Ecce Sigum

Category: Life

  • Accidental Popularity

    Looking at my site statistics this morning I saw that over the weekend es.o got over a hundred hits. Egads! thought I, The cellular automata experiments must have caught the eye of the Right People. I have become Known! Stephen Wolfram himself might have stopped by while I was at the bar!

    But on closer inspection all of the hits, or almost all of them, were referred here by a surfboard design website. Well, sez I in a desperate grab at fading hope, Maybe the members of the Fields Medal Review Panel surf in their spare time.

    I suspect someone grabbed one of my javascript files, specifically the one which opens pop-up windows, and plugged it in over there. Plugged it in and neglected to get rid of the absolute URL reference in the code.

    No, (he says on looking at the referrer logs and cross-referencing the error files). Someone found my site when searching for “surfboard design”, and maybe linked to something which caused everyone following that link to go to my discussion board. I don’t have a discussion board. Nor do I have a surf board.

    Which leaves me right back here where I started: begging for attention.

  • Har

    Broog, Alien Film Critic is very funny. Read him when you are not gazing in awe at the River Project .

  • Starting the Year Off Right

    To usher in the new year in the appropriate way I have picked up two new books: Flash Math Creativity and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain . This year I expect es.o will have more visuals than it did in 2002.

    On to other news.

    Apparently there is (was?) a movement (the “Two Towers Protest”) to have The Two Towers renamed to “show increased sensitivity toward the destruction of the World Trade Center”. The organizers have even gone so far as to call the un-altered title of the movie “hate speech”. Hate speech. Peter Jackson, et.al, kept the original title of the book for the movie, and it is being called “hate speech”.

    This is what I have to say about that:

    1. Dear Two Towers Protest: Fuck you.

    2. The Two Towers is a movie, and the World Trade Center was a tragic event. Never the two shall meet.

    3. If “the people” can’t make a distinction between a fantasy movie and a terrorist attack, then “the people” deserve the angst, anger and ulcers which that will cause.

    The Two Towers Protest is as much a capitalization on the 9/11 events as is the Bush Administration’s arbitrary naming of an “axis of evil”, and as are the kiosks at the outskirts of Ground Zero selling bags of dust and rubble from the buildings.

    Come to think of it, the name of this moronic movement is hate speech, too. The “Two Towers Protest” shows insensitivity toward the terrible events of September 11, 2001. What applies to one must apply to all. They must REALLY hate America. The ghost of Joseph McCarthy is buggering the ghost of Thomas Jefferson in glee.

    And I don’t even want to get into how, with their flawed logic, they are actually encouraging people to forget what happened last September.

  • Huh?

    Raining and 45 degrees here in sunny cheerful warm Grand Rapids. The taking stock of the past year has been done, and my major accomplishment occurred this past night at midnight, when I filled the last page of a journal in which I have been writing since mid-August 2000.

    Raining hard now. The skylight sounds like a popcorn popper.

    The journal is 380 pages of 8 x 11 paper. I write small. But I also send my creative energies into this vampire computer machine. I spend a lot of time here. Too much. Let’s just go ahead and call me obsessive. 380 pages in 850 days. My new journal is about 150 pages, unlined, designed and built by the extraordinary Tracy, who gets nowhere near the credit she deserves for her art. Why unlined? I have never learned to draw, and now is as good a time as any to begin.

    Not raining so hard now. The skylight sounds like a skillet full of bacon.

  • Blah

    Christmas was actually kind of fun this year. My favorite gift was a 5-pound venison sausage, lately from a deer my brother done kilt. Chopped up a chunk of it and threw it into some jambalaya. A perfect match, I gah-ron-tee.

    Now it the time to think about New Years resolutions; whether and what. When you think about it, resolving to do something starting exactly on January 1 is rather arbitrary. From a practical point of view one day is as good as any other. I like to think I am riding a karmic wave; that so many others are making the effort will somehow make it easier for me.

    Last year I resolved to reduce the amount of mediocrity in my life and, to a large degree, I feel I have succeeded. For 2003 I think I want to learn more. Sure, I learned a lot in 2002, about writing, photography, computer stuff, people… but I’m pretty damn smart and I feel like what I learned was a by-product of things I was required or compelled to do.

    So, what then? Re-learn all the Russian I have lost over the last decade? Re-learn the trombone? Learn to draw? Learn Tibetan? Learn to dance? Trigonometry? Calculus? Iambic Pentameter? Java? Guitar? Drinks? It seems that whatever the new thing is, it should be an almost purely mental exercise. I have plenty of physical pursuits to keep me occupied *snort*.

    Another possibility is to do a Good Work or a Great Work, or preferably both. A Good Work might be to help Project Gutenberg XML-ize a few dozen texts. A Great Work might be to create generative art based around something no-one has ever tried. Or a combination of the two… I dunno… Whatever it is, I probably won’t realize I have done it until well after the fact.

  • Preparations

    The Scotch for New Year is….
    Ardmore 19-year (1977 – 1997) cask-strength single-malt Scotch Whiskey. Mmmmmmmm.

    Now off for Christmas back on the farm with the fambly.

  • Mandalas and Rings

    To build a mandala is to practice non-attachment. A thing of beauty is created, cherished briefly, then destroyed. While it is being created those who are working bear in mind that the mandala is a transitive thing. When destroyed it is gone, but the event is now a part of history and nothing will ever change that.

    The ring (yes, That Ring ) is the opposite. Created of hard metal to last forever, coveted by all who come into contact with it; none moreso than its creator. Everyone wants it but no-one enjoys it. It traps the act of creation into a spiral which does not allow the possibility of creating anything else.

    This is a good thing to bear in mind when handing off a project to a client. We built it, we cherished it, now it is gone, and now it is time to move on. A project is a mandala. To treat it as a ring is to continue work past the point of diminishing returns, until we are full of resentment and burned out.

    The things we build are not our own. They will not last forever. Best to do it right, then let go.

    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
    The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  • MIA

    I’m not dead. Merely…distracted.

    The Uzbeckistan Diary is the journal of an American, er, journalist, working to promote an independent press. Quite an interesting read.

  • Open or Closed?

    Assume two possible states of the universe, or reality, (hereafter referred to as [R]). They are the open state and closed state .

  • Wednesday

    The evening snack: One apple, one small block of sharp cheddar cheese, and a very small glass of St Julian Simply Red wine.

    I was informed today that we will be given the entire week of Christmas as extra vacation time. Sometimes I love my job.