Cylindrian Rutabega -- "Grace" in RL - is playing the Central Perk in El Cerrito tonight (and I'll be hanging around with my guitar -- just in case :-)

She's there for three hours from 7-10 pm. She has a bunch of cool friends coming by and the Central Perk is my new favorite hang out i think. (Directions below photograph.)

This would also be a great time to come by and say hi in human form. I love my new robot and avatar friends, but it is still nice to see and hug the actual carbon-based unit corresponding to the identity of the human I love, during those rare special occasions when such meetings are possible :)

Cylindrian Rutabaga Live Tonight!


Directions: This place is really easy to get to:

- It's 1 block away from El Cerrito Plaza Bart, on the corner of Central Avenue and San Pablo.

- From Highway 80, coming North or South, it's the "Central Ave." Exit off the freeway. Then head east off the freeway for five minutes till you get to San Pablo Ave.

-From the North OR South, just take San Pablo Ave till it hits Central Ave. El Cerrito is in between Berkeley/Albany and Richmond. If you're coming north and you hit Guitar Center, you've gone too far.
Going south, hit the Pete's on the right and you've gone too far.

- Address: 10086 San Pablo, El Cerrito, 94530

-Phone: 866-417-5206

-See you tonight!

Once upon a time, I met a skateboarding, breakdancing Tin Woodsman named Gary Bukowski

Gary is a Wishfarmer.

The Wishfarmers are basically a group of Second Life Wizards.

Now I spend my days and nights on Wishfarmers Isle, often just enjoying the surroundings around me, and trying remember what it was I used to do in that other place "out there."

Our latest creation is Strengths Island, which you are about to hear a lot more about...

So I promised that I would start blogging more -- about everything, but in particular about the projects I've been working on these days, which are mainly in Second Life.

Well, I'll finally start making good on that promise today, and I'm really excited about keeping you more in the loop on what I'm working on, so you can help me make it better.

The Second Life learning curve is a brutal one, but I know that soon, if I keep at it 24-7, I'll eventually absorb all the necessary data to effectively mesh with the grid.

Until then, I'm taking as many notes as I can about all my experiences during this precious time, when I still feel like a "Noob" (a SL new user), so I can incorporate them into my writings and teachings accordingly.

It's been a while since I've really taken on the mission of mastering something new like this. In 1996, although I knew very little about computer programming at the time, I decided I wanted to learn everything about Web Standards -- especially HTML and XML. Thanks to several members of the W3C's staff and its original XML Working Group (who spent countless hours on the phone and writing emails to help me learn all the details), in just a few years, I was teaching XML for UC Berkeley Extension Online.

Then, in 2001, I decided to ramp up on Copyright Law in the hopes that it might somehow combine with my technical skills to perhaps play a role in helping to turn the copyright situation around. That time, although I wasn't even sure myself where my research would take me (and again, as a result of countless individuals taking me under their wing, to help me learn quickly), I found myself a co-founder of Creative Commons, working with Lawrence Lessig.

So, as you can see, these leaps into the void seem to pay off for me, generally, in both the short and long term. I consider this to be another such leap.

This latest endeavor also ties in nicely with the graduate and undergraduate level teaching on social networking and virtual worlds I've been doing for Prof. Michelle Wolf and Prof. Marie Drennan at SF State's Broadcast Electronic Communications Arts Department (BECA). I'm having a blast learning these new interactive education concepts and technologies from The Wishfarmers, and I am eagerly incorporating them into my own bevy of teaching knowledge and materials.

I guess by now it's pretty obvious that I truly believe virtual worlds have the potential to help shape and improve our lives. And not just the lives of those online, but also the those out in regular old "meatspace." It seems clear to me that virtual worlds are no more a fad or passing phase than the Internet itself.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself, and it's usually best to start at the beginning...

I'm going out to go vote right now...... and I've already said "go obama" and all that...

But in reality, I'm much more fixated on virtual reality right now, as I've been working with a group of people called "The Wishfarmers" that you're going to hear me start yappin' about... as is my way... when I get infatuated with a new project.

Come to my metaverse playpen, and click "play" on your video and audio controls.

It's pretty cool, courtesy of
Electric Sheep Artist Spot Draves.

