Esozone 2011

:: esozone 2011 ::

My main intent was to catch @mathpunk Tom Henderson in the act, and that I did. We were first introduced by Keith Loftstrom at a Barcamp (#4 in PDX -- I'd been at the first).

I arrived just as he was taking the podium and stayed on through the Duke of Yuke, which I found relaxing.

Dinner with Alex had been a blast.

Now I'm back at the scene but all has gone quiet.

Steve Holden, the Chairman of a small global dictatorship, a virtual state, and myself, an unassuming Minister, would qualify as MVPs in many a diplomatic circle, but our presence here is unannounced. I did not file a resume or advertise as a speaker, as I had no idea when the trip to Silverton would be over.

We came back by Hwy 214 from Silverton, through Woodburn, connecting with I-5 to Wilsonville, stopping at Fry's. Tara had been interviewing for one of her choices of college (I joined at the end), then I united her with her champion debate team (the one she started as a sophomore).

I fondled the Brother MFC scanner / copier / color laser, going for about $500 -- on the high side compared to the others, but so like what I have now... I tore myself away with Holden's help with a recharger for AA/AAA batteries, some of each, and a palette of Red Bull (sugar free), which Tara drinks also (a Taurus family), stocking stuffers (for a vestigial Xmas).

During our stopover at Blue House, I found Food Not Bombs cooking up a storm for the GA at Colonel Summers. That might be a small one, like Holladay Park was (on my beat).

I know what it's like to show up with enough vegan chili for an army, to find only a few skate boarders with their boy and girl friends (which is fine -- plus sometimes we bring live performers, other entertainment, and blend in).

The temperature may get below water's freezing point tonight. FNB was serving at the same site last night as well, but then we're troopers, were doing the same thing a year ago, and years before, even without an Occupation.

Esozone is on the edge of China Town, or Old Town as we call it. I parked just inside the Chinese Gate so Steve, a citizen of the UK, could see how America is dealing with its problems. Mike D is a skilled worker. I know him from Duke's Landing, one of our hubs (though more of a storage depot in this chapter).

One of the dudes at R2D2 (Right To Dream Too) said "you can take my picture: I'm native American but I not one of those who believes your camera will take my soul". "Only two thirds of it" I bantered, as I snapped the shot. Smile. That was earlier today, while waiting for Tara.

Tom: the general uses everything, the artist makes do with nothing. A sense of self is a temporary matrix holding all together, both convergent / divergent. When narrowly focused, as in a trance, we may lose perspective on what our role may be, in the bigger picture.

Apparently the camera was not recording, so the performance has vanished into our brains and blogs as it were.

The audience was engaged and nurtured I thought.

Silverton was a hoot. I thought of contacting Gus but we were there for such a short time, hanging out at one of the main downtown watering holes (after dropping Tara at Silverton High). We enjoyed two appetizers, a couple drinks, and shoved off, back to Portland (a hub or "base") and Esozone.

Off to a food pod for some occufood next, probably the one at the base of Hawthorne, near Lucky Lab, where I am now, by way of Helium across the street.

More from Esozone

Links mentioned:
BizMo Diaries:  Explaining Esoterica
Control Room:  Other News Blips
Grain of Sand:  Esozone Talk
Control Room:  More from Esozone

Esozone 2008

:: Trevor Blake delivers
The Approximate Omnidirectional Ephemeralization
of Richard Buckminster Fuller ::

:: A Study of Shelter Logistics
for Marine Aviation (new edition) ::

:: Russ Chu inspects Trevor's new book
near Oregon Convention Center ::

:: me in some director's chair, Esozone 2008 ::

Back at Laughing Horse

A lot goes on around here I don't know about, duh.

Just tonight I learned that one reason Lindsey was able to join the Laughing Horse Collective, was that some holocaust deniers had managed to jump on board and stage an event here, then departed, creating vacancies. There have been some lasting repercussions.

This news seemed kind of freakish, as the collection is packed with holocaust videos, many of which have come through HQS for review. I bought a copy of Hilter's Willing Executioners here (to the best of my recollection), mom a book on Hitler youth.

I'm doing door again tonight, a no-alcohol event. This benefit is for Laughing Horse itself. Julia is here too, advising potential customers. She also paid back some of her IOU ($15), made a note in the book.

