THE UNIVERSE IS BETWEEN YOUR EARS

Project Elbow: File Manager / Weak References to BitmapDatas in Actionscript Flash.Utils.Dictionary

2012-02-08T22:16:00.000-06:00

The FileManager was written to run FileManagerTasks which run FileLoaders. The FileManager keeps a queue of tasks waiting to run and a list of the tasks running. The FileManager will not run another task if there are too many already running. It also won't run a task if we're already loading something with the same name or ID.

The FileLoader class checks first to see if we have the file on disk. If not, the file is downloaded and put on disk.

The FileLoader returns either the content as an array of bytes (or a UTF8 string), or it loads the content using the Flash Loader in the case of images and SWF files.

So here's the rub: If you ask FileManager for a file and then ask for it again later and the original is still in memory, then why not just create a new DisplayObject from the one already in memory. For instance, if you've loaded an image, and you need another of that image, then you should just create a Bitmap from the BitmapData of the Bitmap already in the display list.

AND, SO, FINALLY, FileManager was upgraded to keep a Dictionary whose keys are weak references to the BitmapData references of the Bitmap DisplayObjects that were loaded.

In case you've found this blog post because you're wanting or think you're wanting to mess with weak references, then I'll put a snipped of code below, but I suggest you read the following before you panic yourself into thinking you always need to use weak references.

ActionScript 3.0 Events: The Myth of useWeakReference

So, anyway, in the FileManager class, I keep a list of bitmapdata's in this:

 protected static var loadedBitmaps:Dictionary = new Dictionary(true);

After a Bitmap is loaded, I save a weak reference to its BitmapData, like this:

if ( task.loader.content is Bitmap )
 {
  var bitmap:Bitmap = task.loader.content as Bitmap;
  loadedBitmaps[bitmap.bitmapData] = task.id_or_filename.toString();
 }

And before I ask the FileLoader to actually load something from disk or download, I check that Dictionary object to see if that sucker is already in memory, like this:

for ( var ref:* in loadedBitmaps )
 {
  if ( loadedBitmaps[ref] == task.id_or_filename.toString() )
  {
   var event:FileManagerCallbackEvent = new FileManagerCallbackEvent();
   event.id_or_filename = task.id_or_filename;
   event.status = FileManagerCallbackEvent.STATUS_COMPLETE;
   event.content = new Bitmap( ref as BitmapData );
   task.callback(event);
   processQueue(); // See if there's anything left to do.
   return;
  }
 }

When an object is garbage collected, entries in a Dictionary of weak references that point to objects that are gone will be removed. And a weak reference will not cause the object to be held in memory as though it's in use (that's why they call the reference "weak").

See:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/Dictionary.html#Dictionary()

Flash Art: Study 7

2012-02-01T19:01:00.004-06:00

I did this Flash thing. Click the link to see it:

http://www.winett.com/study7/

Project Elbow: FileManager

2012-02-01T04:40:00.001-06:00

Another night of programming.

Since it's just not a good idea for loaded modules to be calling the FileLoader (or SQLManager) classes directly, I've created the FileManager class to load files for them.

The FileManager also limits the numbers of files being simultaneously loaded to a preset number so in case the files are actually being downloaded there won't be too many service calls being done at once.

Also, the FileManager class makes sure that the file being loaded isn't already being loaded. If the file is already being loaded and it's a download, then sending another request doesn't make any sense... so such a request is queued instead of started.

In the future it might make sense to move the SQL and cache lookups into the FileManager class so it can go ahead and run a task that's going to load a file from cache regardless of the length of the running list.

Right now, files are loaded in FIFO order, but a priority number could be employed to order the tasks in the waiting queue.

Most of the items that will be loaded will be media files, so a separate media manager is going to be required so that the FileManager/Loader process doesn't have to run if the bitmap data is already in memory.

I suppose this could all be rolled into the FileManager class... It will be important to use weak references or a separate reference counter of some sort so the FileManager (or whatever) either isn't holding on to anything or can let go when something had fallen out of use.

I don't know. This might not be a problem. The kinds of media I'm thinking about are user interface elements, but those would probably be embedded or drawn by Sprite modules. Or they would be loaded and cached by a module and a new instance created on the fly from the cached bitmaps.

So many details.

I'm tired.

Weird Universal Stuff I Said on Twitter and Don't Want to Forget I Said

2012-01-28T12:39:00.002-06:00

I swear that one of life's wisest is reflected in the airline warning: If the masks drop, put yours on first, then put one on your child.

I mean, if it comes down to you or your child, then you're going to save your child...

..but so often people get zeroed in on helping other people and don't take care of themselves, ...

...so their whole life degrades over something that's not life or death.

And, if you don't put your mask on first, then you might not be able to get your kid's mask on,

and then you'd possibly miss sharing a fiery crash with them.

Few people get to experience a fiery crash... makes you a celebrity of sorts in the afterlife.

"Did you experience the fiery crash??" "No, I was unconscious." "Lame."

Foreign spammer's profile: "I'm having sex in the moon next summer" With James T. Kirk? KHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Funny, I'll think I came up with some idea on my own and then listen to a song I haven't heard for 15 years and realize I'd regurgitated it

So in that way our weak, working-space memories are a gift. Life would be pretty boring if you had to come up with truly unique ideas.

Otherwise, "Simpsons Did It," would haunt us all, not just the South Park authors.

But they're living on television, where every thought is recorded and cataloged.

But some ideas are so fantastic that we don't care if they're unique or not. I won't enumerate them here, but will mention frozen burritos.

My life is better because the frozen burrito companies didn't say, "been done." Leaving us with only one choice of nukable awesomeness.

I sympathize with an artist or writer's feeling that they don't want to see much of others' works, but the fact is that you've seen work..

So if you don't continue to experience what others are thinking, then you're just operating out of a small set of old ideas.

..but you're definitely operating off others' ideas...

And then, ever so infrequently, you do come up with something original. You can certainly say the same things in new ways.

Look at the most popular stories: They tell things we all already know, or all already want to believe.

The most basic story: "I'll do almost anything to survive." Very popular. Also, "I'll do almost anything to get into her pants."

I'm very happy that I unlearned the "I'll do almost anything to get into her pants." But, I stole some magic from myself.

I won't say how or why I intentionally desensitized myself to the powers of the ladies.

Ok, I will say why... I guess because I'm a control freak. I didn't like feeling that I couldn't control my reactions, stop thinking, etc.

But then, I stole my own magical experience from me.

So now it's a big deal if I run into some lady who causes me to actually flush, or stop thinking, or freeze in time.

Which did happen recently at the post office. I held the door for a 30-ish chick and sort of froze when I should have been talking.

So see, being able to talk might mean that you're actually somewhat indifferent anyway, that the other person has been objectified.

But I was sort of hurt by Steam Rice. Oh my God, I was terrified of her.

But the thrill came when I ignored my fear and got a relationship going with her anyway.

But, my base instincts clouded my thinking and my powers of observation and it turned out I was being lied to about something important.

I'm the kind of person that you might as well not lie to, because if I don't see it in your face, I'll definitely put it together.

But, I was distracted by my fear. But, I think my subconscious protected me there. Hidden Joe was really running the show.

So, I was lied to, but something kept me from taking any steps that caused trouble for myself or others. Just some emotional pain for me

This lie was like SITCOM level.

Here's a hint someone is lying to you: They pick inappropriate moments and levels of detail to support the lie.

But if you're in "I'll do anything to get into her pants" mode and you're just thrilled by every little thing she does...

"Oh my God, she's so cute when she shops for clothes." SUCKER

Life's a battle between trusting your intuition and wondering if you're just acting out of fear, shame, lust, or greed.

But the universal question is whether or not intuition is just the sum of all our past selves advising our present or whether external.

There is just one thing in the universe. It knows everything and by definition (since there is just one thing) we're all it.

The idea that you can't be in more than one place at a time or more than one person at a time is based on our experience of linear time.

But what if you went back into time constantly and lived a different life?

But you wouldn't know who you are when you're living the life... It's a new life, it deserved to be its own.

But from the perspective of you in those lives, all these other people seem to be someone else.

But you're constantly getting glimpses of yourself in the eyes of others.

Anyway, you never really cut the cord. Your earthly parents never do either. You're expected to live your life, fend for yourself, but

But your earthly self, by design, is wrapped up in dealing with the moment. Present consciousness rules most decisions.

Communication outside of this bubble isn't ruled by time and therefore language is unnecessary.

I mean, we use language to communicate ideas that are timeless, but we have to dole out the information in a way that we'll notice...

...as time passes. So anyway, our consciousness outside the bubble, the version of us that knows all, seen all, will see all, is talking

but it doesn't use language because language is a mechanism that's only used inside the bubble, because of time.

So, it talks to your guts. What's important is that you know the results, not how you came to it anyway.

So, people who seem to live on intuition can do VERY well in this life... They're running on tracks we can't see.

But, you really have to be able to examine your thinking to know from whence the feelings came.

And I think "from whence" is redundant, sorry. To know whence the feelings came

So you might ask yourself, do I like this person because we're to be on the same cosmic track or do I just like the cut of her dress?

And do I like the cut of her dress because of it alone or because it reminds me of someone else, or something completely unrelated?

There is much more going on around here than is plainly obvious.

Outside of time, the consciousness we share already knows how everything turned out. When we're making decisions, we can feel its guts

Its guts are reacting the same way your guts react when you remember something great or something terrible in the past.

You experience it again. And your guts talk to you when you're facing a new situation.

I swear we're experiencing impulses outside of our own earthly experiences though. It's just hard to sort them out.

Many people who undertake the discipline of "giving everything to God" are really just trying to minimize the influence of their own ego.

And regardless of whether or not the person is also being used by other humans in the name of God, you'll notice that those people do well.

If you're not always standing in your own way, then sometimes you do something on an impulse that was actually fed to you by the all knowing

The all knowing doesn't want to run your life. Your value is that you're doing most things for your own reasons.

But, it's going to experience that car wreck along with you, and it reacts to the situation that's happened in a loop, for eternity.

And it hopes that today is the day that it's nudged you enough over your lifetime to stop you from getting into the car.

Because then the whole story is better... it evolved... and we're all one step closer to the perfect Groundhog Day.

So, there's a hole in what I've typed. Without time there is no experience. Everything would just be.

So, it's obvious that the First One experienced time otherwise nothing would change...

So, this theory is going to need a few more decades of thinking.

and the bummer of death would be getting all the questions answered too quickly

Thinking about movies. They could tell you in the first five minutes who did it and why, but that wouldn't be any fun to watch.

And all this physical stuff is not a place at all. Oh, it is to US, because we need a setting.

The universe is so very huge and always expanding because we keep looking. We find evidence for a beginning because it logically must be.

Yet, this is story telling, unfolding before us. We need more to the story, so it's created on the fly.

I can't prove it, but of this I'm absolutely certain: There's nobody else out there.

The pattern of the galaxies in the universe looks a lot like brain cell densities because that pattern was reproduced out of convenience.

Everything here is a reproduction of the same pattern.

EXCEPT FOR YOU

So, are we living in The Matrix? Sort of, except there's no "real world" out there.

The Matrix is the The One... The One doesn't actually run around in The Matrix.

Universal truths are communicated to us through art... and there's a perfectly good explanation.

Good artists are working from their guts and their guts are being massaged by The One.

Collaborative arts are usually the best sources of universal information because the effect of ego is distributed across many.

The dozens of people working on a movie are all doing it for their own reasons, but ALL THEIR GUTS are being massaged by the same person.

So, The One needs a guy in fifty years to get a hint, and a set designer in Hollywood picks out a clock because her guts tell her it's cool.

In fifty years, the guy is watching the movie and is a little freaked out by the clock on the wall. Why is that sticker in the middle?

Why does it say 4:13... that's an error. It can't be 4:13 at this point in the movie. It's an error. April 13th? My birthday?

Oh, that's crazy. What's she talking about?

But, everyone who came before must persist in The One... Suddenly The One is looking more like Us...

What humans do cannot be externally controlled by The One, that's our value, that's the why the system works like it does.

And human are born, so someone has to inhabit that body.

Get in line and ride again, or sit back and watch, and The One will make a new one.

So, you see there are holes in my story. I'm trying to think of it in a bunch of different ways and there are conflicts.

Creating a new soul is a delegation by The One to the new soul.

When this ride is over, you're a person. You have the experience of one life... and The One has added that one life to its own experience.

The One delegated authority over an experience (and the joys of it) to you, but you lived it for The One's continued entertainment.

But now you're back and what you know is that one experience. If you ride again, then you'll have two lifetimes of experience.

But one each trip, you wake up, you're split. Now you're the one (not capitalized) on the outside and one on the inside. You're two.

So the original The One is yelling at you on the inside and your previous one is yelling, too.

Then your one on the inside dies and returns and it's now a delegate from The One, from you, and to it. It's a multilevel marketing scheme

Now you're you and it and The One is all three of you. So, you retain some influence over everyone downstream.

So, some of us are direct delegates of very old souls, containing lots of downstream experience.

If the perfect storm comes up, and a delegate of an old soul also makes choices that end up leading him or her to trust her guts, then...

...then you end up with a sort of super person who can't seem to ever do anything wrong... like the skies open up.

This is sort of a way of thinking about the story of Jesus, of course, looking at it inside and out...

(or inside-out)... There are people walking around who are direct delegates of the oldest soul.

There are people walking around who are delegates of a soul that just died.

And it would be to the benefit of the oldest soul to keep that working because you're not very interesting if when you get back...

...that you actually receive a download of all the experiences The One has had. Oh, The One can tell you stories, but if you're

...if you're a duplicate then you're not very interesting...

So you might think "THAT'S NOT FAIR" -- some people are directly influenced by old souls and some by young ones...

except we're all in the same game. The old souls are looking out for the young souls because they're other delegates of us.

Old Souls walking around tend to help out the young souls... am I right? We all know these people... They warm our hearts sort of magically

They randomly help people and others are asking why and they don't really know why... they just had a feeling...

And sometimes you meet up on earth with one of your siblings... you're both delegates of the same soul...

Don't worry, it's not gross... We're talking about asexual reproduction within delegated consciousness.

Sexual reproduction on Earth is here to throw in a randomness that makes everything more interesting.

"I get the next one!!" "Who will I be?" There's no fricken tellin. You might be a guy, a chick, or a chick with a dick.

The earthly root of evil is appetite. You want more, so you do things to get more.

Some things that we might see as evil are due to the influence of factions of consciousness...

Twitter shut me down at that point, but I want to continue here on the blog so I can revisit this train of thought later.

So the real universe is actually just The One, the original consciousness.

We're all delegations in a line from The One. We were created either by The One, or by a delegate, and, when we die, we'll probably also get into the business of delegating our own consciousness for the reason of increasing our own pool of experiences and for increasing our influence over what's happening Earth-side.

That was the whole point of The One creating the second of us. Life was boring because there was only one. It could think up whatever it wanted and experience whatever it wanted, but it was creating the situation from beginning to end. It was just a story The One told itself. Nothing exciting really happened.

