Notebook

Here are my rather free-form notes on the presenters at Aquacade I, in (pretty much the order they read and/or rocked.

• Stephen Elliot label: MacAdam/Cage
  
  Well, nothing starts a night off like some sexual abuse of minors. Well written and not what I was expecting.
  


• Prageeta Sharma label: Fence Books
  
  I am not sure if you should ever introduce a presenter at a dirty bar with "She is a graduate of Brown and The New School." Hmmm. Not sure if I am supposed to care. I didn't, but that is beside the point. Sharma had a lovely voice and read an interesting poem about men's underwear.
  


• White Magic label: Drag City related: Quix*o*tic
  
  White Magic was introduced by the guy who was M.C. for the event. I think he runs drag city, but I am not sure. My indie rock street cred is as low as it has ever been. He kept making lots of jokes that I must have needed special knowledge to laugh at. And then he introduced White Magic by saying, "They are the toast of New York. You Chicagoans in the crowd should be jealous." Hmm. Sorry. If that is New York's toast, they can keep them. The young singer looked as if she was twelve years old and sang like an adolescent clone of Cat Power's Chan Marshall. The music was good, but each song had the same vocal melody and all of the bad qualities of Chan Marshall's voice. I kept going back and forth on them, but eventually side with "Nah. Not so good." They also played a pretty long set for being in the middle of a bunch of other stuff I wanted to see.
  


• Bill Callahan label: Drag City related: (smog)
  
  I have only seen Callahan play as smog once, but his voice sticks with you. He doesn't look like he would have such a powerful voice. And his words are not strong, in a manly sense, necessarily. The subject from his reading, an in-progress book of imaginary letters to his sister who was away at college, sounded like a collection of ramblings from a supremely indecisive individual, but were read with a straightforwardness that was quite a contrast. Callahan's wit is always very dry, even on his recordings. For a good example, listen to "Dress Sexy At My Funeral."
  


• Joe Wenderoth label: Verse Press
  
  I have received some giggles from friends who were told I went to a poetry reading. I use Joe Wenderoth as a reply. "Oh yeah." I say. "This was a rockin poetry reading. There were lots of swear words AND an orgy with the messiah. Take that." I actually never said that to anyone. I will if the opportunity arises, however. Wenderoth read part of his hysterical Letters to Wendy's and a story about the disciples confronting Jesus about his penis. This question ultimately leads to the revelation that Jesus, in fact, has a vagina. And then they have a messianic gang bang.
  


• Harmony Korine related: Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy, Kids
  
  As a followup to the story about Jesus, Harmony Korine read one piece from his laptop. The story was a disturbing oral history from a hired hand of the Vanderbilt's who was encouraging the young narrator's rape fantasies. Korine barely glanced up from his laptop and has a very quiet voice.
  


• David Berman label: Drag City, Open City
  
  Berman was my main draw to the show, and he didn't disappoint. In addition to a monologue about truth and american presidents (not related) and a real mindbender of a story about an erotic science fiction author getting locked out of the world, he joined Chestnut Station for a rendition of the Silver Jews songs "New Orleans" and "How To Rent A Room." Earlier, I posted my videos of berman from the event. Berman has a great voice and a real slick sense of humour that hinges on a clever turn of phrase as often as it does an apparently ridiculous situation.
  


• Chestnut Station label: Drag City
  
  This band was pretty good, but the M.C. of the even was their vocalist and it was apparent that only 3 people in the crowd had the requisite knowledge to appreciate him fully. Oh well. The bad was really tight and played some good rock. It was a great way to end the set.
  

I still have some pictures to post, but it is late. So off to bed I go......

Posted by at 2:57 AM | Permalink

The Matrix: Revolutions was definitely better than The Matrix: Reloaded, but still not a great movie. It seems to me that the Wachowski brothers had a neat idea for a really cool movie about guns and chicks in leather. And then people started reading in to it. I have to admit, "The Matrix" is a terribly endearing metaphor for daily life. Reloaded and Revolutions at times pummel us with overwraught indirectness. The oracle's dialog, especially gets to be a bit grating because you know that what she says will be repeated back to her. And then to another character. And then to another.
The religous symbolism is played down a bit in Revolutions, but the christ-like image of Neo sacrificing himself at the end is fairly obvious. The lack of underground cave-raves was defintely a big plus for Revolutions, though.
The opening up, creatively and conceptually, that happened with The Animatrix, was probably the best thing for the Matrix storyline. Giving another group of talented authors the opportunity to riff on this idea, that we are slaves in a reality that we are blind to, presented a really solid set of great speculative fiction. I think that set may have done more to keep me interested in the concept than either of the last two films, but there is something there.
When i think about it long enough, my main thoughts about the films can be summed up with a simple question. If you can alter the fabric of "reality," why can't you come up with a more creative solution than leather and guns?
These thoughts are fairly scattered, but I think the films as a set are pretty interesting. Like many interesting things, though, it is not the thing itself that may necessarily be sparking such interest. It may be the latent kernel of an idea that is resonating with people. Or people may like guns and leather. I figure it is a toss-up.

