By
anders pearson
23 Jul 2001
lani came to visit this weekend while she’s between apartments in DC. in an effort to appear like i actually am cool and have a life besides sitting alone in my apartment reading and watching cable, i managed to find a few things to do while she was here.
<p>on saturday afternoon, we went out to queens to go to the <a href="http://www.ps1.org/">ps1</a> <a href="http://www.ps1.org/cut/press/warmup2001.html">warmup</a> with omar and a bunch of his friends. the line was around the block but once we got in, it was a good time. lots of quality dj’s and cheap beer. pretty much everyone at the show was an attractive, hip 20-something. i felt like i must be in the middle of some weird, mtv created fantasy world. the exhibits at the museum were cool. there were sections focused on military uniform fetishes and on japanese consumer culture (the even brought in a live j-pop band). </p>
<p>after that, we went down to brooklyn to check out an underground show that the <a href="http://www.seemen.org/">seemen</a> were putting on. it was way out in the middle of nowhere in a fairly run-down residential neighborhood. we walked around following the directions to the place and eventually found ourselves outside someone’s garage. we were late so the show had already started. since the show was not <em>entirely</em> legal, they were taking some precautions. they would only open the door to quickly let a few people at a time in during quiet parts. during the not so quiet parts, the entire garage door would violently shake accompanied by bright flashes through the cracks and the sounds of explosions coming from inside. once we made it inside, it became pretty clear why it wasn’t a legal show. in a tiny little garage, there were packed about 75 people (significantly more than any sane fire marshall would sanction) standing and watching the <a href="http://www.monkeyview.net/kal%40seemen.org/very_interactice_pieces/revortex_6.vhtml">fire vortex</a>. the room was about 150 degrees and everyone was drenched in sweat. the fire vortex is an arrangement of 4 propane tanks surrounding a volunteer from the audience, each shooting 2 meter jets of flame in a computer controlled rythm. kind of like the <a href="http://www.lhpo.org/">large hot pipe organ</a>, but on a smaller, more personal scale. every time one fired, you could feel the blast of heat from the far end of the room. the part that really made you feel safe in that little enclosed space was that the propane tanks themselves were in the line of fire of the blasts. when one would go off, the flames would curl up around the bottom of another propane tank. by the end of the show, the tanks themselves were blackened from the fire. there were two fire extinguishers on the floor, but they were pretty much for show; i don’t think they’d have helped much if a propane tank exploded. we were late so we only caught the very tail end of the show, but it was definately one of the cooler (not literally) things i’ve seen in quite a while. easily the most dangerous musical instrument i’ve ever seen.</p>
By
quiet
20 Jul 2001
Ummm….I really want to go back to the days in which I believed that the dark vision of the future, where corporations rule everything, was in the future, and not right now. Check this out.
By
anders pearson
20 Jul 2001
went to macworld expo yesterday.
<p>i was pretty disappointed. just the same boring commercial shit. endless booths of small software companies selling not very impressive products. it seems that this year, instead of announcing new and interesting products or new and interesting features being added to products, every software company had the same announcement: “now available for OS X!!” so i guess everyone’s been too busy porting their apps to do anything new.</p>
<p>Apple themselves didn’t have much to talk about either. their biggest announcement seemed to be that OS X.1 would be coming out in september and would include features that should have been in the original release anyway (<span class="caps">DVD</span> playback, Samba support, etc.). i guess if you hadn’t already had a chance to play around with the tiBooks and iBooks, it could have been interesting.</p>
<p>the new <a href="http://www.apple.com/powermac/">dual 800MHz G4’s</a> look pretty nice though.</p>
By
anders pearson
18 Jul 2001
my coworker just returned from a 3 week trip to northern, rural sweden. he took a bunch of pictures while he was there. i find it remarkable how much the landscape really looks like maine. see: 1,
2,
3, 4
By
anders pearson
17 Jul 2001
apparently cheney’s power bill is $186,000 [nytimes article: use ‘cipherpunk’ as username/password].