So, The One created #2. It told #2 a story, which it lived, but #2 came up with different ideas about how to proceed and so the story ended up in a way that was a little harder for The One to predict. It was mildly more entertaining than telling stories to himself.

So, The One created lots more. And each of those was empowered through delegation to create more of themselves and throw them into the story.

On Earth, we are most influenced from the outside by our immediate delegate. That person is yelling most loudly at our guts.

Or, perhaps that person, our immediate spiritual father (male name chosen because I'm a male, not because that person was either male or female), is the only person yelling at our guts, but of course that person is listening most to their immediate spiritual father. The line would go all the way back to The One, he (it) has the most influence over everything.

But I am assuming that outside our Earthly bonds that we're not just alone with ourselves and our upstream delegates... We must have exposure to stories being told by others.

It would make sense that factions would assemble in the spiritual beyond because they all have irons in the Earthly fire. They want their delegates to have good outcomes because it increases the quality of their own experiences over time.

But, the nature of the game on Earth is about resources.

The most valuable resource is time. Time cannot be made. Time cannot be mined.

Time cannot actually be given to someone for their own use... For instance, you can't give someone a year of your life so that they can do two years of stuff while the Earth goes around the sun once. Your year is your year, period.

Well, sort of. Your year is also your spiritual father's year and the year of every delegate all the way back up the line.

Everyone in your lineage wants your year to be awesome.

The One wants EVERYONE'S YEAR TO BE AWESOME.

But, we have other limited resources on Earth. Our animal selves feel the need to get stuff and keep stuff (they do have that need).

In the United States we've come up with a terrific way for people to get access to stuff and spread around stuff. It's not as fair (of an outcome) as putting everything into a pile and splitting it up, and it's a lot less boring. Frankly, it's more fair than splitting everything up... Ok, I won't get into that...

ANYWAY, there's only so much stuff. We want our delegates to do certain things with their time and they need resources to get stuff done -- this is true of everything that we want to get stuff done that involves other people.

We can do amazing things in our own minds, but that doesn't influence others -- it doesn't improve the overall experience of The One. If we want to communicate with others, then we have to invest resources, time, gas money, stamps, food to eat while we're on the train, etc.

So, there are factions.

Some in the spiritual world think some things are fun and some think other things are fun. They break down into factions of lines. There would be some crossing over because we all have different interpretations of what is important -- and those interpretations are a little different than those of our spiritual father, his father, all the way back to The One.

And that's our value -- we interpret things differently because we've lived different lives as have those that came after us.

So, sometimes, people are nudged to do things that might seem evil to others because it's a matter of the distribution of resources. And sometimes very violent or horrible things are done to make it happen.

It would also make sense that some lines would end up with evil and twisted thinking because of chance and prejudice of the line.

Evil would then be like a storm -- or like a thought disease. It would take time to heal with influence from The One on down, but everyone above you also has a vested interest in the entertainment of it all.

If one of your dirty little progeny pushes a couple of people down, but those weren't your people... and since life on Earth is nothing but story telling (even though we find it quite traumatic while we're here)... then you can probably see how a delegate might actually nudge people to take what they want sometimes.

I would imagine that this mostly happens with young souls... immediate returns who have just delegated for their first few times. Perhaps they lived a life that was terrible and hard and they didn't have much... and now they're in the game from the cat bird seat so they want their little ones to get themselves some gusto.

From time to time I've tried to adjust my thinking about this to include the possibility of dualistic good and evil, God and Satan if you like. The story would have to go like this: That a delegate a long time ago went somewhat wrong, or was humored for whatever reason, and was allowed to get a little off into an unbeaten track. And, over time, that delegate got more and more influence and to this day is the primary source of wide-spread evil.

It would make sense that The One caught on and adjust further delegation to keep things in the positive for its own experience, but that it (he) is unwilling or unable to completely wipe out the influence of that early delegate.... The One might be unwilling because a good story usually has bad guys in it.

When kids are pretending, they play out stories. There has to be conflict. Some kids are the police and some are the bank robbers. It makes sense that The One lets factions continue because it's a better story for everyone. It's awful for those of us on Earth who are the victims, but you know a lot of victim stories end in triumph, too.

Project Elbow: Files Collection

2012-01-27T01:02:00.001-06:00

I've added a separate collection to map names to files.

Two reasons:

First, the GridFS collection will eventually be sharded and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that you don't want to be adding indexes to sharded collections -- you want a separate collection to contain your indexed items and then use the primary shard key to get the payload.

Second, I need to support multiple links to a single file.

Anyway, I also created the first administration script -- this one just uploads files.

Also: Earlier this evening I started signing all the requests to the service.

Next: Create the first code module (a separate SWF that will be loaded by the AIR application). I needed to be able to easy upload it and give it a name.

Project Elbow: Files by Name

2012-01-26T15:58:00.002-06:00

The SQLManager class was extended to manage a table that maps a logical filename to a cache ID.

The FileLoader class was extended to accept either a FileId or string (filename) in its constructor.

Once FileLoader.load() is called, if the class was instantiated with a filename, then it will search the database for a mapping to an ID. If there is a mapping, and if the file is still in the cache directory on the PC's file system, then it will call the service provider and send both the filename and the MD5.

The service provider will either return the file that matches up with that name or return HTTP status 304 if the MD5 matches.

In this way, the application can ask for files by name where the name never changes, but the content returned by the name might.

By the way, it was a bad idea to return an HTTP status of 404 if the ID or filename was not found because this status code really means that the web or application server could not find the requested URI. It confused Flash's net stuff... So, instead I'm returning a JSON structure with a notfound member.

Project Elbow: Using the Adobe AIR SQLite Database

2012-01-26T06:25:00.000-06:00

Much happy face this morning.

Yesterday I worked from like 1:30am 'till 5 on trying to store the media files downloaded from the Elbow service provider in the SQLite database provided by the Adobe AIR platform. In my mind, this was a better alternative than caching the file on the PC's file system, but I had one problem and there were two drawbacks:

Problem: I could store the ByteArray in the database, but when I retrieved it, it always had either 5 or 10 extra bytes, and the Loader class refused to load the bytes, saying it didn't know what the file type was. I'm sure I could have tracked that problem down, but I got tired, went to work, and at work thought of these drawbacks:

Drawback 1: Saving a bunch of binary data in the SQLite database is slower than just saving them to disk.

Drawback 2: If the database gets corrupted then cache is gone and that just sounds messy.

So, I decided that I would keep a list of files along with their lengths, use counts, and last times accessed so that a process can prune back the least recently used (with weight on infrequently used and size).

If you're using the file.data.SQLConnection, SQLStatement, et al and interested in what seems to be a pretty good way to put your SQL handling into one central place, then you'll probably be considering using a static class or singleton implementation.

I've decided to just post the source to mine as it is right now. I hope it helps!

In the invoke process for the application, I call SQLManager.init();

To touch a cache entry, I just call SQLManager.execCacheTouch(id);

It's all static, so the FileLoader class doesn't need to know where it is or really what it does. I also decided not to refer to flash.data.SQLResult or flash.net.Responder in the FileLoader class. It just passes a function to the select statement.

package elbow.common 
{
  import flash.data.SQLResult;
  import flash.data.SQLStatement;
  import flash.data.SQLConnection;  
  import flash.net.Responder;
  import flash.utils.ByteArray;
  import flash.events.Event;
  import flash.events.SQLErrorEvent;
  import flash.events.SQLEvent;
  import flash.filesystem.File;
  
  /**
   * ...
   * @author Joe Winett
   */
  public class SQLManager 
  {
    protected static var sqlConn:SQLConnection;
    protected static var sqlErrorMessage:String = null;
    
    protected static var stmtCacheInsert:SQLStatement = null;
    protected static var stmtCacheSelect:SQLStatement = null;    
    protected static var stmtCacheTouch:SQLStatement = null;  
    
    
    
    public static function init(): void
    {
      
      sqlConn = new SQLConnection();
      
      sqlConn.addEventListener( SQLEvent.OPEN, onSqlOpen );
      sqlConn.addEventListener( SQLErrorEvent.ERROR, onSqlOpen );
      
      var sqlFile:File = File.applicationStorageDirectory.resolvePath( "KidsElbowRoom.db" );
      sqlConn.openAsync( sqlFile );
      
    }
    
    protected static function onSqlOpen( event:Event ):void
    {
      var sql:SQLConnection = event.target as SQLConnection;
      
      if ( event.type == SQLErrorEvent.ERROR )
      {
        sqlErrorMessage = "Unable to open SQL Database: " + event.toString();
        trace(  sqlErrorMessage );
      }
      else if ( event.type == SQLEvent.OPEN )
      {                
        trace( "SQL Open: CacheSize " + sql.cacheSize + " PageSize " + sql.pageSize + " AutoCompact " + sql.autoCompact );
        
        var createStatement:SQLStatement = new SQLStatement();
        createStatement.sqlConnection = sql;
        
        createStatement.text = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS cache ( id STRING PRIMARY KEY, useLast DATE, useCount INT, md5 STRING, mime STRING, length UINT )";
        
        createStatement.addEventListener(SQLErrorEvent.ERROR, onSqlError );
        
        createStatement.execute();
        
      }
    }
    
    protected static function onSqlError( event:Event ):void
    {
      sqlErrorMessage = ( event as SQLErrorEvent ).error.toString()  + " " + event.target.text;
      trace( sqlErrorMessage );
    }
    
    public static function makeStatement( text:String ) : SQLStatement
    {
      var stmt:SQLStatement = new SQLStatement();
      stmt.sqlConnection = sqlConn;
      stmt.text = text;
      stmt.addEventListener( SQLErrorEvent.ERROR, onSqlError );
      return stmt;
    }
    
    
    public static function execCacheInsert( id:FileId, md5:FileMD5, mime:String, length:uint ) : void
    {
      if ( stmtCacheInsert == null )
        stmtCacheInsert = makeStatement( "REPLACE INTO cache( id, useLast, useCount, mime, md5, length ) VALUES ( :id, :now, 1, :mime, :md5, :length )" );
      
      stmtCacheInsert.parameters[":id"] = id.id;
      stmtCacheInsert.parameters[":now"] = new Date();      
      stmtCacheInsert.parameters[":md5"] = md5.md5;      
      stmtCacheInsert.parameters[":mime"] = mime;
      stmtCacheInsert.parameters[":length"] = length;
      
      stmtCacheInsert.execute();
    }
    
    public static function execCacheSelect( id:FileId, funcData:Function ): void
    {
      var funcResult:Function = function( result:SQLResult ): void
      {
        funcData(result.data);
      }
      
      if ( stmtCacheSelect == null )
        stmtCacheSelect = makeStatement( "SELECT * FROM cache WHERE id = :id" );
        
      stmtCacheSelect.parameters[":id"] = id.id;
      stmtCacheSelect.execute( -1, new Responder( funcResult ) );
    }
    
    public static function execCacheTouch( id:FileId ): void 
    {
      if ( stmtCacheTouch == null )
        stmtCacheTouch = makeStatement( "UPDATE cache SET useLast = :now, useCount = useCount + 1 WHERE id = :id" );
        
      stmtCacheTouch.parameters[":id"] = id.id;
      stmtCacheTouch.parameters[":now"] = new Date();
      
      stmtCacheTouch.execute();
    }
    
  }

}

Referrer Spam

2012-01-24T06:34:00.000-06:00

I'd like to acknowledge the new, ingenious spamming method: Referrer Spam.

Here's how it works...

You find a blog or site authored by someone who's probably in your target market.

You visit the site and report the HTTP REFERER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer) as being your site selling something.

Then when the author checks his Google Analytics or other log reporting method, he sees your site and wonders what your site is doing referring traffic to his site, then he goes to your site and sees you're selling day trading or other sorts of services.

Really pretty smart.

Project Elbow: Working with flash.data.SQL

2012-01-24T06:25:00.000-06:00

Joe Winett

32 minutes ago near Shawnee

Getting back into 100% gear mode today, less spaz, more bacon. Trying to learn AIR's on-board SQL server before work.

· · Share

- Joe Winett And, wouldn't you know it, it's easy. I swear, everything Macromedia and then Adobe did with Flash/Flex/AIR is easy.
  about an hour ago ·
- Joe Winett And, of course, all SQL operations can be done asynchronously. As far as I can tell, there's not really a threading system in a Flash application. There are just asynchronous operations and whatever is happening in your UI right then. How the work is broken up in the background, I don't know... I guess I don't need to know.
  about an hour ago ·
- Joe Winett Well, crap, they just answered that question. An asynchronous SQL connection executes it's commands in its own thread so your main application thread can go about doing its own thing. Your thread then responds to events indicating what happened.
  59 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett I suppose it's all easy if you're already used to working in an event-driven environment.
  59 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett http://syihosting.com/d/cache.db.jpg
  
  http://www.syihosting.com/d/cache.db.jpg
  www.syihosting.com
  36 minutes ago · ·
- Joe Winett That was pretty easy.
  36 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett http://syihosting.com/d/cache.as.jpg
  
  http://www.syihosting.com/d/cache.as.jpg
  www.syihosting.com
  35 minutes ago · ·
- Joe Winett ‎5:48!! Hurry.
  30 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett The FileManager needs to do a CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS command right after opening. Sometimes it's cool to keep track of a state variable to figure out what you're supposed to do next, but sometime's it's cooler just to have a different listener function for the next statement. It's a different event anyway... Wasting time...
  28 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett Oh no. You can store BLOBs up to 256mb in the database. Hmmm...
  17 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett ‎6:01!!
  17 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett It would be pretty handy to have it right there... But, if I want to load a SWF file and it's 10mb... and it's in the database, I guess I'd load it into memory and then into the actual Flash loader to use it. I don't know why that would be a problem on modern systems... (memory is file is memory is don't care)
  15 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett This would hide the files from the users on the computer and I wouldn't have to worry about something being mucked with as much.
  14 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett Not right now.
  13 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett Holy crap you can just store ActionScript objects in there.
  12 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett I guess that means I could just create the Bitmap and SWF objects and store them... no BLOBs required.
  11 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett These Adobe guys...
  11 minutes ago ·
- Joe Winett http://syihosting.com/d/cache.as2.jpg
  
  http://www.syihosting.com/d/cache.as2.jpg
  www.syihosting.com
  2 minutes ago · ·
- Joe Winett Ok, that's enough. Got to put this in my blog.
  2 minutes ago ·
  ** SO what's probably going to happen is that I'm going to do away with the file-system based cache thing I did... download the files from the service and then create the objects Flash will eventually use and store them directly in the database. So when I need them, the FileManager will look in the database for the ID and then just return the object if it's there.
  
  I still have the issue of dealing with named files... a mapping of a logical name to a file ID. The content of named files could change (for instance, an application manifest) so this is good.
  
  The FileManager won't be responsible for messing with that... There'll just be a second type of loader that looks for a named file. The FileManager will ask the service for the ID that goes with the name, then check the cache for that ID, then go on from there.
  
