In case, because of those pointless dregs of humanity who seem to find pleasure in polluting these public spaces with their spam, this page rebuilds itself incorrectly and plunges the new spaces into darkness once again -- you should update your bookmarks. I moved: a month ago... to Wordpress. I'm exclusively at http://blog.8r4d.com/

Yah.

January 18, 2006 after 3PM | meta | maybe more

.. makes for long spaces.

I must have been doing that lately. And usually when I resort to apologies on the distinct lack of blog, that means life is treating me well enough not to gripe about it here. That's good news.

I've been writing. I decided, rather than plunge into another burst of NaNoWriMo (ah, it is nearly November again, eh?) I would use the excuse to start writing something early, fully ignore the event, and finish well beyond the deadline imposed by superficial motivations.

Yes, I've been writing. For what it's worth. For anything at all. I've set up my cozy corner in the dimly lit basement, wrapped myself in a warm blanket, and danced my fingers across the keys.

Not nearly enough, of course. But some. And some is better than none.

I will write more soon, for certain. I don't find my days filled with the same frustrated gaps as they used to be. That's a good thing for me. It's bad for my readers.

But I'm not forgotten. Just more scattered.

October 24, 2005 after 9PM | meta , writing | maybe moreğ

I think part of this issue is around defining who I am. It's a development thing. A blogging-maturity. What is the point of doing something if it has no point?

I'd like to think there is something more to this than a chaotic collection of garbled thoughts. I took that break a couple months back to restructure. A few long weeks of pondering the nuances of this thing. What came out of that? Focus, for a while. Disfocus for more. I don't really care if that makes sense. This isn't a newspaper. You get what you pay for, right?

August 31, 2005 after 3PM | brand , meta , thinking | maybe moreğ

I feel like I should be writing more here.

When I had finished barely-more than two years of lost.in.vancouver, you, the faithful audience, had been treated to seven-hundred and twenty-six entries of varying quality blogness. That works out to (pop out those calculators now) an average of twenty-six entries per month. Average, of course. And that's counting the formative, edit-by-hand years. But whatever.

This space, counting this entry, has been talleyed at a humble one hundred and eighty three entries, for a working average of thirteen entries per month. Yes, that's right. Literally half.

Albeit, there isn't that compulsion to share stories of a far-away place. Many of my readers are from Edmonton -- or at least visit often enough that they may not care. But I suppose, that should be all the more reason to peel away at the corners and reveal the secrets below the surface. Right?

Ah, well. It's raining. It's been raining for many days now. It's a long, cold drizzle that makes it feel like autumn, in the middle of August. Maybe the rain is bringing out the sympathetic muse.

August 18, 2005 after 10AM | city , meta , writing | maybe moreğ

...dipping my feet into the water to see how it feels.

I'm not sure what I'll do about that yet.

July 4, 2005 after 9AM | meta | maybe more

At the risk of self-referencing, I'd like to point out that I was completely geeky and uncool before it was cool to be geeky and uncool. Caseinpoint:

Forty-two....
Mark this moment in time...
VOTE
the hitchhiker's guide to the perseids
one way to make my day...
snow crash

Though I was a little crushed that I couldn't get an adequate bitrate out of the BBC this morning to listen to Fit the Nineteenth. I suppose I'll need to find a rip of it somewhere this evening. I managed to connect -- though sporadically -- and was greeted by low-bitrate gurgles and pops. Very depressing.

Karin and I did catch the new movie version on the weekend. I prepped myself for disappointment (as one of those crazy loyal fans) but was only mildly shagrinned at the changes. Adams himself never wrote a consistent version, so how could I argue with a Disnification that was (if nothing else) loyal to the spirit of the mythos' external style.

We found the soundtrack, too. Karin likes the fish song. Methinks, a little too much.

May 3, 2005 after 1PM | meta , movies , weird | maybe moreğ

I've been busy. You'll know that I've been busy by the inverse relationship with the number of posts in this space. It's a math thing, you see.

The ultimate nature of this blog is nothing too serious, anyhow. It's a free space. Dark and dangerous. Light and harmless. Everything. Nothing.

Sometimes I make sense. Mostly not.

I was craving photography yesterday. It's a difficult thing to explain. Difficult, I imagine, to grasp the concept unless you've sat somewhere longing to walk around with a camera capturing moments of time. I suppose it's an artistic thing. One has the drive and the tools -- but one is not in the proper space and time to use them.