Spot will be doing an exhibit in the
Node Zero Galleries in early March.

Teleport

Hey gang.

I've been promising a lot of people, including myself, that I'd start blogging again soon.

Well the time has come.

It's rather ironic that, right when my life's getting rather interesting -- at least it seems that way to me :-)
-- I suddenly become too busy to blog -- and for like two or three years, I guess.

Well, I'm back. And I'm here to stay, I hope.

There's too much going on. Too much to talk about. Too much to share. Too much to learn.

'nuff said!

Gobble gobble everybody! Have a great day!

Here's to a progressive genocide-free future!

This is just a catch up note from last weekend on how much fun it's getting to be playing parties and events and things again...

I guess I used to get nervous and couldn't allow myself to enjoy the moment as much as I can now, now that my groove has become a second nature.

Now I don't have to think about what I'm doing. I just go into some kind of trance or something...

But what a rush last weekend to notice that everybody in the building I was playing in was smiling and digging it. They had my music piped in throughout the building (it was kind of an office/client party type thing) -- and everyone was moving their heads back and forth...and smiling.

And they'd walk in and out of the room I was actually in and look over at me, and smile, and kinda say "thanks" and "hey what'ssup?" at the same time with a nod of their heads as they were walking through.

It was a peak experience for sure.

Ready for more of those!

link to info on upcoming shows

Hey my show went great! There were lots of people there and the geeky part of the evening I hoped would take place, did!

To my delight and surprise, John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Annie Harrison and Brian Zisk all stopped by.

There were EFF and Internet Archive folks there too! And lots of other cool friends I'll get around to talking about later.

Anyway huge success.

Next shows at the same place (Ireland's 32, SF) will be:

1) November 11 - my birthday party (b-day the 10th) 9pm - midnight+

2) November 30 - Friday night 7-9 (woot!)

I'll have video going up soon too!

Thanks again to Ron Taylor and my sister for making it all possible.

(I was off playing hookey at the Singularity Summit hanging out with Jamais Cascio during most of what was supposed to be our practice time on Saturday!) (Soooo much more on all that later!)

Wow. That was a long trip. Two weeks of good friends, incredible technology, and serious soul searching.

So good to be home now - but so much to do!

Lots to tell you about everything.

talk soon,

lisa

Me at the Second Life Salsa Party - They're line dancing!

Ok it just happened! Something I'd only dreamed of just a few weeks ago:

I was literally twittered in first life about a party going on in real time in second life. So I clicked on the slurl that was provided in the twitter post, and was teleported to the Salsa party.

(Well yeah, and I had to close SL first to get it to work, because that just seems to be the norm with slurls these days. The "secondlife://" links that go direct seem to work more often than the slurls, but still not often enough. And I find myself having to close SL for whatever doesn't otherwise take to take in the Mapping/teleport process. - That's why this goes under quick tips too.)

This kind of SL/web integration is what I've been waiting for for so many reasons...where do i begin? :-)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iladil/167/227/72

I'll put up a little movie I made of it tonight.

But right now, on a more personal note, I must work on some actual paying Second Life consulting work. The transition is complete..w00t!

That's why the a-z index is slow coming together...but it's coming. Don't you worry. It's coming :-)

Ok so some of you may have noticed that there's a Second Life A-Z Index kicking around, but I've been kind of hedging on its existence because it wasn't until late yesterday that I figured out how the indexes are going to best fit together.

So basically, I still need this external document, but it will still link, for the most part, back to blog posts *of indexes* of things. Like the one I just put up for "Places to Go Practice with Objects."

(Note just saying hi to the two or three people on the planet that this level of detail is of interest to.
You rule. The four of us should get together some time. Now back to the rest of the world :-)

Now where was I? Ahem. Yes, so anyway. I think I've figured it out and that's why I've been dinking around on announcing it. I've been sneaking links to it into old posts, so I don't forget to do that later. But it really didn't feel like anything worth announcing until it had some meat on its bones. (And I've got a freezer full!) (no offense to you veggies! I have um. tofu in the freezer too!)

So now I've had a nice sleep, where I remember having a nice dream about my new information architecture, and "how interesting...this *does* seem to fit in there" and, "why yes, I wondered about that too, and I just happen to have a little list of how to fix that right over he-are."