Regarding the Fuller syllabus, I've had our state-free world projection on display here (briefly, like at Circadia), but won't claim the political left has made him an avatar, any more than the political right has (Laughing Horse leans left, in case you were wondering, calls itself radical).

Around Portland, Fuller (a subversive and a radical) has gotten more attention through OSCONs (not only through me), Esozone (through Trevor especially), and of course through Portland Center Stage.

I would certainly like OMSI to get in on the action, perhaps with some tetrahedral mensuration sculpture and/or some cool dwelling machine exhibits. Something both futuristic and humanitarian, consistent with our Portland spirit (which Portlandia personifies (she's a radical too)).

Getting more synergetics-informed geometry on that Omnimax screen would remind us to keep thinking outside the box. Some of us have been dying to see something along those lines.

Lindsey's friend is helping with the door, so I'm able to focus on the Wittgenstein thread I was following earlier today. Wittgenstein was a contemporary of Hitler's; not saying I believe they were acquainted, although some say they were.

Mike D. of Duke's Landing is here next to me (he's a member of the Collective). He's been upgrading the company XO, got us a developer key.

Breakaway Republics

The Feds seem to have no sense of urgency with regard to the various breakaway republics, mainly because that's not the terminology we use.  Never mind the sanctions, and the fact that they throw our people in prison for what our republics consider non-criminal behavior.  

They attack us.  Their president sent his border patrol to Portland to "quell" our supposed siege of the Federal building (not at all what was happening, but never mind).

However, since Prohibition, Gangland has learned to use soft power and bribes DC to keep up the illusions.  They need their drugs too.  Once the crime bosses have the goods on the politicians, they'll do as they're told for the most part.  A lot of them have expensive habits that must be catered to.  Most would call this "symbiosis" and thank the Supreme Court for making bribery a lifestyle.

We've also endured our share of coups.  The upset against Gore, settled in the Supreme Court, was a soft verdict, affirming the Court's jurisdiction if nothing else.  

The JFK / RFK / King assassinations were hard core and to present those as connected with any coups d'etat is to stray into Man X country i.e. to sound like Prouty.  Prouty cites Bucky in his book JFK regarding the Malthusian motivations of a self styled cabal. 

We're suddenly in Esozone, hello Paul Laffoley.  The secret history channel and all that.

I think the west coast is fine with being the West or Far West.  

Back east, we have the East, where they think more like Euros and/or the Anglos aka the Yukes, i.e. the UKers, with puritanical Yanks their descendants.

The EU is in the eastern hemisphere lets remember (as is Ukedom aka Ukraine).  

They think their "western civilization" is something distinct from Eurasian civilizations, as if Europe  weren't part of that very same continent.  However when the easterners got here, there was already a west here to greet them, and not one to be "won" so much as "won over" (in some dimensions).  

We're still here, absorbing a melting pot, fusing ethnicities.  Portland is your gateway to the Pacific Rim (PacRim), with its own center of gravity.

Salons Dot Net

Some holdouts still think the printed page is the best investment, and I do enjoy my glossy magazines, bought the new Vanity Fair at Powell's yesterday, Tara getting something in metaphysics.

However the scribes were doing illuminated manuscripts while dreaming of Prospero's Books, much as Leibniz was dreaming of machine executable languages. They were enjoying a thriving economy while prefiguring a future one, ours, based more around LCDs, with more economies to come.

In the lore we study as geekoid Americanos, Romany Marie figures in as one of our early CSN queens. She helped Bucky and Isamu find one another, making history. Philosophy and coffee shops have an old relationship anyway, some saying those were the beans Pythagoras raved about, in terms of boosting his IQ. I don't believe it.

The printed page stays important of course, nor is there a line between those, and the illuminated screen versions. We're talking a kind of isomorphism here, with digital storage actually more secure, assuming a high tech civilization able to perpetuate itself (a lot to assume, but it's what the book people were aiming for, so it's not like we're abandoning their dream of literate descendants).

I'm awake early again, chipping away on my slides for Chicago, fixing those typos. We're gonna slog through a pre-college "curriculum of tomorrow" (or visit an "other tomorrow" as Esozone put it) but not by treating ourselves as if we're on some remedial track. No, we're busy professionials, here to have fun. Experience counts for something. We'll share lotsa lore.