  Some experimentation will be needed before I just dump the file-system stuff.
  
  Anyway, this was a pretty good 90 minute session this morning. I think doing this every day will help keep me sane because the thing that drives me crazy the most is the feeling that I'm not getting anything done.

2011 + 18 Days - Joe Winett's Year in Review

2012-01-19T06:45:00.001-06:00

This blog is full of negative posts. As an alternative to gloom, sometimes I elected for crazy, so this blog is also full of crazy posts. I thought today I'd start the day by writing down a few positive things about 2011 plus another 18 days.

And now I'm finding this difficult. I don't like talking about myself which is why this blog is full of negative and crazy -- from times when I was desperate or crazy enough to write down things about myself, some of theme completely fictional.

The summer of 2010 was crazy and sometimes bad and sometimes wonderful, but the net effect was that I was looking at homelessness again coming up in the fall. Rather than do something constructive about it, I decided to cover my bedroom window with foil and hide in the dark room with the air conditioner somewhere near the Juno setting.

A friend said she wanted to start a business that included web design services, so I went to work with her and rented a room in her house. Of course, I couldn't actually pay rent for the room in her house. But, a client found her and we started working for that client and soon I was able to pay the rent for the room in her house. That was late 2010.

In December of 2010, that client asked me to do some work for one of her customers. That customer needed new hosting and I needed a linux server somewhere to work on one of my projects, so I got into hosting websites. That customer went online in January of 2011.

[Wow, I really don't like writing this, and I don't think there's any value in it for anyone else... just thinking about the positive things that have gone on this last 400 days or so is enough.]

Dear Babies:

Parts of 2011 were difficult, but things are much better today.

I'm hoping we can see each other next year around this time. You'll be 16 and 11 years old. When we last saw each other, you were 9 and 4. I'm not a big math guy, but my calculator confirms that 314 years have passed.

I'm hoping we can see each other next year around this time, but if another 314 years pass, I'll still be here hoping we can see each other next year around this time.

Here's a bit of advice: When you repeatedly keep trying to flush your life down the toilet, and God keeps fishing your life back out with whatever He has on hand, then whatever. :)

Another bit of advice: Friends don't take crap from you, but they don't flush you down the toilet for trying to give them crap.

I will record one positive thing about myself: When I apply myself, I do seem to have a weird ability to accomplish computer programming feats in like 1/4 of the time it would take almost anyone else. My goal for 2012 is to apply myself more consistently.

Another goal for 2012 [by the way, it's 6:18am now] is to become even more careful about what I say to other people. You don't remember much about me, I'm sure, so you'll not notice the difference, but today I'm practically a teddy bear. Today, I don't take anything anyone says directly to heart. I think when you learn that what other people might say about you is sometimes not well considered, or really is saying something about themselves, or whatever, and you realize that you used to react to defend your own thoughts about yourself, and then you just go ahead and think those things about yourself and then you change your thinking about yourself and then you only really consider your own thinking about yourself (not ignoring other people, but what I think about myself is my decision)... anyway, you learn to be careful about what you say because most people are trapped in the cycle of letting other people control their feelings.

Oh well, I don't even like that paragraph.

Project Elbow is now farther along than it ever had been. I think what's helped is that I've moved away from the need for it to be perfect and I've even moved away from the need for it to be successful. I just have the need to get it online for the personal satisfaction of it.

So what's the 6:18 thing?

My birthday is June 18th. So, in like 2004, I started taking special note when it was 6:18.

This was a big deal because I had stopped wearing a watch.

Then when I stopped carrying a cell phone, and lived in a place with no clocks, it was a big deal.

Now it's sort of a cool check of the clock in my brain.

I wake up a lot in the middle of the night. I have this weird ability to know about what time it is. Maybe it's not weird... I usually know when I went to sleep and brains keep time and there are clues (like how the moonlight has changed)... but I think it's cool.

Since I don't watch the clock, and my brain is searching out 6:18's, then I think it's neat when I see that it's 6:18.... Especially if it's been more than an hour since I've seen the clock.

I suppose someone could come up with the theory that I'm actually looking at the clock a lot more than I realize... I just don't remember doing it unless it's 6:18.

Whatever.

Project Elbow: Storing Metadata Along with File

2012-01-18T04:19:00.002-06:00

Woke up at 2:30, so decided to do some Elbow.

Decided I needed a more spread out directory structure for the cache files. I could probably look up the most efficient way to do this, cross-platform, or by using some AIR facility, but 26 top level directories each leading to 26 second level directories is just fine for me. We're not talking about a huge number of files.

I also decided I needed to keep the meta data for the file somewhere else than in the SQL database. I might not even use the SQL database to track the files. I could store the use data in the meta file, or just touch the meta file. I should check whether or not "touching" works cross platform in AIR. I bet it does.

Anyway, it's nearly 4:30 now. Have to leave for work at 7:00. Going to try to sleep more.

Cheers, mate.

Project Elbow: Transparent Caching

2012-01-16T21:11:00.003-06:00

The FileLoader class now moves the downloaded file into a hashed directory system. When a new FileLoader is created and load() called, the class first checks to see if the file already exists in the directory system. If so, it transparently dispatches the Complete event.

The FileManager class is actually used to create FileLoader instances. The FileManager piggybacks on the events coming from loader so it can keep a database of when files were loaded and the last time they were used... and eventually prune the cache by LRU.

Much excitement. I did about three hours on this today, some before and some after my job.

Project Elbow: Magic Cookie + AS3 Plus is not PHP Dot

2012-01-16T06:29:00.001-06:00

I woke up at 5 this morning. I need to leave for work at 7, so I decided to do a little morning time rushing on Project Elbow.

My PHP service script was crashing because I used a + instead of a . to stick the content-length onto the end of the content-length header.

This is a common error I make when switching between Javascript or ActionScript 3 and PHP:

header("Content-Length: " + $contentLength );

This creates a header that's just a number. And that causes the fastCGI process to puke up the script and serve up status 500.

Should use string concatenation in PHP instead of number addition:

header("Content-Length: " . $contentLength );

Anyway, the URLStream class for some reason dispatches the HTTP Status code event after dispatching the progress event for data received, so the parser for the beginning on the output was crashing. So, I added a "Magic Cookie"... It's just an expected string of bytes that have to be at the beginning of output or the top of a file to display its type. An error on the script side will never put out this cookie, so I know it's nothing to be parsed further.

Also: Event bubbling is handy.

6:30. Got to go.

Hot Chicks

2012-01-14T10:35:00.001-06:00

I thought I'd type "hot chicks" into Google's Images Search.

Yes, there's a website for Hot Chicks Eating Tacos.

And one for Hots Chicks Eating Burgers

And Pizza

Hot Chicks with D-Bags (not making this up)

Hots Chicks in Mustaches

Busty Asian Married Chicks?

Hot Chicks at Comic Book Conventions

Hot Chicks and Beer Cans

Hot Chicks with Guns

Hots Chicks of Real Estate

Hot Chicks Drowning Each Other

These are almost all posted by just copying the URL and loading the image from another blog or site. So, we'll see that this page doesn't get any new traffic, I think.

Project Elbow: File Loader

2012-01-10T04:25:00.001-06:00

The service provider for Elbow is written in PHP and the application and user files are stored in MongoDB.

The Elbow desktop application is written in Adobe AIR.

The AS3 FileManager and FileLoader classes were started and successfully tested.

I decided to use a mixed binary and JSON format for the getFile service result. It returns a big endian short meaning the length of the JSON part of the response, the JSON, and then the octets of the file. Of course, the JSON includes the id, md5, and length of the file to follow.

(I say mixed binary and JSON, but the binary exists only at the logical application level... the web server still encodes the binary for transport as it always does if it has to do it... the mime type is set to application/octet-stream.)

What was sort of interesting was using the flash.net.URLStream class. Usually, one loads data directly into Flash objects so it's not necessary to get into the middle of the stream, but I need to read those first two bytes and then the JSON in order to provide meaningful event dispatches.

The AS5 Progress event usually shows BytesLoaded and BytesTotal so a Flash application can show a progress bar or something, but the BytesTotal is based on the return from the web server (or Flash Media Server or one compatible with RTMP)... In my case, the "length" property of the JSON object returned as part of the response is used to calculate progress. The web server cannot tell the client how much data it's sending because the PHP script is still sending it.

It just occurred to me that I could fix that by just telling the web server how much data I'm going to send... then that information gets sent to the client. I'll do that eventually. ** Well, decided to do that now, but apparently Flash doesn't care. That's alright.

So, of course, there's a custom event object. It's not really a big deal, but I like that it just passes along the underlying event from Adobe, regardless of that object's type, and passes along the response object (which includes the things like id, md5, length, mimetype). Downloading files in Flash involves a bunch of different event types and it's irritating to have to create all those event handlers. The FileLoader class just dispatches one type of event, FileLoaderEvent.

HTTP depends on a timestamp to determine whether or not a file should be sent again. Since MongoDB / GridFS is always storing the MD5 hash anyway, the caller of the getFile service passes in (again with JSON) the id it wants and the md5 of the file it already has (if it has it). The getFile service returns the appropriate status instead of sending the file if the hash in hand matches the hash in the bush.

Files are stored on the client PC in hashed directories with files named just their id and md5. Another mechanism will be employed to know which files are for what.

I say Application Files are stored in MongoDB because the desktop application is just going to be a collection of the most basic classes. Everything else will be maintained by the file manager. Everything else will include a set of widget base classes and widgets. AIR can be set to automatically prompt the user to download an available update, but considering my target audience, I think that's a little much to ask. Besides, this is much cooler.

Everything happens over SSL and all requests for user files will have to be authenticated by a pre-authorized workstation.

Security is a big deal for the client base, so they can only access the service using the client application after that installation of the client application has been authorized by their administrator. It won't be possible for a client to access the service from another location without prior written approval of Major League Baseball.

You're not supposed to get anything out of all this. I'm writing it so I know when I did these things.

Joe's Picture Theft Project and EpicFaiil

2012-01-08T07:41:00.000-06:00

Below you'll find statistics from this blog and some discussion about how a useless blog like mine attracted so much traffic (useless traffic).

But, when I was looking through the traffic sources -- sites that had links to my blog that people clicked -- I noticed some traffic coming from this girl's blog.

I was a little shocked that I was receiving traffic from the blog of a 17-year-old, self-entitled murderess, until I looked a little further and it turns out that my hair picture theft had probably attracted her to my blog through Google and then she linked to one of the posts including the stolen pictures or linked directly to one of the pictures. I didn't dig much further to see if my guess was right.

But, I thought I would exploit her picture here because when you see it in a list or shared somewhere, you might click on it.

Wait, I just took a moment to read her description there. I saw the 17 and assumed it was her age. Now I see she's a "ganska," too. Dang.

Anyway, since I'm exploiting her, I thought I would put some of this Google "suck" that I "earned" by "stealing" pictures to work for her by providing a link back to her blog. LOOK, I don't know what she's saying on there, so I'm not responsible if you start coloring your hair, getting piercings, and picking up men named Gunther.

Seriously, it looks like she likes to talk about hair.

http://epicfaiil.blogg.se/

Anyway, about my hair thing.

I just wanted to put up a post with pictures of women in them. Actually, I just wanted to look for some pictures of women. So, I did some posts about women and put in some pictures that I downloaded from the Internet.

I followed good SEO practices and named the picture files according to their content and I put them on blog posts that were named according to their content and then I actually put in some content talking about the stuff that was in the pictures. Google liked that and some of those pictures have been number 1 for Images searches for generic terms like, "Brown Hair."

This caused a huge spike in the traffic to this blog:

Here are links to those most popular posts:

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/05/brown-hair.html
http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-persians-are-women-too.html
http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/05/blonde-hair.html
http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/05/lucy-liu-shrine-of-liu-ness.html
http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/05/red-hair.html

Ok, so what have I proved? That you can add numbers to your stats by doing this, but this has not resulted in a bunch of AdSense clicks. People are just looking at the pictures.

But, if you have a product that you're selling and you can take some good pictures of your product in use, then you should put them on your site with really long, really descriptive names. Don't just put "ACME-model-1111-thumbnail.jpg" (unless that's all it is). If it's a picture of oilfield workers using your product to reclaim sludge for use elsewhere then it should be named, "oil-workers-reclaiming-slug-for-reuse-green-energy-production-technologies.jpg".

Here's a longer list of posts and their views.

So you can see that black hair hasn't been as popular as red and blonde hair.

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-hair.html

The huge spike on Brown Hair was due to that picture of Beyonce -- not because of the color of her hair. People were searching for "beyonce hair" and "beyonce brown hair."

This post is one I did that's sort of informational on a popular topic. These searches weren't for images, they were searches by people looking for ideas about cloud computing.

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2010/09/business-ideas-cloud-computing.html

"I'm Done Whining" was not visited because people cared anything about me or my whining. It was another spike because of that picture. That picture has been stolen and reposted on dozens and dozens of blogs. I was unable to figure out from whence it originally came.

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2010/08/im-done-whining.html

And these got traffic because of the names of the people mentioned in the posts:

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/03/angelina-jolie-creeps-me-out.html

http://abighairyspider.blogspot.com/2011/08/drying-off-with-shirt-in-bora-bora-with.html (Winona Ryder)

FlashDevelop and Greensock's TweenLite

2012-01-08T06:30:00.001-06:00

If you're writing Flash applications in AS3 or using the Flex framework or wanting to write browser or desktop AIR applications, then you just have to get'ya FlashDevelop.

http://www.flashdevelop.org/

Now, I'm sure Adobe's own programming tools (Flex Builder?) are probably terrific, but I haven't been in a position to pay for them so I haven't messed with them.

Code completion is one of the greatest inventions added to programmer editors in the space age. No longer are we turning to books or, God forbid, our memories to be sure what we're typing in will compile. Actually the best thing about the built in documentation system is that it tempts you to actually document your own classes and functions, making it much easier to share with your friends.

But one of the neatest things about FlashDevelop is that it downloads and installs the SDKs from Adobe and configures itself to find them. That used to be sort of a hassle.

While I haven't used Adobe's programming tools, I have used the Adobe Flash builder. So, what's the difference between developing a Flash "movie" with Adobe Flash and developing one with FlashDevelop?

Adobe Flash is an animation tool built to satisfy the needs of designers. You can import graphics, create graphics, and graphically move them around the screen according to a timeline. Adobe Flash makes it very easy to build animated widgets without knowing a lot of programming. The code to handle the transitions and movement are built by the Flash tool and any AS3 that you add is really just frosting.

Flash Develop starts you off with an almost empty set of AS3 documents. You decide whether you want your Flash movie to start when it's all loaded into the browser or if you want a smaller segment called a "loader" to run while the movie is being downloaded.

A loader is what you see when you're starting up some Facebook game written in Flash and the frog is jumping around. You see them all the time on picture galleries -- sometimes just displaying a progress bar.

