2Second(fuse) - 04

3x5Second(fuse)
4/30/05 22:22 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I've always been a note-maker and a note-giver. Recently I've traded my PDA and spiral-bound for pocket pads of various kinds. The durable and portable moleskine notebook suits my task. It goes everywhere, fits in my pockets and I can even sit on it without fear of breaking screens and fizzing circuitry. I like the traditional pocket notebook variety and the new flip-open reporter style. Aside from still writing in Palm Graffiti strokes, my only trouble is the remorse I feel ripping out pages to give someone information that won't fit on a business card.

I'm remorseful no more. Inspired by the custom 3x5 creations of Adam Gurno and Scott Lawrence, I've made my own:

Six fit nicely in the accordian pocket of a moleskine. Six card layers is, by the way, roughly the thickness of the human neocortex.

New Is Now Is The Future
4/29/05 15:32 - permalink - email - category: Futurism

History isn't what it used to be.

I'm into the new and the now, but the new and the now has changed with instant transmission. Nothing goes out of style as we revive the dead and bring it into the future, all dressed up and living here with us. With six billion plus people on the planet, there's always a large enough group to keep any meme alive.

Swing, goth, mods. Bluegrass, surf, doo-wop. Greek and Roman gods, golden age science fiction, the life story of your deceased relative. Thylacines, ancient egyptian genes, australopithecines. Everything which once was will be extant again.

This is exactly what I would expect to see as we near the Singularity's slope to infinity: history and culture collapsing from both past and future to the hot flash point of Now. This is why I find it relevant to blog about older books, like Heinlein's and Rucker's works. They're not only still useful for minds today, they're becoming more useful by the second.

Robert Heinlein - To Sail Beyond The Sunset
4/28/05 22:18 - permalink - email - category: Read

To Sail Beyond The Sunset: Maureen Long and Pixel in Venus Shell.

Heinlein came to me as young kid, when a ragged paperback of Stranger In A Strange Land literally fell on my head from the ceiling high bookshelf I could only scour the bottom three shelves of. Not only did this single reading help define my genre of choice, it also positioned Heinlein, through the views expressed in his writings, as the closest thing to an understanding parent I'll ever have. His conversational style was a perfect rendition of father/son talks for a confused boy in the non-sensical midwest landscape of the 1980s.

I devoured his works. Everything I could lay my hands on... the H section in every library and book store would scarcely change without my knowing it: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Revolt in 2100, Methuselah's Children, Time Enough For Love, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, The Number Of The Beast. Through these books, I came to understand myself in the context of a much larger picture than racial bigotry, burnt-out factories and blue-collar attitudes on intelligence and human potential. Like most sons, I didn't agree with him on everything, but his guidance set me on paths I still walk today.

When Heinlein died in 1988 it was like being thrown from a cliff. If you've ever cried on finishing a book you loved reading, you'll understand this as the same response writ large. There were two volumes I'd not read: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond The Sunset. There would be no more. I mentally set these aside for future expeditions when most needed. With the recent unearthing of For Us, The Living, Heinlein's very first (and previously unpublished) novel, it was time to complete the circle.

Time Enough For Love tells the tale of Lazarus Long's time trip into the Golden Age America of his youth, and his relationships there with his family, particularly his mother, Maureen Johnson. To Sail Beyond The Sunset is partly the same story from Maureen's point of view, but goes beyond and wraps all of Heinlein's works together for a final, suitable finale to a lifetime of social criticism through science fiction. His works are fantastical not so much as science fiction, but for the stripping bare of social taboo and fuzzy thinking he presents as lesser states to be overcome by intelligence and individual action.

Heinlein formulates a concept in his later works he calls World-As-Myth, where we are all equally fictional and everything which can be imagined exists somewhere in an infinity of universes. If you consider the nature of infinity and view reality through the useful lens of patterned, mathematic structure, you come to the only possible conclusion: Heinlein's right. To Sail Beyond The Sunset brings World-As-Myth home.

I like to think of Robert Heinlein being rescued at the very end of his life here by the characters he created, that he and his partner Virginia are roaming the multiverse with Lazarus, Maureen, Jubal, Ira, Deety, Zeb, Hilda, Jake and all the others who were most surely family to him the way he's family to me.

Heinlein is no longer here, but I'm still living a story in which he plays a part.

World-As-Myth, indeed.

Event Horizon(tal)
4/27/05 21:00 - permalink - email - category: Creation

This is it. The final push, the make-it-go-bang. Chris Martinez and I have been writing material toward this seven weeks for quite a span of time. At present, we've enough rough tracks for two or three long plays, and more than a few EPs.

When is a creation done?

When you finally say "Enough. As it is, shall it be."

Staggered mix/master schedule for MartiniSpears ep.

We both have lots of other projects on the fire, so we're maximizing the potential of two creatives operating separately for the final schedule. Chris is very strong with structure, so he'll pick the five tracks for the EP, run his final arrangement passes one week per song then hand-off to me. I'll be processing/adorning his arrangements for one week on the song passed off, then mixing/mastering it the following week while I work on processing/adorning the next hand-off.

Playing to strengths and staggering the work will allow us to devote lots of individual think time to each piece, then let it go with no creative remorse over unfinished business.

