This Old Blog

I have kept my comments pretty much to myself with regards to the NSA's Orwellian surveillance systems, letting others far more articulate than I lay out the details and the repercussions of the fine mess we find now find ourselves in. Rather than parrot what's already been written I'd like to point out an interesting feature of this system of systems. And it is a system of systems for gather copious amounts of information on all of us. Right now we're focused on the top level of this SoS, the NSA. The NSA, over time, has built interfaces into each and every participant for the express purpose of gathering the surveillance intelligence, either directly from participating Internet companies or from the web infrastructure itself. Everyone is concentrating on the NSA at the center of this surveillance web, because that's convenient for the real owners of the surveillance web. The NSA didn't build it, contractors did, contractors like Booze Allen Hamilton. Gov...

I've been hearing about random acts of violence since I was a kid; that's over a half century for me. Later some "comedian" came up with "random acts of kindness", later followed by "random acts of art" until the meme was "random acts of [fill_in_the_blank]." For me it's turning into random acts of photography, for no more reason than the mood strikes me at that particular moment. Shapes, colors, textures, design, it can all come together at the most improbable moment. Which is why I carry a real camera at all times, even though I supposedly have a decent camera in my Galaxy S4. While the Galaxy S4's camera is indeed much better than the camera in my former HTC myTouch 4G, it's still a crappy camera for all but emergency situations. Nothing beats having a regular camera (E-1, GX1, NEX 5N, E-M5...) for the ability to hold it assuredly with one hand, shutter release comfortably under the forefinger of the holding hand. In th...

Last week I was up in Virginia, near Alexandria, participating in an system-of-systems integration event. I took the Sony with me and practiced using the camera. Up to this point I've not been particularly pleased with the output from the camera, attributing that to my lack of familiarity with the NEX system. The only way to gain familiarity, and thus satisfactory results, is to practice as much as possible. Something must be happening because these last few groups of photos are actually beginning to look good. I can still see the flaws from the Sony 18-55mm kit zoom, but they don't bother me anymore. Instead I'm doing something I think I forgot how to do. I'm standing back and looking at the whole picture. And when I do I find the flaws disappear and I like the kind of photos the NEX-5N is capable of producing. I like them very much. Whether taken during the day or after dark, the photos turn out rather well. Part if this comes from working with the various ...

I walked down Rouse to a local Wendy's, located on the corner of Rouse and University, where I ate my monthly #7. Large. It used to be #6 on the menu. It's turning hot in Orlando, so I broke out in a small sweat just walking around in the bright sunshine. Nothing horrendous, but a reminder of the coming summer heat and humidity. On the way back I passed several of these signs sitting between the sidewalk and the retention pond, the retention pond that sits between Rouse and the backside of the office complex where my office is located. What's so important that someone felt compelled to put up no-trespassing signs in the middle of open area between the public sidewalk and the retention pond? Is is valuable? No,  not really. Is it fenced in? Not at all. On a bright sunny day, what's wrong with slowly walking down by the water where the ducks like to swim and enjoying weather? Not a damn thing, really. Some officious asshole, in local county government or perhaps some...

Occupy Tallahassee While other Occupy camps are being roughly disbanded by over-militarized local police (New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, etc), the camp in Tallahassee seems to be alive and well, having been established since October of last year, and having been at this location since Thanksgiving. I found this while leaving Tallahassee after stopping by the Broken Brogan (see more below). I met several camp inhabitants this morning and they were all quite friendly. One of them, Aaron, gave me a thumbnail history of the area, stressing the fact that the city gave them permission to occupy this vacant lot at the corner of West Madison and South Duval. Apparently the Occupy group went to great pains to occupy the area legally. I find it amazing that the city of Tallahassee would be so open-minded and cooperative with the Occupy group. Or perhaps I shouldn't be, with Florida State University and Florida A&M sitting right next door to the group. Both of these s...

Orlando's City Hall is a sleepy little affair, nestled in the north-east quadrant of the I-4 and 408 interchange, at the corner of W. South Street and S. Orange Avenue. It usually sees more activity when there's a protest rally going on than it does the city's business is supposed to be conducted. I decided to make a quick stop on the way home because I wanted to see if anyone from Occupy Orlando was there. They'd long ago left their original starting place on S. Ivanhoe next to the Chamber of Commerce. A mix of self-inflicted factors combined with being hassled steadily by the police convinced them to withdraw and re-group at City Hall. ChargePoint charging station When I arrived at City Hall I parked in the first empty spot I could find. I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked to my right and saw an electric vehicle charging station by ChargePoint . I'd been told that a few had started to appear around Orlando, but I hadn't seen one yet. This one w...