Posted by at 2:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bill and I checked out Aquacade I Thursday night at the Empty Bottle. We also grabbed a bite @ Bite (ha!), next door. Bite had great food and was super cheap. I had so much pasta I could barely fit a Harp in my belly afterwards. I did, of course. I am tough like that. Pushing forward and all.

Anyway, Aquacade was a poetry/prose reading & rock show organized by the Silver Jews frontman David Berman. I will post more full notes + pics later, but I have put up the videos that Bill and I shot with my digital camera.

(please note: you will need quicktime to view the videos.

• Part of David Berman's opening monologue:
  small (56k) medium (100k) large (300k)
• Nearly all of the Silver Jews song "New Orleans," performed with Chestnut Station:
  small (56k) medium (100k) large (300k)
• Some of the Silver Jews song "How To Rent a Room," performed with Chestnut Station:
  small (56k) medium (100k) large (300k)

Posted by at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

I often see some funny searches coming into the site from places i used to work or people i used to know (i can tell by the IP addresses).

As has always been the case here, i do not post work-related topics, just general art, coding, reading, random stuff.

I will not be writing about people that I am not 100% sure that they are ok with a link or a mention. Nor will i be writing about former employers. Sorry folks. No need to bore people any more than normal. Everyone has jobs. Everyone has work stories. They are all pretty much the same. oh well.

:)

Posted by at 11:25 PM | Permalink

Just started reading Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland. Inkdroid loaned it to me a couple of weeks ago. 2 chapters in and i found this part that I like a lot:

Operating Manual For Not Quitting

A. Make friends with others who make art, 

and share your in-progress work with each 

other frequently.

B. Learn to think of [A], rather than the 

Museum of Modern Art, as the destination for 

your work.  (Look at it this way: If all goes 

well, MOMA will eventually come to you.)

Posted by at 11:16 PM | Permalink

A couple of weeks ago, at flatfile, I ran into a woman I used to work with, Dana Day, who has done some really nice pinhole work. She gave me a flyer for her upcoming shows (listed below) and it also has a note on it about World Wide Pinhole Day, which is April 25th. I am going to try to participate in it and build a cool camera with Juliana.

If you are in Chicago and want to check out some of Dana's pinhole work, you can catch her here:

• DreamBox Foto & Gallery
  2415 W. North Ave
  Chicago, IL
  March 1 - 31, 2004


• CCT Gallery
  1012 N. Noble
  Chicago, IL
  June 25 - September 17, 2004
  Opening Friday, June 25 5:30 - 7:30 PM
  

Also, BoingBoing (i believe) pointed me towards this cool old Czech pinhole camera model that takes 35 millimeter roll film called the Dirkon. Looks fun!

Posted by at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had two conflicting shopping experiences recently.

Last week, I had some time to kill and a caffeine addiction to feed, so I signed up for a T-Mobile hotspot day pass at the Starbuck's near the train station. The process itself was very simple and fast save for one fact. There was no "log out" button. Basically, I was worried that I would come home to find a big bill from the nasty wifi provider because i didn't log out.
I called T-Mobile HotSpot customer support and had a live person within seconds. Turns out the service does time out after a few inactive minutes, so I was fine there. However, the "log out" button was apparently on a pop-up window. No link anywhere. Just a pop up. The first thing the guy said was, "If you have a browser or plugin that blocks pop-ups, then you won't see the logout link." That is pretty bad. However, at least they knew about it.
I liked my free day, but certainly don't need to pay $0.10/minute to do wifi at a coffeeshop. Some of chicago's local cafe's have much better rates and you can pay with cash and surf relatively anonymously. Yay!

