Topher Tune's Times

2011-07-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Meditation on the Runes

The grass whispers in the breeze and the fog hangs low, blowing the wrong way.

The birds chatter in their social whirl, heedless of silence and happy.

The dog decides to come along, not linger and sniff so.

The messages in the grass are many, full, resplendent.

They are purple and pink, nearly waist high, each little field nearly impassable for all the abundance brought by many days of rain.

I aspire to see, but without much luck. It doesn't matter. The trees will grow and eventually all will be forested. The history of the vast field of 1943 will disappear into pine, cypress, eucalyptus and cotoneaster. What isn't forest will be chaparral, mostly Baccharis and Artemisia. The dark soil will lighten again to rocky light beige hues of granite.

The being alone in this space, the solitude, the ritual will pass.

2010-11-14T15:27:00.000-08:00

When do you suppose a good day is for global pride march? March for pride. In all humility, pride. No money raised. No donation bucket. Just pride. You, me. Anyone at all. Lesbian, gay, transgender, intersex, queer, questioning, straight allies if any of these or any other arbitrary divisions make sense, which they don't, but pride for everyone sure does. What day is it though. All I know is it's one full day, 24 hours long, march any time that day for however long to wherever with whomever.

2010-03-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

Spring in the step, mud at the feet. Look out across the valley and where mid to dark gray green should be, see light gray, light behind the top of the range, the trees in the foreground silhouetted. Lupine out, buttercups, sun cups a few, the last of the camas lily and a giant mushroom just starting, whose surface resembles a golf ball. Grass at the peak of loveliness. Heaven for horses and dogs sniffing.

2009-12-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

Longings I know not what. Empowerment over unknown questions whose answers are therefore unknowable. Gray skies, amazingly plain. Near rain. Things not expensive far from here. People from other countries in town, again far. Sounds of the sea. Smell of deer for the dog to pick up and on sight, lurch furiously toward. Music. Musings. Mixes. Bits and pieces. Whole rumbling mash-ups, a wall of sound. Kitsch settings. Contacts. Hopes.

2009-08-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Attempted a rebuild of iTunes library using an article from Apple Support, "How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists." This is because the computer where iTunes would no longer boot. Also, the new computer has some recent iTunes tracks. Removed the itl and xml file from the expected location in "My Music" as directed in the article, launched iTunes and, since I needed to keep the files were they were before, I made sure uncheck "copy to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" (in iTunes, edit -> preferences -> advanced). I did the "file -> library -> import playlist" on the original iTunes xml file retrieved from the broken machine's "My Music" folder as directed in the article, and the old iTunes library and the playlists were rebuilt (undetermined number of songs weren't found). This took a while because there were 13,000 tracks before. Then I exited iTunes and saved the xml and itl files again. Then I relaunched iTunes and did a second "file -> library -> import playlist," this time pointed on the saved recent xml file on the new computer. This was fairly quick as the recent iTunes library was only a few hundred tracks. Then I decided where I wanted the iTunes Music library should be from now on, and checked the boxes for iTunes to keep the library organized and copy the files to to iTunes Music folder when adding to library. Old and new playlists are present and any decisions about genre and so forth are present as well. This is a great success. The tracks appear in order the original iTunes library was built, and then the recent iTunes library was built, but the added date is all today, not the historically added date. This is essentially a successful re-creation of an old iTunes library and merge of recent library in chronological order.

2009-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

some month and then one... mostly dark, very beautiful, chilly... last week broke two computer systems and the sound card driver on a third, but made up for it by finding a superior used machine for $200 on craigslist... romance... it is a topic, but inactive... mess... it is a topic, but not active enough in dealing with it... poetry... the book is stuck in a broken computer, but the machine to make more is still cranking... even found some old poems today during cleanup, one that sticks in my mind after years and years... music... the promise is streaming with a dj system of some kind such as vdj, not sam

2009-06-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

there is a time of year on the coast when summer persists in the month of june... endless days, bright and beautiful through clean windows... 5-ish in the morning to 9 at night... then comes true summer... usually july 4 is not spared... socko... gray gray days... but today sun hits the screen and toph smiles