Esozone

:: Paul Laffoley delivering his keynote ::

I inadvertently woke Trevor to come to this, originally hyped by him as worth catching, and we were both glad we attended.

This artist, Paul Laffoley, was able to enthrall for four hours, working off some bottled water and a defibrillator. His visuals were simply stunning -- deeply alchemical, occult, weird. That's what his audience is into, and that's what he delivers. His speech, on the other hand, is first person "been there, done that" with improvised science fiction.

He's argued for eight hours with Bucky about the Mobius Strip, had that mind-blowing phone call with Kenneth Snelson, did Claude Bragdon's 4D house, a basis for Heinlein's crooked one, as if Bragdon had had the time, builds space elevator time machines in his head and paints them... Gurdjieff, Ouspensky.

A walking compendium of some of the 20th Century's best circus magic, with intimations of what's coming in the 21st. An earnest student of utopia. Shades of Hieronymus Bosch. Many allusions to Dante.

Complete with self-interruptions over others' voices, coke bottle shadows, stories of assistants he'd driven insane. Oh, and a Gaudi version of the World Trade Center, post-911. Wants to live in a Klein Bottle house, grown from some philosophical vegetable matter.

Got my 50 dollars' worth, that's for sure.

OK, time for Bridge Pedal.

:: trevor's comics @ backspace ::

Sketchy Ethnography

:: exploring the Twin Cities of Minneapolis / St. Paul ::

City planning was a big part of the conversation while I was here, with some mention of my dad and our family's concern with Libya's future, some 50 years ago minus a few. The plans dad did were for about 50 years forward, so even if they were followed (as some say they were), they'd be about at their horizon limit by now. Other planners would have had to be doing some homework in the meantime.

Minneapolis has light rail to the airport, like PDX. It also goes to Mall of America, which I had no reason to visit on this trip. My trips were by gasoline powered vehicle, small convertible and van. We did some walking to the Museum of Imperial Russian Art, just off the nearby exit from I-35 W. That was an engrossing exhibit, about the marching towards populism known as Socialist Realism, a type of art Stalin favored, and that has since turned to self parody and self reflection, via Shepard Fairey and others (Dead Kennedys parodied Nazism, fast forward to South Park), verging on psychedelic in some schools of art.

I'm somewhat the emissary from Portland on Pirate Party business one might say, helping to organize some campaigns. David is thinking of taking on the 59ers, those who apply Miller's Rules to get the 59 stellates of the icosahedron, a classic topic by now, right up there with uniform polyhedra. The rules might come across as somewhat capricious to some, as they admit some rather goofy monsters into the mix. Couldn't we pare down? Koski's critique of the Archimedean honeycomb duals seemed to get at least steelpillow's attention (using an Internet alias -- some of you know who I mean). The Pirate Party courts Esozone, Subgenius etc. and so these geometrical esoterica are a natural fit. Speaking of which, we watched John Brawley's new video of his Icosahedron in a Grotto (Portland has a Grotto too).

What does a smart diplomat do in such circumstances? If you're a real pro, you go to a neighborhood block party in Tangletown (its doors you admire). Then you join Omar Ansari's Surly Brewery in its festivities, now that the law has been changed, permitting destination factory towns, more like Disneyland but with more alcohol. Oregon has these already and does a great job with them (witness Edgefield). And you tour a neighborhood hard hit by the tornado three weeks ago. There's an urban legend that hotter urban CBDs and surroundings repel tornadoes. Comforting, but no deterrent to the one that put down here recently, ripping through a swatch of residences.

Characteristically, there was no overt government presence, as emergency services to residents are increasingly verboten in Private America, as evidenced by Orlando's banning citizens sharing free food in public parks with hungry neighbors. Any such "short circuiting" of the money economy is regarded as "underground" even though it's the background from which the monied emerged.

The Pirate Party questions privatization, starting with Ludwig Wittgenstein's "theories", which Dr. Cornish calls a "no ownership" metaphysics. That might sound Communistic to some (more like a not-for-sale military), and indeed there's a sense in which Grunch of Giants (a party favorite) was more subversive than anything dreamed of since Karl Marx (says so right on the back). This is not a party that seeks majority status however. Perhaps thanks to Quaker influence, it stays deliberately tiny and elitist, and fields few candidates.

