| Cuteness for D&D Fans! |
[Jul. 24th, 2008|02:32 pm] |
I just discovered a delightful comic, which is funny and has good stories, characters, etc. This particular one has a mighty passle o' cuteness as well - wee gnoll and gelly-cubie!
It's totally worth reading from the beginning. Warning: lots of fan service... but a fair amount of it is in service to the plot.
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote |
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| Travel Plans |
[Jul. 24th, 2008|10:20 am] |
So, Aug 1-3, I'm going to be up in Eugene, OR for Faerieworlds 2008, and then next week, from 08/08/08 to Aug 10 I'll be in Las Vegas, NV for DEFCON 16, I think I'm going to skip Black-Hat this year, cause I'm just not getting enough out of it for the price. (The next time I go, I'll probably be presenting my research.)
And then… Aug 25-Sep 1 is Burning Man!
Back in June, a button got pressed somewhere, and I started to obsess over Burning Man; I was having dreams every night about it for several days in a row. This year I plan on taking it easy, and not building anything big, and not camping with a theme camp, and basically not doing any physical labor, or having any great responsibilities. I'm thinking that my contribution to Burning Man this year will be documenting it through photography.
Stuff to bring:- Food that doesn't require cooking, and 35 Gal. of water
- Fur coats, furry boots, and brightly colored clothes that I'll never be able to use for anything else again.
- Bicycle(s) and parts.
- Camera gear.
- Goggles and dust masks. (Sunscreen, Lip gloss, garbage bags, etc.)
- Bright blinking flashing glowing things.
Ok, so, what am I forgetting? I'm deliberately not going to bring a tent this year, as every single year I set one up — and then never sleep in it.
I'm considering rigging up some kind of plastic covers for my cameras (mostly the lenses), so that they don't get completely impregnated with dust. (If you saw my old D200 you know what I mean.) The D300 body is dust and water-proof, but my 50mm f/1.4 lens isn't — It started making crunching noises when autofocusing by about Wednesday of burn. I saw another photographer on the playa a year or two ago, who had their camera inside a plastic shower cap, with rubber bands around the lens and stuff. The only part exposed was the objective surface of the lens. I might do that. |
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| Conceptual Fish and the Middle Pillar |
[Jul. 23rd, 2008|12:27 pm] |
"It is an example of one of the many species of purely conceptual fish which swim in the flows of human interaction and the tides of cause and effect. This may sound like madness, but it isn’t. Life is tenacious and determined. The streams, currents and rivers of human knowledge, experience and communication which have grown throughout our short history are now a vast, rich and bountiful environment. Why should we expect these flows to be sterile?"
Can someone loan this Book to a grateful girl?
Contemplating purity of rational thought.. the proper placement of emotional experience in relational dynamics and understanding. Still struggling with being able to eradicate emotional bias in thought processes while still holding space and value for the deep insight that emotional experience brings.
Our emotions occur for a reason, they are not simply impurities that needs to be sorted out from the panoply of human experience so that one can see clearly. They inform our conscious minds of subtle calculations we do on an instantaneous basis, calculations that our conscious selves can not calculate with the same alacrity. Some of this calculations are erroneous, and this is why each emotion must be tracked back to its source and investigated so that one can test and validate its accuracy of transmission. Some emotions are brought about by correct calculations, they inform us of boundaries crossed, triggers that reflect deep sated beliefs and ideas about reality, personal feelings raised based on ways in which we perceive our experiences, and a whole variety of other important details that make purely rational analysis ineffective. The rational mind does not have the processing power of the subconcious.
Often we are able to grok by 'intuition' something that is not right about a problem long before the rational mind figures it out. Does this mean we should ignore our emotions or instead treat them as precious jewels that shine their light to remind our conscious rational minds to pay attention and delve deeper into the psyche in search for understanding.
We think of sterility in one sense as pure, hermetically sealed, clean but in another definition it is also: lacking the power to function, lacking in imagination, creativtiy, and vitality, lacking in the ability to produce offspring.
And here lies the trap of approaching life on either side of the middle pillar..
Making an imense effort right now to eradicate emotional bias but there is no really good model to follow as the models in the environment are not rightly aspected. They lie on the opposite side of the pillar and suffer issues of being cut off from the knowledge and depth hidden within the subconscious mind that is translated to us through the ocean of emotional experience.
And so .. in this vast, rich, and bountiful environment.. how does one know what conceptual fish are good eating?