The other major shopping experience I had last week was a washer/dryer purchase from Sears.com. I know from some work I did at a former company that Sears does a lot of large appliance business online, so I was disappointed that the process was so clunky. Sears.com, as many large retailers online, use the BroadVision platform. I am surprised that a huge e-commerce platform can suck so much. On Sears.com, i encountered "Session Timed Out" error message after just arriving at a site, broken product links and category links and other clunkiness. I saved the washer and dryer that I wanted into my cart, but was unable to retrieve those items in a later session until I added something else to the cart first. And then, the items were no longer saved in my cart, but I was not told that. So I had to search for the items again. What a pain. I am shocked that small retailers can often do it so much better.
The one big plus for Sears was my call to customer service on Friday. I was on the phone with somebody nearly instantly and had a repairman scheduled in a matter of minutes. I think i may have hooked the dryer up slightly wrong, so it is not drying as well as it should.
So, for both T-Mobile and Sears.com, bad for initial experience, good for customer support. Weird.

Posted by at 12:17 AM | Permalink

its not in short supply around here right now. Here is my current recipe:

• one show corporate crime trial


• countless major corporate crooks not going to jail


• 1 unneccessary war devolving into a civil war


• a possible US sponsored coup of a democraticly (sp?) elected (albeit kinda shady) leader


• New FCC guidelines on obscenity and what I should or should not be allowed to see/hear/read/think


• re-watching "The Insider" and despairing over the sorry state of journalistic integrity in 2004


• reading 70s sci-fi/psychedelic conspiracy theorists.

All i want is for people to take responsibility for their own actions, not be offended by crude humor, and for really harmful crooks to go to jail. grrrr

Posted by at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have started to use the new project management system Basecamp from the fine folks at 37signals. I am very much impressed with the system, but I do have a couple of complaints. While usability may be their forte security certainly is not. I have a couple of suggestions for the developers, and a whole heap o' praise.

Ok. Let's get the praise out of the way first.

• Basecamp is free to run a single project with. this is nice. 10 projects will cost you 20 dollars a month. This is a completely nominal fee for such an excellent product.


• Every page has an extremely polished design and functionality. So many little touches just make this application feel nearly perfect.


• When you alter the 10th item on a list of 50, you see a little fade when you save your changes, orienting you on the page. For more info, see this Signal Vs. Noise post


• Each page is accompanied by collapsible help boxes that not only have great information, but are easy to get out of your way once you no longer need them.


• Each section has clear notes to an admin on what a client will and will not see. This is very helpful if you have inter-company communications that are not for client eyes, or are just not ready for showing something.

OK. That being said, there are a few problems.

• You may only assign someone to one of their company's projects. This is no good for contractors who need access to the client's project and do not have projects of their own, per se.
• There is no security for the XML and iCal feeds. Not smart. These feeds should be removed completely until this has been addressed (although I understand that it is a larger problem than basecamp). The following message is shown near each feed:

  .

  These feeds should definitely be password secured. iCal supports authentication via a pop-up while adding feeds, and most RSS newsreaders will support a URL similar to http://user:password@www.servername.com/yourfile.rss. Users of NetNewsWire from Ranchero, see The NetNewsWire FAQ. A unique URL is only unique until someone's bot finishes cycling through all the options. There is no security through obscurity.
  



• A "forgot password" page should never give any information except to the legitimate user. View the following 2 pages:

  

  

  Now, it may seem like a minor thing, but someone could harvest a lot of email addresses by plugging in values to the form. A better functional design is to ask the user for their email address and send their username to them that way.



• A "forgot password" link should never send a password out over a plaintext connection. Provide a hint to the user as a first line of defense. Provide a one-time URL as a second line of defense, with email confirmations at each step. This incorporates a second level of authentication (person X has access to person X's email account) and sends no information over plaintext or on to a page where it is visible by a would-be attacker.


• There is no SSL on the site, with the exception of the payment screens. SSL is not free, so I understand why people don't automatically tack SSL on to a site. However, user information is just as important as credit card information. One problem that Basecamp faces in this regard is that each client gets their own subdomain on one of a handful of basecamp URLs. To implement SSL for this setup would require getting an SSL certificate for each subdomain (cost prohibitive and unneccessary) or making a sentral login page for each main domain and using a cookie to store session ID information. This is more costly in terms of development time, but the extra security will be greatly appreciated by users.

In conclusion, Basecamp provides amazing value for the price, and is an excellent addition to a freelance or small company workflow. Go give it a whirl.

Posted by at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)