I’ve just added
deb http://pandora.debian.org/~bali/debian unstable bali …to my apt-get source.list so I can grab the NNTP patched version of mutt. Which means that I get to easily read newsgroups like rec.arts.sf.science
Which means I get to read mails about living on a braneworld.. Which means I get even less done.
Ahhhhh hell, let’s make this more interesting.
I’m going to use this file to store my notes for this week’s NTK. If it goes well, I’ll do this every week.
Eek. Show’s over, I guess.
I am, as anyone who knows me will tell, almost pathologically suspicious of authority figures. I’m also a bit freaked by people who are too similar to me (one of the reasons why I held back from moving to SF for so long is walking into a bar where everyone looked like me, smoked like me, languidly slumped in their seats like me and talked forever about computers).
On the other hand, I do have heroes, lots of heroes. They’re generally people who are somewhat bit like me, but in some way … better. My plan in these cases is to monitor these people carefully, and see if I can’t assimilate their more noble characteristics as my own. I vaguely hope at the same time they get something good out of the trade too – certainly good enough for them to be friends with me.
I like this strategy: it means that I often end up friends with my heroes. I prefer heroes you can hang out with than heroes on stamps.
Anyway, my heroes right now are Zooko and Cory Doctorow. I’ve met both of them; when we met, we bumbled around, having fun in both cases. It’s not like either of them are Doc Savage in real life; I think you’d class all three of us in that “bright-looking, somewhat dazed info-feeders” category. But, man, does their work blow me away: it’s got that feel of the attainable goal, of just stepping outside of the tight loops of your daily life and trying to reach something just a bit further out. In both cases, they inspire you (or rather me) to sit down and do some hard thinking. Also, every time I read Zooko’s diary entries about his son Irby, I want to go out and buy a box load of toddlers. I’m not sure if that’s a noble goal or not. Zooko certainly makes it seem like one.
Back from the desert, like every other Bay Area dork worthy of the name.
I sort of had fun. I was a bit quiet, the burns didn’t excite me much: living here for longer meant a lot of it was, well, a bit too contextualised for me. It didn’t seem as earth-shatteringly weird as previously. I tried to participate, but I’m too clumsy and this year, I didn’t have the social wherewithall to comply with whatever it is that Burning Man demands.
Next year, though…
This time the West End run of Caught In The Net will have the cast I always dreamed of:
On a small copper plaque on the El Camino Real freeway:
Battle of Santa Clara
On January 2, 1847, somewhere hereabouts was fought the last northern battle of the Mexican war. The official casualty report: “dead none, wounded none, missing but one on the American side and he came up shortly afterwards stating that he had been searching for his ramrod which in the excitement he had forgotten to draw from his gun and fired at the enemy”
Dedicated October 14 1978
Mountain Charlie Chapter No 1850
e clampus vitus
“right wrongs nobody”
I’m attempting to return to the point where I enjoy writing. This may involve some work. But then writing for me has always involved a lot of work, ever since – well, ever since I started getting paid for it. You wouldn’t believe how much I struggle over even a few sentences, and often for very little obvious improvement. I truly envy people like Avedon Carol and Richard Kadrey who can write beautifully coherent arguments online at terrifying speed, before logging off and doing their real, paid, writing work.
I’m presuming a little. Maybe they fret as much. Prose appears fully formed, ex nihilo, with no clear idea of how it forms. Except in IRC. I remember being very disturbed when I watched over the shoulder of somebody I knew on IRC, regularly spilling out complete sentences into a channel at a speed I can’t even think at, let alone write.
Well, that didn’t take long: a fully packaged key-cracker for 802.11. And it’s for wlan-ng too!
Finnegan, the Folk Hero (of HTML).