
/connect irc.freenode.org (freenode is popular irc server for opensource projects)
/join #channel-name (I'd suggest #ubuntu, #arduino, #sparkfun or #hacklabto !)

if you've registered your nick;
/msg NickServ identify username password

other useful stuff;
ALT + L / R Arrow; switch open windows
/q username; open a private msg session with a user (/q to close from the window)
username:blah blah ; page user in channel
/leave; leave a channel
/quit; quit irc
/ignore username; ignore use for session
_empahsis_
*emphasis*
/me action; states an action in channel

You can also do lots of fun stuff with screen;
CTRL-A C; create a window
CTRL-A N, P ; move between windows
CTRL-A S; horizontal split
CTRL-A | ; vertical split
CTRL-A TAB; switch between regions
CTRL-A D; detach from session

also;
screen -rd session-name; reconnect to session

2010-03-06T22:48:00.001-08:00

I'm still having trouble I believe laying out what I'm trying to accomplish. Its something like a hug, with words. A bundle of paper that really says, hi friend, I've been waiting and now that you're here, there's so much for us to do.

Someone said fight where you stand, and I'm thinking that's probably the best thing to do.

So what do I believe in?
Toronto is a special in the world, and has great potential to be the center of where things for the future are getting figured out.

Also that this can't be done without accomplishing a holistic relation between technology and activism.

So I need to write about that, since I can't draw it all together. It merely will have to be a collection, like an earnest conversation with a friend who's got an open mind.

Instant Feedback for C Programming in Nano

2010-02-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

I learned to program using python. Therefore the method I follow for learning is very experimental, I type in a bit of code, see what happens, tweak until its right then incorporate it into the larger program. With the interactive interpreter, this is easy, and can be accomplished in quite the rapid fire fashion. When I started learning C I wanted something similar, so I figured out a fine little one-liner that I was running in a split of a screen session that I had my editor running in.

gcc -x c - < hello.c; ./a.out

I came to notice that gedit has an 'External Tools' plugin which lets you execute commands in a window within the editor. So I created a tool that with one keypress will compile and execute whatever is currently on screen (saved or not). This works well for my purposes on testing non-interactive code.

To set that up in gedit;
Edit>Preferences>Plugins, Enable 'External Tools'
Tools>External Tools>New
Commands:

#!/bin/sh
gcc -x c - -o $HOME/.tempc;
$HOME/.tempc
rm .tempc

Input: Current Document

Fun!

Why Toronto is Worth It.

2010-02-21T22:18:00.001-08:00

Its February. I'm tired. Things seem their worst. Or they did. Probably some time this afternoon. I was low.

But then, then, then, this!
and the rest of the record.

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff; thanks for the punch in the face.

I'm awake now, wide open I'm looking around at this city. I'd forgot why I was here. I'd been dragging my feet and muttering; I was close to ditching.
I think its worth staying here, I think there's stuff to do. I mean there's stuff to be done. To be done and have fun doing it.
I was thinking about socializing, I think I should do less. Or that is the kind where it is its own, end. The kind I'd like is that which happens in the process of doing something larger. The beers after the meeting, heck the beers during the meeting.
I want to find myself caught up in something, with others. I think that's something that's hard to do here, and that makes it more worth it. There's community here to build.
Enough empty celebrations, as someone said, we have feasts every night, and flop when things don't go our way.

So what's the todo, to do?

Crossing the Sprawl by Bus

2010-01-08T11:53:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to figure out if its possible to cross the Bos-Wash Megalopolis by public transit.

So far;
[Merrimack Valley Transit (http://mvrta.com)]
Newburyport, MA to Worcester, MA by MTBA commuter rail (http://www.mtba.com)
Worcester, MA to Brookfield, MA by Worcester Transit (http://www.therta.com)
Brookfield, MA to Ware, MA ~10mi gap! (http://bit.ly/4Qyr4e)
Ware, MA to Enfield, CT by Pioneer Valley Transit (http://www.pvta.com)
Enfield, CT to New Haven, CT by CTTransit (http://www.cttransit.com)
[you can also go from New Haven along to New London (and a bit further, http://www.seatbus.com) which is about 50 miles from Providence, the southern point of the MTBA rail system]
New Haven, CT to New York, NY by MTA Metro-North (http://www.mta.info)
New York, NY to Trenton, NJ by NJ Transit (http://www.njtransit.com)
Trenton, NJ to Newark, DE by SEPTA ( http://www.septa.org)
Newark, DE to Elkton, MD by DART (http://www.dartfirststate.com)
Elkon, MD to Perryville, MD by 'The Bus' (http://www.ccgov.org) / ~14mi gap (http://bit.ly/6SqEDK)
Perryville, MD to Washington, DC by MARC (http://www.mtamaryland.com)
Washington, DC to Fredericksburg, VA by VRE (http://vre.org)
Fredericksburg, VA to Petersburg, VA by GRTC (http://www.ridegrtc.com)
[Petersburg, VA Transit (http://www.petersburg-va.org/transit)]

google maps transit route (http://bit.ly/59Klhg) 669mi ~60 extra mi from shortest route