I missed this one. Friendly's declared Chapter 11 last September and closed 66 stores in the process. This store, at the intersection of University and Alafaya, was one of the 66. I'd eaten there a number of times in the past, but I hadn't been there for some time. So many have gone bust that I've grown rather numb to the whole process. Fortunately, every business along University that has gone out has been re-opened with something else. That is, except for this former Chevron station that's been an empty lot on the corner, next to the former Friendly's, for nearly three years. This is a view across the property where the gas pumps used to stand. The close, larger circular plates on the ground are the access ports to the underground tanks that fed the pumps. And yet a new business is going up a block west of all of this, at the corner of University and Quadrangle Blvd. This used to be a heavily wooded lot I wrote about in 2010, a small piece of remainin...

I had another session in physical therapy today for the teetering tottering wobbly knee. The quads are still squishy as my bright young physical therapist noted, but never fear, we'll get them whipped back into proper shape in no time. I can still fell bone-on-bone when I hit one of the tears in the cartilage, but at least it's a dull pain now, not like somebody jabbed an ice pick into my knee and started to root around. After an hour of PT and an ice pack cool-down, I walked out in remarkably good shape and reasonable spirits. My knee felt like it hadn't felt since I can remember; like normal, with no pain or other reminders. It just felt good. That was 4:30pm. As I came out I saw the setting sun shining on the tennis courts of RDV. And like yesterday a moon hung above the whole scene. I walked around a bit and tripped a few exposures with the E-P2 and the 20mm. Then I settled into the Prius and headed home. I knew my good feelings were too good to be true. Around 7pm...

A simple assessment of personal milestones and deliverables. Photography I started the year off a member of a 365 photo-a-day group. I had grand ideals, hoping that by applying a little personal self-discipline that I could improve both quantity and quality of my photography. I had collected a fair amount of gear, built around the E-3 and the E-P2, and it was beginning to sit around more than it was being used towards the end of 2010. I managed to keep it up until mid-year (July), at which time my daily publication became erratic, and I dropped out of the 365 group. In total I published some 1,400 photos to my Flickr account, with a smattering to Google directly. Although I failed to achieve the goal of a photo specific for every day of the year, it did serve it's overall purpose of getting me to photograph far more often, and of far more varied subjects. I'll carry this on into 2012 and beyond (see below). Blogging This has been a blow-out year for me with regards to...

Via Michelle's Blog What an interesting 24 hours, in which I've been blocked from following @wilw by @wilw on Twitter. It all started around midnight of the 14 th.  While in my alter-ego as a statistically insignificant Usenet weenie, I fired up the aging Multivac down in the basement and logged onto the Internets (I would have been surfing the Information Superhighway sooner but it's getting really hard to find spare tubes for the old beast, and I needed to hunt around town a bit before I found a couple of replacement 12AX7As for the audio input preamp). Once powered up it took a while to get the old girl to attach to Twitter. Ever since she accidentally discovered Simon Pegg (@simonpegg) on Twitter she's been somewhat erratic, asking spontaneously from time to time for a cricket bat. It was while I was reading the paper tape from @wilw's (Wil Weaton) tweets that I came across this Me: Here's a post, G+. Google Plus: Hey! I'm going to Randomly Capit...

It's been a little over three years since George died (June 22, 2008). In a country heaping praise on The Steve for little more than building lots of expensive widgets and with all the political shenanigans the current crop of Republicans are trying to pull on this nation, I thought it worth while to transcribe this routine George recorded in 1988, some 23 years ago, and in the process heap some well deserved praise on another important contemporary American. What he had to say in this routine is truly worth remembering. And note that while he's ranting about the Reagan administration and the Moral Majority, little has changed in the last 23 years. Especially his observations about Wall Street. I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photographs of all the criminals and law breakers in the Ronald Reagan administration. Yeah! Yeah! Oh! Two hundred and twenty five of 'em so far. Two hundred and twenty five different people in the ...

Abandoned wheelchair near Trespass Oak This is going to be a long, strange post. And I blame it all on Matthew Robertson and one of his tweets. Matthew tweeted a link to " Occupy Wall Street Was Right Not to Trust the Main Stream Media ." It took a while to read it and think about it (no, I'm not a member of the tl;dr group, which should be quite obvious reading any of my posts). Weighing in at solid 1448 words and with a Gunning Fog index of 15.17, it seems aimed at the average American 12th grader (17 to 18 year olds), which places it outside the reading comprehension of 99% of the Tea Party. But I digress... Normally I would have let this pass, until I reached the section in the essay equating Occupy with open source and crowd sourcing. I'm quite familiar with open source development the the products of such a process, as I use Linux at work and at home, have a number of Android[1] devices that have benefited from open source, as well as powerful developme...