2009-05-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

ending this and on that someone walks in all youthful seeming but handle that

2009-04-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

this is where i get to say i am getting married

2009-03-09T18:00:00.001-07:00

rains are light this year, particularly the ones that were supposed to come in december and january... february rains were generous, and spring was not completely lost... it is wonderful to climb the hillsides between patches of rain and look out over the ocean

2009-02-22T11:01:00.000-08:00

gazos creek is one strange to me... it comes out small... location near former vast dunes... middle of remote stretch of coast... passionate stories of birds in jeffers tones... scanned... dark... need some art

2009-01-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

2009-01-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

2008-12-17T18:05:00.000-08:00

messages of hope and good things... the days are short... attention and temper also... occasional moments of musical beauty, poetic insight, calligraphic messing...

2008-08-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

isn't it great to have a blog and never post? sure it is...it is like having this wonderful closet full of stuff you never play with...you keep adding to it...everything is shiny and new and clean, ready to use, batteries charged, in perfect working order...cars...violins...pianos...boxes of paints and large canvases...workstations...skis...boomboxes...big-screen tv...books, don't get me started...

2008-05-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

spring to summer the grass turns and days are bright...maybe some fog but it burns off leaving brightness, coolness, freshness...yesterday a swim in the cove swells....mmmm

2008-05-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

still here...much time in second life..shifting priorities, aspirations, other blogs, identities...xo

2007-11-17T09:55:00.001-08:00

Christopher's Copy, Irene Poon--this is next to the Paint Pot on upper Grant Ave in North Beach mid 60s--Maggie's was a dress shop and other things, Maggie seen here :)

2007-09-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Raving lunatic migrates to SL and, well, raves. Gets ditched.

2007-07-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

Linux logs listed by Steve Litt, reproduced in The Times as a mnemonic of old chops

/var/log/messages	The granddaddy of all logs, this is the major repository of system messages.
/var/log/boot.log	This log records messages issued during the boot process, and is handy for deducing the as-booted state of the computer, as well as getting hints as to what went wrong during bootup.
/var/log/dmesg	Messages from the kernel ring buffer -- low level boot info
/var/log/secure	Basic security messages including telnet logons.
/var/log/cron	Log of running of cron jobs.
/var/log/maillog	Mail log
/var/log/netconf.log	A record of network events such as route changes and dhcpd
/var/log/security.log	This log shows security concerns such as world-writable files, open and listening ports, changes in security, and the like. Pay special attention to the "diff check". This file is written by a daily cron job.
/var/log/security/	This directory contains intermediate files contributing to the maintenance of the security.log file.
/var/log/xdm-error.log	Use this when troubleshooting your Xwindows video.
/var/log/httpd/	This directory contains logs pertaining to the web server.
/var/log/samba/	This directory contains the various logs for the Samba file and print server.

2007-07-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

Is it Big Poetry or little poetry? You determine the size. Starfish.

2007-06-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Let's say the Toph wants to know how much things cost today as against seven years ago, where would he go? Cost-of-Living Calculator!

2007-06-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

Topher Tune's Times masthead graphic, after all these years without one, is thanks to Ransom Note Generator.

2007-06-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

Robot, pirates, monkey, the essentials!

2007-05-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

Father Death song [wood s lot] by the voice of the Be-in, Allen Ginsberg.

2007-05-23T15:42:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you can't get much out of a scan like beauty captured on film, right.

2007-05-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

[Aussielicious] Here is a hot dance tune video mash.

2007-05-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

The Times is happy to announce a new blog consisting of sketch and narrative of San Francisco as it was roughly 30 years ago, Black Cat Paws. There was a great bar called the Black Cat, and the cat whose paws did the drawings claims the name "Black Cat" to keep that establishment's memory and the freedom it stood for alive.

2007-05-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

This a scan of an image from Tahoe visit last year.