Now I need to figure out how often each connection runs, and if I can do it all at once or while have to spend the night somewhere. It should take no more than a day to complete.

2009-12-13T01:35:00.000-08:00

15:59 * readability screams for coffee
16:01 < h______> /dcc readability send coffee.exe
16:02 < readability> running Wine is what got me in this trouble in the first place!

2009-11-26T07:24:00.000-08:00

I think though, I want to certainly try to build up a strong sense of 'why' (ie.. why this is very bad thing for all of us) in the larger document that's being worked on. So that its something that will educate people (of the collective opinion of the group) as much as it lays out any sort of code of acceptable behaviour. I sense that its something that's missing sometimes in more 'code of conduct-y' documents, and can lead to "I'm not allowed to make this joke or act this way, but its just because all the [insert possible target here] here are uptight".

Inclusive language is certainly a good aim for the tone of it all; I'd like people to be able to get the sense that the lab is there for them to grown in. Something like;

"This is Kimya on a rooftop screaming "WE ARE NOT ALONE!!! WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!!! COME HERE, WE LOVE YOU!!!" with big choruses and big arrangements and friends and toys and long rambling wordy epics and simple acoustic ballads and honest to goodness heart and soul and laughter and tears. "

Which is a description of a record, but stands-in well for my sappiest notions about the place of the lab community within the city.

Its not really true right now, possibly only because of it never having been considered by anyone but me. My notions of what a collective can be are certainly coloured by my encounters with other youth collectives and some wise punk bands that I've been lucky enough to get to hear.

Naively though, I think we're on to some pretty important ideas, that we can truly embrace your statement, that everyone is a teacher - and a student, is one of the most wonderful possible goals we could reach.

I'm glad you like the space, like the group, I've been so filled up by getting to know them all (I'm pretty new on the ground to this community, just a year.. ). I'd been lonely for community since I got out of school, and now to find it, and have both hands on helping it grow into something strong and diverse, I've really been having the time of my life.

Recording Internet Radio Shows with Cron

2009-09-29T15:16:00.001-07:00

This is a short script I threw together this morning to capture shows for myself.

#!/usr/bin/python

"""
streamdownloader.py

Script for downloading streaming mp3 files from internet radio sites for
a specified amount of time. Intended to be useful as something run from cron
and record your favourite shows. Have a lot of fun!

Usage:      $ ./streamdownloader.py <stream> <output filename> <length in minutes>
Example:    $ ./streamdownloader.py http://trentradio.ca:8800/hi-fi.ogg trent.ogg 60

Chad Mounteny
readability@gmail.com
September 2009

Should work great for Linux, have no idea otherwise.
"""

import urllib
import time
import sys

def main():
    while now() - length < start:
        data = conn.read(100)
        target.write(data)

def now():
    return int(time.time())

stream = sys.argv[1]
dest = sys.argv[2]
length = int(sys.argv[3])*60
start = now()
conn = urllib.urlopen(stream)
target = open(dest, 'wb')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

you've got to be ssh'ing me

2009-09-29T07:38:00.001-07:00

I work for a radio station. A radio station whose IT department seems to be determined to prevent me from listening to radio -- over the Internet that is. A whole swath of odd numbers ports are blocked from outgoing connections. This has annoyed me a number of times in the past whether I was just trying to set up someone's Internet radio appliance (the Sanyo model depends on an outgoing connection to port 5800) or like today just trying listen to a friend's show on Trent University Radio (trentradio.ca) which streams on port 8800. Thankfully I've got access to some powertools still in that I can make an outgoing ssh connection, which of course means you can do anything you want!

This one is an easy fix, the original link is;
http://trentradio.ca:8800/hi-fi.ogg.m3u

so first enter this on the command line (in Ubuntu);

ssh -L 8800:trentradio.ca:8800 user@fooserver

then open;

http://127.0.0.1:8800/hi-fi.ogg.m3u

in VLC or whatever you feel like.