And then I awoke, because it was just a dream. And I, of course, won't know for a week or two if mine's even going to work. But it will be fun trying.

Me parachuting in Second Life

Alright, all my hard drives are completely filled up with video I've taken the time to prepare to blog, and never blogged. (DOH!)

Now I have to throw this stuff up...and quickly. Or forget about it for the time being. (eeek! noooo!)

So I'm gonna try to have a slinging hash video day - where I'm just throwing stuff up without much else.

I might end up going back later and filling stuff in. It will depend.

There's just been so much going on so quickly. I've been able to document it all accordingly to explain to you, but haven't had time to organize it and get it up. This last week, I did get it organized, just still haven't put it up. Now...it's a goin up!

more later... for now.... another song from June 10!

The first time I tried this ice cream, I kinda ate a half pint of it without stopping.

The cone always was the best part of an ice cream cone. How brilliant to break it up, cover it with chocolate, and throw it in with some caramel.

(Shhhh. No worries Steven, my love -- I won't jeopardize your marriage by sitting on your lap like that brazen hussy Jane Fonda did -- we can play footsie under the table during the interview while no one's watching :-)

I know I do this every year or so, but I've been going through a lot of incredible changes and realizations in my life lately, and one of them was *yet another* realization of the piece of me that is missing when I'm not blogging on a regular basis.

I've been getting caught up in a lot of crap lately that ultimately, in the larger scheme of things, doesn't matter, and forgetting the important things in life, like getting the word out to people about important issues that affect their lives -- or, hey, are just plain cool to watch and talk about.

So with that...I bring you the latest episode of
Hometown Baghdad -- in incredible video blog coming out of Iraq that the creators have been nice enough to remind me about every so often.

Here's a brief description:

It shows the aftermath of the US troops killing the innocent uncle of one of our subjects. In the video you can see a cheery, largely US-friendly family turn fully against America and the troops. It is chilling. And perhaps the most moving entry into our series.

Love you all and thanks for waiting around for me to start paying attention again!

Every time I post, the response is so gratifying. You've all become a very important part of my life, and it feels like an old friend I've been neglecting or something...

Let's see if I can keep it going this time. So much going on. So much to learn and share!

I've been to the Castro on Halloween several times, and even on years that I don't decide to go, it's important to me that I know it's there, happening. Just over there, being cultural, historical, and wonderful. And I always get to hear interesting and exciting anecdotes from my friends that make it.

Now we're told the party's over because, it would appear, of some gang incident that happened last year that didn't have anything to do with the festivities.

Merchants are being asked to close early. I hope they don't. They make a lot of money on Halloween. Why should they have to suffer too?

here's the article in the chronicle about it.

How can we save it guys? I dunno. Seems like we should go straight to Gavin Newsome about it. This is a good issue to see where he's at on over-reaching blanket bans on public congregation...

It's like telling the German's "hey, no Oktoberfest this year."

Here's the best quote of the article:

"People are still going to go to the Castro," said Ted Strawser, founder of the San Francisco Party Party, a group that opposes the move. "Without services, they're just going to pee in the street, and without entertainment, mischief will occur."

Updated to provide easy links to The San Francisco Party Party's website on this issue and its party platform statement.

Here's the full text of the article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/01/state/n211009D90.DTL

City officials shut down annual Castro Halloween bash

Friday, June 1, 2007

A city firefighter assists a shooting victim, who was amo... A shooting victim clutches his leg in the Castro district... Erika Gruendyke (left) and Lenora Hett get a free, hands-... Gluteus maximus: Many Castro Halloween revelers wore cost...

(06-01) 21:10 PDT San Francisco (AP) --

Halloween revelers in San Francisco will have to find a new place to haunt this year after city officials decided to shut down the Castro district's yearly street party.

The section of Market and Castro Streets usually blocked off for the costumed extravaganza will remain open to traffic. There will be no portable toilets provided and no stages erected for entertainment, officials said.

Merchants are being asked to close early, said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents the Castro, and some have already agreed to do so.

Moving the famous street party — a decades-long tradition in the gay enclave — has been an annual discussion since violence has increasingly defined the event. Last year a gunman shot nine people, and in 2002 four people were stabbed.