<p>what the <em>fuck</em> is he doing?! </p>
<p>i cannot understand how a 33-room mansion could possibly draw that much power. that’s almost $6000 per room. the power bill for my 3 bedroom apartment last month was under $50 (that would extrapolate to $600/year). so cheney’s house, on a per-room basis, is using 10 times more power than my apartment. and we have a growing collection of computers and electronics that are on pretty constantly.</p>
<p>one person i was talking to suggested that the power consumption was due to cheney’s pacemaker and frequent need for defibrillators (those things use a fair amount of juice). someone else suggested that cheney’s just growing lots of pot and it’s all for the lamps in the closets.</p>
<p>i think he’s probably just got a killer 200kw stereo that he keeps blasting gangsta rap 24/7.</p>
By
anders pearson
17 Jul 2001
we’ve been having some issues with postgresql last night and this morning after one of my coworker’s servlets went haywire.
<p>if you experience any more problems, let me know. apologies for any inconvenience.</p>
By
emile
17 Jul 2001
if this successfully goes off as a “suicide by cop” i think were all file-system-check’ed. this is almost as bad as that “probable cause” monkey business. i thought only the big time g-men could ‘suicide’ someone, but that soon could be coming to a theater near you.
By
tuck
16 Jul 2001
this china and the olympics thing… i don’t understand what the big deal is. in fact, i’m pretty confused by it.
<p>it seems like china itself should not be so concerned about the olympics being held there. doesn’t The Party consider the rest of the world a bad influence on its people anyway? why would they seek out the approval of a world they are at odds with? economic reasons only? that’s selling out. what kind of message does it send to the chinese citizens? people whose minds they are attempting to control…</p>
<p>also, since The Party hates free speech and dissemination of knowledge and even today covers up events and happenings that it fears the world would look down upon… why the hell would they want 10,000 reporters over there? is it possible that while the olympics occur they will stop killing their handicapped and stop beating the crap out of peaceful protesters and stop sending members of peaceful religious sects to concentration camps? seems like a good time for brave frustrated citizens to share with the world what life is like there… what’s the government going to do, beat a citizen in the street in front of <span class="caps">BBC</span>/CBS/FOX news reporters while he tries to explain how government agents entered his home and killed his handicapped brother in front of him? </p>
<p>also a good time for pulizer-hopefuls to probe.</p>
<p>fukc. man.. actually… what a perfect time for student protests… with 10,000 reporters there, and china trying to improve its image, there should be protests and if the government runs them over with tanks again, there could be no denial- more cameras and satellite links than at any other period of time anywhere else in the world. what would happen? hmm./</p>
<p>what would happen if a competing athlete one day wore an ever-popular “Free Tibet” shirt… or if there were peaceful protests by visitors who were there for the games… what would the government do? on a normal day, arrest and beat and deport. (or beat, arrest, deport) but the games, and the crowd, and the cameras… not normal days. i’m excitedly curious.</p>
By
anders pearson
15 Jul 2001
slight redesign. something different.
By
jp
12 Jul 2001
at long last, I took in Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within tonight. a few thoughts:
1) wow.
2) even retina-shattering visuals can be harmed by bad writing (I thought everyone would take a hint after Episode I, but…).
3) wow.
4) the influence from the games is obvious: the character named sid, the similarity to FFVII in overall idea, the same visual effect schemes are even used from some of the cooler console visuals.
but the most interesting thing is the japanese sentiments that are portrayed throughout the movie – the buddhist and shinto beliefs concerning “angry ghosts” and the notion of all objects carrying a life force… really amusing. that these notions would make their way into the games, which would then survive intact and even be developed further in the silver screen production.
but seriously, if you’d like a crash course in the fundamental attitutes regarding sprits, life, and death a la japanese-style all wrapped in some phenomenal graphical achievement, it might be worth your seven american dollars.