So yes, the weather is rather dramatic compared to Portland's. The tornado was severe, the lightning and thunder storms are higher powered. The heat spikes and the cold spikes are both more exaggerated. The roads take a real pounding in the winter, meaning many more potholes and wear and tear on motor vehicles. They gave up using DEQ-style emissions testing to keep the rolling stock on the newer side (more efficient) because falling-apart older cars simply fall apart under the stress of cold winters and all the sand and salt in the streets. The Elm trees have been dying. Perhaps Ginko, an older species, will do better in the Early Plasticene (or is it Late already?).

Seeking Work

I missed Wanderers yesterday, was grateful to sit in with the physical therapist, in the aftermath of Tara's encounter with a reckless driver.

My heart goes out to families who came to this juncture and lost a dear member, or suffered severe injuries. I lost my dad in a car accident, almost lost my mom.

Glenn reports Sheldon Renan was just back from Brussels, all hot to trot, optimistic about Portland's future.

That "capital of open source" moniker has not lost its luster after all these years. The world expects great things from our city, or at least that's the buzz in some circles.

I supplied BFI's web site with two new community postings earlier today, one about Flextegrity, which I'm hoping to use as a classroom supply in measured quantities, another about Martian Math, which repackages a lot of the Bucky stuff.

My analysis for Glenn this morning, after flipping through some art books in his collection, is that insecurity on the part of conservatives accounts for much of the hold up.

I found Haim's analysis rather telling. He's worried we're trying to turn back the clock and make sacred geometry and divination our whole kit and kaboodle, a surrender to superstition and hard won advances in science.

At any rate, whether he realizes it or not, whether he intends it or not, and certainly with no malice aforethought, Kirby is trying to repeal the Renaissance and to erase two thousand years of intellectual development in the mathematical sciences. Other than that, it's a great program.

Arthur Loeb maybe expresses some similar sentiments in his introduction to Synergetics:

Platonic and Archimedean solids and such plane figures as the Pentagram were powerful tools of Applied Magic. The Age of Reason banished such configurations to the realm of superstition: their power was denied. Orthogonality prevailed, being rational and very earthbound. Interest in geometrics declined. Buckminster Fuller's search for a natural and truly rational coordinate system eventually led to the tensegrity concept and the construction of geodesic domes. Polyhedra and pentagrams, being proven useful after all, have been rescued from the limbo of superstition. Now the danger exists that geometrics will become respectable once more, and it behooves us to take a good look at the very unorthodox peregrinations of Fuller's mind before stepping into the inviting straitjacket.

My view is we don't turn our backs on history and we accept the connections between art, mathematics, and psychology as part of our shared heritage.

Our emphasis, however, is on promising careers. This isn't about churning out a vast army of astrologers and soothsayers, unless by that you simply mean wise investors with long term, not just short term horizons, readers of tea leaves. People like that always sound at least a little bit cosmic.

Rather than resist all attempts to paint Synergetics as "occult" I go along with these comic book motifs as good marketing and point to Portland's techno-occult as a source of many positive memes.

Bucky always considered the art world a source of key allies. Paul Laffoley, our special guest at Esozone, is a representative of that bridge twixt esoterica and American Transcendentalism ala Fuller.

My thanks to Suzanne Bader of Mosaic Consulting for swinging by Lyrik to check in. I was happy to report on Gordon's improving health.

Next, a meeting with Amy, the insurance adjustor.

Triangulating

I was just posting over on Synergeo how I'm looking at a conceptual triangle as governing my projects: Wittgenstein, Synergetics, Python. Yes, esoteric (Esozone conference coming right up, but nothing scheduled yet on my end).

Wittgenstein was a contemporary of Hitler's, an Austrian, who ended up in a POW camp in WWI, where he started hammering together a world famous philosophy that made him the darling of Cambridge. After publishing his magnum opus, he hung up his academic regalia and took off into the wilds again, only to return with a slap of the forehead, realizing he'd made some mistakes, or at least now he had a better way of saying what he'd been trying to say. I did my Princeton thesis on his so-called second philosophy (Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Philosophical Grammar etc.).

