ready… aim… fire! (answer to Ross)

In the questions entry, Ross jokingly asked for me to summarize the period in which i was gone. I actually think that everything about humanity can be summed up in the first event that i heard about upon returning.

On July 4th, a NASA projectile successfully intersected with a comet – a “smashing” success. A Russian astrologer became hysterical.

Can’t you just see it? A bunch of NASA boys sitting around stoned off the gourd imagining what they could do for fun. “Dude, i know! Let’s shoot the moon.” “No, dude. That’s too easy. We need to shoot something moving.” “Dude! I know dude! A comet! Let’s shoot a comet!” “Dude!!!”

The result? Probes and projectiles engaged in “deep impact” conveniently placed in the newspaper next to the latest news on “deep throat.” And really, probe or no probe, it’s basically an aiming mission, the million dollar version of the bulls-eye target practice in boys’ bathrooms. As my friend at NASA pointed out, the impact is equivalent to throwing a penny at a 16-wheeler. And can’t you just see the NASA dudes’ faces when a Russian woman started screaming about the deformation of her horoscope? “But can’t you seeeeeee? Nature is defenseless against your masculine ejaculations!”

Some things never change but they do continue to amuse.

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do you have questions for me?

So, I return to work on Tuesday. I haven’t read many blogs in two months but when I last did, I remember there being concerns that all of us were getting boring. Talking to Clay in New York, I think there is some truth to that. We repeat ourselves over and over again. I, for one, have zero desire to be a broken record – I do that enough as is.

So let me ask you – what questions would you be excited to see me address? What is burning in your mind?

I haven’t read a lot lately (well, lots of trash fiction) so feel free to point me to different topics and ask me to respond. I figure this might be a good way to get caught up.

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gentle re-entrance

It’s 4AM and i just took the N to Wonderland after my last night in New York before heading out to a week with my family. I can’t even begin to exclaim the glory of taking a vacation, the preciousness of laughter and late-night conversations. I feel so thankful for my life and genuinely refreshed. Of course, i’m really wary of diving back into the life inside the machine.

There’s no good way to sum up my trip so perhaps a photo will do:

::giggle:: Really, Thailand was about daily Thai massages, my first acupuncture, private yoga, meditation, temples, one evil jellyfish, fasting and a hell of a lot of beach. I stayed at a place called The Sanctuary on Koh Phangan which is utterly glorious for anyone looking to chill out in Thailand at a non-pretentious resort.

New York has also been filled with chilling goodness too, ranging from goofy nights in the Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel (“a riot of visual cacophony”) to a day spent with mermaids and Clay’s little boy to getting kicked out of Washington Square Park in “the city that never sleeps” (ha! things do close!). All amongst amazing company, seeing old friends everywhere and finally getting to meet a fellow troublemaker. Oh and pizza and bagels and Belgian frites. I love New York sooo much.

The weird thing is that i don’t really miss my computer life. I don’t miss the OCD hypertension, the time spent zoning out with human contact coming in bubble form locked in my room. Roaming the streets, human synchronicity, adhoc exploration, walking my ass off, doing yoga… it has been so lovely to interact with people constantly that my computer feels so cold and blogging feels so remote. I love being back to intellectual engagement with friends but i do not miss email one bit. I wonder if it’s possible to just give up on email entirely, to just turn it off. Hmmm….

Anyhow, i still felt the need to blog re-entrance even if i’m still not responding to anything sent my way. ::wave::

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bye!

I AM ON VACATION

I will be gone from May 29-July 3. I’m off to Thailand and then in New York with my family (with a conference in there). Email has been shut off. My normal email addresses send a bounce message before proceeding to /dev/null; the ones for mailing lists, blogs, random mail, etc. go straight to /dev/null. I have no intention of blogging and i’m not taking a camera. It’s time for yoga, meditation and beach. I intend to relax to the best of my ability.

Have a great June!!

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podcasting: connecting directly via naming and practice

So, when podcasting first emerged and people told me that it was *the* answer to blogging, i rolled my eyes. I have zero interest in listening to random blogs. While i’m happy to scan across large quantities of text, there’s no way that i have any desire to listen to blogs or produce a podcast. None.

From the beginning, i said that i would like podcasting when NPR was podcasting, when electronic music was podcast and when it was otherwise adopted by people who know how to turn voice into an art. In theory, amateurism is interesting to me; in reality, i don’t want to listen to it.