Elsewise..eating a tomato contemplating Lycopene and the power of antioxidents in the hope it will inspire further eating of fruits and vegetables. |
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| Breath |
[Jul. 23rd, 2008|12:34 am] |
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To stop loving you is like trying to stop breathing..you can apply all of your will to it, but no matter what you do, the body eventually takes over and you find yourself gasping for air involuntarily. This is what loving you is like and this is why its a love that lasts a lifetime. It could not be any other way by its very nature. |
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| A Moment of Mourning |
[Jul. 22nd, 2008|10:54 am] |
I was listening to Annwn on the way to work today and started crying.
By all the spirits and deities, I miss Leigh Ann.
Her fires will burn brightly in my heart for a long time. (Not just mine, I know, but this is my moment of mourning.)
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote |
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| Now in Panovision! |
[Jul. 22nd, 2008|12:22 am] |
I ran some more photos though PTGui. Managed to crash it twice, and it couldn't auto-generate control points on a few photos. It also can't merge portrait and landscape photos, which seems like a weird limitation.
Filename Resolution
test2.jpg 10000x3412
test3.jpg 1987x2010
test4.jpg 2944x1359
test5.jpg 3185x1256
test6.jpg 4511x1280
test7.jpg 5363x742
test8.jpg 24847x4000
test9.jpg 6659x3000
test10.jpg 2972x1346
test11.jpg 9441x3000
test12.jpg 11559x2800
test13.jpg 3211x1246
test14.jpg 2487x1609
test15.jpg 1191x3366
test16.jpg 2038x1963
test17.jpg 15843x4000
test18.jpg 3340x1600
test19.jpg 10529x1280
test20.jpg 4324x1280
These are just roughs for evaluating the stitching software. When I actually make panoramas for reals , these will have the vignetting corrected, and the noise (hopefully) removed, and the exposure adjusted, and all those things that I secretly do to my photos in post-processing. They'll also all line up correctly too, which not all of these do. (On some of them I had to enter control points by hand, and being just a tiny bit off will rotate the whole frame.) (And they certainly won't have stupid watermarks all over them.)
So, here's your homework assignment:
I've uploaded the original resolution (3872x2592 etc.) JPGs from some of the above tests. Download these and stitch them back together with your favorite software, and then tell me how it goes. Some of them were taken hand-held, and so the camera moves position from one frame to the next. I was thinking of uploading the NEFs, but oh well.
Here are the files:
http://www.arclight.net/~julia/lj/2008_Jul/Panorama_Inputs/
Have fun.
P.S. If you're wondering about the Burning Man ones; I climbed up a 40ft. tower, and stayed there until I was no longer afraid of hights. I was psyching myself up for an experience I had later that night — the night of the burn. I happened to have my camera with me at the time, and captured these (and other) photos of the sunset. They were all done hand-held, while hanging off a wobblely tower, keep that in mind when you can see the stars in the sky in some of them. |
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| Any IT Managers or similar out there want to work in Berkeley? |
[Jul. 21st, 2008|01:25 pm] |
Hi all,
My IT department resigned today - all two of them. I have no idea what the circumstances were, but given the recent success our company has had I can only imagine it was personal.
This means we (the Polymer Technology Group, aka PTG) will be looking for an IT Manager and/or Asst. Mgr/Sysadmin in the near future, working in a Windows XP server environment. I'm afraid I don't know much more about it than that, but if you'd be interested in working for a small (about 100 employee) biomaterials firm in west Berkeley there will be 1 or 2 positions open soon. Have a look at our website at www.dsmptg.com
I can answer questions about the company, but not about the position (I'll know more when it's officially posted). As an aside I get a nice referral bonus if I find a candidate that gets hired, so it could be win-win-win (you, me, PTG).
Drop me a line at my LJ ID at yahoo if interested!
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote |
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| The world has lost its center...and so I spin about.. |
[Jul. 19th, 2008|09:10 pm] |
So.. been thinking. This never happens.
Here I am..at the center of this giant spiritual burning man project..surrounded by healers, artists, performers, organizers, and musicians... pretty much I'm getting what I wanted for the last few years...well...sans the edgy aspect of the occult that I do so appreciate.