Synergetics is a philosophical language invented by the famous American born inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the first jet setters and one of the most intrepid, never traveling as a tourist. He used this invented language as a way to anchor all kinds of incoming communications from all over the globe. He was friends with Marshall McLuhan and the two of them formed the nucleus of a subversive network which also included "Sonny", my mentor E.J. Applewhite. The magnum opus is on the web and, like Wittgenstein's stuff, is very much a topic in these blogs.

Python is a computer programming language. The first language I really respected a lot was APL by Kenneth Iversion, first encountered at Princeton. Then I followed the xBase trajectory for many years, starting with Ashton-Tate's dBase II and ending with Microsoft Visual Foxpro (VFP9). Whereas xBase was retrofitted to become object oriented, I think successfully (it's a better language than VB), Python was object oriented from the ground up and is even more intelligently designed. It reminds me of APL in some ways, although these two are not in the same language family.

How I relate these three vertices of my triangle is as follows: the later Wittgenstein introduces the notion of "language games" which relates easily to the computer science concept of "namespaces", which Python well implements. The idea of namespaces helps thinkers make room in their thinking for remote vocabularies, alien shop talks, extraordinary grammars (philosophies), such as Bucky Fuller's Synergetics. Given the latter has a lot of geometric content for its core logic, implementing Python modules to express this geometry has been yet another edge on this triangle.

The mutually reinforcing nature of this design helps guide my curriculum writing, which includes journaling in my blogs.

:: google today ::

Architects of Control (movie review)

This comes from the equivalent of the horror shelf at the Laughing Horse co-op. Michael Tsarion does a stream of consciousness rant, eloquent yet annoyed at peoples' evident gullibility.

He pushes the conspiracy theorist envelope by bringing in a lot of interesting history and fringe characters, providing a kind of 101 introduction to Esozone type threads, ala Da Vinci Code and like that.

One gets the impression the mind controllers hold all the high cards ("resistance is futile..."), plus the production values are good, so this becomes one more mesmerizing piece of media in the hard to find category. The irony in controlling (checking the power of) other mind controllers is not lost on this audience. Spin doctors R us eh?

The scene where Clark Kent and Superman get into a knock down drag out fight in a junk yard... where was that from again? What are these movies we keep excerpting? I admit to being out of the loop on a lot of pop culture. "What's the difference between sorcery and magic?" is one of the questions, fair warning to the science-minded that we're talking to your irrational side in this film -- but about building up your rational powers as a counter, heightening your skepticism quotient. That's a positive community service in my book, so I'm hardly panning this film.

Michael reminds me of our own Alex Ansary, a kind of on-steroids version given all the help he's been getting from props and production. I recommend this film if only for the archival footage and the obscure historical allusions. This was only Program One in the series, after which I fell back into a passive state, the effect of the trigger words having worn off already.

Followup: when Maureen showed up next day, I offered to screen this to her United Methodists, maybe answer questions. But then it's not mine to show in public, could get in trouble with ASCAP or one of those. Also: the excerpts from other movies are clearly labeled i.e. I don't want to leave the misapprehension this isn't a scholarly work with the equivalent of video footnotes. Plenty of thinking went in to this rendition. I haven't seen Program Two yet (it's a four DVD set right?). Laughing Horse only has Program One.

Beautiful Pizza

:: art by J. Shea ::

I went by Fine Grind today to show Joe the pictures I'd snapped of his artworks at Lizard Lounge. Tag and I checked it out a few days ago. This is mostly a retail outlet for clothing and accessories, but offers coffee and a couple workstations. Blending in some art gallery motifs works well in this ambiance.

My other work at FG was to set up a developer's workbench vis-a-vis VPython and document some of the steps on edu-sig. Those of you following my curriculum writing know that I put a lot of stress on the VPython add-on, which bridges Python to OpenGL in a manner friendly to ordinary mortals who just want a simple API for real time spatial renditions.

Over on Synergeo, I've been consolidating some of the gains we've made around the T, E and K modules and their respective rhombic triacontahedra of volumes 5, 5+ and 7.5 respectively. Of course these values are in tetravolumes, a feature of this Portland ethnomathematics I share through Coffee Shops Network, Esozone, Saturday Academy and other places. We're training a next generation of advertiser... designer.