2007-04-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a double exposure of two unsynchronized frames with photoshop overlay of two more unsynchronized frames in "screen" mode. It simulates a printed image of a double exposed roll, but lacks expected film artifacts. Note that this is not a special case of a "frame" double exposure, where the scene is double exposed as seen through a window or mirror.

2007-04-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is a little hard to find since it's excerpted from page 4 of a PDF to HTML document titled "IPTC - NAA S u b j e c t Reference S c h e m e." It is useful for categorizing photographs under the appropriate tag, but as the document indicates elsewhere, there are numeric categories that are perhaps more widely used by news organizations.

Arts, Culture & Entertainment (ACE)
Crime, Law & Justice (CLJ)
Disasters & Accidents (DIS)
Economy, Business & Finance (FIN)
Education (EDU)
Environmental issues (ENV)
Health (HTH)
Human Interest (HUM)
Labour (LAB)
Lifestyle & Leisure (LIF)
Politics (POL)
Religion and Belief (REL)
Science & Technology (SCI)
Social Issues (SOI)
Sport (SPO)
Unrest, Conflicts & War (WAR)
Weather (WEA)

2007-04-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here is an experiment in double exposure using the "screen" blend mode in photoshop.

2007-03-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) update appeared on the Toph's XP system again, and he remembered he does not want this spyware. The Toph did a search on this, since he can't remember what he did before and why. First, why? Since the purpose of operating system patching, if done at all, should be strictly related to security and function to the benefit of the user, not DRM that cripples the machine at boot to the benefit of the operating system licenser; therefore Toph opts not to install this update.

Action: Perform the search as above and identify appropriate solutions such as discussed and directed in these three pages. In the Toph's case, the less radical remedy described in the last page worked fine before, and should continue to do so. It's important to apply all steps so that other users to the Toph's machine won't go ahead and unwittingly install this ill-directed "update" at shutdown. The Toph wishes he didn't have to waste his time (and the casual reader's time) on this, but hopes this account helps others.

2007-03-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

The flickr photostream for photowalking8 in Half Moon Bay is now sizable and incisive. There are "meta" pictures of photographers using outsize equipment taking pictures of each other, sometimes while while the other is photographing (and you can even check out what they're shooting), human interest shots, surfing and biking-on-the-jetty action, lots of birds, scenic views of Pillar Point Harbor in heavy fog. It's worth seeing because many of the photographers achieve publication quality results.

The Toph learned how to IPTC tag multiple images in Irfanview: simply select all of the the images you want to tag in thumbnail view (invoked separately from Irfanview), set the tags, copyright, and whatever other fields apply to the selected images just once and you're done, all will be tagged. Then go back to Irfanview and set individual additional tags and write a custom caption. Then upload and each of the new images in your photostream correctly displays caption and tags. This system is efficient and effective for performing non-destructive edits to JPEGs; i.e orient from landscape to portrait if necessary, and perform IPTC tagging with access to all fields.

2007-03-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

It's kind of a shock to see the newspapers waste away as Scobleizer and others discuss. They're not the same. Instead of about 10 news stories on the front page, there are three fluffed out features with graphics all over the place, like a large, messy magazine.

2007-03-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

Today is HMB photowalk. It's a little new yet, but Thomas Hawk mentions it. Robert Scoble brought a wildlife lens to share.

2007-02-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

Here is an upcoming scene in Chris, a look at the Ferry Building at night.

2007-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

Here's a new set (deleted Charlotte and Steamer set, not the photos):
flying foam
The foam was so intense it "snowed" half a block into Montara.

2007-01-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

On a day when a minister delivers a sermon, commemoratively speaking, against hegemony in Vietnam, we have news of another brutal hanging and dancing in the streets. While the condemned were found guilty of heinous crimes, no offense was capital in a literal sense. Since American prisoners wear orange Guantanamo jumpsuits, we share the blame.

America, we reap what we sow. "I will rise up and break the backbone of your power and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name."

2007-01-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

Go forward peacefully. Fortune says, don't expect to gain at others' expense, but only from being considerate. Go on.

Words of wisdom from a young designer many years ago: just leave. At hint of argument and stress, she packs up and leaves. There are better days tomorrow, but if not, continue leaving early.