After this, on to packaging and decisions over where and how to take it to the next level.

World Cities
4/26/05 20:42 - permalink - email - category: Politics

Pascal Venier links to an intriguing map of regional relations among world cities and their organizational domains in the efforts of Big Business. The map comes from World Cities and Territorial States under Conditions of Contemporary Globalization, The 1999 Annual Political Geography Lecture by P.J. Taylor.

Reading the originating document, I found a second amazing map of alpha, beta and gamma world cities. This is a cropped version to fit here without shrinking, showing only Europe and the Americas. Follow the link for a full version with Asia included. It's enlightening.

World Cities of the Americas and Europe.

The idea of influential cities driving the world's economies and cultures leading to the downfall or irrelevance of enclosing states seems like a natural stage in the growth of multi-nationals. Taking over a city economically and using it to expand and manage territory is what they do. This map was created using quantitative information from a "data bank of 69 firms over 263 cities to identify a roster of 55 world cities." I'm wondering how other statistical analysis would overlay this map. What would wage scales and ethnicity breakdowns look like in comparison? How about levels of education, or local influence of respected academic institutions and research centers? Per capita income? Voting age? Age of the city itself? Dominant religion? Type of government?

An idea has just occurred to me for an excellent comparison display of data using Jitter or Java. Using a table of values for various parameters, one could drag a city to another city, changing the size and color of the circles to show a relative comparison of other factors, while still viewing their world-city status.

After that, I can imagine various automating algorithms to run relationship routes and comparisons, with the output plugged into sound generation patches... as usual, I can take any idea and find some way to make music out of it.

One last quote from Taylor, part of an argument labeled Braudel's Provocation: "Braudel provides us with a lovely bit of unconventional wisdom: capitalism is inherently anti-market. Any sensible capitalist avoids a proper functioning market because that is not where the biggest profits are to be made."

Dayenu
4/24/05 23:29 - permalink - email - category: Exorcism

Capping an extremely busy weekend, I was participant in an interesting Seder tonight in Berkeley. Multi-religious, multi-cultural and tremendous fun, three particular phrases stayed with me:

"We who are heirs to centuries of fear and wickedness, here tonight to celebrate our freedom."

"We make our religions look like us. What I'm interested in are those parts which do not look like us, because those are the parts of ourselves we need to remember."

"While with Pesach we celebrate in specificity the liberation theology of Judaism, we're actually celebrating all liberation theologies throughout the world, those which influenced Judaism and those it influenced and merged with in return. This night is for all oppressed people, everywhere."

I'm raising this fifth glass of wine to you, dear reader. To freedom and to life... LeChaim!

Have Sound Will Mobile
4/23/05 14:28 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I'm one hardcore laptopian. It goes everywhere with me, as inseparable as my heartbeat. I write this weblog, communicate with the world, design and disseminate from from the high-wire platform of my PowerBook. While I ultimately end up in the studio for the final steps of the process, and often enter it to record hardware synths to disk, I work on musical tracks everywhere.

Ideas may start:

in the studio
in the laptop
in a conversation on a Financial District street corner as a single rasped syllable opens a dimensional window through which comes flying an entire composition
in a dream and into life in the middle of the night

Once the song-writing process meant being surrounded by dozens of keyboards, samplers and drum machines. These days, I can bring songs to just short of the final mix and master wherever I am. With the recent acquisition of a tiny Edirol controller I am rigged for immediate musical endeavor.

The studio is the world is the studio. My mobile rig, aka What's In My Bag:

Apple PowerBook 17" loaded with Live, Digital Performer, custom Max/MSP/Jitter apps, patches and plug-ins, plus a slew of other audio frying tools
Edirol PCR-M1 USB controller with integrated MIDI interface
Logitech Dual Action Gamepad (for controlling some of those custom Max/MSP/Jitter apps)
80GB Firewire 800 drive for extended recording, dumps of raw tracks and regular rsyncx backups
Sony MiniDisc recorder with Core-sound stealth mics
Original Nintendo GameBoy running Nanoloop cartridge
Droid-3 using custom audio/midi control interface written in Max/MSP

I bring audio from the MiniDisc, Nanoloop and Droid-3 in via the PowerBook's on-board line-in jack. From there it goes through edits, processing, conversion and all ends up in Live where the groove is gotten on.

iPod (lots of tunes, scratch and demo tracks, extra hard drive in a pinch)
Headphones and earbuds of the moment
Moleskine pocket notebook (grid, 9 x 14 cm) and a couple mechanical pencils
1GB jump drive on my keychain (sneaker net forever!)
Canon PowerShot
Various audio and MIDI cables so it all interconnects and also connects to everything else
15' extension power cable, PSUs for everything
The bag itself is a Tom Bihn Smart Alec with an added snap-in Monolith case for the PowerBook. Comfortable to carry, spacious yet sleek, waterproof (even the zipper!) and tough. This is, by far, the absolute best laptop carrier I've ever used.

Any time, any place, my groove and I are one.

Related: V(m)KB?

Noosfera - Jungian Epiphanies
4/22/05 23:07 - permalink - email - category: Listen

World tree reaches to the sky on the cover graphic of Jungian Epiphanies by Noosfera.