The title of this post refers to the venue from which I'm posting. After a long day in service of my country, it's great to get some R&R listening to a favorite vocalist and friend who also happens to be a talented rock star. Life is good sometimes. The set is over now. Lindsey is having some well deserved beer and pizza with the newest fans -- all guys here tonight, with a mix of passers by checking us out through the window. She's talking solidarity with the soldiers, other policies (yes, I'm eavesdropping).

I've been working on this Starling / System76 since 8 PM, still have up to an hour of battery life. I'm so far pleased with this netbook, although it doesn't let me get away with being as ham handed as I'm used to.

Grunch Net

Network Solutions finally nudged me enough that I reupped on the domain again, this time until 2013. They were having evident problems in the ISP department per posted technical advisories, so I passed on the offer to switch from Qwest as my back end.

If I drop Qwest, I'd probably be dropping the land line as well (remember land lines?), and the fax (5032311045 -- mostly gets stuff about Cancun and Acapulco). As of now, however, I've even got my DirectTV bundled through Qwest, albiet with slashed HBO, Animal Planet (not by choice), still have National Geographic channel. No Geek Channel, Pentagon Channel nor Al Jazeera, no VOA. But that's standard for Lower48 slumdog neighborhoods such as our 97214. Switching to Comcast wouldn't help matters. At least we have Hulu, Netflix and so on (Youtube etc.).

The Grunch website is a literary project, as was the small book for which it was named, R.B. Fuller's Grunch of Giants. I spell out some radical middle politics plus give it a retro flair (sort of Bob like, John Waters, hints of Mad), consistent with Esozone's "Other Tomorrow" aesthetics, i.e. let's imagine had we not kicked the can down the road on the Bucky stuff for so long, we wouldn't be wallowing in high banking fees and closing costs maybe, might even have better health care.

Of course "it's not too late" is the perennial hope. Under the front page veneer, I've got a lot of basic humanities readings, a lot of it in ruins, given it's ancient, but with a link to my blogs, which have remained quite contemporary in flavor. We're a lot of young engineers (including female, in Japan) and design scientists (Bucky's nomenclature), around Portland, around Chicago... everywhere actually (Vilnius, Gothenberg...), so hold on to your hats and let's fly. Yes, we could use some more help. The work isn't easy.

Speaking of hard work, I've put in some more time on the OS Bridge puzzle of harnessing local talent to pull at least a few of our local NGOs into the 21st century. I'm looking at PPUG as one of those talent pools we might recruit from moving forward, along with art schools, graphic design schools i.e. just because you're good at regular expressions doesn't mean you know how to draw airplane seat pocket materials.

We need talent from many walks of life, not just software engineering. Read the post below for more on the User Group concept? You could probably adapt what we're doing for needed upgrades in your area.

More Gardening

"we also teach gardening"

The philosophical underpinnings of the garden remain important. Better the seeds be harvested directly from the local scene than obtained through the cash economy.

The game is to develop using biological methods having root access in ways money does not, unless converted from bracelets back to cows (a few bulls) per the Critical Path codec.

The dirt pile was developed with assistance from a borrowed pickup truck. Various flavors of compost will be mixed for raised beds. This is a process any family with a lawn might engage in, if seeking urban edibles. Which reminds me, we met at Back Space again. I got it all working on the Starling, with Mark giving me some invaluable pointers on how to operate it more successfully. He's a pretty brilliant guy I think. And yes, there's a plan to go with GeoDjango. I'm recruiting talent from PSU and such places.

We elected not to view Constant Gardener at the Boltons' last night, though I am eager to learn of Maureen's adventures in Kenya. I'd seen the movie, even read the book, had all this pending business to attend to, including around Quarterly Meeting.

Speaking of which, Glenn and I just met Lisa at the corner of 37th at Bagdad to discuss options. She was on a bicycle, whereas my party was walking Weird Sarah to Laurelhurst Park (a designated off-leash area in the neighborhood).

The Private Party at Duke's Landing was recorded live (about 3.5 hours) and sliced up into 109 separately entitled tracks for archiving and blogging. At least half of them are dialog. Some of the song takes are headed straight to the Myspace site whereas some of the more private stuff will go exclusively to event participants, at least at first (the most recent plan, as of this writing).

We're happy to have a mobile sound studio solution so that rough cut recordings get some air time. I'd like to add video at some point and find some R-rated TV slot on community access, or just burn straight to DVD. The various video products will then draw from this raw footage. Coffee Shops Network is already a client.