Here's a simple AS3 program for Flash without a loader:

 public class Main extends Sprite   
 {            
      public function Main():void   
      {  
           if (stage) init();  
           else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);  
      }  
      private function init(e:Event = null):void   
      {  
           removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);  
           // entry point  
         ** YOUR CODE HERE**                 
      }  
 }

FlashDevelop does not have the graphic tools that Adobe's Flash designer does. If you want a graphic to appear on the screen, then you figure out how to put it there in code. If you want the graphic to move over time, then you figure out how to move it over time.

But WAIT! People have already figured out how to move things over time.

One of the most popular and easiest to use tweening libraries is TweenLite, a lightweight, fast tweening engine.

http://www.greensock.com/tweenlite/

I love their Greensock logo:

I always think of my ex-wife when I see some cute logos.

This green sock thing looks like one she would have made for them.

Storing Media Files in MongoDB + Streaming Back the Chunks

2012-01-07T19:19:00.002-06:00

In case you're unaware, there's a database system called MongoDB that stores documents in collections unlike an SQL relational database management system that stores rows in tables. And, unlike an RDBMS, MongoDB developers do not declare the schema for data that will go into each document.

Anyway, MongoDB is really good at sharding data across a bunch of servers and clustering them, so it makes sense that if you're working on a web application that's going to be running across a lot of front-end servers that you just store the media files uploaded by visitors (images, videos, whatever) directly in the database and let MongoDB worry about where to store it and how to get it back.

MongoDB GridFS is a specification for developers of drivers that lays out how large files should be stored into collections in the database. GridFS says there needs to be a "files" collection which lists the files and a "chunks" collection in which each stored document is a 256k chunk of the file.

A "driver" is an access method for MongoDB. If you're a PHP programmer like I am, then you're using the MongoDB Native PHP driver which defines a bunch of PHP classes for working with your database. They also implement GridFS classes.

Storing a file in the database is easy: http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.mongogridfs.php

On that page you'll see a note that they did not implement a way to stream chunks directly. If you want to stream a file back to the web browser, then you have to call the function to collect the file in memory as a string or save the file to disk on the web server and use some old school method to send it.

The most efficient way to handle it would be to stream the chunks directly. To do that, you have to access the files and chunks collections directly, not by using PHP's MongoGridFSFile class.

The basic procedure: Look up the Files document representing your file, then determine how many chunks there are by dividing the length by the chunkSize, then go into a loop and ask for each chunk separately, sending the data, and then going back for more.

This isn't a tutorial, but I'm guessing if you've bothered to find this you're a programmer already.

Here's some code that will help you write a chunk streamer.

 function sendFile( MongoId $id )  
 {  
      $collFiles = DB::get("fs.files");  
      $file = $collFiles->findOne( array( "_id" => $id ) );             
      $mime = filepathToMime($file["filename"]);  
             
      header( 'Content-type: ' . $mime );  
             
      $length = $file["length"];  
      $chunkSize = $file["chunkSize"];  
      $chunks = ceil( $length / $chunkSize );  
             
      $collChunks = DB::get("fs.chunks");  
             
      for( $i=0; $i<$chunks; $i++ )  
      {  
         $chunk = $collChunks->findOne( array( "files_id" => $id, "n" => $i ) );  
         echo (string) $chunk["data"]->bin;  
      }  
   
     exit();  
 }

The DB::get() function is one of mine. It connects to MongoDB (if not already), selects the database, and returns the MongoCollection class for that name.

The filepathToMime() is mine too... it's just a list of file extensions matched up with mime types.

Of course, you're going to want to do some checking to see if you have to send the file at all. The browser asks for the file and send the timestamp for the one in the cache (if it's cached)... so you're going to want to check it against the timestamp stored in MongoDB and return the appropriate HTTP status code if you don't need to send it again.

My particular application isn't browser based. It's going to store the MD5 of the file and ask for it by identifier and that MD5 value. MongoDB stores the MD5 in the Files collection, so I just have to compare the hash values and back out from sending the file again if they match.

For those of you who are not programmers: An MD5 "hash" is a value that for all practical purposes uniquely identifies some data... basically, it one-way encrypts the data into a long number. There are a bunch of hash algorithms out there, but MD5 by RSA is ubiquitous.

Happy programming.

Realistic Stereo Electret Condenser Microphone RS 33-1065

2012-01-06T02:44:00.002-06:00

Remember these?

Your Realistic Stereo Electret Condenser Microphone is a compact and unique high quality stereo microphone. lt’s unique because the two mike heads are individually adjustable (each head can be adjusted up to 90°). The special adjustable heads give you better stereo separation for recording your favorite music.

Kurt Wise (aka, Wiseguy), a buddy of mine from back in the radio days, has this page on his site about the dual headed microphone. You can read more at http://roguestream.net/RS33-1065Mic.htm

Kurt's been working on a podcast of rare live rock performances at http://roguestream.net.

Rick Cohn: Complete and Total Market Domination

2011-12-11T10:49:00.001-06:00

I've had the pleasure of working for some really great managers over the years.

Shortly after I started working for KMYZ FM 104.5 in Tulsa in the 80's, the management team was changed and we were introduced by Rick Cohn to Rick Cohn, the radio station's new General Manager.

One of the statements he made in that meeting made a huge impression on me. It was something to this effect:

We're not looking for a slight improvement in our ratings, we're going for a 100 share -- complete and total market domination.

I've repeated the phrase, complete and total market domination, probably thousands of times since.

The idea reminds me of something that was said by Mrs. Buck, our Grove Elementary PE teacher, when she was teaching us to do the standing long jump:

You don't aim for where you expect to land, you aim for a line six feet farther.

Mountain Biking Little Man

2011-12-10T20:39:00.001-06:00

When your sister learned to ride her bike, we got a seat for my bike and I'd take you along for rides around the neighborhood.

My bike had baskets on the pedals that made them sort of like stirrups and I was really nervous that we might start falling and I wouldn't be able to get my foot out in time to catch us, but it never happened.

It's important not to think about the bad things that might happen. Most of the accidents I've had, like falling off of things, happened right after I'd imagined what it would be like if they did happen.

And, most of the strikes I've gotten when bowling happened right after I imagined getting a strike.

The weird thing about a strike: I knew it the moment I released the ball.

I'm guessing to get more strikes, one has to know it before releasing the ball.

I read a book called the One Minute Salesman which I can sum up in less than a minute: It's important to practice what you want to accomplish in your head. Then you just go out and do it.

I miss you and your sister. We won't see each other at Christmas again this year.

In my head, I've lived through a reunion with you two thousands of times, but you're both sort of frozen in time there.

I recently saw a picture my Aunt Wendy took of you at Baby J's 15th birthday party at Dad's. It's very exciting that you're both growing up, but also somewhat disturbing -- I sometimes worry we'll no longer know each other.

You're both becoming regular people rather than little kids. I think it's probably more positive to be excited that when we do finally get to meet, we'll have to go about the process of learning to get to know someone new, me and you two.

Yes, I miss you.

Blue

2011-12-04T20:11:00.001-06:00

I used to say that purple was my favorite color, but I didn't really have a favorite -- I just said purple so I'd have an answer to the question.

In 2007 I did a bunch of art and saw a lot of colors next to each other and decided that blue was definitely my favorite.

Today I'm willing to qualify my favorite color further and announce that I love cobalt blue.

I know the sky is blue, but otherwise blue is a very rare color in my world.

Dear Paypal: Please, go jump in a lake.

2011-12-04T10:36:00.001-06:00

Just a few weeks after they decided not to do business with me, for offenses I did not commit, about which they will not provide their evidence, they're sending me an email taunting me about it?

Wow, why don't you people at Paypal put a little thought into your form email system? This email reiterates that my account has been "permanently limited" and also tells me the steps I can take to address the issue. I've taken those steps and still they permanently limited me. This is the second email I've received like this since then and I had already taken the steps to prove who I am -- I faxed them an image of all the proof of identity I have... which, no doubt, they're now selling to the highest bidder (right).

Check this out:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
There's an issue with your account
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Joseph Winett,

We emailed you a little while ago about an issue with your account. Because
of this issue, we've limited what you can do with your account.

What's the problem?

Our system detected that multiple PayPal accounts contain registration
information similar to yours. Our <a
href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/ua">User
Agreement</a> allows PayPal users to have one Personal account and one
Premier or Business account. To return your account to regular standing, we
will need to confirm some of the information on your account.

Case ID Number: PP-****

What to do next

We understand it's frustrating and inconvenient to have your account
permanently limited but you'll still be able to see your transaction
history for a limited time.

You can get more details about your account limitation in the Resolution
Center. For more information, please contact us and we'll do our best to
help.

Sincerely,
PayPal

Joe's 2012 Art - Flash Hue Color Matrix Filter

2011-12-03T08:15:00.001-06:00

I did these last night. The story about the matrix filter is below them.

One of the coolest things about messing around with art on the computer is that you can change the colors of pixels that are already on the canvas. When you have a complex mix of colors, it's quite neat to see them all change, usually rotating through the color-wheel, hue by hue.

After I did the first piece, I decided I wanted to make a little animation in Flash that showed that happening. I figured it would be necessary for me to get every pixel, then calculate the hue change, and then to put it back where I found it.

In order to make this color picker control for Flash, I had to learn to do HSV colors and convert them to RGB. I ended up finding a cool class that did the conversions for me. I thought I was going to have to use that class to adjust every pixel in my new thing.

Flash provides a filtering system for display objects and bitmaps. It can cache a display object, perform some operation on all the pixels, and then swap the cache for the live image.

Flash supports a color matrix filter. A color matrix is a set of 20 values in an array that defines the math operations to be done to the R and G and B components of each pixel in the image created by the display object.

Here is Adobe's documentation of the class that creates the filter from the matrix: flash.filter.ColorMatrixFilter.

Let me show you the highlights!!

redResult   = (a[0]  * srcR) + (a[1]  * srcG) + (a[2]  * srcB) + (a[3]  * srcA) + a[4]
greenResult = (a[5]  * srcR) + (a[6]  * srcG) + (a[7]  * srcB) + (a[8]  * srcA) + a[9]
blueResult  = (a[10] * srcR) + (a[11] * srcG) + (a[12] * srcB) + (a[13] * srcA) + a[14]
alphaResult = (a[15] * srcR) + (a[16] * srcG) + (a[17] * srcB) + (a[18] * srcA) + a[19

So, I scratched my head for a minute and then went looking to see if someone else had already figured out what the matrix should be to change blue into a slightly more greenish-blue without changing the saturation or the brightness.

Matt Lloyd had already created a class that created a matrix to feed to Flash to create the filter I needed. It has a creative commons license on it, and I'm making this blog post to thank him and give him credit for his work.

Here is his post: Matt-Lloyd's Blog: Hue Color Matrix Filter

Here is a link to the little Flash thing I did so quickly thanks to Matt's work: Joe's 2012 Art - Study 1

And here's my Flash thing running in an iframe:

Here is what the two upper layers look like:

Statistics: Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes in the United States (2009)

2011-11-25T07:42:00.001-06:00

Nearly 71.9% of the anti-religious hate crimes in the United States were perpetrated because of the offender's anti-Jewish bias, 8.4% because of anti-Islamic bias -- according to the Department of Justice Uniform Crime Reporting Program statistics for 2009.

I found the links to this information here on Ketzele's blog.

Crimes suck. Hate crime sucks. The point being made on one of Ketzele's sources is that the press doesn't report much on anti-Semitic crimes, but a lot on anti-Islamic ones.

One thing that stood out in the statistics for me was that nearly half of all hate crimes are because of racial bias, and nearly 72% of those because of an anti-Black bias.

And, compare in your head the reporting of hate crimes against homosexuals with the reporting of hate crimes against any other group and then look at the statistics. I guess when a black guy gets beaten up just because he's black, it's old news?

I suppose these statistics are helpful, but I don't like hate crime laws. It's like saying that if you were the victim of a violent crime that did not involve these biases then you're just not as important as a Jew, a homosexual, or a black guy.

It's wrong to beat someone up, whether you're doing it because they looked at your girlfriend or they're gay (you think) or they smell bad. It's also wrong that someone can spend a lot more time in jail for possessing a drug, for their own use, affecting their own life, than beating someone up, for their own purpose, affecting someone else's life.

Here's a joke for you: A Jew, a homosexual, and a black guy go into a bar and the black guy gets beaten up. The punchline: Statistics.

I'd like to put in these statistics for Oklahoma. In 2009, in Tulsa, there was just one hate crime reported, (ethnicity biased). In Oklahoma City, there were 20 (various biases, mostly race and sexual orientation). That could be a policing anomaly in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, both, or Tulsa could just be a sweet place to live (it's pretty nice).

Oklahoma City's population is only about 45% larger than Tulsa's, by the way... so don't think I'm comparing Peoria, Illinois with New York City...

Ok, New York City -- 271 crimes (139 of those, the largest part, based on religion). But their population was listed as 8400997... that's 3.23 crimes per 100,000 people.

Oklahoma City, 20 crimes, pop 556939, 3.59 crimes per 100,000 people.

Tulsa, 1 crime, pop 384851, 0.26 crimes per 100,000 people.

Ok, gee, Los Angeles, 190 crimes, pop 3848776, 4.94 crimes per 100,000 people.

Punchline: Statistics.

Best Personal Lecture by a Professor (Movie: Box Elder)

2011-11-22T21:02:00.001-06:00

A college slacker checks on his final grade.

Take a look at your overall scores there. What you'll notice is that we're pretty much in the same place as we were two years ago – nothing's changed.

What concerns me about that is not your consistently poor grades, but your consistently inconsistent performance.

Scott, as you probably know, when you apply yourself your work is hands down, top to bottom, grade-A material. But then, of course I need to doc-down that grade, for its lateness, the inevitable spelling errors that would make a third-grader scream for her life, for the stains on the paper – coffee; strawberry jam, I think it was, at one point. You and I know that still puts us in the B category, which is not bad – not what you're capable of, but not bad.

But then we start looking at your final grade and that grade is affected by all your absences, your failed pop quizzes, your absolute lack of any homework assignments what so ever, and now we're plummeting down into the D for dog category.

Now I don't consider myself a man given to mendacity – I may be deluded about that, but that's how I see myself, anyway – but, I must tell you that I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're somebody who's just full of great potential and talent that's just wasting his time just skating by. Because quite frankly, I don't think you are full of great talent, or amazing potential.

On the other hand, though, I think you just might be the kind of man that given the right opportunity you could prove me wrong.

And that leads me to my greatest concern.

I've seen several men like you pass by – and it's usually men, which is quite interesting.

What you're waiting for is some sort of opportunity, a sink-or-swim opportunity, really, where you can prove yourself a hero. But you know what? Those opportunities are not what you expect them to be. They're small, mundane, even boring. And one of them eventually flowers.

But if you're waiting for that big situation, you sink. I mean, think about it – if you're out there, adrift in the middle of the ocean, your chances of reaching the shore are much higher if you just pick a direction and start swimming rather than tread water, waiting for someone to find you and save you.