Chris O'Shea at Pixelsumo turned me onto Devachan by Cesare Marilungo, which looks like a groovy app for 3d programming. I'll be compiling Devachan on one of my Win boxes later this week, but at the moment I'm swimming in Cesare's music while Jittering.

This, my friends, is very fine and unique ambient, centering around reverb drenched guitar work and washes of droning feedback. Surprising melodies, even more surprising melodies hidden underneath, complete with understated, atmospheric vox, occasional piano and zero percussion.

Noosfera doesn't get in the way, doesn't force you to concentrate on it, instead creates an embedded place, a structure for time, space and mind to unfold within. "Noosfera" is Italian for "noosphere," which seems entirely appropriate.

Every few tracks I looked up from my Jitter efforts to find myself surprised by the room I was still in.

Sulfur And Definition
4/21/05 03:33 - permalink - email - category: Atmos

His pull was almost visually distorting. The boy's eyes locked and tracked every movement.

The man sitting across the dinner table ran well-manicured thumbs beneath each black lapel, straightening the collar of his already impeccably fit jacket. Black hair spilled over slight but squared shoulders, sharp nose split the distance exactly between eyes so dark there were no irises.

Cold mouth, smiling.

Those black eyes directed his trapped gaze across the lush spread in one lavish sweep and hook. "Don't wait for me. Eat."

Yes, Silent Jack knew how to fill a platter for meetings of this sort. The boy had been eating here since he was six, strayed in off the street and pressed into service washing dishes after devouring the meal he'd been trying to thieve. 1918 had been close to the end of him, until earning that meal marked the start of something truly good. He'd washed dishes for Jack since, so finally dining with the man in the black suit seemed a natural progression.

Expectancy issued forth, pulling his attention, fork hanging in the air mid-bite. "So... the deal." The man passed four fingertips across thumb in quick succession and flames sprang from his hand. He lit the dark brown cigarette still coalescing between his lips.

The boy stared at the spot the flames had been, now glowing ember and curling spirals of thick, green vapor. "I didn't know you smoked." As the words fell, unable to be recalled, he knew they'd cost him.

One sharp eyebrow became a blade, dividing past from future. "I've always smoked."

Hope Springs
4/20/05 14:00 - permalink - email - category: Unfälle

Sitting here outside Peet's Coffee in downtown San Francisco, I people watch. I'm sipping green tea, working on a mic-reactive Jitter patch with my main Tinderbox document open on another screen to capture ideas... and people watching.

A few moments ago a pair of ancient ladies came stepping gingerly along, arm in arm. One was likely the daughter of the other, both were old enough to have personally known Solomon. As they walked, the younger released the other's arm to briefly turn and inspect an anti-Bush poster on the wall. The moment they separated the elder, unaware of the new arrangement, stepped a few feet forward and began to fall.

At this precise moment, a young man walking swiftly up behind them passed through the position where the younger woman had been standing. He reached for the falling lady's air-grasping arm just in time to keep her from going down on hard concrete, then escorted her to the entrance of the coffee shop.

As he held the door open with one arm and helped steady her with the other, she looked at him with astonishment and said "You're not Hope!"

He saw me smiling, looked back to the old lady, and said "Well ma'am, perhaps I am."

Monolake - Invisible Force
4/18/05 00:41 - permalink - email - category: Listen

BlueYellow streamers on cover of Monolake's Invisible Force single.

Monolake returns with a stomper: the double A sided single Invisible Force.

Invisible leads us out of the thumping, machined darkness of Monolake's last full-length, Momentum, and into steamy, tribal tech amidst glistening noir cities. Repetitive and insistent, but never static. You're heading for the station to hop the trans-ether express and can't help bobbing your head along the way.

Force sounds like phenotypical expression of an evolved genotype from Excentric or Reminiscence off Momentum. A lightly swung kick and hidden bounce in the snare, the sparsely atmospheric space around body-pop drum programming... but the comparison ends with the rhythmic structures. Chopped and re-arranged female utterances guide you through the beat, a subway driver bleeding through from the future. You can't help but move, and when you reach your destination, you want to ride the trans-ether loop again.

Invisible Force is the first advance single from upcoming Monolake album Polygon Cities, due in June. Robert Henke's changed up his solo artist situation and worked with a new partner for this album, T++. Invisible Force is still very much Monolake, but fresh from tomorrow. I can't wait for the entire new plate to drop.

More Of The Same
4/16/05 22:17 - permalink - email - category: Politics

Requiem.net.au sees increased aggression against Iran and Syria if John Bolton, Bush II's pick for US ambassador to the United Nations, gets the job.

It does fit the pattern. You can count on Bush, Inc. for three things: doublespeak, half-truth and outright lies. But I don't see the irony Requiem does. I see a plan in action.

Here are a few reinforcing threads in the Republicans' sophist tapestry:

Alberto Gonzales - The Attorney General is meant to represent the rule of law at the highest level. The US now has an Attorney General who advocates breaking international law and condoning torture to suit US interests.

Clear Skies Initiative - This ridiculously named boon for Big Pollution allows more pollution to be released than under our existing Clean Air Act, with self-policing by industry. As usual, Bush has the wolves guarding the sheep.