I guess it would be fruitful to breakdown what's happening here. 'ssh' is the command for opening a secure shell with another host. Without any additions 'ssh user@fooserver' would open a shell window on 'fooserver' with the 'user' logged on. The '-L' flag means that we want to enable 'local port forwarding'. This means what it says mostly, any traffic directed at the first specified port ('8800') on the local host will be redirected over the ssh connection to the specified port ('8800') on the remote host ('trentradio.ca'). Its important to see here that the first specified port is arbitrary and I only assigned it to be the same as the second port for convenience.

Have fun!

the only things that really matter are what you give freely

2009-09-18T00:31:00.001-07:00

me: that whole 'creative economy' thing

2:46 PM its like; as free as you think you are -- you're not

because you become dependent on a benevolent government

its like the clergy was

2:47 PM people with natural aptitude in the past; could rise from their class and get a cozy post-secondary education and post in the church

they could feel like they were doing some good too

2:48 PM but when you look back on it now; you can see that they were just state-sponsored population pacificers

er pacifiers

and if they ever tried to really help people

(say providing information about birth control)

2:49 PM (or saying that jesus probably thought gay people were just fine)

well then out on the street you go

and thats how it is now for projects that depend on government money

2:50 PM you can escape your class; and get a job at an NGO or an art grant -- but really you're not free

uh.. ANARCHY!

2:52 PM that's why I had this big crisis with work; I had to disintegrate the fact from my worldview that my job is really making a difference. I've stopped considering that it adds anything to my worth to the world; its at the best a neutral thing to be labouring at

the only things that really matter are what you give freely

2:53 PM its kind of putting me in idealogical conflict with * because she sees things the other way; in that her employment is her contribution to society; and she just does whatever she wishes with the rest of her time

2:54 PM I don't know I'm right for sure

but thats just what my gut has been telling me for a while

I need to read on and on forever to really ever figure any of it out

2009-09-18T00:26:00.001-07:00

"Of course what's occupying my mind has been, which would seem to be occupying yours too is how to help the world when its seems like nothing you could do could make a real difference. I was despairing for a while, but then found myself studying people who really did make a difference -- and started to feel a lot better.

I found a quote a few weeks ago and it probably was the start in the more drastic turn things have been taking for me;

"To be a critic is to trade transcendence in for self-awareness and proficiency—which is not to say that geniuses don't know what they're doing...genius involves a sort of freefall, brave, bold and fluent, that most of us aren't capable of."

Certainly one of the many things I've taken out of it; is to not read too much philosophy.

Life 's been simplified really; I just have to think what might be good for the world; and implement it -- its the small-scaled solutions that are really going to matter and if it happens you do figure something out useful; its inevitably going to spread. In that way its much more effective than a massive infrastructure project."

notes from a letter

2009-09-18T00:23:00.001-07:00

"I think generally; that what we have to do is take responsibility for our consumption. In a way; thats what been on my mind in my spare thinking time lately; how to cultivate that responsibility."

"So I've been forming these ideas; about using the physical space the collective has -- as somewhere to base of a program out of that would outwardly appear as free (libre) technology education but would on another level have the purpose of putting people back in touch with the tools to create their own technology -- and beyond that the tools to manufacture anything else they might need with their own labour. Because I feel implicitly that when you're involved with production of something (food, clothes, transportation) -- you're more inclined to use it responsibly."

I shall use my time.

2009-09-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

2009-08-29T12:02:00.001-07:00

"These things the oligarchs will do because they cannot help doing them. These great works will be the form their expenditure of the surplus will take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long ago expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the building of temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish, not a priest class, but an artist class. And in place of the merchant class of bourgeoisie will be the labor castes. And beneath will be the abyss, wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself, the common people, the great bulk of the population. And in the end, who knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss; the labor castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away; and then, at last, after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the common man. I had thought to see that day; but now I know that I shall never see it."

- Jack London

2009-08-27T00:13:00.001-07:00

Angelika Hoerle

Hacky Ubuntu MP3 Merging

2009-08-17T16:18:00.001-07:00

This will NOT work under all circumstances (and it certainly would make a messy resultant file!), but I needed to merge some mp3s to bring them into Audacity without a lot of copy and pasting so I gave the following a try and it worked;

baruser@foobox:~$ cat file1.mp3 file2.mp3 file3.mp3 >> output.mp3

I can imagine this would not work if there was any differences in file format between the component mp3s (bitrate, sampling frequency, no. channels, etc.).

storm

2009-08-09T18:33:00.001-07:00

There just was a big storm here. Everyone in my apartment complex was out on their balconies hollering every time there was a big strike.

