My dear, you are the dirt,
The beginning in which I grow;
You hold my roots upon the Earth
You are all my strength below
My dear, you are the dirt,
You catch me when I fall;
You are each place I need you
You are, my love, my all
My Dear, You Are
Poems, posted on September 29, 2009 at 04h44
Spontaneous Friend
Crime of Life, posted on September 27, 2009 at 10h18
On the way over I thought about another time I’d gone to visit him. It was nearly thirty below and there I was walking through the biting wind to say hello. This time, it was nearly 11 and he’d just told me he was in town overnight. Years earlier, he was on stage with The Subterraneans and blew a string on his bass. He didn’t have any spares and there were no other bass guitars around, so I drove home to get mine. Another night, I was supposed to meet some people I didn’t necessarily want to be alone with, so I dropped in and picked him up on the way. And yet still, he once called me at six with a free ticket to Nine Inch Nails at seven. The seats were only several rows back from the stage.
It’s nice to have a spontaneous friend.
On A Sunday Afternoon
My Regular Mind, posted on September 27, 2009 at 11h24
A full ten days without an update, you see. That’s mostly because I wanted the previous entry up as long as possible, and lessly because I’ve been a scurrying thing. I’ve restructured my project list, pushing the Great Big Project back a wee bit to make room for others. Recording some hip hop lyrics is moving up, as is my vegetarian information package, and both things will coincide with the launch of my new web site redesign. In its development, I have tried to focus on functionality over formality. (That’s not quite the right word, I don’t think. How about, formal-ality?) Homes are rarely ever furnished before they’re built, right? Continued…
Flowers For Pepito
Briefs of Fiction, posted on September 17, 2009 at 04h25
When An knew that she absolutely must go, she stepped into the grass, the same way she had so many years ago. The mist was drifting in and soon she wouldn’t be able to see a thing, not the grass, not Furrley or the nymbit, not even the beautiful ivea-violets she was holding. The nymbit squeaked.
“Now listen here, you. I told you I was gonna have to leave one day, so don’t you go making this sad on me,” she said to her friends. The wind blew her short hair into her eyes. Continued…
Untidy
Crime of Life, posted on September 15, 2009 at 07h53
tags used: relationships
She came over one night, upset. I rushed around anxiously tidying up my things. The place was a mess. Still. The day before I was staying in to clean, but I became distracted by something that took the entire evening. Only she knew what was going to happen.
I was feeling differently about distractions then. My nights were often filled with them and hardly with her. Everything was unusual. I’d stepped into a shape I thought emotions should fit into, but I wouldn’t admit the shape wasn’t my own.
When she told me she was leaving that night, I did not want her to go. Both our minds had been wandering for some time, distracted. Only she knew. My room was so cluttered then.
A Waiting Time
My Regular Mind, posted on September 15, 2009 at 04h05
I feel as though soon, and I’m not sure when, I’ll have to take some time for myself. Months, as long as I can. I have enough saved up for it, and I could extend my sabbatical if I reduce my unnecessary expenses. Eating out, large grocery stores, miscellaneous luxuries. My body feels weakened a little, like an anxiety of wanting to do everything immediately.
But for now, all I have to do is take a shower and enjoy dinner.
Biotechnology as the Way to Feed a Starving World
Thoughtful Thinking, posted on September 14, 2009 at 03h08
tags used: quotes
“One of the problems that the biotechnology industry has is that it’s done nothing for the American consumer. There’s nothing there. There’s no genetically engineered food that does anything… no nutrition, nothing for us. So how are they going to sell this technology to the American people? Well, they’ve come up with this idea that maybe biotechnology should be sold as the way to feed a starving world.
“One major problem with that, the reason why roughly 800 million people starve every day – and that is a tragic fact – has nothing to do with the amount of food available. Most of these people around the world who are starving used to be farmers. But because of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund giving huge loans to these countries, these countries can no longer allow for subsisted farming. They had to grow expensive export crops back to the first world to pay back those loans. So they kicked these hundreds of millions of farmers off their farms, they end up in the Bopauls and the Mexico Cities and the Brazilias of the world. Without money. They are no longer growing their own food. And they’re competing for the scarce jobs available in the new industrialization of these countries. They are no longer food independent, they’re food dependent.”
- Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director, Center for Food Safety
Transcribed from The Future of Food.
Programming Languages
Crime of Life, posted on September 11, 2009 at 01h02
My first exposure to programming languages was at Peter’s home. He showed me something he made in QBASIC where you guessed a random number that the computer generated. The game itself was uninteresting, but when he showed me how he’d made it I was fascinated. I could do that. So I taught myself using the help menu. It was tedious progress on an old Pentium 386, but this was long before internet and instructional books.
Years later, my family got a modem, and soon after, my friend Dale introduced me to mIRC. The interesting thing about mIRC was that you could develop your own scripts, and since the language was similar to what I already knew, I was immediately fascinated. Once again, using help menus and examples, I programmed several different scripts, including a bot that people could play various games with. Soon after that, I learned how to program in HTML, once again self-taught, and made a few simple web sites, like this one and this one.
I’m not sure how I came about learning PHP and MySQL, but most likely it was as a result of talking to Rob. (Rob runs Logical Hosting, which I recommend to anyone looking for domains.) They were fairly simple languages to learn, albeit much more powerful, and there were a few peculiarities to the languages that made my self-instruction more difficult than it had to be. Then, as of a week ago, I’ve been learning CSS. Yes, on my own.
Ahh, the story of one geek’s progress.
Unusual Days
My Regular Mind, posted on September 11, 2009 at 08h46
I had some bizarre dreams last night. And I slept for a solid nine hours.
I haven’t had a session of coding like last night in a long time, probably not since I was in junior high school. I remember a couple nights when I was working on what I called TextGamez in BASIC. I’d just learned a new function (if I’m not mistaken, it was something along the lines of $x = $inkey) and I was going wild throwing it into loops. There must have been times since then when I was working on web sites or IRC scripts, but nothing like last night. I was literally falling asleep at the keyboard, my body couldn’t take any more. My brain on the other hand was fighting to keep his partner awake. Sometimes what you’re working on just becomes so clear that if you interrupt it to sleep, you’ll never find that rhythm again.
It’s my usual day off today. Yesterday I was also away from work, but that was unusual, just like the day before it. I was productive though, so it’s not a great loss. Except financially.
Headlines
Briefs of Fiction, posted on September 9, 2009 at 10h51
As Mr. Higgins picks up the newspaper, he sees tomorrow’s headline, in big block letters across the top:
TORIES LOSE 18 SEATS
“Oh right,” he mumbles, “have to go vote later.”
The thought doesn’t cross his mind that his vote won’t make a difference. He’s just happy to have something to do.
The rest of the paper is more of the same. A robbery later on, an explosion in Manitoba, a new Google something-or-other. He doesn’t read the articles, just skims the headlines until he gets to the obituaries. He looks through them carefully, looking for his name.
No, not today.