There are choices in war and peace, and these are two of them, peaceful direction, and retiring at gratuitous adversity without prejudice.

2006-12-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

Fall down with you

Paperboys [mo'po[dbqp]]

2006-12-30T12:18:00.000-08:00

My book. Of course it's good, 177pp. If you despise not-real-poetry, buy this book.

2006-12-27T16:39:00.000-08:00

The original snip is very similar to Get a Google Poem. A typical dragable bookmarklet is snip me!

2006-11-24T18:39:00.000-08:00

More progress with automated search haynaku. Script grabs more of snippet than previously, drops bold emphasis and adds a few remaining lines that have the wrong number of syllables, v.1. It hasn't been easy to isolate unusable chracters and excess whitespace.

2006-10-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

Progress on the automated haynaku front. Take returned SOAP search string and explode it. Pick what nonsense to publish. Throw away a lot of usable data, tolerate errors (no error checking), [update] v.0.

2006-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Someone likes this interface to flickr too much--irresistible for simple slide show.

2006-10-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

[Thomas Hawk]

2006-10-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

On the topic of books, Echoes from the Heart, the anthology from Half Moon Bay that was read half-way through last night is an index of the poets who have read at M.Coffee in recent years, and a good way to identify each of them precisely and the kind of poetry he or she writes.

For one shining moment, there was a place known as Half Moon Bay. --Art Malear

2006-09-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Visit to Mill Valley, childhood home at age of three. Found the house. Partied in the redwoods and planted some of the seeds that fell on the table. Happy Anniversary, Steamer and Charlotte.

2006-09-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Toph reads:

Unveiling of the M. Coffee Poetry Anthology
Saturday, September 30, 2006
7:00 pm

M. Coffee
522 Main St
Half Moon Bay, CA

2006-09-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

This is the promised rune from nature.

2006-09-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

Books tag fun via (much better read) fait accompli:

Thanks to
The Casual Tee (Trevor Calvert) [click here]
for tagging me

What is a book that changed your life?
Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

What is a book you've read more than once?
Charles Bernstein, Senses of Responsibility

What is a book you'd want to take with you to a desert island?
Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus

What is a book that made you giddy?
Ted Berrigan, The Sonnets

What is a book that made you sad?
Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

What is a book you wish you had written?
Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger

What is a book you are currently reading?
Sue Grafton, A is for Alibi

What is a book you've been meaning to read?
Mark Wallace, Dead Carnival

Tag 5 bloggers:

Toph- Nada- Gary- Drew- Ernesto- Possibly all of these bloggers have been tagged already- haven't been following this thread closely enough this summer to know who hasn't been tagged.

In no order, book Toph isn't publishing, Spinoza, Ethics, Ben Stein, How Successful People Win, Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Milton, Paradise Lost--oh bother, can't do this.

2006-08-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Walked the dog in the foggy dusk with sharp glasses on. Saw dried grass talking as in this brief post from dbqp. In case no picture of precisely what they are saying in the local field is forthcoming, here is one from Ricoh GR of a different season. Be sure to click on the picture to see the layers, nuances, whispers.

2006-08-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Took the fawn pit bull on his favorite walk to the hay field, a half-mile circuit with views of the stables at Buttles, brussels sprouts fields, the airport and Pillar Point harbor beyond. Today was a grayer day than usual, fog obscuring some of the ridges. The boy was in heaven--it's the evidence of other dogs he savors like fine California wine.

2006-08-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

Wrote a new poem that matches word for word an instance of Get a Google Poem by simply obtaining an API key, installing nusoap lib files on a php server and within that file directory, the code exactly as given on Google Blogoscoped as something.php; then invoke in browser. The poem consists of the resulting snippets.

2006-08-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

Tried a roll-your-own del.icio feed in the template, and now it replaces feedroll, which was pretty good except that sometimes it wouldn't update for days. Recently this happened, and latest bookmarks weren't being displayed. Toph researched this a while back and learned update failure might be because feedroll doesn't wait if the source feed responds too slowly. Here is the blogger template script, a variation of del.icio's with tweaks. Some lines are merely for style, which is better demonstrated on del.icio page devoted to styling linkrolls. There is a noscript handler from the default.