Healthy Forest Act - Just like Clear Skies, this only helps Big Business. Under this act, timber companies may chop down old-growth on public land and sell it for top dollar. It does not decrease the spread of forest fires as propagandized and it does not affect the health of the forest positively in any way, instead negatively impacting the environment and local ecosystems.

No Child Left Behind - NCLB furthers a system where only the wealthy receive quality education, and ultimately will convert the government funded American public school system to private schools paid for by parents. Again, private industry wins, the general public loses. No wonder Bush has underfunded education by over $27 billion.

The USA PATRIOT Act - Destroys civil liberties, privacy and the foundations of democratic process. PATRIOT enables the administration to brand anyone exercising their right to dissent and disagree with Bush, Inc. as an enemy of the state.

Private Accounts & Social Security's imminent collapse - This entire boondoggle is solely to cover up the largest planned government re-assignment of wealth from the middle class to the corporate sector in history.

The War On Terror - Invading Iraq has created far more terrorists than killed. This effort should probably be renamed the War On Iraqi Civilians or The War For Oil.

Spending "political capital" from a "public mandate" - Bush lost the popular vote the first time and invaded two countries on the strength of that. For term two he pulled off a whopping 51% of the vote, so watch out.

A "culture of life" - This from the man who, as Governor of Texas, presided over more executions (152) than any other governor in history, spent only 15-30 minutes per prisoner deciding against clemency requests while granting only one, and himself signed the Texas Futile Care Law allowing health care providers to pull the plug on patients unable to pay for their life support.

A man of God - Guess Bush II only reads the Old Testament.

The 2000 election was a coup in the US government. In 2004 Bush, Inc. solidified its power through nationalism, fear ("Terrizm, terrizm, terrizm!") and hellfire.

Until these guys are out, it will be more of the same.

Internet Exploder
4/15/05 16:05 - permalink - email - category: 2Secondfuse

I've added two new badges to 2Second(fuse)'s left column.

The Livejournal badge links to 2Second(fuse)'s RSS feed syndicated on LJ, which can be added to Friends pages. I've added it to my own on vitruvius.livejournal.com and it works wonderfully. An interesting feature of Livejournal's implementation of feeds: comments are available on each post. True slickness would be had if LJ emailed comments to the author address listed in the feed itself.

Firefox badge. I debated adding this. I'm not interested in annoying Win users or being branded a software bigot. Here's the scoop: I've tested this site on every browser available on OSX, Win2k and WinXP (Linux tests coming soon) and the ONLY browser that doesn't render the CSS positioning properly is... you guessed it, Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

If you catch the site formatted a bit oddly, I'm pushing the CSS around in an attempt to find solutions which will render properly in IE. Of course, when it renders properly in IE it breaks in Safari, Firefox, Netscape and Opera.

Add in security and other flaws Internet Explorer is routinely roasted for and I can't in good conscience refrain from recommending Firefox. This is not bigotry. Cross-platform, stable, secure, standards compliant, fast, tabbed browsing: Firefox is simply a superior product.

Papal Neocortex
4/14/05 13:58 - permalink - email - category: Science

Bruce Schneier's written an excellent summary of the Papal election process.

It's fascinating to take apart a system developed over centuries to withstand social engineering and direct rigging. Most interesting to me are these thoughts in Schneier's closing paragraphs, for another reason:

The only way manual systems work is through a pyramid-like scheme, with small groups reporting their manually obtained results up the chain to more central tabulating authorities.

Those of you I've been raving to about Jeff Hawkins' new book On Intelligence might be having a hint of deja vu. It's part of how Hawkins claims the brain processes data. The feedback and levels of hierarchic autonomy are missing, but it's a component of the process.

Fully wrapping myself around Hawkins' ideas, I'm seeing parallels playing out everywhere.

Perhaps pantheist Leibniz was on the right track with his Monadology, after all.

Right Logic, Wrong Target
4/12/05 09:24 - permalink - email - category: Vegetarian

My morning Firefox routine is to "Open in Tabs" several directories of news sites, weblogs, music industry forums, tech and geek chatter and other daily sources of information whilst sipping the day's first, and thus best, cup of green tea.

One of my opening news tabs is MSNBC. It's not deep and it's not factually reliable, but as an indicator of spin and America's general mindset it's usually spot-on. The first story which caught my eye this morning was Should hunters be allowed to shoot cats? and I must admit, my cup of tea was no longer as wonderful as it might have been.

Wisconsin is holding a public advisory vote on whether "wild" cats should be unlisted as protected, headed up by a fellow named Mark La Crosse. The results of the vote are considered by the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board and if they agree, this would allow hunters to kill cats all year long like other unprotected species, such as gophers and skunks.

"Wild" is defined as any cat without a collar that does not show "friendly" behavior. One of my two cats is a socialized feral. He's often more friendly than the other, but both will duck for immediate cover when someone they don't know comes tramping along in boots with a gun. So what, exactly, would the signs of "friendly" behavior be? Sticking around to be shot?

The MSNBC article's stated reason for allowing cat hunting: Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials.

So let's put this in perspective: hunters want to kill cats, whose flesh they do not eat and whose skins they do not use, because the cats kill songbirds? You're really reaching, boys.