BabyJ: Scrambled Eggs with Cheese

2011-11-21T18:55:00.001-06:00

One Sunday morning, BabyJ, you and I were up early. Your mommy was sleeping in, so I decided I would make us some breakfast.

You had recently started feeding yourself and so I decided it was time to teach you to make scrambled eggs with cheese.

I pulled your high hair into the kitchen and got you set up with some Cheerios and juice and then proceeded to show you every step of making the eggs and toasting the toast.

You loved every second of the performance and then, when the eggs had cooled a little, you scarfed a bunch of them down and loved them and then promptly broke out with itchy hives.

I broke the rule, eggs and cheese. We didn't know which you were allergic to at first and later a doctor determined it was both.

I felt so bad about it. You had loved the eggs and cheese.

Wow, that was a long time ago.

So, on your first birthday, we knew what you were allergic to, so your mother ordered a big cake for your guests and a little cake for you to eat. Your little cake was supposed to have regular frosting, but it turned out that it also had frosting made with butter like the big cake... you smeared a bunch of it on your face and promptly broke with itchy hives.

Hmm.

You loved that cake, though.

And now, a picture of your brother eating spaghetti, which he loved dearly...

Does Little Man still have the biggest voice on the block? His very first breath of air was followed by a wailing that impressed even the salty delivery nurses -- in the delivery room and out at the desk and down the hall.

I'm not sure the doctor who delivered the baby with the big man voice was paying much attention. She was frighteningly ignorant of some of the process. Maybe she was drunk, I don't know. I swear to God, she asked a nurse an anatomy question. Well, God remembers. Sorry to swear.

You're both healthy, smart kids.

I miss you.

Much unhappy face.

Happy Birthday, BabyJ!

2011-11-20T21:13:00.001-06:00

Dear BabyJ,

Happy Birthday!

You're fifteen today, but when you and Little Man were little kids, you used to ask me to tell you stories of when you were babies. I thought this year for your birthday, I'd write the story of the day you were born.

The story of the day you were born starts on the day before you were born.

Once upon a time, I was at work and my phone rang. It was your mother and she said it was time to go to the hospital. So, I came home and we went to the hospital. The nurses asked a bunch of questions and then the doctor came in and did some checking and then she told us to go home.

Once upon the next day, I was at work. Around 3 o'clock my phone rang. It was your mother and she said this time it was really time to go the hospital, but no huge rush. She told me she was going to take a shower.

So, I went home, in a big rush.

Everything was very calm when I made it into our bedroom at home. Your mother was all clean and sweet smelling. Her things, which had been packed for weeks, were on the bed. She had her boombox all ready and a little carry bag full of music and a couple of snacks.

We loaded up and headed to Saint Francis. Your mother was having periodic contractions the whole way. I don't remember the interval, but that was definitely going to be the day.

Your mother had figured that they weren't going to let her eat at the hospital and she was hungry, so dang it, Tots!! We stopped at the Sonic near Saint Francis. I can't remember if your mommy ate many (or any) of the Tots. I can't remember if it really was Tots or if I had Tots or what...

I dropped your mother off at the new mommy depot outside of the hospital. They have a loading dock there. You hop out of your car and rush inside and yell incoherently and they assume your wife is outside and they come out with a wheelchair and then you offload your woman and miracle baby into the wheelchair and they tell you to park carefully and return, your woman and miracle baby will meet you inside, and then, I assume, they make fun of you while you park your car quickly and sprint into the hospital.

Your mother had wanted the big delivery room, but it wasn't available, but that was okay because she was hurting bad, every so often, and any room would do, so any room did and you were born.

Story over.

Kidding!!

Your mommy got out of her clothes and into an easy-exit gown and she paced around and she was checked and checked and then they hooked her up to a thing that checked when she was having contractions and the computer thing spit out paper continuously so the doctor and nurses could keep an eye on the contractions.

And then it was time for that medicine to be poked into her back. So they did that.

Every once in a while she got checked and they would call out numbers, like 8 centimeters!!! (I don't remember the numbers... is 10 centimeters a lot? I don't have a cervix, so I wouldn't know. It seems like a lot to me...)

Family started arriving that evening.

The labor room had been transformed into a warm and soothing environment with a table lamp the only light and music playing. And then it was time so your mother sent everyone away. With luck, I got to stay. :)

Actually, I had endured sticking my hand into a bucket of salty ice water so I knew just how to breath... and that experience helped immensely to keep me from fainting during the whole, painful ordeal.

As you might imagine, there was breathing and there was pushing and there was a little trouble...

They had a monitor hooked to your little head that showed the doctor and nurses your heart rate, I think, because they needed to know through the contractions and the regular external monitor was inaccurate during contractions, or something like that, so they hooked it into your head... There was a little screw!!! THEY SCREWED IT INTO YOUR HEAD!!! EWWW.

Well, your heart rate went down during contractions, or something like that. The doctor did some digging (LITERALLY) and found that the cord was probably wrapped around your neck, so there was going to be some turning and rushing to get you out.

And you came out!

ANYWAY, you were okay. You were a little blue, but the doctor and nurses weren't worried one bit. They cleaned out your little mouth with a squeezy-sucker and you started crying and you pinked up quickly.

And the doctor woman MADE me cut the cord. I was saying, no thanks, didn't want to come between you and your mother, but she MADE me do it. Oh yeh, I remember it. I remember the freaky doctor scissors. I remember the snip sound.

They cleaned you off and then left you with me and your mother.

I don't remember crying (yet), but your mother and I were mesmerized by you. That first hour flew by.

And then it was time for me to go out and officially tell everyone that you had come (they already knew, of course, but the staff wasn't allowed to tell them if you were a boy or girl)... But your mother was allowing visitors and, of course, my mother was going to be first, so I went out to get her.

As I was coming down the hall, my mother was already coming out of the waiting room, throwing down her purse, and was entering the hall, and I said we had a baby girl and then I started crying, in front of everyone (smooth move), and hugging her.

When we got into the room, your grandma throw down her jacket and said, "Give me that baby!" and she held you and held you and talked to you.

Anyway, many people came in to see you before you went to your bath and checkup. I went with you. And then they all came around to watch you get your bath and checkup (there's a window)...

The nurse gave you a bath and then performed your little New Baby Inspection and Checkup while you warmed up with a heater pointed at you. (They have these baby checkup stations that have heaters.)

They made sure you had ten fingers and two feet, and orifices, and a heart beat.

You were perfect!!!

So, they put a little tiny diaper on you. You were little, just over 6 lbs, so they had to use the tiniest of their diapers.

I took you back into the room with your mom. She had been checked out by then. Everyone said good night and your mother and I slept in the room with you in a little baby carrier cart.

I changed your first diapers, of course. And, every time, I re-wrapped you into your baby papoose (burrito) wrapper cloth thing.

We were so happy to finally meet you.

You were named after the little neighbor girl that your mother babysat, with a different, mommy-approved spelling. I usually came over during the baby sitting. Your middle name, of course, was your mother's mother's name.

I love you.

Please tell your brother I love him, too.

:)

Philo Farnsworth

2011-11-18T09:32:00.001-06:00

At 11 years old, this kid began experimenting with electricity in Idaho. In 1920, at the age of 14, he showed his high school chemistry teacher his design for electronic television.

A young Russian immigrant, Vladimir Zworykin, had also thought up television independently and almost simultaneously. He ended up helping RCA develop a working system.

Philo's patent was challenged by RCA in court.

Philo won and was awarded the patent because his high school chemistry teacher had copied down the design he saw on the blackboard in 1920, proving that Farnsworth was first.

Farnsworth did make some money licensing the patent to RCA, but he never really shared in the glory or the huge fortunes that were made.

Photocopy of the drawing Justin Tolman, Philo's chemistry teacher,
made in 1920 that ended up sealing the deal for
Farnsworth in patent court.

Mid-Life Crisis

2011-11-15T17:00:00.001-06:00

From My Name is Jerry
(movie not about the mid-life crisis as described herein)

Here is my theory about the classic mid-life crisis some men go through.

The crisis has been portrayed as a last gasp for glory before heading into the autumn years and I think that might be due to the shallow interpretation by these men of their own feelings, but I think it's driven by the evolutionary need for more babies.

I think during the distant yesterdays that probably prosperous and powerful men in the tribe continued to father children throughout their lives. Eventually, their original mates could no longer bare them many good sons and daughters.

Unlike me, most middle class men who live into their forties have built up some security and their children have left the nest and so they feel that old school pressure to have more puppies and kittens. But, at least half of them aren't going to bail out on their true love back at home, so they go a little psycho and express their manhood by going to the gym and buying that Harley and smiling at the blonde chick on the corner nearly half his age (but a respectable few years older than his daughter).

And then the other half pick up the blonde chick and divorce their wives via a fax (because they're too polite to do it through email, or a Facebook update).

And then the other half were already being kicked to the curb by their newly super hot forty something woman who has determined that she knows what she wants and it's not the schlub sitting on the cough who hasn't yet gone through his midlife crisis.

She's sick of fantasy football.

Yeh, super hot. I've had the good fortune of spending a lot of time with a woman in her mid-forties who easily had more men after her than that blonde chick on the corner. It's funny watching all those young guys check her while she walked to our table in a restaurant... actually looking away from their young, blonde date while she was talking.

Bad move, young dude.

Women HATE that. I learned that in high school at the mall. You better not look away to check out the backside of that girl walking past the table. Death move. I'm good at not directly looking... I'm not saying I don't see. I have excellent peripheral vision.

The good news: I think the baby thing passed over this last year. It cropped up, strangely, while I was homeless. And then when I had a job and things were looking alright again, it surged forward through my brain cogs... and I actually started spending time with a 28-year old woman.

When it looked like things were going to be bad again, I thought it was a sort of bad deal for such a young woman... and I was specifically thinking about children. What if she wanted children? I can't support children (obviously). Then, if I stuck around it would be in bad faith, selfish.

I told myself that, anyway.

A good, healthy fear of intimacy feeds excuses for doing the right thing.

I recently used the internal excuse that I was more likely to add to a woman's problems than help, and all the while I would be taking up space that could be filled by a more well adjusted potential mate for her.

Well, enough about me and now a picture of a chicken.

Here's some art I did. It relates to the chicken. My excuse this time is that it's foolish and irresponsible to print up a bunch of art for a show when I don't have the money to make a good presentation. It's very true that most ventures fail because they're not well ventured -- money spent on a weak attempt is money wasted.

No, I didn't draw this. Originally it was a photograph of a butterfly that I rearranged and colored.

You just can't imagine the relief I've felt in the past when some strong woman just absolutely forced me to loosen up. It's the kind of peaceful feeling that can become addictive.

I'm very careful about becoming addicted to the wrong person or in the wrong situation -- one where I might know that things are wrong for her (and/or me) but I stick with it anyway because I don't want to give up the peace.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

My relationship with #2 ended up being that way. We had spent years together. For the first 18 months, we literally spent nearly every second of every day in each other's presence and we both loved a good percentage of those seconds. But, we are different kinds of people for various reasons and some of the things she wanted to spend our lives on differed from the kinds of things that I knew I could spend my life on, so we should have split up, but we were addicted, and so splitting was a loud, violent process... mostly because I couldn't bring myself to just leave and so expressed my frustration through violence -- sort of a cry for a breakup.

It was also a good way to just wallow in anger and make myself feel better for a little while. (Strong, angry actions release all sorts of chemicals that dull your pain... which is why it's so hard for some people to stop being shitheads even when they know they're shitheads and they always regret what was said or done... They're addicted to the chemicals released by their anger...)

Eventually we got married.

She mercifully brought it all to an end about a month later, when she moved away to another state.

I was just reading this over and started wondering about why I got so girl crazy when I was homeless. For some reason in my recent life, I've been less depressed while I was homeless than any other time. Oh, I was stressed, but it was survival stress... For some reason, when you're worried about your physical well being, and you're not much liking sleeping in a room with 300 of your closest, farting friends, and you didn't really enjoy getting stuck with the shower head that always sprays cold water while 20 of your closest friends are in there farting, and ten other guys at the head of the line are yelling to hurry the fuck up, and you don't think about the fact that you don't have shower shoes and then you wonder where those other guys found shower shoes and then you're drying off with what a woman would call a "face towel"... that's worn through in several places... and then you try to put on your dirty clothes while you're still wet, but you're glad you have your socks back on and you're not standing on the floor... and then you catch the flu during the first couple of weeks (this happened to me BOTH TIMES I stayed in a shelter)...

I've been homeless three times. Before the middle time, I was dropped off by a friend at a homeless shelter. I went inside and lined up to get a cot. Then they herded us into the chapel for a service.

The guy giving the service looked familiar, so I stayed after to find out why.

It turned out that he was a telephone services salesman for Worldcom. I'd purchased all the PRI's for my internet service through him... Thousands of dollars a month worth.

I was so humiliated to run into him there. I didn't have a good answer to the question, "What happened?"

Then I remembered that flu.

I remembered sitting in a chair at the Day Center for the Homeless in Tulsa, Oklahoma because I was too sick go walk around downtown getting turned down for jobs... I was DAMN LUCKY to have a chair. I sat there... wiping my nose with toilet paper... sometimes falling asleep and waking up to the sound of snot hitting my coat (my snot, THANK GOD).

Nothing like hearing that some old guy just got jacked for his disability money by crack heads in the bathroom of the Day Center.

Yeeeee hawww!!!!

So, I walked out of the homeless shelter and decided to sleep in the wild. Those were my exact thoughts: I am releasing myself to the wild.

I slept under a highway overpass for 10 nights.

Sweet.

Well, this again is enough about me. And now, a picture of a highway overpass.

Ok, this is a squirrel from the National Geographic website: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/squirrel/

These little guys look cute, but they'll take you out if given the chance.

I guess what I'm saying is that when you're concerned for your immediate survival, you don't have time to dwell on your shortcomings. Or, perhaps, there's an excitement generated by the predicament, or a fight-or-flight response... the same sort of chemicals are probably produced in a person's brain as with that...

Or, perhaps I'm just remembering it that way.

I remember laughing whenever things got a little worse... like when I decided to walk a long distance and then it was hot and sweat was dripping into and burning my eyes and I was getting sun burned and then I got to where I was going and it was closed so I turned around and walked back... a six mile round trip.

Well, what else was I going to do that day? Sit under the bridge?

It's quite frustrating to me that I am unable alone to experience the kinds of peaceful feelings that I do when I'm in an intimate relationship with a woman. I don't know. The need to mate is a basic human need, pretty low down on the hierarchy of needs, I'd imagine. I suppose when you're not in a relationship that may provide what is so basic to our constitutions that everything you build outside it is always sitting on a shaky foundation... just a contrived substitution for what you really need.

And now some more of my art.

Thanks to our own idiocy, #2 and I were really, really poor for a number of those months. We always had a place to sleep, and that was good, but I remember being so sick of eating what we could get from food banks... man, one day we had the money to eat at Whataburger. WOW. Beef. It's what was for dinner. What a great burger...