And I'm finding myself contemplating 'change' and where to focus my efforts next. I will get to ( hopefully) positively affect maybe 30k people at burning man this year. I find myself thinking, it's just 30k. What real net positive impact in the world can this have? And so the mind starts to follow itself down various paths testing which ones have greater net effect in the world. What I if saved 100,000 acres of rainforest in the amazon or cured cancer or.. and the list goes on and on.. as my mind runs through various scenarios calculating net impacts..
and every time I think of something that would make a significant difference (let's call significant something that positively affects over 1 million sentient creature), I am struck by the fact that it doesn't seem enough. And my heart feel weary. And then I think.. what about teaching and education through art & performance.. this is basically what I am doing now..and how there is this idea that if one person can share vision then maybe millions would be called to action.. I step back from that and think of the old joke..those that can do do and those that can't teach. and I think that teaching and hoping one's students are more capable of making a difference than oneself may not be the answer either. Sometimes the internet is appealing..the great blank canvas (not too unlike burning man) that with the right marketing one could reach millions.. maybe i should learn a little programming.. but what would I say? Sometimes I think what I would do would be to try to offer better and better tools for grassroots organization over the net...because maybe that is way to help other people help.. it all feels so futile.
And I'm at a loss.. of where to go and what direction to turn in a world this fucked up. If only i had a cause, you know.. something ..one specific thing that I felt passionately about that could positively affect the world for centuries to come..and I think if I could just be a little smarter I could look at the world with clarity and know exactly what that thing should be..where to direct my efforts to have the most positive impact. But I'm jut a little genius not a great one...and so I sit and ponder.. and find no answers worthy of a lifetime of effort...only this vague knowledge that if enough people were 'on it' maybe we could fix all the problems.
So here it goes..and here I am..at the center of this whirlwind bringing together great minds and seeing my horizons expand into vast vistas of art, politics, and science..pregnant with rich possibility for future projects branching out far beyond the limited confines of burning man.. vaguely making out shapes in the future not enough to actually know where all this immense work is leading.. but enough to be hopeful that there is in fact..a movement of people..and that I've perhaps found it and that perhaps.. just perhaps.. if we're all together we'll be able to really do something.
And I worry I am wasting my life waiting for the right cause...and I think that my ideas around the ability of art to influence the masses is just another excuse to avoid making a real decision about how to address issues that are much less aesthetically pleasing to look at....talking about global climate change with brightly colored cute girls with dread falls over wine & organice chocolate is oh so much nicer then sharing a cup'a'joe with the homeless guy who smells of urine... and i wonder if inner city children would give a shit about a 'temple that illustrates the states of consciousness of humanity' and I wonder..and wonder..and wonder..
and so I just keep working. I keep doing things because to not do them would be to admit that I don't know what to do..and I'm not about to admit failure on Project Saving the World. ; ) and so..here i am ..working 60 hours a week outside of work to make this project successful.. in the hopes that amassing greater and greater numbers of focused aware smart people who care about the great work will result in enough critical mass..so that maybe one day..that project that will decrease the suffering for all will appear.. like a jewel in the midst of conversation and then I would know and this confusion and ache of feeling powerless in an unjust mindless world.will disappear. I will have direction and clarity and purpose.
How I yearn for that day. But for today..i reign in that yearning and I direct all of it to the thing I can do right now.. which is bring all these people together and make a giant temple to express my yearning for a world where all that feels lives well..for a world where the earth & all her children are honored, where the psyche is whole, where the rainbow rays of divine expression are all appreciated, and where the eternal oneness and interconnectedness of all is known at the most intimate level of being.
Maybe it's nothing..this project...one week of light pouring out into the world..and then it too will be gone.. and a year of my effort complete..and i'll be back to looking for that next thing..only this time.. I want will try to find something that can positively affect hundreds of thousands..because 30 or 40k won't be enough..and I'll choose the best thing I can come up based on all the knowledge I have gained, knowing whatever it is that I will give my life to next will still not be enough..
And..yes.there is this sense where all is perfect now..but.. I can't quite accept that 'we' the human race can't do better then we are doing..that somehow this is it.. and we're just supposed to enjoy the fucked up glorious beautiful and savage ride. Somehow..that 'knowledge' isn't enough...and my mind not great enough to either grasp the solution or find peace within the tumult of living in a world filled with so much suffering. |
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| Panorama Tools |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|04:28 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  busy | ] |
Something that's been on my TODO list for a long time, is to stitch together a large number of my photos into one big one. I really really don't have enough time to evaluate several packages. So if anyone can just tell me which one is "the best" I'll be on my way.
Here's an expiriment I did this morning while I should have been doing other things. It's from a series of photos I took of the moonrise lastnight, parked on the side of the road (University Ave.)
http://www.arclight.net/~julia/lj/2008_Jul/test.jpg |
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| Busy, busy, busy... |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|03:11 am] |
So, right now I'm missing The Last Hope although there's still enough time for me to jump on a plane and make it. PET is coming up in a few days, and I want to spend time with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) enochsmiles, but I could buy a MacBook or Nikon D300 for what plane tickets are now. And time-wise, I'm trying to keep my head above water at work. And I also noticed that if I can stop spending money for three months, I'll have enough saved up for surgery (yes, that operation).