Frustration.

So I went for a two hour walk last night, dipping deep into the river valley, pausing every couple of moments to snap another image from the quasi-natural surroundings. It was good. The photos were so-so, often washed out because the lighting tricks I knew from my previous camera don't work on a system that needs more delicate control. The camera is too smart. It outthinks me, assuming I want a photo with far too much light. So I'm mildly disappointed, but only with myself for needing more time to learn about mythical features but needing to spend my day behind a desk.

Tim Hortons gave me frustration this morning. Again. They feel a need to mess up my order, consistently. They feel a need to stick the spokes of my morning routine. Starbucks may cost more, but at least the barristas seem like they realize their job fractionally depends on my purchases.

I think I'm coding today.

May 3, 2005 after 8AM | coffee , meta , photography | maybe moreğ

We control information in a variety of ways. Blogs are the medium of a generation of disillusioned corprocrats. Thoughts are encapsulated in modular nodes that cohese to form a wandering opinion in the guise of a personal narrative. Understanding the medium is as important as understanding the message. (1) Journals escape the exaggerated thoughts of the writer to later readers. (2) Music encapsulates contagion, verse, and harmony in memetic flow. (3) Books formalize logical stories into patterns of narrative. (4) Film transcribes the formal and exclusive data of words, language, and ideas into visual and highly transmutable concepts. (5) Advertising distils concept and desire into viral thought. (6) Legend and myth propel and amplify tested concepts and story into the far future. Failing to understand purpose implies misunderstanding of disinformation.

statistics

blog entries: 126
percent of blog entires (meta): 20%
percent of blog entries (focused): 15%
percent of blog entries (abstractions): 8%
percent of blog entries (memetic): 17%
percent of blog entries (pure narrative): 40%
themes: 30
cohesion to thematics: 67%
narratives: 3
cohesion to narratives: 85%
links: 718
advertisements: 723
percent of advertisements (revenue): 69%
percent of advertisements (viral): 21%
percent of advertisements (narrative): 10%
comments: 851 (depreciated)
percent of comments (spam): 79%
percent of comments (misconception): 8%
percent of comments (offtopic): 11%
percent of comments (defendable): 2%
readers: undefined

Disinformation is key.

March 16, 2005 after 8AM | abstract , meta | maybe more

Events connecting as they do through the ebbs and flows of data exchange, I have pushed forward with expermental evilness. Google has long offered an AdSense program for websites, targetted ads pop up here and there as designed, and [rubs hands together] generates cash for the webmaster. I thought I'd poke in an application and see if I would qualify. Oddly enough, this site fits within the realm of their criteria.

Some of you might complain. Ah well.

Thing is, from an experimental perspective I can examine a number of weak justifications:

1) Look at the ads that appear with the site. Some of them are actually relavant or interesting. I've already clicked on one for mere sake of interest.

2) The cheaper this website is for me to operate, the longer I will.

3) A possible thought experiment (and something to write about) as I see how much "click-revenue" a site like this cheezy little thing can actually generate.

Commence complaining now...

February 25, 2005 after 12PM | business , meta , money | maybe moreğ

I spent my lunch pretending I am a lawyer.

Well, sort of.

A bunch of things about websites, blogs, privacy, and all that fun stuff got me thinking: You know? I'm putting myself out there everyday, sticking my neck out just a little further, fishing just a little deeper in those digital waters for an interested audience -- and unfortunately the nature of the internet means it's easier to cast it out than reel it back in. Who knows who could turn up these very words in a few minutes, days, weeks, years, decades -- and, well, sadly enough try to hold them against me for their content or even just their existence.

The internet isn't the wild-west anymore. It used to be something like that: metaphorically. But now? It's a cut-throat virtual land of commerce and trade, with crazy lawyers and other folks with sway patrolling it's streets. A guy needs a little protection.

So here's the thing: I don't know if it's legally binding. I don't care if it's legally binding. But effective immediately, every single byte of original content on this webpage is hereby proclaimed private and confidential. Every single byte of original content on this webpage is mine and I get to decide (a) who reads it, (b) who stores it, and (c) what I want to charge for that use.

But don't worry: for most of you it's still free and always will be. Most of you -- that's like 99.999% of you -- only need to be honest, interesting people, and I'll never charge you a cent. Family? No problem. Friends? Go right on in. Fellow bloggers? Well, watch your step, but we all know you're cool, right? So that's it. Not one penny. Just enjoy.