There's not a lot more to say about what's been happening in Oakland that hasn't already been said by far better writers than I. What I've done is collect the three most chilling and moving images from the night of 28 October of the police rage against unarmed American citizenry. Yeah, you all look real cool in your riot suits. Scot Olsen lies bleeding and stunned after being deliberately hit in the head with a tear-gas canister. Does it make you feel good to gas a handicapped person in their wheel chair? Other links worth reading and following; Occupy Oakland seeks strike after Scott Olsen injury -  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2053502/Occupy-Oakland-Protesters-streets-NYC-solidarity-Scott-Olsen.html Why did police officer fire gas canister into crowd trying to help injured Iraq veteran? -  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2053502/Occupy-Oakland-Protesters-streets-NYC-solidarity-Scott-Olsen.html Occupy Oakland: Mayor Quan Issues Co...

Today is the second day of Vulcan Event's "Away Mission: Orlando." (You can go Google about it). Some of the guest stars include Patrick Stewart, David Warner, and Jewel Staite. I wasn't paying any attention to this until Staite tweeted about it, leaving a link to the event. I took a gander at it and that's when I began to wonder just what planet she and her friends really come from. First were the prices to participate. Yep, you gotta pay to play. The highest price is a Platinum Reserved Weekend with all sorts of goodies; A reserved seat in the first rows of the main theater all weekend. Admission to a private cocktail party with celebrity guests in attendance. Four autographs vouchers for use with any of our celebrity guests. (One of the four autograph vouchers can be used for Sir Patrick Stewart's autograph.) Etc, etc, etc, bling, bling, bling. Everything that your decadent geek heart could desire. The price of admission for this little fête? A mere ...

While my belief in the local Occupy Wall Street action, Occupy Orlando, has been tamped down a fair bit, my belief in the causes of these actions has not. If anything, I've started to examine the current situation, and in the process peel off the layers of apathy and lazy thinking that have accumulated over the decades. I've been fascinated with history since the start of high school and the discovery of American history around the time of the American Civil War (a.k.a. the War of Northern Aggression). It has expanded over the decades, back through the Revolutionary period and forward through both world wars. And every time I read the letters or speeches of nearly all historical figures, they've had a least one memorable quote about their concerns with regards to concentrated wealth and power. We have been warned down through the centuries, from Plutarch to our present time, about the dangers to self rule from the concentration of great wealth in a few hands. For with g...

James The Instigator (on the right) I stopped off by the Senator Beth Johnson Park to check on the state of Occupy Orlando. After the weekend arrests and subsequent cleanup of the area, the park and surround empty lot are a lot quieter than it was during the first five days after the initial march downtown to city hall. While I was there I had a chance to talk to several folks, and their stories helped me piece together some of the events that led to the arrests. And in the process helped me to make a decision with regards to the group as a whole. I'd already gotten an earlier email from a third member that laid out some interesting points about the arrests. According to his story he'd asked an officer later in the day in a different part of Orlando about the arrests and the officer's thoughts on the protesters. His summation of the officer's response; A handful of Occupy Orlando wanted attention by getting arrested. The majority of Occupy Orlando are all good, ...

As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others. Alexander Hamilton, Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788 Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world [FULL ARTICLE LINK] AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts c...

Website: http://www.occupyorlando.org/ Facebook Link: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyOrlandoFL Sunday 23 October 2011 - Day 8 There's a lot you miss when you don't hang around, especially after dark. Sometime around 2am, on Saturday, 22 October, day 7 of the Occupy Orlando movement, Orlando police swept into the area in force and arrested 19 protesters . By the time all was said and done the 19 were taken to the 33rd street station and charged with misdemeanor trespass on property after they'd been with warned. Many of the protesters arrested are being held on a $500 bond, which is steep if you've got little to start with. Trespass Warning Authorization taped to the oak on the vacant lot Transcribed from the Trespass Warning Authorization Case Number: 2011-467351 Rebecca Camacho, General Manager World Trade Towers LLC Business Name: Vacant building/lot Located at: 68 S Ivanhoe BV Property description: Gray building w/boarded up windows and property Wit...