<div id="container"><p><a href="http://del.icio.us/toph">del.icio.us/toph</a></p></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/feeds/json/toph?count=5"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

var par = document.createElement('P')
par.style.fontFamily = "Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, Arial"

for (var i=0, post; post = Delicious.posts[i]; i++) {
 
 var a = document.createElement('a')
 var newline = document.createElement('BR')
 a.setAttribute('href', post.u)
        a.setAttribute('target', "_blank")
 a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(post.d))
 par.appendChild(a)
        if (post.n) {
            par.appendChild(document.createTextNode(" "))
            par.appendChild(document.createTextNode(post.n))
        }
 par.appendChild(newline)
 
}
document.getElementById('container').appendChild(par)
</script>

<noscript><a href="http://del.icio.us/toph">my del.icio.us</a></noscript>

2006-08-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Leevi Lehto writes a fascinating "traffic tracking service data" poem, reddish bandit wrecks 2003

Poem google leevi poems lehto generator poetry runo get the pearl about finnish joulua sex runoja harbor patterns keats die want search john isotissi hauskaa and english vuotta leikit kes microsoft uutta sam kielletyt pattern afraid onnellista joulurunot new sonnet dont love renessanssi helsinki creator hpyhuulet ville when for vuokaavio couplets fuck hyv joyce ertha golondrinas blog runot james system cia excretory rinne sonetti hytnen villanelle laulu las oscuras petrarca 2005 poet sanat pejk idille you tuomas translation xxl church leino cunt mp3 searches horny malinovski paris runous romantiken poesi shakespeare pearls volveran hyvaa sestina kirjallisuus dustin williamson from odysseus what arto how rsnen lentokentt pages kaltio jukka rauno joutsijrvi your eino jonimatti suomennos not like ruislinnun runogeneraattori nainen althusser nuoruustango isorintainen tynni ulysses jarkko porno sorry grandpa anthology modernismi leevilehto did ashbery... [more]

2006-07-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Two weekends in a row: ocean time. Water is warm, 60 degrees. It's like coming home again.

2006-07-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Tori Amos sings Father Lucifer on Letterman.

2006-07-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

At the last moments of a foggy day, went out and saw magenta Martha Washingtons (Pelargonium x. domesticum) in the nasturtiums...

and Tower of Jewels (Echium sp.)...

2006-07-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

Up at 7:30 and saw sun lighting triangles in the closed Venetian blinds. After paper and net, there was the exuberance of soccer, football, weeding and other work in the yard.

In the afternoon, the dog and I walked in the last of the sun, as it turned out. On the way back, crossed the line of fog and now the mood is much changed. Must go out and pick up the tools.

2006-06-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Jackson Square (Picasa Beta)

2006-06-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

The streets are alive
[part of the non-photography site]
nitsa5
evening in Hollywood

2006-06-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

This word on the shelf its shade in the stomach
This word on the shelf which you didn't conquer
This a little smoking word on the shelf bitter
This word on the shelf crushed between two banks
This word on the shelf which cut me up
This word on the shelf under a gleaming lamp
This word on the shelf which causes a sneeze
This word on the shelf the crooked tooth of an idiot phoneme
This word on the shelf
I hoist
And search for tears with my eyes
This word on the shelf which I lost
This enclosed word, to painfully advance
This word on the shelf that wasn't conquered
This word between your teeth
Which you seek to substitute
My eye the tear posed on the word on the shelf
This word on the shelf while your words don't matter to me
This word on the shelf which I lost and that you drown
This word on the shelf that upsets my liver
This word on the shelf continue your soliloquy
This word on the shelf the counting rhyme of sticking midnight my cries
This word on the shelf that I didn't hear once
This word on the shelf that I didn't hear once
This word on the shelf that I didn't hear once.

2006-06-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

iraq oil revenue - Google Search: who cares where the money goes these days?