The greatest threat to all wildlife, songbirds included, is habitat encroachment and destruction by homo sapiens. There are 6 billion plus of us, and far less of all of them every day.

Come clean, Mr. La Crosse. You don't give a damn about songbirds. If you did, you'd be working on population control and extolling the benefits of adoption and planned parenthood. Instead of shooting cats, you'd be promoting sustainable agriculture, ending urban sprawl and calling for the creation rather than destruction of wetlands and forests.

You just like to kill creatures which are smaller than yourself.

Responsibility
4/11/05 00:38 - permalink - email - category: Incantation

I am responsible.

For my actions, for their impact, for righting those actions if their impact is not what I intended, for my life, for the world.

My place in this universe is the sole responsibility of one person: me. The kind of world I live in also belongs to only me. How could it be otherwise?

With so many people on the planet, how can this be? The cumulative working of billions of individual actions creates the world. By taking responsibility I actively and consciously shape the effects of my actions. These actions affect others and shape their actions in response. More importantly, I shape the actions of those who do not consciously choose their path.

There's the key- consciously choosing your path.

Think for just a moment- how many people's live do you affect with every one of your smallest actions?

When you purchase/don't purchase the meat, when you start the car/when you ride a bike, when you flip on a light switch/when you dine by candle light, when you take someone else's word for it/when you learn something new, when you hold your tongue/when you speak up and out?

Once each of my smallest actions has flown from my hand, how does it unfold? Am I the architect of animals suffering in mills by the millions, paying for their continued mass use as food products? By driving when I could walk or bike, am I engineering the socioeconomic situations producing suicide attacks by airplane? When I place my faith in the hands of those who would dictate right and wrong, am I blindly following tradition rather than a course which makes sense now? By not speaking up do I share responsibility for the actions of talking head politicians in a post-literate culture?

Think for another moment- how is your life affected by the mere thoughts become action of people you do not personally know?

Here is my definition of activism: envision the world you would live in, bring it into focus, define it. Compare it against the one you currently inhabit. What needs to change?

Start changing it.

Work down the chain from the largest features to the smallest actions needed to make them real. Begin with the smallest actions and keep working until where you're at looks like where you want to be.

Activism means practicing what you desire. It means communicating the instructions for how to change in a thousand different ways to a thousand different kinds of people. It means creating incentives for others to change even if they don't understand the reasoning behind it. It means explaining the reasoning behind it. It means explaining the reasoning behind it again.

It means proving your assertions. One way to do this: walk the walk. When you don't fall down from doing so, others will start walking with you.

It means sharing your vision of the world with everyone you come into contact with. Not forcing it upon them... sharing it.

It means carrying the world with you, always.

It means never stopping until your work is done.

All living organisms require constant support to continue. A world, like dreams and lives and clear thought, is a living organism. Activism means never stopping, because the work of caring for a living organism is only done once it is dead.

Tinderbox Export: RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3
4/9/05 22:48 - permalink - email - category: Tinderbox

I use Tinderbox from Eastgate Software for all kinds of grooviness, including the creation of 2Second(fuse). When I began building this weblog the existing feed templates just weren't rocking NetNewsWire the way I wanted them to. A bit of reverse engineering, occasional glances at the specs and a little perseverance gave me new export templates for both RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3. This wasn't difficult to accomplish, but did take some tweaking before the new feeds would validate.

If you're a new Tinderblogger (or one without feeds) and export your weblog to your own site rather than using Blogger or MovableType, this may save you some work.

Set Up

There are four HTML export template files you'll need to place in your local html templates directory:

rssnews.txt, rssnewsitem.txt, atomnews.txt, atomnewsitem.txt

They're available in two versions:

tinderfeeds_24.zip for use in Tinderbox 2.4

tinderfeeds_25.zip for use in Tinderbox 2.5.

Download them, then fire up a text editor and have a look. You'll want to edit them to include your own copyright info, author name and email address in the appropriate spots. Make sure you have the attributes set in your Tinderbox document for WeblogTitle, WeblogTagline and base URL, as this data is used in the templates.

Step By Step

First, I created two agents which skim the first few posts from a container called archives, one for RSS and one for ATOM.

Outline view in Tinderbox 2.4 showing RSS and Atom agents collecting recent posts for the feeds.

The container archives is kept sorted chronologically, most recent first, so the Agent Query below gathers the most recent entries into RSS and ATOM. You reach this query pane by selecting each agent and hitting Enter. Each agent is the same here except for its Name. I chose to feed only the nine most recent entries, but it could be any number you like. After an entry is no longer within range, it will drop out of your feeds.

If you don't keep your entries in a main container called archives, just substitute the name of whatever container you're pulling from.

Next, select each agent and hit Cmd-Option-I to bring up Info. To set the proper HTML export values double-click the attribute properties for each of the following:

HTMLExportTemplate for RSS == rssnews.txt, for ATOM == atomnews.txt

HTMLExportFileName for RSS == index, for ATOM == atom

HTMLExportExtension is .xml for both agents

Below are my complete HTML export settings for the RSS agent. The ATOM agent is exactly the same with the above exceptions.