But here's the catch: if anyone, ever, uses this site or the information on it to hurt me, my family, or my company, or tries to sue me or fire me based on any sort of information or data contained here... bang! That's when the other shoe drops -- there's the line: and it-ain't-free-no-more. In fact, it could get very pricy for you, evil-dude. Why these words alone could cost you upwards of $5000 just to read them -- one time.

Huh?

The wild-west is being bound and gagged: Certain folks have been getting fired because their bosses have read their blogs. Other folks have been getting sued for comments that visitor.people have written on their sites. Malicious others have hunted down personal information and background data on bloggers to use it against them. So here's the deal. New policy: No such thing as free anymore, at least if you have evil thoughts or otherwise wouldn't have my permission to use this stuff.

Stated. Fact. Expect an invoice if you don't make the cool-list. By the time you get it we'll probably be in court for some other reason, anyhow. Maybe a settlement is in order? Just make sure to read the EULA I wrote over lunch. I hate those things, but the world (wide web) is a scary place these days.

February 11, 2005 after 3PM | business , meta , opinions , politics | maybe moreğ

So, betwixt the furstrations of having a ill-tempered website, a mess of chaos at the office, and innumerable little terrors mixing through the folds of my everyday existence, there has been the house. It seems that the bitterly cold weather of weeks past caught us up, and we spent a number of frustrating post-work and weekend trips to the site to look at a slowly progressing concrete hole.

When it rains, it pours: when it shines, the sky opens and heavenly light streams through the atmosphere. Work stabilized for a bit, the web-stuff is sorting out, and when Karin and I visited the house-site on Wednesday evening there were the makings of a floor. The framing has begun; And I imagine by the time we spin around this evening there may even be something resembling walls and stairs and other house-like structures built of the wooden bits now scattered around my future front yard.

Photos? Well, it was dark and we were being sneaky. The showhome was "barely open" so we went by without saying much. And far be it from me to terrorize my neighbors with bright flashing lights from my camera late into the evening. I'll save that for when I live there and have a house to duck into for protection.

February 4, 2005 after 9AM | house , meta , photography , weather | maybe moreğ

Don't you hate it when your website falls into utter and total chaos? Okay, so it's not completely relatable angst, but two weeks of it is very much a pain in the ass.

Things are coming together. If you've managed to read this, drop me a note and let me know that you care! Ha!

February 3, 2005 after 3PM | meta , stress | maybe moreğ

I've been cleaning the comment spam from my blogs. The vulnerable lost.in.vancouver was apparently wider open than I thought, and over the course of Friday and Saturday recieved nearly 300 rogue messages advertising for hair loss treatments and debt relief. I ultimately wrote a little script that lets me seal the doors (previously just hidden) with an iron-lock. In fact the door is pretty much welded shut, and I'm going to start locking comments off after they are older than about a week. It's just too much work to bother with the whole thing. In other words, get your say while you can.

In wandering the ancient pages of old blogs, I rediscovered a few infamous memes I was working on. One of my old favs: words I see from where I sit...

More Coffee Flavour
Music by Alan Menken
ACTION CANCEL
Trinitron
Principles of Biochemistry
Sonic Mega Collection Plus
Risk
Before initial use, recharge handset for about 8 hours.
7 1/4-in . CIRCULAR SAW
Omnivision
Montigo

January 16, 2005 after 11AM | abstract , meta , stress | maybe moreğ

I do more with this page than meets the eye. Case-in-point: this is the nine-hundredth article spread across about ten (give or take) blog and content sites to be found in the depths of this domain. It just goes to show that I've been moving far too fast for my own good. I even worked through lunch today; though I did sneak out early to peek at the progress of our new living space just a twenty-minute drive away.

Consequently, the RoundUp was in mid-broadcast, and I was surrounded by audio version of a sociology lesson:

Around three-thirty this afternoon, just when the audience who needed to hear it most was busy working, the CBC conducted an insightful reflection on the general speed of the world. I can give neither the broadcasters nor the host credit for originality as it been extracted, the bulk of the context, from a guest reviewer's opinion of a magazine article, the article itself republished from an alternative media source. Initially, I thought all that filtering would make it less valid; But no. The filtering and amplification, like so many published memes passed around some secret network (until it wound up in my ears from the speaker of my little red truck) really only makes it more potent.