2009-08-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

During the Free Speech Movement, (Lee) Felsenstein had performed pedestrian tasks such as running the mimeograph machine, which was routinely delegated to the nerds. One night he was hanging around the student-group headquarters when somebody came running in and---erroneously---reported that police ad surrounded the campus. It seemed to Felsenstein that everbody went into a frenzy and turned to him in unison yelling,
"Quick, make us a police radio!"

Flustered, he responed, "You don't understand--you can't do something like that quickly."

The incident led him to realize that he would never be able to come up with technical solutions on demand, and so he decided to take the responsibility for working on useful technologies ahead of time. [...]

He had decided that he would actively shy away from the intensely political leadership meetings, instead styling himself as a movement technician.

- John Markoff, What The Doormouse Said, page 268

Finding the Physical Location of a Python Module

2009-08-06T12:29:00.001-07:00

I needed to find some sample code that came with a module and couldn't figure out where Ubuntu had installed it;

:~$ python
Python 2.6.2 (release26-maint, Apr 19 2009, 01:56:41)
[GCC 4.3.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import foomodule
>>> print foomodule.__file__
/var/lib/python-support/python2.6/foomodule/__init__.pyc
>>>

eab

2009-08-05T23:47:00.001-07:00

I read almost half of 1984 today. I'd never picked it up before, of course sometimes just because everyone likes something doesn't mean it isn't any good. Although reading it, and knowing that everyone has read it, and everyone still carrying on like they do, it seems.. Well its not anything I suppose. I already am working on the hypothesis that each of us is hyper-aware of all our actions and just choose to not modify them to better take into account the situation. Brains are lazy it would seem.

2009-08-05T23:13:00.001-07:00

a band called;
The Joint Chiefs of Math

that makes me laugh; a bit

Walking Life Transcript

2009-08-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

I love Waking Life, so I was happy to find that this website has a transcript of the entire movie.

ProxBox Remix

2009-08-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to mention a project I've been working on;

Its called the ProBox Remix and is a very minor modification of the stock OpenWrt alternative firmware for ASUS WL-520GU routers. Its just a backup of the routers config files using OpenWrts builtin backup/restore function. A backup made after I tweaked a few settings and installed proxy software.

So by following the instructions on the site you can turn a $50 router into a standalone unit that will provide proxy access for internet users in Iran.

As far as how to communicate this information to users in the country. I'm still no sure.

I would consider the information available on the site as only alpha quality but am working on expanding the features, so to allow access for different countries to be added on the fly or as automatic feedback from what appears in the news.

The List by Defiance Ohio

2009-08-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

[...]
Measured my days
and metered my years
in fears and muscle tension
[...]

I really like this song, I really like this whole album actually, and these people are nice enough to give it away for free.

Batch Normalization using Audacity

2009-08-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

So I have these mp3s I want to normalize. There's only about twenty of them so doing it all by hand in Audacity wouldn't be so bad and I'm sure there's easy ways to script Audacity to do the task.

What is normalizing you might ask? Well sometimes audio is recorded at a low level unintentionally or it is dubbed to a new medium at a less than ideal level. In this case, the latter is true.

So what you want to do- is to increase the level so that highest peak is as high as possible. Its easy to do this by eyeballing the waveform in an editor and using the amplify plugin accordingly but like I was saying this might get a bit tiring.

If you'd like to follow along;
Let's install Audacity first (on Unbuntu);

:~$ sudo apt-get install audacity

Now do this!

Open Audacity
File > Edit Chains
Add "Normalize"
Insert "Normalization"
Ok
File > Normalise > Apply to Files
Watch magic happen (quickly)
Have a beer (at 0 dBFS)

declaration

2009-03-24T00:06:00.000-07:00

And/Oh welcome to this world, have as much fun as you would like while helping others have as much fun as you are having. Be kind to those you love, and be kind to those you don't. But for Gods sake you gotta be kind, and respectful because we're all one soul. Be the best fucking human you could be!

Today, I the author am declaring my intention to live. I'm tired of my jello-y existence. I am going to love freely. Lavish compliments. Help everyone.

I will shine these words on my mind forcing negativity and criticism to crumble at conception. Let the waves of cynicism surrounding me go no further; sink them, squish them, and combust them into midnight bike rides, shouts of exuberance, impassioned fucking, and tottering piles of chopped vegetables!

When I find my resolve threatened I will turn to my own ingenuity and rummage through the junk drawer of my existence determined to find the improvised implements necessary to carry out these words.

I am strong; but I will need your help.