Anyway, things were really miserable. I made a daily trip through the parking lots of grocery stores and fast food restaurants and convenience stores looking for change.

Here's a tip: People drop change when they're looking for their keys. They pull their keys out of their pocket or purse and sometimes some change gets dropped. Also, they drop change at the drive-through windows of fast food places. Look in these places for change.

If you're not too proud to harvest the tobacco out of someone else's smokes, then break-time smoke holes outside of grocery stores or office buildings are the perfect place because people who are late from coming back from their break will just put out a cigarette at mid-carcinogenagenationmadeupword and leave it there.

We didn't even smoke tobacco before that... But for several weeks we took up the mission of finding tobacco and making ourselves sick with it. And then we stopped smoking tobacco.

Anyway, throughout this misery we were together. For some reason being together made everything just okay enough to keep going.

Misery can bind people together, too. One becomes very loyal to the person who lived through it with him.

Ok, that's enough. I've come back like 10 times to add more to this mess, so I'll close by admitting that I feel things are really screwed up and I'm so sure that I can't help myself fix it that I'm not even trying hard enough. Any reward from efforts to right myself are so long after the efforts and my situation feels like it is one of being in a hole so deep that I'll never make it out before dying on the way. At my core I am hopeless and unhappy.

Making a little more money means that I'll have to spend lots of time in courts and watching people who have a right to take it take it. In addition to the kind corporations who loaned me money, the United States of America, and I imagine, the State of Oklahoma, are looking for me because I owe you money, too.

So, making a little more money means a lot more trouble. And, I hate courts. Nothing good has ever happened for me in a courtroom.

So, the only way out is to make a LOT MORE MONEY.

Wow, the pressure. I can't admit to myself that I don't have what it takes to make a lot more money. I have the ideas, and I have the basic skill sets, but I don't have the type of long term consistency of mission and thought and drive to make anything like that happen.

So, the set of possibilities keeps getting smaller in my head. Suddenly I'm looking for ideas to create simple software tools that accomplish some great task. Or working on projects that have some sort of hobby need within me that will keep me going.

But, the voice in the back of my head wants me to face that none of this will ever happen because I know I won't make it happen.

There is no backup plan.

Someone who can't do what he should to accomplish what he thinks he must, and yet refuses to quit "trying" or won't stop telling himself that he's trying... is truly doomed, I think.

I used to study stories and quotes from people who were eventually successful in business. None of those people were immediate hits. They all had really hard knocks... Ventures that failed and people lost money and they were down and out, but they didn't quit, and eventually someone was interested enough in their success to write down their stories.

But, see, those people never stopped really trying and they are all the sorts of people who have a long term vision of what they're doing and they work day in and day out to make it happen. If they lose, they pick up some other project and keep making things happen.

Thinking of these shortcomings has become an excuse to not accomplish anything -- it's a classic sort of addiction or compulsion cycle. "Oh, I'm just a big fat pig anyway, why not eat another pizza?" "Oh, I'm a complete shithead and there's no hope, why not smoke more crack?"

I don't have an eating disorder and I don't smoke crack, but you can see, surely, that it's all the same sort of problem: "I'm not getting anything done anyway, my life is never going anywhere good; why work this afternoon?"

So, you see the dilemma: The kind of internal peace that might come from a new relationship could be the one thing that I'm missing that keeps me waving my brain around and not completing anything, but while I have all of these problems to deal with and I think everything just really might go to complete shit -- perhaps stress even ruining my health -- that it's not fair to "infect" someone else's life with it.

I'm damn lucky to have a new family. That's good. This "luck" was directly related to another strong woman acting in my life. God bless #3.

Ok, I'm done.

Wait!! I'm not done.

The hierarchy of homeless shelter needs: You're naked and standing on a wet floor. Goodness knows what sorts of fungi are floating around on the floor. Do you put on your underwear first or your socks? Underwear... What's on your feet is already on your feet. There is no 10-second rule that makes any sense. And, while you're sure you're the best damn looking homeless guy out of the 300, you still cover your bare ass before anyone else starts thinking you're the best damn looking homeless guy out of the 300.

Oh, and that sound you can't quite identify in the bathroom, coming from one of the stalls, is an old guy masturbating. I bet you wish you didn't know that. I know I wished I hadn't figured it out.

Just Some Stuff

2011-11-13T17:24:00.001-06:00

11 Minutes Ago

2011-11-12T02:31:00.001-06:00

In case you were wondering, I don't have much of a life among those of you in the wider world. I have and do spend a lot of time alone and I watch a large number of movies, easily more than 50 every month.

Way back, when times were more generous, I saw every movie that was shown in Tulsa theaters that didn't seem useless (or have a lot of crying, or gay vampires -- the sorts of movies where chick-BFF's come out hugging).

Oh wait, I think I saw The Notebook. I might have been married at the time. Ok, it was good.

ANYWAY

I thought I had seen every movie made in the last 20 years about time travel, but I just found a new one.

See this movie: 11 Minutes Ago

http://www.11minutesagothemovie.com/

11 Minutes Ago has no special effects, no killer androids, no Jean-Claude Van Damme. This movie is low budget, shot all in the same house (in one 17-hour filming session), and is easily the best movie about time travel I've ever seen -- and it doesn't discuss any of the mechanics of the technology.

This guy "tumbles" 48 years into the past to get an air sample because the air had become polluted in his time.

Wait, it's not a green, tree hugging movie -- it's a love story where cause and effect are all messed around, but it makes perfect sense in the end.

See, the guy can only stay for 11 minutes at a time or he'll have to stay forever (he'll never make it back with his air sample). But this woman is lovey-dovey with him and he's just shocked, and curious, and interested... And the guys at the party are talking to him like they know him because he's already been there a number of times and he's been talking to them all night about the truth.

SO, he has to come back to see how this all came about and to see the woman again. He goes home and spends 6 months preparing another trip... and eventually arrives for his second visit, 15 minutes before he arrived the first time.

It's really, really cool. See 11 Minutes Ago.

Dear Babies: Meet George Washington Carver

2011-11-11T11:30:00.001-06:00

My Dear Babies,

This is a picture of George Washington Carver. He was one of the world's greatest scientists. He did most of his work in the very early days of the 20th century.

Mr. Carver was born into slavery in Missouri.

Mr. Carver later figured out ways to save poor southern farmers from a fix they were in due to raising only cotton. He promoted the switch to alternative crops, such as peanuts and soybeans. He also figured out useful ways to use to those crops for more than just food -- to create valuable products that could be used by industry.

Although his inventions could have made him a very wealthy man, Carver only patented three minor applications. He freely taught people the lion's share of what he figured out.

You can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington_carver

The point of writing this blog post is to copy over this list of Carver's eight values to live by:

Be clean both inside and out.
Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
Lose, if need be, without squealing.
Win without bragging.
Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
Be too brave to lie.
Be too generous to cheat.
Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.

There's no shame in an inventor protecting his work with patents, or a programmer protecting her work with copyrights, but there are lots of people, even today, who freely share their work (or at least make it quite convenient and inexpensive to use).

You can read about some stuff here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Past Unintended Consequences of the United States War on Marijuana

2011-11-10T17:58:00.001-06:00

I'm watching this PBS documentary called The Botany of Desire which is about plants that are really good at getting humans to "work" for them: apples, tulips, potatoes, and cannabis.

Here's something I just learned that I thought was really funny:

Smoking pot in North America used to mainly be a Mexican thing. As Mexicans migrated north, they brought pot smoking with them.

Early in the 20th century, pot was popular also with African Americans and musicians (mainly jazz musicians).

But, in the 1960's America's youth across the country started smoking a lot of pot which many in power thought was going to bring our very way of life to an end, so they pressured Mexico to begin spraying their pot fields with herbicide.

Well, the kids were concerned that they might be smoking tainted weed, so labs popped up around the country that would test marijuana for them.

Eventually, thanks to the power of the free market, illegal pot fields started to be planted all over the western part of the US to meet demand.

So, the US government dispatched helicopters to find and seize the fields. In one year, the total amount of pot seized in the US exceeded the amount the officials were previously estimating as the TOTAL SIZE OF THE US POT CROP for that year. So, the officials pushed harder to stop marijuana growing.

Growers got the hint and then decided they needed to move marijuana cultivation indoors.

The weed that they were growing outdoors was the same weed as was grown in Mexico: Cannabis Sativa -- a 15ft tall plant that grows very slowly.

So, they searched around and found a mountain variety from Asia somewhere called Cannabis Indica which is short and bushy.

They crossed Sativa with Indica and created varieties that grow in small spaces and very quickly.

So, basically, trying to stop people from being able to smoke marijuana CREATED the growing industry in this country and forced them to find ways to grow it faster in smaller spaces. Of course, indoor cultivation also lead to stronger and stronger varieties because it's easier to control the conditions of the plants and whatnot inside where you don't have to look out for bears and helicopters.

So funny.

** The documentary has a similar story to tell about apples... It used to be that most apples were bitter and grown for hard cider -- which early Americans drank instead of water -- getting drunk. Then there was a war on apples. HAHAHA

Your Vote is Never Wasted

2011-11-02T11:56:00.001-05:00

Every election cycle we see pleas from the involved to the undecided that they should cast their votes in such a way that their vote is not "wasted" by voting for someone who is never going to win.

That's just screwed up, short-term thinking and short-term thinking is the reason we're always in a mess in this country.

Your vote for the candidate of your choice makes a difference in subsequent election cycles because future candidates are smart enough to take into account what you wanted and tailor their message to get your vote in the future.

If you choose the "lesser of two evils" then you are truly wasting your vote because you are participating in the perpetuation of a two-party system that is obviously operating as a single-party problem.

Grandpa and Grandma's House

2011-10-30T10:39:00.002-05:00

My dad's parents lived in Kansas City, about a 4.5 hour drive from where we lived in Tulsa.

We visited them on holidays and my brother and I usually stayed with them for several weeks every summer.

Kansas City had a UHF television station that aired Star Trek on Saturday afternoons. I'd never seen anything like it.

The "salt sucker" was the scariest
monster ever on Star Trek.

Incidentally, it was in Kansas City that we could see Rocky and Bullwinkle.

My grandparents had purchased the World Book Encyclopedia. They also had the years updates. I can't remember what year the original volumes were, but there were probably six or seven yearly books there...

Grandma and Grandpa had hundreds of fiction books, but I was mostly fascinated by the encyclopedia.

I absorbed information from the World Book.

And there were the cousins!

Andy and I have lots of cousins. In Kansas City, we would join up with Rona (my only older cousin), Lisa, Aaron, Adam, and Jill.

What was cool was that while we had not seen each other for months, we usually just picked up playing where we left off.

Besides riding up and down the sidewalks with our Big Wheels, we also made newspapers and wrote fake news and put on skits with fake news. You know, kid stuff.

Grandma had a manual typewriter on a desk in one of the upstairs bedroom, so we were just compelled to write things with it.

This was a time before video games, when all we had to entertain ourselves with was ourselves.

Something that's really interesting: My cousin Adam and I are like opposites.

Adam is this math genius type of guy who reasons things out and probably always takes the prudent course. I generally fly by the seat of my pants.

We're both programmers, but Adam is more of an actual computer scientist than I am.

My grandparents had a three bedroom house, so when everyone was in town for Thanksgiving or Passover or Hanuka, whatever, the adults would sleep at a motel and the kids would sleep upstairs in the house. The girls would sleep in one room and the boys in the other... There were a number of cots employed.

When it got late, our parents would send up upstairs to sleep. But, we didn't sleep right away, of course. We talked and told jokes and laughed. Sometimes we sneaked down the stairs to have a peek at what was going on down there.

One night while we were staring at the ceiling, Adam and I started talking about time travel. I remember that Adam kept shooting down my dreaming with what he saw as the cold hard facts about the matter.

Dinners in Kansas City were always eventful. Usually there were discussions about political matters and my Grandfather was conservative and some others there were quite liberal.

I can remember when someone in Kansas City on welfare had her welfare stopped because the government found out that she was saving money in a bank account. Wow, was there a debate about the nature and necessity of welfare...

My cousin Rona liked to drop bombshells in the middle of thing and get the adults fired up. One time during a pause in the conversation, Rona blurted out, "I'm thinking about buying a gun." Wow...

When the discussions got too heated, my dad would always play the cooler by hanging a spoon on his nose.

Ok, that's all.

PayPal: WTF?!?!?!?

2011-10-22T09:56:00.001-05:00

A few days ago, PayPal "limited" my account.

They sent me a vague email telling me that I might have violated their terms of service and that I should refer to their policies to try to figure out what's going on.

Then they let me know that they'd be holding on to my $18 for 45 days, and until then I will not be able to use the account for anything.

So, I inquired. I specifically asked why this happened. Their computer told me I could expect a response within 5 days.

Here is the reply I just received. Apparently their processes and the information they used to determine that they should hold on to my $18 is super private -- if I want to see it, then I need a court order or subpoena.

** AND NOW THEIR SYSTEM IS TELLING ME THIS:

Why is my account access limited?

Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):

Oct 20, 2011: Our system detected that multiple PayPal accounts contain registration information similar to yours. Our User Agreementallows PayPal users to have one Personal account and one Premier or Business account. To return your account to regular standing, we will need to confirm some of the information on your account.

(Your case ID for this reason is PP****.)

** PAYPAL!?!?! WTF!?!?!?

Hello, Joseph. My name is Tasha Krista from PayPal Resolution Services.

I understand that you are concerned about the limitation on your account. When we limited your account, we looked at different factors including:

Information we collect internally and sometimes from other users.
PayPal's tools, processes and information that monitor our payment network are confidential and proprietary.

To help you understand our limitation process, there are a few things you should know:

When you signed up for our services, you agreed to our User Agreement, Privacy, Acceptable Use Policies and others.
The decision to place a limitation on your account was based on terms outlined in these agreements.
Generally, we place limitations on an account to learn more about you, your account activity or your transactions. To appeal an account limitation, we might ask you to take various steps, provide us with information, or supply us with certain documents.
In some cases, we may decide that we can no longer offer our services to you.

If you would like to obtain copies of the information we reviewed in deciding to place a limitation on your account, you will need to obtain a court order or subpoena. To do so, you may want to consider speaking with an attorney who should be able to explain the subpoena process to you. If you choose to subpoena the information, you'll need to submit it to us using National Registered Agents, Inc.

We value you as a part of our PayPal family, and it is important for me to resolve your concern. If you feel the information provided is not enough, please do not hesitate to email us back.

Sincerely,

Tasha Krista

PayPal Resolution Services

PayPal, an eBay Company

Check out our Community Help Forums at www.paypal-community.com. You can also follow us on Twitter to find answers, help other members, and learn more about PayPal. Go to www.Twitter.com/askpaypal.

** SO, I FAXED THEM A BUNCH OF PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION ON OCTOBER 24TH.

** AND ON NOVEMBER 11TH, THEY DECIDED TO PERMANENTLY DISABLE MY ACCOUNT:

Dear Joseph Winett,

What's the problem?