My inner-most muse was very impressed. He's a sit-back-and-smell-the-roses type of character, and I've been ignoring him far too much lately.

It seems, or so the article would try and impress upon us, that the world is moving too fast. Cell phones connecting us to previously untapped social and professional networks wherever we are and whenever we want, syndicated television on two-hundred channels entertaining us with the dogma of Hollywood, and the bulk of human knowledge available twenty-four hours a day to anyone with the means to buy a moderately priced computer and a high-speed Internet connection. What the article and subsequent broadcast meant to tell us is (really) that we are moving too fast in the world.

I reflected momentarily, and went back to driving down a busy road. Later I found myself sitting in front of two screens, one a television playing reruns of Seinfeld, and the other a LCD monitor checking my email and catching up on the latest news from the under-belly of technology.

This time the muse, most definitely, was not impressed. My life, after all, moves far too fast. That would be fine if I could keep up. But much of the time I'm sitting on the edge watching it all slip through my fingers and wondering why I can't seem to find the motivation to tap out a few words on the keyboard or etch out a few lines on a clean sheet of paper, gritty charcoal in my hands.

Step one step backwards.

It's not my objective to preach. Nor is it my objective to state abundantly obvious clichés of the nature of society in general. It's my objective to create yet another node in this, the meme-engine. The world is moving too fast. And thus this one idea re-propogates. I state it, and it enters your brain (albeit temporarily) and perhaps one day you'll share that notion somewhere else. Barring that, you'll become a end-node in the network and you may not even matter to the grand scheme of things anyhow.

It's about choice, information, and how we use it to our advantage.

I've been trying to recalculate something about this webspace. Doing so has made me notably absent, one may have also realized, until those unremarkable though vast bursts of creative energy are sporadically dumped into these pages. It is symtomatic of something else, and even if I tried to explain it, it would be the metaphorical tip of the iceberg to the grand scope of it all. Even Jess was reflecting on a lack of general motivation lately. I won't try to steal her thunder, nor try to arrogantly presume that I had anything directly to do with it -- but it does beg the question: in a universe created by the bursting interaction of ideas by like-minded individuals, how many nodes can collapse on that network before the engine folds in upon itself?

I am just a node after all. And not a particularly vital one at that. That's not pitiful self-doubt writing. It's just a quantitative fact of how many people load this page on a regular basis.

So, do we stop the world? No. The momentum would fling us all into outer space. Whatever. Then, without dropping dead of virtual exhaustion, how do I as a person sitting here with a computer on my lap make my little node vital?

I realize it isn't the question of stopping the world. It's a question of grokking the nature of the information, learning what is important and what is not, and filtering the filters: meta, as it were. I see you, I understand you, and I fall back to quietly leach off that energy. You presume that this is a parasitic relationship, and that by reading you've done your part. I understand it to be symbiotic. I guess it starts there: I write another nine-hundred pages of rambling giberish, contribute to the digital swath of information, and narrow those filters just a little more.

You? Well, that's really not my decision.

January 12, 2005 after 10PM | meta , opinions , reading , thinking | maybe moreğ

I'm thinking I might take a post-christmas sabatical from this whole blog thing. Just getting a little tired of it, and I want to direct some of that energy to other things. We'll see. I'm still going to keep up the house updates -- things like adding photos of our new basement walls here and in the gallery -- and maybe post some sporadic updates about the other projects I'm working on. But for now... well, I'm just putting myself out there and the reaction has been mixed. I need to think on that a while.

December 30, 2004 after 2PM | house , meta , stress | maybe moreğ

'Twas the morn before Christmas and all through the nets
Not a mousie was stirring, not even the pets.
The floppies were stacked by the modem with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The files were nestled all snug in a folder
The screen saver turned on, the weather was colder.

And leaving the keyboard along with my mouse
I turned from the screen to the rest of the house.
When up from the drive there arose such a clatter
I turned to the screen to see what was the matter.
Away to the mouse I flew like a flash,
Zoomed open a window in fear of a crash...

The glow from the screen on the keyboard below
Gave an electronic luster to all my macros.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a little Google icon, Gmail. With nine (count'em) NINE! invites to anyone who wants one. Just leave me a comment by Christmas morning. If you've taken the time to read this grabage this morning, you deserve one. HA!

December 24, 2004 after 7AM | meta , weather | maybe moreğ

I don't know how picky the spam scrubber on this blog can be, but sometimes it will reject those comments of yours out of sheer spite. At random. Who knows...