This morning, i woke up to the word podcast coming out of NPR every few seconds. ABC is podcasting. Wow… i’m impressed. Podcasting is not that old but it has already reached mainstream news. But this actually make sense. They already produce large quantities of media ready-to-go for mobile listening. Why not just deploy it in a new way? This makes complete sense. They are doing their own TiVo for radio (and for TV). The practice is already there. While audio-bloggers have to develop a new practice, radio and TV folks have this medium down. Podcasting does what i’ve wanted Audible to do wrt radio for a while. And it is simpler and quicker.

Second, think about the value of the term “podcast.” What was the number one device sold at Christmas? iPod. The term “pod” is hip, cool and yet mainstream as hell.

I’m super super stoked that the mainstream media has taken this and ran with it – this is impressively fast adoption. There’s only one problem… how are they going to feel when we forward through the ads and NPR’s annoying requests for money? Are we going to see the same TiVo fights on podcasting? Are deals going to be made such that podcasting is limited to just the mainstream folks or iPods are created to not allow forwarding? Goddess, i hope not. As much as i have no interest in listening to any audio-blogs, by all means, let those who do relish in it.

What are the costs of mainstream adoption during the early adopter phase? What does it mean when it fits so well with a practice and yet, allows for a different form of it?

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ah, the magical touch

I know better. I know better. So, when i started down the path of bouncing my mail for vacation, i figured it had to be easy. This is me.

So, started out with SIMS bouncing per the suggestion. Nope, didn’t work. Why? Couldn’t get formail to get called to save my life. So, switched plans, figured out how to get vacation working so that it sent messages, overrided the time stamp and the To/CC rules. In the process, killed my procmail file which spun 600 messages into chaos. This was great except that everything forwarded from Netspace to SIMS (a.k.a. all danah.org messages) sent vacation to Netspace which was bad.

OK. So i tried to set up vacation on Netspace to mimic SIMS to do all of the danah.org messages. Vacation doesn’t exist on Netspace. So we went back to formail which worked there.

In the process, of course, i was fucking around with my procmail files and managed to fubar everything. Procmail was going into autoloops, mail was going goddess only knows where, LINEBUF was filling up, bounces weren’t getting sent. OMG.

So, getting everything set up only took a total of 16 hours and the unbelievably awesome help of Glenn, Adam, Greg, Kevin, Kevin, and Thomas. Oh, and a lot of bitching support from everyone else. Needless to say, this is not something i should’ve been doing today. But dear god.

The end result:

:0
| (formail -r -i ‘From: Mailer Daemon Angel ‘ -i ‘Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details’; cat /home/grrl/.vacation.msg) | sendmail -oi -t

(and)

:0
| /usr/bin/vacation -t1s -j dmb

with a .vacation.msg that says:

From: Mailer Daemon Angel
Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details

—– All mail to danah is currently auto-deleted —–
Bounced: <$SUBJECT>
(reason: danah needs a break)

—– Transcript of session follows —–

procmail: Refused to save
550 5.1.1 …. User exhausted

Daemons have decided to destroy danah’s mail so that she may rest without fear of returning to the dreaded INBOX. All messages sent to danah from May 29-July 3 2005 will not be delivered. If it is still important, contact danah again after July 3. Perhaps, if you feel so inclined, invite the Daemons to visit your server so that you too may rest without email.

—– Do not resend until after July 3 —–

Say bye-bye. Your message has just found a new home in /dev/null. ::wave:: bye bye cute message…. bye bye….

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dr. toast : oz so late – music to chill to

In prep for vacation, i’ve been organizing my iPod. I went through the hellish process of creating genres for everything and generating Playlists. One of my favorite genres – psychill – was sadly lacking. It’s the genre that i listen to the most because it’s ideal calm music to work to. Yet, i only had three artists there – bluetech, Shpongle and dr. toast. Part of the problem is that i honestly don’t know what else belongs in this genre.

So, i approached Toast to ask for good things in his genre and, bless his heart, he made me a mix of vacation music to chill by. In return, i wanted to do a shout-out for anyone who’s looking for good music to chill or work to. His album oz so late is just beautiful and i’ve listened to it perpetually since it came out. Click here for some song samples.

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