To help protect our members' accounts, we routinely review account

activity. When we reviewed your activity, we noticed that you have more

than one Personal account or more than one Premier or Business account. In

addition, we noticed one or more of the following other reasons to limit

your account and terminate our services:

• You provided us with information that we believe was false, inaccurate or

misleading information; or

• You sent or received funds that were potentially fraudulent; or

• You have more than one account with a negative balance; or

• You are in violation of the User Agreement, the Commercial Entity

Agreement, the Acceptable Use Policy or another agreement you have with

PayPal.

Our decision was based on terms outlined in these agreements.

What to do next

Because of these issues, your account(s) has been permanently limited and

we can no longer offer our services to you. You will still be able to

log-in to see your transaction history for a limited time.

If you believe you've received this message in error you may appeal the

decision by contacting PayPal at the Help Center and clicking "Contact Us".

Please be prepared to provide one or all of the following pieces of

information; drivers' license, social security or tax ID card, current

utility bill, business license, articles of incorporation or other

identifying documentation.

If you don't appeal this decision within 14 days, we will use any positive

balance in your PayPal accounts to resolve any negative balance you have.

To protect against the risk of reversals like buyer complaints or

chargebacks, we will hold the funds in your account for up to 45 days. We

will use your account balance to pay for any reversals we receive against

your account. You'll receive an email within this time period advising you

that any balance in your account is available for withdrawal. Once you

receive this email, you can log into your account and click "Withdraw" at

the top of the page to receive your funds.

Thanks,

PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you

will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account

and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

** I CALLED AND THEY SAID THERE WAS NO APPEALING... AFTER MORE THAN 10 YEARS, WE WERE DONE DOING BUSINESS. THE CSR TOLD ME THAT SHE COULD NOT REVEAL THE INFORMATION USED TO MAKE THE DECISION BECAUSE THEIR POLICY IS NOT TO DO SO IN ORDER TO KEEP FRAUDS FROM LEARNING HOW TO CIRCUMVENT THEIR SECURITY.

Well, fine. Fuck you, Paypal. I do not have more than one account and I have not engaged in fraud.

More Difficult

2011-10-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

Bouquet

My life is about to become much more difficult. I just spent sixty hours hiding under my covers.

It wasn't that long ago that I made up a delusion that this was all for some greater purpose, that this would all have been worth it in the end, that it wasn't actually possible for someone to ruin their life, that anyone could come back from anything as long as they were still breathing.

I don't think that's the case.

I don't have any idea of what coming back would mean. I don't have anywhere to go, and I don't see the glory in simply surviving.

This latest set back is just an indignity forced on me by failures I committed in the past. For anyone else, satisfying such a simple requirement would have been child's play, so while I should just be going on and ignoring this new nasty thing, I see it as another example of why I'm a really terrible person.

I had nightmares all night.

Wow, I really, really hate life. It's not anyone's fault but my own. I built myself wrong. I cannot conform.

Depressed Grandmas and Mr. Hand

2011-10-13T23:10:00.003-05:00

Somehow I ended up following the blog of a woman who describes herself as a grandma to two 15 year old twins who has suffered from depression since she was in her teens, a condition which has gotten progressively worse over the years. The cheerful part is that she has and is being treated with all sorts of medications and still she suffers. Well, dandy.

This post has nothing to do with Mr. Hand. Since you're not here, this isn't our time, it's your time where you are and my time here.

I don't enjoy anything. My life is just an oscillation between the state of not enjoying anything and the state of not enjoying anything and feeling really crappy.

Any cheerful times in the last few years have been completely artificial, fueled by delusions of the world being as it is not.

I do experience relief sometimes -- for instance if I think I have some sort of problem, like a small money problem, when it's solved then I feel better than I did, but I'm still not enjoying anything.

Imagine if you were willing to just blow off work this afternoon, but there really wasn't anything you wanted to do anyway. And now imagine that you blow off work anyway. So, now you're not working and you're not doing something you enjoy (because you don't enjoy anything). Wow, what a nice feeling.

There have been times in my life that I've looked forward to things and I've had fun, but those times are gone.

When you've got nothing to look forward to, then the only reason to work is just to keep eating so you can not enjoy something tomorrow. I suppose not enjoying things inside is better than not enjoying them under a bridge.

Survival just isn't a reason to live.

In addition to not enjoying anything, the holidays are coming up and I hate the holidays.

I'm not going to, but I'd really like to kill myself tonight -- before even clicking save on this post. I've said I would hold out until my next birthday. I'm sure I'll hold out until some natural something happens to me one day. I can't imagine having to stick around until I'm that grandma's age. What a fucking nightmare.

A Trip to the Moon

2011-10-07T08:11:00.002-05:00

A Trip to the Moon is my favorite book of all time.

My parents bought me my first copy. I played the record and read along probably four million times before I was 8.

I had a little record player in a white plastic case. I'm thinking it looked something like this (but all white):

[SPOILER ALERT]

The kids' dad is an astronaut and he's been training hard to get ready for his trip to the moon. The kids have been helping him train.

Right before the trip, Dad comes down with a nasty case of the measles and is going to have to cancel his launch!!

So the kids visit the head of NASA and explain to him that they've been training with their dad and know just what to do.

4 3 2 1 LIFTOFF!!

[END SPOILER ALERT]

It's a great book.

My second copy was given to me by #1. That was by far the greatest, most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given to me.

I don't know where it is now. I'm pretty sure I abandoned it when I moved out of the house. I hope she didn't throw it away.

My clock with the sticker on it; M&M's by the color; in case you get sad; rope, a camouflage jacket, and motion detector; Mr. Happy; babies. K, I've paid the most terrible price and learned big lessons. Please, cut me loose from my noose.

Dreams Suck

2011-10-02T14:25:00.000-05:00

This photograph appeared in Life Magazine in 1957.

Recently, I've been sleeping at least three times a day.

One of the weird things I've noticed is that my dreams are never playgrounds and what I want never happens.

This morning, I woke up and was going to write about a dream I was having, but it was yet another sexually frustrating dream, and I decided I wasn't going to write about why it went awry, so it was no story at all.

I will now say that the dream this morning involved this young lady who acts on Warehouse 13, but she had been morphed into a woman older than just 20, but it's still embarrassing. I found this image on the website for a comic book store under the heading "Coolest Female Actors in Television Shows."

The Warehouse 13 geek was fully dressed, in a dress, something the character would never actually wear.

But, the chick in the bathtub (different lady) a little while ago was not dressed. I was in the bathtub with her, wearing my clothes.

It seemed odd to me in the dream, so I decided to take off my clothes. Now I was really going to get somewhere.

So, I jumped out of the bathtub.

WTF? Why jump out? Never leave the scene.

Ok, no problem. Took off my soaking shirt and threw it in the corner.

It landed in a trashcan.

WTF?

Well, that was irritating to me, so I went to get it out of the trashcan. Then the woman in the bathtub wanted a trash bag for something else. And then I looked in the trashcan and it was my underwear and then this trash bag I found had some items of clothing in it, so I was asking her if she wanted me to just dump them out.

WTF?

I woke up.

These dreams are really starting to piss me off.

The one this morning, I could feel the dress on small of her back. This afternoon, her wet, soapy skin.

Who gets into a bathtub wearing a t-shirt and jeans?

There is no break from life, not waking, nor sleeping.

I'm not kidding around when I say this dream thing pisses me off. It's not just the sex dreams, but nothing ever works out, it seems. I never get to go where I want to go and I'm always getting lost and there are complications and confusions and when I look again the thing I'm trying to figure out is never as it was before so then it's something new to have to figure out, but here's no figuring it out, anyway.

So, sleep isn't much fun, but I'd rather be sleeping than typing this. Being awake is just preparation for being able to sleep.

My favorite video game isn't much fun anymore. I've only been playing it for 12 years or so. Well, I did stop playing it regularly for several years.

I am really, really stuck. I can't fix my life and I don't want to live 30-50 more years of it. Hell, I don't want to have to fill up the next three hours until I can get myself to take another nap.

The only reason I'm participating at all with the rest of you is because I haven't been able to bring myself to end it yet and being alive without a place to live or any food at all is really, really uncomfortable. But, that makes me life's bitch. I'm your bitch, I guess. I'm God's bitch. The very second I can overcome this switch in my head, you can all go to hell and I'll see you there.

There is no hell.

Arg.

2011-10-02T09:47:00.001-05:00

Arg. Arg arg arg, arg arg arg arg ARG arg arg.

Fuck Off

2011-09-30T11:08:00.002-05:00

From This Site

No, I'm not going to shut up about it. If you don't like it, don't read it (i.e., fuck off).

Georgia is definitely my favorite web font.

This blog doesn't use Georgia right now, and I could fix that, but the only project I really want to work on is killing myself. Oh, I'll never actually do it and that just pisses me off (i.e., fuck off).

Accomplishing death would involve doing a whole bunch of things I just don't do. I'd have to be out of my mind drunk, which is about impossible for me, and if I could get out of my mind then I'd forget all about the project anyway.

I might possibly be able to kill myself by accident. I'm not talking about engaging in some really dangerous activities (I don't do that), I'm talking about hiding poison in the second backup toothpaste tube, but DAMMIT, I just can't have poison toothpaste hanging around the house in case someone I actually care about (which is about everyone) uses it.

So, I can't booby-trap myself to death.

This whole thing is so stupid, I want to kill myself just to shut myself up (i.e., fuck off).

Dear Babies. (My babies, not you.)

2011-09-28T09:19:00.001-05:00

Wow, what a sterling post that last one was, eh?!?!

One thing you can be sure of is that your father wasn't a robot. Well, I am sort of like a robot, but I'm sure I'm not.

Remember when I tried to start reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to you, Baby J? It was between Harry Potter books.

I know it had to be between HP books because all the other books were old... When we read the Narnia books, we read ALL the Narnia books. Neither of us could wait to start the next. Same thing with the Oz books.

Anyway, Douglas Adams bored you within 5 minutes, so we didn't go on. Now you're almost 15 and I bet you'd like his books.

The other day, I was thinking about writing and so I was thinking about the books I've read. Excluding the ones I was assigned to read in school, I've read less than 50 books, including those I read to you.

Well, that's excluding the little books for children we read. I probably read 50 of those to you over and over and over.

Do you like my hat?

I do not.

Go, Dog, Go!

Holy green donkeys, you loved that book.

Your brother loved books, too.

Since I've read everything Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut wrote, that's exposing myself as a guy who never really read much fiction. I read several John Grisham and Michael Crichton books. I read a great collection of early Asimov short stories (in a book).

I don't remember exactly which books your brother loved. He loved flying his little plastic red jet fighter around. I was going to include the story about the fighter, but I can't.

In seventh- or eighth-grade English class I learned about writing stories. I was taught that stories have to have some sort of conflict and conflict comes in three flavors: Man Against Man, Man Against Nature, and Man Against Himself.

At the time, I didn't quite understand the Man Against Himself one.

There's nothing really dramatic to add there.

I just used a calculator to figure out that, on average, I spend 1% of my time around other people. That time is generally spent saying hello to someone as I walk through a room.

I read a story once talking about how some of the first guys stationed at the South Pole alone would go a little crazy. The lack of human interaction and the constant confinement and the never-changing sensory input sort of forced their brains to go off on their own.

I was always sure I could survive at the South Pole. I also don't see the horror in solitary confinement in a prison (well, a modern prison). I wouldn't want to be thrown in the "The Box" outside in the sun... Or in the hole with the rats wherever.

Isolation is a problem for people who aren't used to it, I guess. I don't know. I don't really know anything.

I should be working.

Money won't make anything better. All money would do is help me distract myself and trap me into making up reasons to make more money.

Presently, I'm always completely broke within 5 days of receiving any money. This time around, I did buy a monitor. I've avoided buying it for quite some time. The last time I bought a durable good was January of this year when I bought the video card. Wait, I did buy a cell phone in like March?

I don't know what my reasoning is, completely. I won't get another regular job. I cannot conform to someone else's lifestyle for long periods of time. Again, the money doesn't help anything anyway except to provide distraction.

Click on this one.

The only reason I've ever wanted to complete JUST ONE project of mine was to prove I could do it, but I can't actually do it.

Nothing is actually interesting enough to do it for a long time in one day and none of my projects are juicy enough to spend a lifetime completing, just to prove something to myself. None of them are great enough to prove anything to anyone else, but I don't really care what they think.

I always feel better around other people yet I don't spend time around other people.

My story won't have a happy ending and, sickly, it won't be tragic enough to even be interesting. So, that pretty much means I'm a pussy.

Negative Post from the Doomed and/or Damned with Girly-Stick Picture

2011-09-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

MOTHERFUCKER BLOGGER FUCKER ASSHOLE BLOGGER

Yeh, well, fuck.

It sucked anyway, but I spent an hour writing it. The least blogger could have done was save it.

I'll sum it up:

Life isn't precious at all. DIE ALL YOU WANT, WE'LL MAKE MORE. I'm sure when I get to wherever we're all going that I'm going to hear chuckles, "Damn, I thought you peaked at around 8 or 9... why the fuck did you hang around that long?"

Yes, I'm responsible for my boredom. It's my fault that my only joy in life is a cigarette and I hate the cigarette because it doesn't bring me any joy.

My mother said that to me once, "My only joy in life is smoking."

It's very sad that people miss her... I miss her... God knows I've needed her, but she got out at 55... it cost her a bunch of pain, but she had a few extra happy years (being somewhat out of her mind)... Before then she was obviously miserable from time to time.

We don't have a responsibility to the human race to survive. The day I overcome my feeling of responsibility to the people I personally know, I'm out of here.

Dreams of Frustration

2011-09-19T09:00:00.002-05:00

I was getting ready to put this drawer back in its dresser this morning
when I noticed this sums up one of the greatest people I've ever
had the pleasure of knowing. This isn't art, this is her life right here.

This is a little hairy spider.

I remember a lot of my dreams because I wake up during them because of frustrating circumstances. In essence, I remember them because I quit messing with them.

Here's one from last night: I'm in this beautiful housing edition built in some hills with lots of tall trees and shade, walking along the streets. It's nice, but I want to go somewhere. I know the address, but I find that none of the street signs have hundred-block numbers on them. Then I look again and suddenly this street sign has six ways to turn, and only one of them seems to have a number on it, but I can't get close enough to read the tiny number. Screw it, I'm waking up.

I just realized that was quite similar to a real situation I had, but at that time I wasn't frustrated. I was blank, walking around in a suit and tennis shoes, trying to make it to my dad's house a couple of miles away by walking through a neighborhood built on a hill between 81st and 91st on Yale in Tulsa. I was lost, sure, but I wasn't frustrated -- it was one of the greatest, most bizarre experiences I'm sure anyone has ever enjoyed. Somehow I was able to make it back home.