Lenore tried to write this:

Hehehe.... Heck, it's almost as good to have a surprise as I make my daily check of your blog.... April 5th, sounds like a good date to me!! It's only 1 day off Liz's birthday!! :)

And they originally told us July 22nd, and we got July 15th, so it could be even earlier! Then again, you're doing construction in the winter which has a little more weather influence...:)

...after reading this morning's entry. As astute readers will notice, and others will endure, occasionally some malicious bloghacker will fill blog comments with rude, crude, and unwelcome garbage. It's a ratings-thing, you see. If their link shows up in my comments then Google thinks I'm linking to their page. I'm not, but Google for all it's wonders and inventiveness can't really tell the difference yet. It looks at any link as good publicity and ranks it a little bit higher in their search results. Oddly enough, the spammers don't realize that Movabletype cleans all the HTML from their comments, and their links are spam-buffered-redirects of some sort. They're shooting blanks, in other words, but still making a lot of noise, and causing a lot of hassle for my readers (case-in-point Lenore) who has to struggle through the filters to post a legitimate comment.

Sigh. The scope of the problem is represented clearly in the system logs of this blog: my scrubber rejected no less than one hundred and twenty-two comments because of questionable content -- things like "casino", "poker", "online", "russia" are some of the top blocked URLwords -- and that's JUST in the last seven days. To put that in perspective: I've only written eighty five entries in this blog, and my readers have only posted thirty-two legitimate comments. And that is over the span of seven months!

Last week Slashdot had a poll about something like this... And sorry, folks, it's just going to get worse.

December 9, 2004 after 1PM | friends , meta , stress | maybe moreğ

It seems more of you are interested in THE PROJECT than I anticipated. I suppose it beats the endless filosofizing and melodrama with which I would otherwise fill these virtual pages. And of course, the last thing I want to turn this building story into is a filosofize-ed-melloo-dram-tic diatribe on the medeocre efforts of paying someone to build us a house.

It's an effort, but not THAT much of one.

In fact, I would dare to suggest that it is generally very amusing and deeply exciting -- for me, at least -- and as such deserves to be spoken of and written of with careful reverence, or something otherwise approaching careful disclosure. Nevertheless, I'll try and break it up a little bit in hopes that it gets neither so monotonous nor lacking -- which it might do if I risk running out of material. It's a risk, and especially after attending (count) three turkey-roasts this weekend where the house-topic popped up on occasion; I don't want to sound like a scrambled MP3 file -- or an audio analogy approaching the modern equivalent of a broken record.

So, for example, the floor plan: one main floor and one top floor modified as we're building. The original, of course, belongs to Jayman and I'm probably breaking a half-dozen copyrights and contractual agreements by modifying and posting them here, so I'll give them full credit and hope I don't receive an angry letter from some lawyer for doing so. They are on Jayman's site to download, anyhow.

Jayman Jayman Jayman -- There. And three makes five links. That should make someone happpy.

Moderately disappointed, Melanie writes : "So you would have been our neighbours!!! And we went and moved before you got in.... "

True. Terwilligar is quite close. Yes, we nearly could have thrown rocks at your old place from our new one. Not that we would have of couse -- it's just a really bizaare and (unfortunately) nasty figure of speech. Ah, well. At least you know where we live, now.

And maybe, someday soon, I'll post something concrete: like foundation pictures. (Smirk: Get it? Concrete? Get it? Wink! Wink!)

October 12, 2004 after 1PM | house , meta | maybe moreğ

I have a feeling that until this whole concept settles in my mind a little further, I'm going to have lots to say about the new "project" and events surrounding it. It's funny how, upon making that transition from prospective homeowner to, as the legalese puts it, The Purchaser one's very thoughts and patterns of concern suddenly swing into more "constructive" matters.

For example, I spent my lunch break at the hardware store a few blocks away from my office. Suddenly rows upon rows of finishing supplies are interesting and consuming. I never would have thought I could be vagely concerned with looking at paint cards or arborite samples -- but suddenly, given the choice between Best Buy and rows of DVDs -- or Home Depot and countertop finishes -- well, I plead no-contest. It's a shoe-in for the home-renovating, because apparently it's where I've decided to spend my money for (at least) the next twenty-five years. It's also dull to everyone but Karin and I.

And that could be a problem.