Lindsey is not playing covers so there are no issues around who controls the music at this point. Most cities have a Wild West of this kind, frequented by talent scouts, intrepid tourists. I've not spent much time in Nashville, yet imagine something similar. Savannah must not be that different either, given Lindsey's duck to water transition to the PDX music scene.

Glenn suggested I nudge Trevor to get Lindsey a slot at the upcoming Esozone conference. That's smart thinking, whether it happens or not.

Loose Ends

Thank you to Laurie and Gayle for the winter jacket for Tara, looks really snug, and just in time for our latest XRL venture, my garb at the cleaners. Departing tomorrow.

While Tara went shopping, I had a marketing meeting over Thai food. At what point, when Photoshopping an NGO's (or GO's) logo onto high tech gear, do you want to seek the client's permission? Obviously if it's not real, is science fiction, you're free to tickle the client's imagination. Permission should fall under the heading of informed consent, meaning you've at least tested the waters already.

In terms of funding, the Bhutanese Army has a charter to ferment alcoholic beverages for revenue. Given military discipline is a lot about controlling inventory, supply chains, this makes plenty of sense.

Many NGOs have adopted the same model, making jams, chocolates or cheeses for barter in the marketplace, while offering seasonal retreats to practitioners of whatever faith, closer to the core mission of the abbey, although having ritual chores around cheese making is also food for the soul.

Speaking of NGOs, I've been yakking with Western Friend about the state of the art when it comes to DB work (data bases). In liberal software circles, some talk of AMP or ARM, losing the L and/or changing PHP to Ruby.

We used to say LAMP for those who weren't tracking back then: LAMP = Linux (operating system) + Apache (web server, might be for localhost) + MySQL (database engine) + some computer language starting with P (Python, Perl or PHP).

A lot of us still use Linux of course (I'm on Ubuntu right now), but OS X users need to understand they're not locked in to FileMaker Pro or other proprietary solutions. MySQL (M) and Apache (A) work well on a Mac, and for P you've got Python, although some still prefer Perl.

Same with Windows: don't assume you're locked in to Access and/or any flavor of Visual Basic (VB) including .NET. I'd recommend IronPython if Microsoft seemed less ambivalent about its marketing.

Regarding IronPython, is this the FoxPro story all over again? Visual FoxPro (VFP) was far superior to Access, but Redmond's home grown VB was more the cash cow, not alien xBase, inherited from JPL by way of Ashton-Tate. Access made cube farmers feel special, and as a front end productivity tool still makes some sense, especially if you like those "fat client" office suites (a web browser is considered "thin" even if bulky).

Now some child prodigy is going to remind me that this DB work could all be done in Emacs and LISP i.e. none of this browser-based stuff is really necessary if you can type in computer code. To which I reply: remember we're not all like you, even if we like you.

I've got a second XO, as of today, will maybe get them to talk to each other. XOs prefer to stay social (called mesh networking, like they explained on some cereal box maybe).

Good talking about Hong Kong at lunch, got me thinking about visiting Asia again. Portland's new International High School is set to open in September. That might dovetail with some of our plans to build more bridges with PSU.

Dick Pugh's Willamette Meteor talk could easily pack an auditorium, and it's this kind of geographically localized content, backed with lots of GIS/GPS, that keeps food on the table in our region. Greater Portland is a city of planners in many respects, my dad having been one of them, before moving his career overseas.

Speaking of GIS, I should talk about the Times Square 3-frequency buckyball again, something I usually get around to this time of year. More though, I'm wondering why CAD people don't burn us an n-frequency ballroom ball to replace the more traditional sort (lots of ill-fitting squares), of hexagons and twelve pentagons (n % 3 == 0). The precision fittings would speak well for the company that did a good one. Maybe it's out there. Please send me a link.

Some high points of 2008: breakfast with Allegra, boating with Tompos (plus seeing the play four more times), hanging out with D.W. Jacobs, Sam Lanahan (Dark Matter found), and Trevor Blake at the Portland Fish House on Hawthorne, a business trip to the high desert, Willamette Quarterly Meeting, HR meetings with some Portland pros, that visit to the Linus and Ava Pauling special collection, some of those Esozone talks, getting Tara's room remodeled (thank you Elizabeth, Gayle), voting, hanging out with Gordon.