2006-06-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

[wood s lot] Jake Shimabukuro
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
in Central Park
on the ukelele

Dazzling

2006-06-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Attempt to use ccPublisher on an image with odd results as below. Where do the title, description and keywords go? Retried, but this time uploaded to internet archive for permanent, free hosting.

The file DSCN0023tractors_at_swanton.JPG identified by urn:sha1:DK7ZT4QHXJYBHWH3YOJQES2WH35ORVHH is licensed to the public under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

2006-05-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

Just can't get over these choral renditions of pop songs...

powered by ODEO

2006-05-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

DP Primitives

input
save
retrieve
output
copy
change
translate
derive
compare
decide
repeat
destroy
count
sum
collect

2006-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

A wavy line of letters pasted over the boarded over sign to San Francisco on Highway 1 at El Granada reads as follows:

EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD 5

2006-05-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

Memories of a woman who edited a Finnish newsletter for years and another woman who started an anti-nuclear group.

2006-04-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

At last a spring day, warm and bright. Time to muse, sketch roses, take the dog to water in the morning and blue-eyed grass in the afternoon.

Put off work, watch the shadows. Think about the lawn to no avail.

2006-04-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Ocean waves at easter

2006-04-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Joi Ito a long time ago mentioned moblogging (what?), and finally, TTT has added it. It's hard to match his (Joi's) networking pictures or even his scenery (cc).

2006-04-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

Douglas iris... The mystery of spring (moblog)

2006-04-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

Blue eyed grass

2006-04-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

Flowers by Sioxa

2006-03-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

zare restaurant - Google Search has several entries for Zaré. Go to the one in Napa on Monday night, where for $26 per person prix fixe you have the choice of two entrées deliciously prepared, and totally on a different plane from the casual surroundings.

2006-03-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

An open granite book at Robert Louis Stevenson State Park reads in part as follows:

Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being         5
  Trod the flowery April blithely for awhile,
Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,
  Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.

—XXVII. In Memoriam F. A. S. (also)

The other page of the book says something about RLS and "bride," Fanny Osbourne.

2006-03-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

Today's OED wotd "integer" seems to be missing some nuanced usages we see in computer science as below:

Integer (computer science)

Polymorphism (computer science)

"Fixed point arithmetic, but for integers only, is also provided." p. 3

IBM, Fortran Automatic Coding System For The IBM 704 (pdf), 1956

"Since we have a strict synchronism of stimuli arriving only at times which are integer multiples of τ , we may disregard phenomena of tiring, facilitation, etc." p. 10

"One stimulus on the first line expresses the presence of the order as such, while a sequence of stimuli on the second line species the number k desired. k runs over 256 values, it is best to choose these as 0, 1, . . . , 255, in which case k is the general 8-digit binary integer." p. 36

John von Neumann, The First Draft Report on the EDVAC (pdf), 1945

2006-02-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

~~Sr. Grosjean~~ Ruth Enero (sp? part of "We Just Walk" led by Lyle Grosjean as interviewed on KPFA News) walks for Michael Morales and others condemned on Death Row. Judge Kenneth Starr appeals to Schwarzenegger for a hearing. He says the governor will be the first in the US to to ignore the original trial judge, Judge Charles McGrath (still sitting), who wrote Schwarzenegger last month saying he changed his mind. In 1983, the Reagan appointee sentenced Morales to death, but on hearing that he does not speak Spanish, critical testimony of a jailhouse informant of an incriminating conversation in Spanish is perjured. Now, under a ruling in Federal District Court by Judge Jeremy Fogel, doctors will be part of the execution team to verify Morales is unconscious after being dosed with barbiturates, and perhaps followed by drugs causing paralysis and the heart to stop.

~~Sr. Grosjean~~ Enero points out that society is better served with life or life without parole. She says there is value in all lives while they may last. Further, capital punishment brings no closure, nor does it deter murder. See the stream from San Quentin.

Update:
Lyle Grosjean makes the point on the stream that executions do not deter crime.