How It Works

The main template files (rssnews.txt and atomnews.txt) wrap header and closing information around the exported feed page, and tell Tinderbox to process each child note inside the agents with a second template before inserting its data in the main feed.

This second template (rssnewsitem.txt and atomnewsitem.txt) simply formats each note to be an individual entry in the feed.

Cleaning Up

Export your weblog to HTML (Cmd-Shift-H) and presto! The feed files you've generated (index.xml and atom.xml) should go in the top level of your website, the same directory where index.html lives.

Put the following discovery code inside the <head></head> tags of your site's index.html page:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="YOUR_WEBLOG RSS 2.0" href="http://YOUR_SITE_URL/index.xml">

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="YOUR_WEBLOG Atom 0.3" href="http://YOUR_SITE_URL/atom.xml">

I've tested the feeds generated by these templates using NetNewsWire and Pheeder on OSX, FeedReader on WinXP and Firefox's built-in feed reader on both platforms. The RSS feed has also been routed through LiveJournal's built in feed support and shows properly on Friends pages. (Thank you, Mgoa Bloom.)

Looking around at other people's feeds for examples to crib from, I found most feeds have at least a few problems and won't validate. These feeds will. You can test them out (or 2Sec's own) at feedvalidator.org.

Happy syndication!

Rudy Rucker - The Fourth Dimension
4/8/05 00:22 - permalink - email - category: Read

I'll admit: I'm a sucker for Flatlandia.

I wasn't always this way. The person I have to thank for this curious addiction is Rudy Rucker. He introduced me to A. Square and his two dimensional cohorts back when I was questing for the edges of the universe and anything was possible.

He did it with The Fourth Dimension.

Thanks in large part to Rudy Rucker, Douglas Hofstadter and Robert Heinlein I realized there are no edges. Everything is not only possible, but probable. Tonight I spent some hours re-re-reading various sections of this book, getting a bearing on my internal compass, plotting a new path based on where I've been.

Here are some points on the map of reality Rucker provided me:

- Flatland

- the fourth dimension as time and as space

- Necker cubes

- hypercubes, hyperspheres and tesseracts

- hyperspace, Howard Hinton and Hinton cubes

- pre-atomic theory explanations of reality

- matter and space as fluid conceptual frameworks

- wormholes, Einstein-Rosen bridges, warped and folded space

- Einstein's general and special theories of relativity

- ana/kata and fact-space

- liquor thieves from the next dimension

It goes on and on. Rucker introduced to me or expanded to early understanding so much in these pages... the cumulative effect is staggering. Best of all, and I believe the main reason for this volume's success: cover to cover, the book is fun. It's not academic, dry or difficult reading at any point, and the eccentric, engaging style slips past the "learning something new" barrier in disguise. I can imagine Rucker with the White Rabbit sitting next to him laying out writing advice on the manuscript.

Each chapter contains mind-bending puzzles for you to do (probably the Rabbit's idea) and if you're very diligent you'll be able to visualize four dimensional objects by the end of the book.

Mediated
4/7/05 10:06 - permalink - email - category: Futurism

I recently spoke to my grandfather via CapTel mediated telephone conversation. CapTel is in ramp-up now, with main distribution only to veterans. Full-scale voice recognition and transcription is planned, but for now it's you, your conversation partner and a silent third party transcriber.

Text scrolls along for the subscriber on a small LCD. The captioning was fairly good, and provided my grandfather the ability to hold a solid telephone conversation for the first time in many decades. He's in his mid-80s and quite hearing impaired, age now conspiring with original damage from shelling during WWII. This is a work-around for his lost ability almost on par with the implanted optic lenses of some years back.

During the conversation I was quite conscious of the third person's presence... questions ran through my head as we spoke:

- When tough conversations must be had, will people hold back from the truth and the straight line for fear of what the person listening might think?

- How often do people try to engage the transcriber as an active participant, perhaps to settle an argument?

- How often do transcribers themselves feel the urge to interject, to answer a question or make a statement? Does this urge subside with experience? Is this professionalism or apathy? How often do they feel an ethical dilemma in something they've overheard and must remain silent to? Can the transcriber be held liable in some instances, such as child endangerment?

- Are there already cases where someone has mis-transcribed conversation to devastating effect, ending relationships and destroying happiness? Or perhaps created misrepresentative text resulting in legal trouble for either of the conversing people? How long until waivers are required absolving CapTel of all responsibility?

- Are there times where the ability for someone to truly communicate has saved a life, created new happiness and joy?

- I wonder if transcribers send out the occasional "fuck you" on the screen to misogynists, racists, homophobes, zealots and other lowlifes then quit the job. Perhaps they take over one side of the conversation entirely, substituting their own thoughts to the deaf party. How often? On acceptance of the transcriptionist job do you sign an agreement affirming you will not do this? Are there legal penalties if you do?

- As a transcriber, could you bring suit for emotional distress against the person you were transcribing? Could you make a case for a hostile work environment?

- Are the conversations/transcriptions recorded to provide legal leverage for CapTel? Is this information for sale and searchable?

- How can someone do this for a job? Never mind potentially offensive conversations... I would go crazy transcribing all the banal blather flying across American phone circuits. Doughnut conversations in abundance. On the flip side, imagine the non-doughnut conversations to be heard. Are transcribers sometimes witness to amazing, wondrous interactions, changing their own viewpoint and their life? Is it possible first-hand experiences of this transcribing group will spill out to larger influence on society as a whole, promoting understanding and embracing of the spectrum of human life?