Another (boring) example is brought up the issue of framing. When we were still scoping and plotting, Dad had mentioned that apparently sixteen inch on center framing was better than twenty-four inch on center framing. Initally, I had no idea what he was even talking about. You mean I have to know how many two-by-fours are in my WALLS! Simply put: Hallelujah for Google. While I'm sure there are things that are not fully explainable via the internet, I did find a number of quote-interesting-unquote resources touting not-only the environmental efficiency of using less lumber in one's house, but also a number of references to energy efficiency, load-bearing strength, wall-thickness, and drywall crack-resistence in relation to the newer standard. It's absolutely amazing how one can use a fifteen minute break to dig up completely esoteric information and bore one's website audience. I almost never would have thought it possible.

Again, it could be a potential problem.

One -- perhaps interesting -- thought did cross my mind: It was that the house requires a good name. And a logo. Maybe even a theme song. Well -- okay -- maybe just a good name. I tried explaining this to Karin (who, consequently, thoroughly enjoys the work of one LM Montgomery) that Anne of Green Gables would have just been Anne, The Red Haired Brat Who Lives in That Green-Trimmed Farmhouse at the End of the Lane if her house didn't have a good name. I mean, names and such are important stuff. Imagine how much more impressive it would sound to say "I'm spending the holidays at One-Whippet Manor" rather than telling people "I'm doing Christmas at my parent's house." It's degrees more impressive. To me, at least.

And that could be a problem, also.

So to avoid any confusion in the future: yes, there will be substantial house-talk here. It's unavoidable. It's "the project." It's how we're spending the next six months of our life. It's a BIG thing. Big. Just tell me to shut up if I get annoying.

October 7, 2004 after 3PM | house , meta , weird | maybe moreğ

I've contemplated something.

But, I'm not sure: significant things demand significant attention. And I'm not sure if, in this case, significant attention requires something as significant as it's own website. I mean, after all, Brett and Lenore did it. They took the plunge. They tried to orchestrate their own little construction in the midst of a larger one.

A decision is immenent: I pondered it a little, even stretching to consider a domain name fitting for the grand event. But I think, perhaps, that this -- here -- is where this site becomes more interesting. And so, simply, I'll avoid the tangled distractions of yet another website, and focus my energies here. And begin the bold story of another, less abstract garden, somewhere in a little prairie town called Edmonton.

Thus: a new theme... build and home. The story of the following, begins:

The city, it seems, has woven us a step deeper into it's patterns. It hasn't consumed us, but rather than rootless waifs dancing across its surface, we are setting tendrils and finding our place. Last night, amidst a flury of random emotions, we started a "file."

Oh, it's not a big file. It's just a thin little legal-sized pile of documents. But it's our file, with our names on it, and some numbers that would be meaningless beyond the context of us. Last night we sat down, created some simple sheets of paper, tucked them away in the safe confines of something larger than anything we can imagine right now, and set a cascading snowball in motion that will ultimately lead to us orchestrating the chain of events. Those events, pending a million unsettled factors will -- in a few years time -- and stetching year imortal, find me standing in a small patch dirt, pulling weeds and tending the few little bits of life that etch themselves into some managable meaning between the tides of everything that makes us human. A lot, a yard, a block of cement that creates a drive leading up to a complex entangled structure, otherwise known as a house.

It's a frightening thing. Consuming. Yet, powerful. Fundamental. And, reassuring that everything is worth something. Eventually.

September 29, 2004 after 11AM | friends , house , meta | maybe moreğ

There is humour in the city. Humour in the darkness and blindness of not knowing what lurks behind the colourful billboards and flashing light-matricies. And there is something behind the cracks, but we think we know what it is...

It seems like I sit and wonder about these things all the time. I'm trying to join the fractured elements of whatever I can grasp out of the air and construct it into a thing that I can see more clearly. I can see it now, but it is floating in the jetsom of my brain and I can't figure out how to clear away the mess and reach out to it.

I had an idea. Blogs. These things. They are literal self-expressions, of a sort. They exist because real people drain their minds to the digital places, sharing their every whim with the netwerk of electronic wanderers. It's this, I think, that makes these blogs universally popular and also universally hated. The arguement falls something along the line of artistic expression versus defining art: what constitutes the elements of free expression, but also becomes a useful addition to the pool of thought and idea that makes up the blogosphere? In other words, are the shared journals and ramblings of a thousand-million people the makings of something grander and bolder than humanity has ever created -- or the flotsom, garbage and cheap roadside junk-stands on the cliche'd metaphor of the digital highway?