In the meantime, I'm going up to veedub's tonight, and then to the Infected Mushroom concert at 1015 Folsom [in San Francisco].
Assuming that I don't fly out to Belgium at the last minute, I'm thinking of driving up to this: http://www.thegreenwolf.com/kingather08.html next weekend, for reasons I'll explain later. |
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| Wanna be a Fool with me? |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|05:53 pm] |
A Fool's Journey
A Northern California 2008 Equinox Restorative and Retreat for Women and Men
September 25 - 28, 2008 Take a leap and spend four days and three nights in Northern California traveling the road of the Sacred Fool with magic, ritual, and restorative reflection. <nicked (and modified a wee bit) from oak> I've joined forces with others who have done the same to create something new that aims to be gently powerfully restorative. Things are getting more challenging on this great green globe. Figuring out ways to spiritually and magically recharge ourselves is important so we can listen to our intuition and have access to our creativity. This is what we want to come together and do. We are calling it A Fool's Journey and will be using the Tarot archetype of the Sacred Fool to lead us into new territory. We want this to be a real restorative experience and so selfishly would LOVE to have those we love there. This is a not for profit venture… the cost of it covers food and lodging and both look to be fantastic. It's going to be held at this groovy retreat center that was made for the Jungian community…so it's magically charged up and is comfortable to boot. We look forward to sacred lounging around the swimming pool and creating a kind of magical spa with clay/salt and essential oils. Astrology will be taught as well as mask making and the elements of magic…there's an art house and a library full of spiritual books and it's a wonderful place to hike around or just bask in beauty on the big front porch of the lodge. Basically we aim to create an experience where everyone can drop down, relax, and find their center. It's September 25 – 28 up near Middletown. We are limited to 40 people, so PLEASE sign up soon if you want to come. It will be fun, We promise!!!!
Check out the website with all the registration stuff – unfortunately we are not high tech so you have to print it out and mail it in…but really, I hope you can come and be part of the magic! Feel free to pass this information along to anyone you think would be interested!
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| Skylab Offline for 1-2 days |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|07:58 am] |
Halloo to any who might have interest:
Skylab is having some electrical work done today (very shortly, in fact) and will have no power for the rest of the day, and possible some or all of tomorrow. That means the house phone will not be working; try cell phones (though those are decrepit and thus somewhat unreliable as well) if you need to contact any of us.
I'll have e-mail access at work but can't spend too long at it for obvious reasons :)
I really should find that old phone I have that runs off the phone line....
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote |
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| Basic Accounts and X-Men |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|07:10 am] |
Account Structure Update
Back by popular demand, Basic Accounts will be available to all users again by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer. More information on the decision-making process and proposals relating to the future of Basic Accounts are in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) lj_2008.
New Themes
Two attractive and all-new Flexible Squares themes, "Circular" and "Circular Brown" are now available.
L to R: Circular and Brown
New V-Gifts
Give someone you care about the gift of enticement. With the new Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi v-gifts, all the significant people in your life will be able to share in the longing for the tasty edibles below. Plus, it reminds loved ones you think they're really sweet, really savory or just plain satisfying.
L to R: Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi
Ж-Men...but not the ones you might expect!
This week LJ Russia launched Ж-Men, a new comedy series about superheroes, inspired by the LJ communities dedicated to superheros, comics and cartoons. The title's "Ж" comes from ЖЖ, the nickname for LiveJournal in Russia.
Ж-Men's script is written by a group of LJ enthusiasts who also happen to be television professionals. Who knew? Following the premiere, five more episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks. We hope you find the series fresh and enjoyable.
This is, of course, an experiment for LiveJournal. As always, we'd love to hear what you think! |
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| depressed and lonely |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|09:03 am] |
It can be validating when the oracle mirrors my feelings. All I want to do is sleep. And I have many things to do that I put off. Instead I am re-reading Cosmos and Psyche.
where is my kitteh?
k |
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| Brewers: Faire attention à beer |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|12:40 am] |
psy and xot you must check out ogam's post. |
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| The Cyclic Universe |
[Jul. 14th, 2008|04:08 pm] |
Today I am sad and mopey girl.
That is all.
I recognize that this too shall pass. |
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| Astrology and Magick of Giordano Bruno |
[Jul. 12th, 2008|07:14 pm] |
Giordano Bruno site I found while researching my list of books I wish people would read. I tried reading books on the Art of Memory at one point in my life, but stalled out. I have so much I want to read, and so little concentration.
k |
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