In the foreground, I participated in a wonderfully complete, transcontinental conversation with my grandfather. When I told him I loved him, I know he saw the words. In the background, when the conversation was over I felt the urge to thank our silent transcriber for their services, the culmination of all those questions above.

But I couldn't. My grandfather/transcriber was already disconnected.

V(m)KB?
4/6/05 03:33 - permalink - email - category: Idea

cc: VKB, Inc.

VKB has created an amazing, long-overdue and almost totally ignored virtual keyboard device. Using infrared detection it tracks your finger motion on a lightspray keyboard. Futuristic and sexy.

All is not lightsabers and gargleblasters, however. People using the device complain of hand stress from typing swiftly on an ungiving surface, at least until they learn to use softer strokes. Tracking has been reported to be poor unless the virtual keys are hit exactly, a difficult accomplishment without the feedback of a physically pressable button.

I think VKB is missing the money shot. The acceptance percentage in the consumer tech crowd is going to be much smaller than the acceptance in specialized niche markets which could truly benefit from this technology.

I'm a musician who lugs a portable studio everywhere. I currently abuse a small MIDI controller keyboard which barely squeezes into an already over-burdened backpack. I am in love with the idea of carrying a tiny, cyclopean drone like the VKB to spray two or three octaves of keys over my work surface of the moment.

I see the controller purists among you looking askance at this text right now, whispering things like "What about pressure sensitivity?" and "How about velocity?" The technology may already lend itself to velocity measurements, and if not, with development I feel certain speed of finger stroke could be measured. With the longer throw of musical keys it may also be easier to improve stroke recognition in the general keying areas.

All sorts of motion controllers may be possible. Imagine a single band of light functioning somewhat like a ribbon controller next to the keyboard, and assignable to any MIDI parameter you like, including those you would normally control with pressure. Imagine being able to switch back and forth from a few virtual octaves to a group of X/Y pad controllers (one for each finger!) to a bank of mixing faders.

This is all off point.

Portable. Let me say it again: less than 3" tall by 1" wide by 1" deep.

Portable.

I release all claims to this idea, VKB. It's all yours. There must be an enterprising OEM out there (Roland/Edirol, perhaps?) who would be interested in bringing a device like this to market.

I have one small request: when the first Virtual (MIDI) KeyBoards roll off the assembly line, send me one, will you?

Apparat - Duplex (remixes)
4/5/05 15:05 - permalink - email - category: Listen

1- Schallstrom (Thomas Fehlmann remix)

2- Contradiction (L'usine remix)

3- Steinholtz (Monolake remix)

4- Wooden (Anders Ilar remix)

Four excellent original tracks from Apparat's Duplex + four luminaries of the electronic sound world == four excellent, luminous remixes. I can't stop playing this today. I am compelled to shuttle back and hit play again.

Thomas Fehlmann's click and run version of Schallstrom hits the virtual four on the floor crowd right where they like it... electronic body music for the brain.

L'Usine's reconstruction of Contradiction warps the vocals into another instrument entirely, then presses them into service of ride-tha-funk glitch-hop.

Monolake engineers a frozen, linear take on Steinholtz, whirring and bumping on the boundary between Apparat's and his own world of paradoxical motion and stillness in ever-increasing quantities.

Closing out the tracks, Anders Ilar's vast reconstruction of Wooden is playing somewhere right now in a cylindrical space ship traveling between solar systems. It's been a centuries-long voyage to colonize a new world, but the destination is finally near.

Evolution In Action
4/4/05 00:33 - permalink - email - category: Exorcism

It is with unrestrained mirth I read of Intelligent Design stealth attacks on science and evolution in American public schools. I am saddened by the thousands of young minds this quackery is being foisted upon, but the premise of portraying religion as science in the year 2005 is so cognitively dissonant, so delusional I can only laugh.

Word one to Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates: once something enters the realm of science, it can no longer be religious faith. As science, it's now subject to rigorous empirical testing and potential invalidation, just like any other scientific theory. Until you can put the Artist's signature on display, Intelligent Design fails the evidence test in every way.

A point, if I may, that could give Intelligent Design advocates a more productive avenue of thought:

Given an Intelligent Designer, which is the more elegant solution?

1- Kick-start an entire reality and let it proceed according to seeded algorithms.

2- Grow the basic framework but create one "un-evolvable" eyeball and brain at a time, then step in at various points to monkey and tinker with it in order to keep it all rolling along according to "plan."

If a human created a system requiring zero expenditure of energy on maintenance and daily operation we would hail them as an absolute genius. If a human creates a system which breaks down often, needs continual re-working or accomplishes its functions via various Goldbergian routes, we call this "bad design" and suggest the designer take it back to plan.

ID proponents, by arguing only occasional involvement on the part of a Designer for "irreducibly complex" features, are actually arguing for:

1- At best, an imperfect Designer creating in ad hoc fashion because it did not have the skill, dominion or desire to create whole cloth.

2- At worst, an imperfect Designer with no plan at all.