And so what? It takes publishing to a quasi-grass roots level, letting folks like the reallivepreacher make the jump, bound across that threshold. People will read what they think is (a) important, (b) interesting, (c) valid, and (d) real.

Ah, but you say, people read fiction all the time. And people -- most normal, sane people -- don't think fiction is real, or are at least able to parse the absolute concrete from the absolute mind-vapor on a fairly consistent basis. So people don't care if something is REAL, right?

Perhaps: but I wouldn't read a news story that I knew was fabricated. As an example, supermarket tabloids, in my humble opinion, grasp at the absurd every day -- and people purchase them. Don't kid yourself. The publishers make a lot of money. But you need to remember: grasping at the distant truth is a more literal truth of such publications, and most folks will tell you: it's for entertainment. Rarely do people believe: and when they do, society goes to great lengths to discredit those people.

So -- back to the real.

Blogs are real: presumably, because real people write them. Real people, mostly, read them as well -- though that is an "audience factor", and I'm still building to that. But what if: what if you -- YOU -- came across a blog that was not real? What if you, wandering through the incoherent ramblings of a million digital journals, stumbled upon a glimpse into the life of a completely fictional person? Would you know?

I think it is a valid question. How would you know? Honestly, I don't think I could tell. I don't think I could differentiate between the incoherent ramblings of (for example) girl "A" who is a real live person, sitting in her quiet two-bedroom apartment, waxing-poetic to a keyboard and girl "B" who is actually a fourty-seven year old man, writing the fictional account of a person sitting in her quiet two-bedroom apartment, waxing-poetic to a keyboard. For example.

Just for example.

So what happens now?

We sit here and ponder the influence on internet culture through chat and instant messaging, through email and other forms of direct digital communication. Fraud and misrepresentation, we call it. It's harmful, misleading, and meant to cause harm and mis-direction to many impressionable minds. But what about the indirect communication? What about fiction? What about the idea that I could sit down, right at this very moment, and start writing as someone else, setting my words adrift in the digital ether, afloat in the tides of a vast sea of information: is that wrong? Is that mis-representation? Or merely fiction? And ultimately, with no other influence than the occasional passer-by believing the illusion, what harm have I acheived?

It's all hypothetical. But it would be an interesting experiment in a new kind of fiction: stories the audience doesn't even know they are reading...

The idea lingers. It's The Matrix. It is an illusion, just the control is different. Who creates the illusion? Who controls the illusion? Who controls the ideas and threads of human thought? And what really is the impact of fiction-unrecognized?

Which brings us back to blogs. These things. They are literal self-expressions, of a sort. They exist because real people drain their minds to the digital places, sharing their every whim with the netwerk of electronic wanderers. And do we continue to trust those people as real? And what kind of skill -- if any -- would it take to create the illusion of real that we continue to trust. I'm real. I assure you. If I were to make someone up, they might be a certain level more interesting than a mis-directed twenty-something lingering in a life where barbeques, ten-kilometer runs, and plastic aquariums seem to consume more of my time that anything. Or would I? You would wonder.

Though -- and I ask because I am truely considering the experimental, yet fraudulent existence of a blog-sprite -- could you find me if I was someone else?

September 23, 2004 after 9AM | city , meta , thinking , writing | maybe moreğ

I have four gmail invites left. If anyone cares. If anyone even knows what I'm talking about... I'm willing to share.

September 22, 2004 after 12PM | meta | maybe moreğ

The first step in assuming responsibility of something larger than oneself is to grasp the effort involved in menial caregiving, and purchase something within the limits of disposability. In other words, if my new fish were to die in the near future, no big loss. It would suck for the fish, but a new one costs, like, three dollars.

I bought one of those little mini-aquariums yesterday. It came with the standard assortment of plastic plants, a burst bag of green gravel, and a little jar of chemical which makes the water you and I consume everyday, safe for habitation by aquatic animals.

And then I went back to the pet store later and picked up blue. He is a male betta, officially termed Betta Splendens and popularly known as a Siamese Fighting Fish. He was living in a small plastic drinking cup, stacked neatly on the shelf with about thirty of his closest relatives -- and I'm still not sure if he likes his new digs, a spacious two litres of green-hued plastic, more or less than the plastic cup.