Update: 2/21/2006 6:51 pm PST
Apparently there is no one willing to risk his or her license to execute Morales in compliance with Judge Fogel's order filed today requiring direct injection of barbiturates.

Update: 2/23/2006 7:21 pm PST
It is the State that could not comply with the judge's order.

2006-02-19T17:59:00.000-08:00

This week, more pictures from Abu Ghraib, even worse than before. More news of global warming from Greenland. And around here, even at home with 30-year-olds sitting around doing nothing, not enough is being done about education. Kids too adrift? Professors too irrelevant? Too little payoff for the commitment?

Instead of "volunteering" for the Army or some dead end job, how about a campaign for wide open scholarships? Instead of ratcheting up tuition and student loan interest, how about the exact opposite?

Instead of war, the death penalty and torture, how about peace, rehabilitation and decent policing?

Clean up this record of a country with promise grown into unsustainable empire. Restore the American dream by budgeting for opportunity.

celebs

2006-01-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

celebs
Originally uploaded by tobc.

These are the celebrities.

Edmund Husserl 1859-1938
Louis Pasteur 1822-1895
Eddie Irvine 1965--
Friedrich Engels 1820-1895
Carlo Collodi 1826-1890
George Lazenby 1939--
Chester A. Arthur 1830-1886
Antonin Dvorak 1841-1904
Henri Becquerel 1852-1908
William Henry Bragg 1862-1942

The Toph is more dead than alive

2006-01-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

DSCN0032
Originally uploaded by tobc.

The Toph is more dead than alive according to face recognition on MyHeritage.com. The celebrity matches are almost all dead.

2006-01-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

Boynton comes to the rescue with "My January Ennui." Another version inspires laughter in the Toph household, a rare success. How do they do that is the question. The response for ~erin/crazy tests tepid, but "My January Ennui" works here too with a list this time titled "Skiffless."

2006-01-15T14:16:00.000-08:00

[Update: embedded freestyle rap on youtube removed by whoever posted it]
According to Wikipedia, this would be awesome.

2006-01-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Home, heat and holiday clean-up. These are today's themes.

2005-12-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

The madness of writing a few lines. Not even that. A title. Then generate some lurid trash. Invitation.

2005-12-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

Patreesh, shown preparing dog food (top), commenting on the picture taking (center) and as St. Patreesh-of-the-Skunk (above), saw a skunk wandering aimlessly on the road this morning when she was out feeding Gypsy, a neighbor's Shetland Pony. The aimless walk was due to a soup can over the skunk's head. Twice she grabbed the skunk by the can and tried to swing it free by centrifugal force. That didn't work. Finally she grabbed the can and the skunk by the scruff of its neck and pulled them apart. A young man drove up in his car and said he saw the skunk earlier, went home and told his family. His grandmother said to call the SPCA. Patreesh says the pull-off lid leaves a ring around the can that can catch hungry skunks. Her final word: "Crush your cans." Maybe you could rinse them out.

2005-12-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hear "The beginning of 'ousrun,riverpast'" (1:14), new audio for "What is this waste of time?"

Following is a slightly mangled post from odeo:

Following is another slightly mangled post:

2005-12-09T18:28:00.000-08:00

fait accompli remembers Jackson Mac Low and a year later, Toph finds Diastic Reading to add to the toybox.

2005-12-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

View out each windowpane on a foggy August day in Montara

2005-11-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a car resting for days by the side of the road overlooking the ocean.

2005-11-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Santa Cruz

2005-11-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

While the car was speeding south on the bluffs between San Gregorio and Pescadero, I opened the passenger window to capture the full moon and its reflection on the ocean. The camera took its time to make the exposure.

2005-11-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

You can see into the water a little.

2005-11-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

Tonight, 6-8pm, is the annual lighting at Pigeon Point.

2005-11-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

Cousins with garden statuary, Fresno

2005-11-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

A perfect bungalow on a busy street in Santa Cruz catches the day's last rays on Halloween.

2005-10-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Ghost camps stand between Money's and Pigeon Point. These days you might find a truck or two. The nearest inhabited houses are hidden nearby below the terrace.