In the long term, this is memetic evolution in action, and Intelligent Design will be its own undoing. By opening the concept up to scientific discussion and abandoning the safety net of designation as "unquestionable Creationist dogma" it will seal its own fate as that of all nonsensical ideas unable to compete: history.

Word two to Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates: weed out the logical contradictions and poor implications of your concepts, then get involved in honest science and experience the truly wondrous "complexity from simplicity" of reality. If there is a Designer, it's far too Intelligent to create something using ID's haphazard human-framed methodology. Science doesn't invalidate the essence of your concept of a Created universe, only historic interpretations of the idea.

"Let there be light" may be a true beginning. Everything after that? We're still working on the translation.

Shoes Of April 05
4/2/05 18:46 - permalink - email - category: Vegetarian

I've worn these fine working boots for close to a year. I nicked the already weakened creasing of the right boot's surface on an unruly rack corner... and found vinyl is easily repaired with duct tape.

Waterproof, warm, tough enough and 100% man-made materials == no skin belonging to someone else and about 20% the price of the same shoe if constructed from leather.

I almost went with black duct, but like the look of silver taping better.

Duct tape: musician's best friend, and now a snappy vegetarian fashion statement.

Be Something Extraordinary
4/1/05 09:00 - permalink - email - category: Incantation

Just after the Eve's midnight on 31 December 2004 the title of this post leapt from the aether. It promptly set up shop in my skull as if it owned the joint and has been tearing down pointless walls for three months since.

Mundane life hums and pops along, small voltage in a small circuit. High voltage, dealing lightning from each hand in a feedback loop with the universe itself, flying threads of energy whipping back around on me in regenerative charging cycles... that's what I want, that's where I'm going.

Be something extraordinary- my credo for the new millenium.

We credit rockstars with powers and abilities outside the norm in Western society. They occupy a special plane all their own, and the rules don't apply to them. It's seen as a desirable position, overlapping "genius," "president" and "priest" to varying degrees, but with more hip-swivel.

When we flatten our pre-conceptual walls we see it's not musicians alone who qualify for rockstardom. Writers, scientists, photographers, architects, actors, movie-makers, programmers, chip-designers, activists, chefs, child-rearers, linguists, artists, bio-engineers, astral travelers... rockers all. A rockstar is anyone who creates something and does it not just well, but so well it's outside the bounds of common experience.

You are not a rockstar because you take a pretty picture. Or because you wear your inner life on your sleeve for all to see, turning whatever situation is at hand into an avenue of self-promotion. You are likewise not a rockstar because you persevere under the injustice of the world. Martyrs are, after all, failures. And failures, no matter how spectacular, do not qualify for rocker status.

You are not a rockstar because you can convince people to look at you. Any fool can do that, and will find people don't honestly see what's right in front of their faces and the shallow attention doesn't satisfy. There is a difference between the image and the item. Don't pretend to the throne, be the real thing.

Being a rockstar is about exactly that: being. People look at you precisely because, as a rockstar, you're something amazing. While it results from the holistic effect of your actions, it's not something you can consciously do... it's something you are.

With Western culture mired in mediocrity, hypocrisy and outright fakery, rockstars in all fields are more needed than ever. Banality is to be had in plenty and is collapsing under its own weight, a weight great enough to take many of us down with it. Creative acts are the natural domain of rockstars, with self-directed evolution the ultimate creative act. Can rockstars remake the world? Rockstars, my friend, are the only ones who can.

Be something extraordinary.

The Fuse Is Lit
4/1/05 08:45 - permalink - email - category: 2Secondfuse

2Second(fuse) is:

A focusing mechanism for my many endeavors and interests

I'm highly interested in process and conscious design, so my intent is to make 2Second(fuse) an evolving mind-map, charting my course from past into future using present as pivot point.

An artistic process

Counter-balancing the above, "the map is not the territory." I'll be using my continually evolving map as an aid in exploring the actual terrain, digging into the details of creation and growth. The act of writing it down is a crucial part of thinking it through to manifestation. Upon manifestation, an artist returns, even if only subconsciously, to a piece's continuation. It's natural, a part of the process, so I'll be using this weblog to keep the process moving between "finished" works. A quote attributed to Da Vinci summarizes it perfectly, "Art is never finished, only abandoned." By fixing and linking my thoughts in whole cloth I'm cycling forward with all of them. I'm abandoning abandonment.

A springboard for ideas and communication

An idea I seem to mention often in my conversations with "sovereign" individuals: you can live your life in a way which may increase understanding and acceptance of your actions and make the world a better place for you and like-minded people to live in. If you don't talk to the wind, how can you ever expect it to answer back?

A sandbox

I'm an evolver, so count on 2Second(fuse) changing. I won't break any permalinks, but I'll be nudging CSS schemes/formating/visuals around, adding areas, breaking/fixing/dive-bombing/fixing the right way. 01 April 2005 is simply the starting point. I'm still cogitating some larger decisions: to add comments or not to add comments, perhaps roll in older entries from previous incarnations, image and sonic galleries, podcasting, randomization...

To suggest, comment or just say "hello," drop me an email. I'm particularly fond of suggestions and comments with a nice "hello" wrapped around them.

Hello!