In another dream I was in a park that was built in and around a zoo, but I wanted to get to some other part of the park and I walked and walked and couldn't find it, so I decided to cut across a thing and down a hill and ended up in a dark forest place surrounded by a tall fence and through the moonlight I could see that the things sticking to my face were spider webs. Gong! Wake up.

The last one I'll tell you about was that I returned to work at a corporate job but couldn't find my cubicle, then I couldn't quite remember what my job was, or who my boss was. I did have some exploding soccer balls and was distributing them by throwing them over cubicles. Well, they didn't explode like to blow things up -- they were balls that made the sound like things were going to blow up. Apparently it was an office gag done every Monday and it was my turn. Anyway, I had to listen to some corporate bullshit and then decided I didn't like my job and wanted to quit, so I asked who was my boss, they said, "Rob," so I asked where Rob was...

They walked me to his office which was in a much more fun part of the building where they were having Hawaiian Day. It was bright and sunny and they all had on yellowish, flower-print shirts and were still doing their corporate bullshit, but in a much better mood.

Well, Rob of course Rob wasn't in his office and no one knew when he'd be back. Screw it. Gong. Wake up.

The soccer ball thing reminded me of one of the most boring jobs I had. I think most people were bored because they did office pranks and games all day, every day, it seems. Every once in a while a wadded paper ball would land in your cubicle from sources unknown, but you'd have an idea because you could hear snickering to the southeast. Ah, it was the database guys.

One time I grabbed the ball and stood up and the "architect" (a term I hate for software programming, but it does seem to fit) was walking by and I acted like I was going to toss it his way. He just grimaced and said sternly that he doesn't play that.

That job was too easy and too slow. The hardest part of anything was finding where it WAS and, as you know, I hate searching for things. It's silly.

The only task I enjoyed was fixing a bug that had been on the books for two years and that several people had worked on. It affected only their biggest clients and they were still complaining. I think they gave it to me as a joke. I fixed it in 20 minutes.

It took longer to explain it to get it error checked and then to joke around about it with the architect. "Can you believe someone put a shell call in this loop?"

"Wow, a shell call in that loop?" He replied. I could tell it was him.

At the meeting the next morning (oh yes, every morning we had a meeting that involved spreading a little work to a lot of people)... anyway, everyone says what they did the day before. I mentioned the bug fix. Some people were happy and then the architect accused me of using "program enhancing drugs" on it (an insult probably because I was obviously on drugs) and I replied that I couldn't find any in the "Zee Case" -- a medical box in the pantry area with aspirin, Band Aides, and the like.

Incidentally, I learned I was fired when I checked my work email from home and it didn't work. It seems stupid, but I just couldn't sit there all day and be bored, looking around on the Internet and not taking any drugs, even for the $48/hour which gloriously had been paying for drugs.

So I decided to move up my plans to run for President of the United States in the next election. Let's see, that was January 4th or 5th, 2008, so I had like months to get ready for the election and then I'd have some free time to write my inauguration speech. Oh screw it, I just worked on the speech... in my head. Writing things down is just crazy.

I suck at strategy games.

Life in this West World is a strategy game.

Holy crap, I don't know if I'm more like the robot or Mr. Benjamin there. I'm definitely not a homicidal robot, but he was just relentless and kept coming. Eventually it was strategy that won the day.

I used to play Age of Empires online against my uncle and one of his friends. It's a resources and time strategy war game. You build stuff and then use the stuff to go invade the others' lands.

One time Kevin's elephants kept coming and coming and they got there quick and trampled down my guys and my walls and stuff. I couldn't figure out how he was doing it, so I just kept throwing my stuff in his direction. After the game it turned out he had built another base INSIDE MY OWN WALLS and I had failed to look for it.

I play a game called Quake, but I play it like it was tennis or racquetball. I play "free for all" which is just a bunch of guys shooting at each other. I like that... See guy, shoot guy. I have very fast reflexes and very good aim, but I don't play with any sort of strategy.

Other guys like to play it like it's a strategy game. They prefer to play "duels" which are one on one -- they're what the professional players play (because you can have a tournament and really find out who is best)... But duels are not only about your skill as a marksman or about how well you can run around and not freak out. They're about fighting over the stuff on the map. So you have to remember to go get the stuff. That's a strategy.

I did play a duel not long ago, which I lost, but I only lost by half his score and he was a little pissed off about it because I was obviously just running around. One time I got him and he actually wrote, "What the hell are you doing?? Why would you charge at me like that with no armor?" He assumed I would be using the same strategies they all know and study and employ on every map: 1st, you go here, shoot two rockets down there because there's a 40% chance he'll spawn there, then run over here. Oh, so boring.

Then those guys play FFA and say that it's all just luck. I had won two in a row with this dueler being second when he started saying that crap. Then he said he felt he was going to win the next one, so I replied that since it's all just luck if we play 10 then he should win 5. I won the next three. So, 5 of 5... I guess it was just luck because it certainly wasn't a coin toss. Anyway, he couldn't understand why I didn't duel because, in his words, "That's where the respect is."

I'm obviously not into respect.

I don't know what I'm in to.

I did finally agree to play that guy in a duel because he had really been pretty cool about being humiliated by luck and I figured I owed him a shot at what he would think would be humiliating for me (which it isn't), but then he left.

So yes, I've spent the first hour of my day writing this crap. This crap has no purpose, and it's not part of a strategy. Some have suggested I write a book, but writing a book involved employing a strategy. A book really needs a reason and a direction and an ending.

This nightmare never ends.

Analog Transduction of Voice via Modern, Low Bandwidth Codec

2011-09-16T17:36:00.002-05:00

Lots of work is going into voice-to-text applications for hand-held devices. Translation from one language to another using a cloud-based system is one application I've seen demonstrated recently.

Such devices could help those who cannot hear make some sense out of a conversation with someone whose sloppy lips are hard to read and they'll definitely help with phone conversations, but those of us who ever misunderstood the tone of an email or text message and ended up in a flame-war can attest to the imperfection of hand-crafted written language. These machines won't help detect sarcasm.

Modern, low bandwidth codecs, like those used for Voice over IP, don't actually send the original sound. They break the part of their input that they detect to be human voice into smaller parts and then approximate the tonal qualities on the other end. It's purely digital mumbo-jumbo -- if you look at the waveform coming out, it's not really much like what went in, but your brain thinks it hears your buddy.

Your telephone uses an approximation called pulse code modulation (PCM) that takes a 128kbp digitized sound and then just ignores frequencies that aren't often part of human speech, only sending 56kbps. But, it's analog... basically what goes in, comes out. Even music sound almost fine over the phone, except a lot of the frequency range is missing.

I'm sure you've noticed that the codec in your cellphone does a horrible job of sending music. It's even worse for tighter codecs on VoIP sending like 8kbps.

But the codecs are good enough for being able to tell if a friend is kidding or serious, being sarcastic, or dry, or both.

So, what if you hooked up one of these codecs with an arm band that vibrated a little transducer thing along with the voices that it picks out of the room. Seems like it would be less confusing that just jiggling a person's arm along with all the noise in the room.

Wouldn't the human brain eventually learn to discern verbal information from the vibrations?

No, I'm not going to work on it.

Creating and Caching Image Thumbnails in PHP using GD and Supporting IF_MODIFIED_SINCE HTTP Header

2011-09-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

This is not a tutorial, just some source code that might help you out if you're looking for hints.

The code below won't run for you out of the box because you don't have my framework, but here is a brief explanation of what it does:

If a browser requests a URI like /image/some-image-slug.jpg then "some-image-slug" is looked up and the product ID associated with it is used to reference the image files.

The URI path can include "full" or "thumb" before the slug, like /image/thumb/some-image-slug.jpg.

If the cached image doesn't exist or is older than the original, then the full or thumb image is remade.

The file modification time of the cached image is used to manage the IF_MODIFIED_SINCE stuff...

My original lesson on IF_MODIFIED_SINCE was found here:
Caching Behavior of Web Browser (pdf)

This post was quite helpful:
If-Modified-Since HTTP Header – How to Use with PHP

This was also helpful:
Creating Thumbnails with PHP using the GD Library

<?php
  define("_SC_FRAME", true);

  $maxWidths = array("full" => 300, "thumb" => 100);

  require_once("fw/fw.php");

  CONFIG::$debugEcho = false;

  $parts = preg_split('/\//', preg_replace('/\.[a-z]+$/', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']), 4, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

  if (count($parts) >= 3) {
      $size = $parts[count($parts) - 2];
      if ($size == "image")
          $size = "full";
      elseif ($size != "full" && $size != "thumb")
          $size = null;
  }
  $slug = $parts[count($parts) - 1];

  if (count($parts) < 3 || !$size) {
      header("Status: 400 Bad Request");
      echo "400 Bad Request";
      exit();
  }

  $prodId = DB::querySingleValue("SELECT id FROM " . DB::table("prods") . " WHERE slug = " . DB::esc($slug));

  if (!$prodId) {
      header("Status: 404 Not Found");
      echo "404 Not Found: $slug";
      exit();
  }

  $filename = mapPath("/sc/product-images/$size/$prodId.jpg");
  $original = mapPath("/sc/product-images/original/$prodId.jpg");

  $originalExists = file_exists($original);
  $filenameExists = file_exists($filename);

  if ($originalExists && $filenameExists && filemtime($original) > filemtime($filename)) {
      // To avoid a delay in the system read of the modification time...
      // If you save over the same inode, the modification time seems to stick for a bit
      // on the system I'm using.  There's probably a better way to do this.
      unlink($filename);
      $filenameExists = false;
  }

  if (!$filenameExists) {
      if (!$originalExists) {
          header("Status: 404 Not Found");
          echo "404 Not Found: $slug (no original)";
          exit();
      }


      list($width, $height) = getimagesize($original);

      if ($width <= $maxWidths[$size]) {
          copy($original, $filename);
          //debug_str("copied");
      } else {
          $modWidth = $maxWidths[$size];
          $modHeight = $height * $modWidth / $width;

          $tn = imagecreatetruecolor($modWidth, $modHeight);

          $ext = pathinfo($original, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);

          switch ($ext) {
              case "jpg":
                  $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($original);
                  break;

              case "gif":
                  $image = imagecreatefromgif($original);
                  break;

              case "bmp":
                  $image = imagecreatefromwbmp($original);
                  break;

              case "png":
                  $image = imagecreatefrompng($original);
                  break;

              default:
                  header("Status: 500 Error");
                  echo "500 Unknown original file extension [$ext]";
                  exit();
          }


          imagecopyresampled($tn, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $modWidth, $modHeight, $width, $height);
          imagejpeg($tn, $filename);
          //debug_str("sampled");
      }
  }

  $lastModified = filemtime($filename);

  if (array_key_exists("HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE", $_SERVER)) {
      $if_modified_since = strtotime(preg_replace('/;.*$/', '', $_SERVER["HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE"]));

      //debug_str( date("r",$if_modified_since) . " " . date("r",$lastModified));

      if ($lastModified <= $if_modified_since) {
          header("Status: 304 Not Modified");
          //debug_str("not modified");
          exit();
      }
  }

  header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
  header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate(DATE_RFC1123, $lastModified));

  readfile($filename);

  //debug_str("sent");?>

Joomla Custom Error Page

2011-09-06T12:27:00.001-05:00

Click on this graphic to see the code.

Ok, so you've been searching around for an easy way to override the default Joomla error page to match your template.

After TWO HOURS of messing around, I finally found the page which is linked at the bottom of this post.

To summarize:

You need to edit /templates/system/error.php to regurgitate a special URL on your site for the 404. You also need to set the Status header to '404 Not Found'. You can see the code in the graphic above.

How this works:

On my site, /404-not-found is an SEF url linked to a menu item that shows an article called 404 Not Found.

At the top of error.php, you check the error code to see if it's a 404. If so, then you make a call back to the server to get the text of your special 404 page.

The php function file_get_contents() will go anywhere and pull back the result. If http streams are properly configured on the server, then the file name can be a url. So, this makes the server connect to itself and get the page contents for the 404 page. Then that text is echoed back to the calling browser and the exit() function then ends processing of the request.

The calling browser gets a 404 status (which is sort of important if the calling browser is a search engine) and the text displayed is the contents of your custom 404 page served up in your active template.

You really should copy error.php to your template directory (i.e., /templates/mytemplatename/error.php) to avoid a Joomla update replacing /templates/system/error.php.

Thanks anisjoli for that!

http://www.joomlart.com/forums/showthread.php?29192-Customized-Branded-Error-(404)-Page-Joomla-Hack

Tracia's List

2011-09-02T05:51:00.000-05:00

September 2nd. While today isn't the official anniversary of anything, I'm sure something happened on that day during my few years with Tracia that was awesome. Perhaps we shared a baloney sammich.

One of Tracia's favorite things to do is listen to music. The computer's main value to her was playing music on YouTube. Here are some of the songs she always played starting with her all-time favorite, Back to the Island by Leon Russell.

notQuake

2011-08-31T04:35:00.004-05:00

Last month, I mailed a couple of dvds to Todd Hollenshead, the co-owner and CEO of id Software.

The videos gave him a couple of ideas for the future of the Quake franchise, ways to make the game more social and ubiquitous, and suggested they pay me a consulting fee of a couple grand per month to help.

:)

I used less than half my ass on the attempt.

Funny:

On Saturday night at Quakecon 2011, I was walking from the lobby to the very back of the gigantic hotel and meeting-center complex and I passed a ballroom where Quakecon attendees were attending in a bunch of chairs. There were huge video projections of a Quake match going on... probably a final.

I kept walking.

Just up the way in the middle of the complex was a large, empty, carpeted area where just hours before gymnasts were pacing around.

We pedestrians walk around the carpet area, and at that time there were only two men walking around it, and we passed each other, me and Todd Hollenshead. For a moment, our eyes met. I do believe he recognized the crazy dvd guy.

I'm going to learn OpenGL. My stuff will be called notQuake.

Douglas Gordon, Fine Artist

2011-08-30T10:44:00.001-05:00

While we've never met, my circle has cross paths with Douglas Gordon's, an artist also living here in Shawnee.

Douglas' art was first pointed out to me by one business partner and today I've realized thanks to an exchange with another business partner that Douglas' day job is at the very agency that helped me out of homelessness a couple of years ago.

I've just spent the last few minutes looking more closely at some of Douglas' work and I've noticed some similarity with some out of my own Distortions folder. My work isn't nearly as intricate.

I'm going to post some of his below, followed by some of mine.

I am in no way implying (nor do I think) that Douglas' work was in any way influenced by mine. As far as I know, he's never seen mine stuff anyway. I was wondering why they're so similar, though.

I believe his were done with Photoshop and mine were done with GIMP.

His art was lifted using links supplied on this site, where you can purchase prints of Mr. Gordon's work:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/douglas-g-gordon.html?tab=artwork

Elation (mine)

The Package (mine)

The Runner (mine)

Shine On 2 (mine)

I have a lot of work, but most of it is currently offline as I'm rebuilding my own website.

You can see some of it here on Picasa.