Breath of life

Monday, December 29, 2003

I was capturing some stills earlier from BARAKA for its entry in the BME encyclopedia (it contains lots of body modification footage). For those of you who haven't seen it, or haven't seen it since it came out (this is the first time I've rewatched it in ten years), it's still a stunning movie:

I noticed something interesting though in the Masai (Kenya) segment. Most of the Masai had “perfect” ears as far as scarring, blowout, and so on, except for one guy (it's clearer on the DVD in motion):

You can see that he has that “double lobe” that you get when there's blowout combined with a ring of slightly tighter scar tissue… It's good to know that even in cultures where it's normal, occasionally people get excited, stretch to fast, and face the consequences!

Anyway, I'm getting a lot of work done lately. I think it's in part because of getting an espresso maker for Christmas… As if I don't have enough substance abuse problems already!!! Time to go make another.

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Origins

Monday, December 29, 2003

The whatever forum last night got into “first internet experience” so I thought I'd try and remember mine. I've been BBSing (and running BBSs, usually under Wildcat) since about 1984 or 85, but those were not on the Internet and I never really got that into pseudo-net tech like FidoNet (I was more interested in porn, programming libraries, and warez), although I was a DATAPAC user, primarily to talk to distant friends. In the early 90s I got a CRS Online account, which was a big BBS that had tried to tie USENET feeds into their forums.

I was able to read USENET fine, but I couldn't post to it, and I really wanted to take part. Toronto's first ISP was just opening (Internex Online) and when I went in to sign up I got the distinct impression that the person working the desk was hitting on me on account of my stretched ears (1″ ears were pretty rare in early 1994)… Anyway, I joined rec.arts.bodyart and on August 8th, 1994 made my delurk as follows:


Well, this is my official delurk... hopefully I have my server/editor figured out. I just got a rook done today and a 10ga PA about 2 weeks agon (all healed up)... I also have various small piercings (ears, nipple, frenum - misplaced) and an earlobe that I have managed to get up to over 1" and rising. Also I have a "full body" brand - from my hip to my forearm. Some questions: 1) What are the logistics of a large (4+ ga) piercing in the conch? (2) What is this metal OSMIUM - is it part of a joke, or is it a real metal? (3) How much does an ampallang hurt in comparison to a PA, and can I have both a large PA and ampallang? - like 0+ ga (4) Did this post arrive successfully?
  thanks
  shannon larratt
  glider@io.org

Yeah, I was a real newb, but not long afterwards I was already posting info files. Can you tell it's an obsession with me? Check out the very earliest version (August 11th, 1994) of the Ear Piercing 101 diagram… gotta love ASCII art:

Places to pierce your ear:
    __--
   /          __------__
  |          / _-----__ \
  |        ,/ |     4  | |   1 is a rook (top-inner fold)
  |* *     +  |--1__   | |   2 is a tragus (triangle-thing)
  |/       __ \     \  | |   3 is a daith (innermost fold)
  /  _.      \ `3-_  | | |   4 is a conch piercing
 |___/      2 | --   |  ,'   5 is a lobe piercing
   |___      /     __/  |
   |__/        ---'    ,'
   |         .    5   ,'
   |          -_____-
    \___

On August 12th a better version was posted:


                _,----------._
             ,-'              `-.
           ,'   ,------------._  \
         -'     |        4     `. `.
             6 ,'--._         4 |  |
             ,'      `1.        `. `.
             |          `-.      |  |
             `-.           `.    |  |
                `-._        `.  4`. |
          ,-----.3_ `--.__   |    | |
          `-.      `---.     |    | |
           2 |            4 ,'      ;
            ,'          ,--'       ,'
         ,-'        4,-'          ,'
         |    4  ,--'            ,'
         `------'          5    ;
                       5       /
                            ./'
       -.    5    5      _,'
         `.            ,'
          |       _.--'
           `-----'

1 is the rook (topmost inner fold of the ear shell)
2 is a tragus (that triangle)
3 is a daith (in the fold of cartilage tissue just above the ear opening)
4 is a conch piercing (yes, all the way down are still considered conch's)
5 is a lobe piercing
6 (i think) is called a helix.

Not long after that (only August 15th) I was already trying to get a magazine or book rolling:


Is anyone out there interested in starting an e-zine dedicated to piercing and bodyart? It's a project I would like to get started... I have access to a 1200dpi scanner, and lots of equipment, and have various piercings of my own I could use, but obiously I need help... If anyone is interested please email me.

For a first issue I would like to make a sort-of-FAQ with photos (among other stuff) - something that newbies could ftp and would answer a lot of question - but I don't want to use magazine pictures so I would need people to mail me pictures or email me scans of stuff... not just finished piercings but procedural photos if you have an unusual piece of pierce. (I will probably use photos of having an 8mm dermal punch put through my conch.)

