Blog

Clarification

For me, not for you.

Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/wz1978-07-27.sbeok.flac16/wz1978-07-27t05_64kb.mp3]

For a while I took the whole idea of subjectivism (?) to an extreme, where I figured since there isn’t an objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ you ought to do what you think is right. The problem with this is since nearly all actions are made out of self-interest, tolerance is unaccounted for. And that just can’t be.
So now there is the exception to the rule.

Zeitgeist

I suppose this has already made the rounds, but it took me until today to see it. Some good points, some crazy points, all bound to start a fight.
Whether you agree with anything in this movie or not, its bound to make you angry. I suggest watching it, waiting a while, and then seriously considering what it has to say.

ZeitgeistMovie.com

Oh, and in that same vein (I guess) remember tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day – remember to do your part.

Bus things

While my Guitar Gently Weeps as done by Jake Shimabukuro
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/jshimabukuro2006-06-09.RevivalTent.superlux.flac16/jshimabukuro2006-06-09t09_64kb.mp3]

Well, part of the original plan with the bus was to have it as a traveling wifi hotspot. I’m starting to think that is no longer necessary. Several things have changed since then.
1) There are far more hotspots than there were three or so years ago when I wanted to do that. Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, other random places all have wifi, and they are by no means uncommon.
2) Everything I would have wanted an internet connection for can be done on a cell phone. Blog posts can be made by email, photos and videos can be taken and then uploaded from the phone, Google Maps are accessible on most phones as well.
I think I’ll still bring my laptop, but I think I’m going to be much less reliant on it. That should save some power, make it easier to travel, and I’m sure there are some other benefits as well.

I’ve been watching eBay for a few months now, and it seems the cheapest school buses are the 40ft flat-nosed buses. And of course the fact that it is winter helps push down the price a little. So that is very likely what I will end up with. I’m in love with this style of front end, although I’m not sure why. It just looks perfect. Unfortunately that is only on mid-80s model buses, and that may prevent me from getting one in that style.

One way or another, I should have a bus by February.

Mall

So it seems someone has already tried living in a mall, even if it isn’t exactly how I envisioned it. This may be even cooler. Michael Townsend lived in the mall for four years while it was still running. See his site here, or listen to an interview with him here (streaming below).

[audio:http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_383_A_Home_In_The_Mall.mp3]

Upgrades

Rocksteady by Houdini Roadshow
[audio:http://www.rockerblog.de/houdini-website/02_Rocksteady.mp3]

Last Thursday Fedora 8 was released, and of course, I wanted to upgrade. I was still using FC6, and I figured an upgrade over the existing OS would be ugly (in part because there is one release gap between the two, and I never really had a stable install of FC6), so I prepared for a fresh install. Thanks to Google, I didn’t have to worry about documents or the like. I’m still working on moving more of my media online (videos to Google video/YouTube, pictures to Flickr/Picasa). In the end, I only had about 12 gigs of files from my old system that I wanted to keep (not counting my external hard drive).

So I go to move those 12 gigs to the external, and something is wrong. My external is now read-only. After playing with it for a while, and figuring out that there wasn’t much I could do, I decided I’d just move the contents of the external back to my desktop, format the external, then move everything (plus the 12 gigs) back to the external. Great. While copying the 200-some-odd GBs to my desktop, the filesystem on the external corrupts. I have no idea why this happens, and after a couple attempts I find it cannot be saved. So I’m formatting the external, and that goes smoothly. I can now back up those 12 gigs, and install Fedora 8.

And I did, without any other issues. But I’m now down one very large music collection. I don’t care too much though: its happened before, I know I can rebuild. Just frustrating. So today, I wake up, and find out I went over my bandwidth. Crap.
Anyway, Fedora 8 is slick, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in Linux.

Existential Radio Theater

If you’d like to, listen to this interview from NPR’s Fresh Air which aired yesterday.

During that interview with David Guarascio, Moses Port and Sameer Gardezi linked above, they got to talking about how they worked together on a radio show while in college, although the radio station wasn’t actually accessible anywhere off campus. That, along with a crappy timeslot, gave them very few listeners. They described it as “existential radio theater” where they would keep trying to get people to call in, and give them some indication that someone was listening.

First of all, that’s an incredible phrase. Secondly, I got to thinking about it, and that’s largely what people do on the internet. Blogs are great examples (this one less so than others, but still). For the most part, blogs don’t get read, and even when they are, you can usually count the amount of readers on your hand. So why do we do it? Why do we keep creating even when we know no one will see it?

I saw a video of Larry Lessig’s talk from this year’s TED today, and in it he suggests that is just what our generation does. Granted, he expresses this idea far more eloquent than I have (next to Steve Jobs, Larry Lessig is my favourite person to watch speak) but the point is still the same. Our generation plays a much more active role in culture – blogs are just an extention of this.

…

…Right?

Union Maid

Times Like These by Jack Johnson
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/jj2005-08-05.at931.shnf/jj2005-08-05d2t05_64kb.mp3]

So I saw Bee Movie tonight, and it is mostly entertaining. Definitely weird at times, but still, overall I came away with a good feeling. The only thing I found a little weird was the underlying capitalist propaganda, which may not have been intentional, but still jumped out at me. In the beginning, the bee stands out, and breaks the norm, challenging authority. And he wins, but we’re only halfway into the movie. Suddenly, everything goes to shit, and it turns out that change is bad, and ruining the way everyone lives. So they go back, and everything is well again. Moral? Be a cog.

Otherwise, this got us talking about the impending strike of the Writer’s Guild of America. As we walked down the corridor of the movie theater, we couldn’t see another movie out in theaters or any other movie advertised on the walls (soon to be released) worth seeing. And the strike hasn’t even begun yet. If it does turn out to be a longer strike than everyone would like it to be, we’ll be looking at a long winter, with even less worthwhile movies than normal.

Although obviously this has less of an effect on independent movies. The problem of course is that they can never quite make the jump to widespread release. At this point Eric brought up an idea I hadn’t considered: theaters could start showing independent movies in an attempt to draw audiences in. That would be a massive leap forward for independent film makers (and their fans). It would also be one more step towards the decentralization of media, simillar to what is happening in music right now. Less dependence on the big three (or is it four?) production studios, and more emphasis on the content. I would personally love to see something like this happen. It has been nothing but benificial for music so far (at least from the consumer’s perspective, the labels aren’t so happy).

So go on writers – strike!