September 2001

Shocking attack this morning in New York and Washington D.C.. My heart goes out to all who lost their lives today. I fear for my nation, and for the world.

Additionally, my mother is in town from Virginia. And last week, Jenny’s mom was in town from Miami.

Watched parts 1 and 2 of Band of Brothers [ based on the book of the same name ] last night. My father is in town from Virginia, and he was a veteran of Vietnam and served in the 101st Airborne Division. My father is a history buff, and has read on the history of the 101st extensively. He has attended some of the reunions of the Screaming Eagle Association. The series is good, and worth a look.

airshare.org is a collective | co-op | science club experimenting with 802.11b wireless networking. I’m a fan of airport and have for more than a year. Airport is no different than 802.11b, but is easy to install for someone like me. Anyway, on Saturday I hung out while some very cool demonstrations and experiments of technology happened. Free (or cheap) ubiquitous internet is a helluva good thing I think. I’m eager to keep experiment with this stuff – which is cheap, and easy to use. So check out airshare.org and see what’s happening here in San Diego.

Great busy weekend. Went to a lovely party @ Kynn and Liz’s Place up in Lake Elsinore on Saturday. It’s another county over – in Riverside County. Jenny and I had a great time.

David McLean of evolt.org got something I wrote onto Yahoo! Canada’s Quotation of the day—today.

“So how do those who would protest get smart? They need to organize in such a way that they can beat the police, and the media, at their own game.

Every protester in my mind needs a video camera, and an online journal. Eyes wide open, direct to the world – Media savvy. Documenting abuses by the police in realtime. I truly believe, all evidence to the contrary, that the truth will out. This is my manifesto – for those with real causes (that is, causes worth fighting for) media-savvy, nonviolent, hyper-protest.

Think: McLuhan meets Gandhi.”

I don’t write much about activism, but I believe in justice, and in the ability of people to subvert the status quo by avoiding complacency, and being smarter. We have so many tools available to us, we should use them. If we don’t use them for ourselves, they’ll end up being used on us.

Yesterday was my Paternal Grandfather’s birthday. He’s a WWII veteran – he was a Chief aboard several ships in the Pacific Fleet. He had joined the navy a few years before the war broke out. Anyway, one story retold last night was that when he visited the Arizona Memorial, he saw a buddy’s name—and was heard to exclaim—“That guy owes me ten bucks!”

He did not deny the story, so I take it to be true.

In any case, it’s a very funny story, and fits my Grandfather to a T.

I’ve had these Star Wars Songbook songs on my site—in the smorgasborg— for a long time. I had always assumed they emerged from the collective unconscious somehow. But the other day I got a nice note from the original author asking me for attribution, and said it would be fine if I left them up. How cool is that? So you should all visit his site—www.theforce.net/songbook. Nifty!

New Lab item. How to make .php files masquerade as .php3. It’s a bit of magic which requires the very cool mod_rewrite for apache. Good mod_rewrite tutorials here and here.

While situating the new computer room, I find myself compulsively listening to two radio shows online (in RA)—Air Sculpture pt.1 pt.2, and Anthropology pt.1 pt.2—from FZFAN.

Frank Zappa’s insights into the Award Shows, the Music Business, and MTV are as apropos as ever. He talks specifically about MTV as the point where bands began to be signed for how they look, and not for how they sound. I like where he says that MTV was what the music business deserved.