At about the same time I was running super early versions of what would later become the MegaSurvey; on September 9th, 1994 I posted some early results:


General Piercings:
 ear         (61%)|**********************
 nipple      (51%)|******************
 navel       (17%)|******
 septum      (17%)|******
 tongue      (11%)|****
 eyebrow     ( 5%)|**

Male Piercings:
 pa          (35%)|*******
 frenum      (21%)|****
 ampallang   ( 5%)|*
 hafada      ( 5%)|*
 rev pa      ( 5%)|*

Female Piercings:
 inner labia (16%)|**
 clit hood   (16%)|**

Originally the magazine had been planned as an email newsletter with attached photos, but then it shifted over to being an FTP site (remember, this was before the days of Netscape; only Lynx was used for browsing and Mosaic was a prototype with limited penetration). On October 15th, 1994, I announced that the site was up:


OK - This is a confirmation of the FTP site for piercing that is STARTING to become active. It's address is:
  ftp.io.org
and it's directories are:
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart - main directory
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart/incoming - uploads of all types
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart/ezine - the ezine when it starts to exist
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart/ezine/incoming - incoming articles, submissions, letters
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart/pictures - pictures, JPEG or GIF usually
  /u/u3/g/glider/bodyart/text - text

CURRENTLY, these directories are mostly empty, but hopefully will start to fill up soon.
 shannon larratt
 glider@io.org

ps. if you want to subscribe to the ezine, mail me...

However, that course of action didn't work that well, and I don't really count it as “officially” launched at that point — it was just a small collection of photos really. The web started taking off as well, so, on December 7th, 1994, the following post was made:


Subject: Body Art Magazine / WWW Site

Ok, well the magazine is much more on its way! The initial pictures from the first issue are available on my WWW site.

 https://www.io.org/~glider

There are a bunch of pictures: hand web, large piercings, stretching, implant surgery, eyebrow... they are 1200dpi colour 24bit scans, all 640x480 in .jpg format - check it out. Text will be there soon too...

 shannon larratt
 glider@io.org

So that (BME) is “my first internet experience”. Beginners luck I suppose. I'm sure folks like Barry (maybe Keith as well but I'm not sure) who pre-date me on RAB probably get a chuckle out of remembering those days… given that Barry almost got me shut down for slander — but that's another story!

Anyway, feel free to post your “first internet experience” story in the forum…

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Fingerprints

Sunday, December 28, 2003

Most of my work for the 2004/01/01 update is done. The only major task left is to finish the year-end awards pages, which isn't too much. Oh, and I'll probably have to tweak the update software a little to make it handle a simultaneous image and experience update, but that's easy as well.

I dusted off The Trouble With Being Born today while I was working on the update stuff, and while Cioran is really a love-him or hate-him sort of philosopher, this one, along with Tears and Saints, is one of my favorite works. I think that's the opposite reaction you're supposed to have?


Characteristic of dying regimes: to permit a confused mixture of beliefs and doctrines, and to give the illusion, at the same time, that the moment of choice can be indefinited postponed...

This is the source — the sole soure — of the charm of pre-revolutionary periods.

# # #

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

Now I'm going start working on a highspeed “image fingerprinting” utility that'll hopefully go a long way to eliminating duplicated images in the BME galleries (and other places too maybe). It's really basic. Originally I was just going to do a hash of the file, but I realized that since it only has to do a “loose match” (which is then later manually confirmed) I can shift the balanced from effectiveness over to speed a little more than usual.

UPDATE (three hours later): The fingerprinting system is designed (using tuncated CRCs of expontially staggered 32-byte blocks throughout the file), inserted into the add-image-bot code, tested, debugged, and verified! I seriously didn't think I'd have it running today. Yay for being allowed to have supper.

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Hmm…

Sunday, December 28, 2003

I just got this picture submitted to me, with no explanation as to what it is. Any theories? Because of the size, I doubt it's a human testicle (since that would be most people's first assumption). I don't speak Chinese so I can only inquire so far in this case.

I lean toward the notion that it's an abnormally small human testicle, but I really am not 100% sure at all!

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Don't let your silly dreams fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall.

Saturday, December 27, 2003

A few issues that are pending for BME in 2004 are listed below. If you have feedback on any of them feel free to post your notions in the whatever forum…

IAM vs E2 Access

I'm probably going to start taking mainstream submissions for IAM access again over the next month or two. The goal is to make sure that site supporters always have access to something if they want it (since a dozen E2 memberships are not useful to most people). My current plan would be to add an “IAM ONLY” button to the submissions forms here on the site, which would then issue you coupons instead of a passcode. This would also allow the better contributors to support their friends.

Video Integration

I'm going to start taking video submissions for all sections (ie. not just themed movies such as procedures, but short video “photos” of piercings and so on) of BME starting fairly soon, as well as building video blogging and so on into IAM as a byproduct. Currently the plan is to put the videos inside the existing subsections, but in a separate gallery from the images themselves (but using the same general thumbnail/grid style). I haven't even begun to thought about minimum standards (ie. resolution, time, compression) or anything like that…?

Live Chat

The current live chat will have to be scrapped soon. It's “growing bugs” and there are holes in it so it's not really up for debate. I can either replace it with an IRC server, a customized IRC server (using IAM for authentication), or a custom client (which would be Windows only) that would include things like downloading avatars from IAM and true IAM integration (so, for example, if you're in live chat, and someone sends you an iam.alive message, it would pop up there as well). I lean to one of the latter two.

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