Monthly Archives: February 2002

Pix


Very cool book that I got this morning in the mail! Thank you. I've skimmed it cover to cover and have started reading it in more depth. There's a lot of poetic aspect that to be honest is difficult to interpret cross-culturally, but I think I understand the message it's trying to convey.

One of my other projects that maybe I'll have a chance to work on today… It's a video overlay device; what it'll do is allow me to display emergency messages over my TV, for example if the system detects a server problem it can notify me if I'm just relaxing (thank god, I do to much of that, right?).

Sad, sad day. I broke my first-gen Rex. In my opinion this is the best, most functional PDA ever released (the new Rex is better because it has an edit mode, but you know what I mean). Seriously, this thing may be five years out of date, but it's very useful. It does what it's supposed to do; nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, and the Rex reminds me — before the Rex came out, IBM Japan had a similar device. It was also a PC card, and had a full keyboard (that needed a toothpick to use). If anyone remembers this litte thing, or knows where to get one, I'd love the details.

My days

8AM. Get up. Walk the dog. Have a shower. Make sure the servers are up and check for any emergencies. Walk the dog. Drink a mocha. Assess what takes priority. Program. Write. Program. Have a salad. Program. Program. Write. Program. Eat supper. Program. (censored). Write. (censored). Go to sleep. 3:30AM.

My next task of the day is to build an IM gateway so some of my external tools can access IAM.alive (for example, the experience engine will be able to contact people about the reviews they left). I'm continuing to slowly build up BME/risks… I haven't got much feedback on it one way or the other, but I hope people find it useful once it's full of data…

Coldwalking

As I understand firewalking, it's basically a stage magic trick with very little profound meaning. It's simply a physics trick, and requires no particular “belief” to do successfully (just ask Randi!). It's value comes not from the physical act, but from the psychological “fear factor” journey it forces you to face and the mumbo jumbo whoever is hosting the event decides to add. Real magic doesn't need a story or a myth or a ritual attached to it — real magic is real.

My latest interest is coldwalking (sorry, I invented that term, if anyone knows the proper term let me know). Historically, when Hindus would “drop out”, they'd stay in the mountains, which are of course extremely cold. As such, one of the things they learned how to do is control their body temperature to such an extent that they were able to survive in these environments with little to no protection — this has been scientifically documented and verified with holy men all over Asia. It's far from unusual.

Anyway, I'm well versed with moving energy in and out of my body and from place to place inside my body, so I figured I should give this a try. Even though it's winter, I've taken to not dressing when I walk the dog — I never put on shoes when I walk in the snow, and I don't wear a jacket unless it's fairly windy (hey, I'm an amateur).

I believe that what I am doing isn't particularly difficult and that any of you can replicate it. Understand — and believe — two things before you begin:

  1. You are a part of a single earth entity. Interpret that however you want, but accept yourself as a part of a whole, rather than an independant entity.
  2. The earth, while it has it's cold spots, is a very warm place. So warm in fact that it's full of rocks so hot that they've turned into lava.

As you stand in the snow, cherish the fact that you have bare feet — you're not standing in the cold, you're connected to this immense heat. Thankfully there's nothing as shallow as leather and rubber holding you back from it. Cease to understand that you exist and allow the heat of the earth to flow up into you.

Now, I'm not telling you there's a spiritual meaning in this. I'm perfectly willing to accept it's simply a visualization exercise that induces some physiological response. But it is real, and it does work, and you can do it too. I do it daily; yesterday I exposed myself to the cold like this for about three hours and other than burning through a lot of callories — I was starving by noon — I suffered no ill effects and felt no cold.

Before you call me crazy, try it.

Even if you can't conquer cold, try thinking about your feet when you walk, especially barefoot. Try and feel your feet connecting with and becoming a part of the ground below you when you step. When you're standing, don't feel yourself. Reach down, and pull the earth up into you and while you're doing this push yourself back down into the earth as well. You may well find that suddenly you can “feel” everything around you in a whole new way.

Like I said, try it.

If the experience strikes you, please let me know how it went in the “whatever” forum — I'd love to hear different people's interpretation of what's going on as well.

Shirt stuff

We went to the screener's today and hung out with them for a while and fiddled with the colors and their leader told us all about clear inks, water based inks, etc. so I have a whole lot of neat ideas for things to do in the future. I'll have photos of the pierced panty sets shortly as well — they had the screens ready… one word: HOT.

Anway, here's what's currently on the presses:


The elf shirt! It's on a really nice dark forest green color. I think we did a BME boy in a similar color, but I'm pretty sure this one's a little darker.

DENIED! I think you have to review 2000 experiences to get this little critter.

This is the first experience shirt. The thing I really like about it is that there are no letter. Most sign language shirts include letters; my feeling is that the sign language stands on its own — why translate it?

It was a lot of effort to get this shirt of Katsuyuki (photo by Phil) colorcorrect, but I think it was worth the effort… Now I have to dig up Katsuyuki's address in Japan so I can mail him one!

This one is just way too funny. Other than the fact that it's a complaint, I think it's actually really well written! (And as a point of trivia, I think Marty is the “friend” he's talking about.)

A sample of the backs on the experience shirts; the actual ones are a little lighter hit so you can read the “experience” text more clearly. Each shirt style of course has a different number.

Anyway, I said it in the forum, but I really want to thank everyone who's been helping me with this software upgrade, especially those of you who've been assisting in the tech support forums. It really lightens my load and makes it a lot easier for me to get things done. Thank you!

eBay

I just “won” two books on eBay for $9… I got “SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF PLASTIC SURGERY” and “ANESTHESIA IN PLASTIC SURGERY”… Their medical section rocks; I'm picking up $100 – $500 books for literally a tenth to a hundredth of their original list selling price.

A couple people have mentioned problems with inserting HTML onto their page; if you are having this problem, if you can describe it in detail in the Whatever forum or the Tech Support forum, that would be greatly appreciated. I haven't had any problems with it…