Some of you, the astute ones, may have already seen the webcam. No guarantees on how long that will last. Perhaps only until I'm certain he's not going to expire when I go home at night. Perhaps.

August 13, 2004 after 11AM | fish , meta | maybe moreğ

Somehow I've become a programmer.

It's not really my title. I'm a scientist. An educator on my good days. A white-collar, nalgene-holding, keyboard-jockey with a short commute, the radio bouncing between CBC and JOE depending on my mood.

Somehow, I'm writing code.

It started innocently enough: knowledge begets responsibility, responsibility begets power, power begets contempt for the system, and all this leads to a tinkering effect wherein the norms become clouded and ripe for change. And here I sit, burning the garbage scripts that melt across our servers like egg yolks drizzling across a steaming grill.

And then other possibilities emerge. Private projects loom on the horizon. The city, it's midnight thunder storms ring electric along the skyline cityscape, taunts for something more. And I hunker, lurk, wait patiently for ideas to spawn while I scratch out bits of hypertext and riddle them with preprocessor strings, like bullets mocking a paper silhouette of a generic villian.

It is odd how quickly those concepts form in the mind, each query locking neurons into tighter elegance and spurning new paths for data to run free through the oceans of my silicon logic. Text is just data, isn't it? Stories, books, and narratives are just the logical paths through created universes, no? Publishing has become much too linear, I think as I reflect on how easily a plot melds into a datasphere, and a datasphere launches countless possibilities for something grander.

But then what do I know?

July 28, 2004 after 9AM | code , meta , work | maybe moreğ

This is the twenty-third entry on this blog. That means we're picking up steam, chugging along, and heading into the deep unknown...

The city disappeared for a while. We drove out west for the weekend to go camping. Three and a half hours in the car, each way, led to a variety of stimulating activites including hiking, fishing, and eating.

It should come as no surprise that I'm tired now. And early -- early -- tomorrow morning I leave for Toronto. It is the life we lead. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

July 5, 2004 after 8AM | meta , play , travel | maybe moreğ

What I'd really like to do is open this place up to creative thought. You know. To move away from the whole thread of reality that has spread like a bad haircut over the face of blogdom, now that would be nice.

Make that choice for yourself, of course. I'm just lacking in scope since recombining the fractured efforts of an attempted commentary of my literal life. I think I need to sway. Drift, as it were.

Thus, this feed becomes the garden: in that literal space, a place to cultivate ideas and random norms of ficticious environs. A play on words envelops the world, and I stretch into the original purpose of my digitalis: scope the memes and creative pathways stretching untapped from this source, and draw them into a universal dictum.

Wowsers!

In a vague sense I'm thinking of relationships: whose and whatsits. The foundation of any thoughtspace is a gap into the fragments of menial and structured relationships between ideas and people and things. It is a gripping thought, bringing something to nothing, connection to individual droplets of disinterest.

I was reflecting on a modestly old book about dragons. Something Pern-related actually. I was thinking about the mentorships and relationships between the universe and beings and between beings and other beings. It is deeply profound, really, that idea of symbiosis. And it resembled the embryonic shards of some idea I have been trying to convey.

Perhaps I will have more thoughts later.

May 21, 2004 after 1PM | abstract , meta , thinking , writing | maybe moreğ

It's stuff day. Apparently. According to the vague interpretations of those involved we may have delivery of our moving van this afternoon. This makes me happy, in a simplistic sort of emotion kind of way.

At the moment, however, I'm still thinking about where my virtual home is headed: simplicty or obscurity.

I'll be sure to inform or display. It's such a thing. Such. Whatever.

May 5, 2004 after 10AM | meta , stress | maybe moreğ

...and I'm never too sure where to start. I guess it would help to have a destination. With over seven hundred raw entries of pure bloggy goodness under my belt, you'd think I'd have this thing under control by now.

But no.

It's May One. I'm no longer a BC resident. I'm no longer lost in an unfamiliar city. (Missing one that grew on me perhaps.) And I'm not sure where I'm going here, yet. Here, as in Edmonton. Here, as in this webspace. I considered something more serious. I considered keeping it free. I considered... well, I considered a lot of things. But I think I'll let it decide for itself, and like my iPod, flip randomly as digitalis dictates.

So that's it. A first entry. This place will not look the same in a little while. It will change. Evolve. Grow to fit the space.

But I just wanted you to know that I was still here.

May 1, 2004 after 11AM | city , iPod , life , meta | maybe moreğ