San Francisco officials tried to start an alternative party at the Civic Center from 1996-2001. But party-seekers went to the Castro anyway, and police had to patrol both events.

City officials have proposed moving the party to a parking lot at AT&T Park, and luring a top-name entertainer to help private promoters recoup the costs of the event.

"People are still going to go to the Castro," said Ted Strawser, founder of the San Francisco Party Party, a group that opposes the move. "Without services, they're just going to pee in the street, and without entertainment, mischief will occur."

I know they're a man-made superband and all, but hell, some of these songs kick some serious ass.

Here's
some weird version of Slither.... It will get the point across. (Actually you can't hear alot of the cool vocals in it, is some mostly-instrumental version at the end, sorry...)

OK WAIT Here's a BETTER VERSION.

Anyway it's like to good parts of GnR with Stone Pilot's sprinkled on top. I must admit they've got a few ringers :-)

I just love scott's lyrics ....

Anyway I'm up too late in the middle of the night again, but this time I can't blame Second Life, just First Life...

I have a ton of stuff about to go up at the Mefeedia blog...and lots of interesting news to tell you about this week!

Stay tuned :-)

Friend me in SL - I'm Haley Bailey - and I'll send you a Mefeedia T-shirt you can wear in Second Life. So I'm learning how to program and build objects and buildings in Second Life, and I can tell that I've found a new obsession for sure. As I mentioned above, my SL name is "Haley Bailey." I extend the usual offer to "friend me." I'm still hanging out for the most part at my friend Ryce Broderick's place. He's David Meade in meatspace -- Teleport Now - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gyeongju/106/166/73 I met a lot of other ethnographers and researchers at CHI 2007 last week. We're all going to share data! Yippie!

I don't understand the whole "wasting time in SL" thing though, because I am definitely learning technical and cultural skills while I'm in there.

There's so much culture and social intrigue in world. And it's not necessarily a substitution for meatspace.

I'm getting more into meatspace too! There's a new vlog on the way!

But my point is that it's really the instances of the virtual world's bleeding over into meatspace that fascinate the hell out of me. Why I decided to start writing up tutorials and tours of SL. (Tour index on the way.)

Update! This show has been moved to May 20th!

Hey I just landed another gig next weekend from 10am-2pm on SUNDAY, May 13th at the Kensington Farmer's Market.

Since I've just got oodles of time, I'll probably be going through my whole set. (25+songs)

I'm bringing my sister up from LA to keep things jamming in-between my sets.

We might even perform a few songs together. We definitely will since we get an extra week to prepare!

Anyway come by and say hi, if you're in the neighborhood.

If you can find your way up to the stores along the Arlington, you've found it.

If you take Bart, take the 7 bus from either Berkeley or North Berkeley Bart.

Update 5/7/07 - ok too hard to find a phone that meets everything? or just who cares?

Haven't heard from anyone :-)

Peeps!

My phone from 2003 is literally falling apart now and the time has come to move into the modern age for me.

My cell phone can't take pix or vids and can receive text messages, but can't even send them!

I need to know quickly which phones are best and why, so I can make a good decision.

I don't really want to spend a lot...but I'll spend what I have to to get something decent.

Now I want:
-video capabilities
-video upload capabilities (don't want the vids "trapped" in my phone)
-digi pic (always comes with vid anyway)
-pic upload
-texting...

anything else I need to include?

Thanks in advance for your usual great advice.

washington post on kurt vonnegut's death...

Vonnegut died on Wednesday after suffering brain injuries following a
fall weeks ago, said Donald Farber, Vonnegut's friend, lawyer, agent
and manager.

Here's a transcript of one of his last interviews, with David Brancaccio on PBS, NOW.

Lately, he considered himself a man without a country, as I think many of us have felt lately.

Consistenly now, for many decades, without meaning to, Kurt has spoken for a lot of Americans. (As he rattles on, weaving his way through his fantasy-driven storytelling journals...)

I miss him already.

Kurt Vonnegut dead at 84

By Matthew Robinson
Reuters
Thursday, April 12, 2007; 1:05 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark, satirical vision in
works including "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle" was shaped
by the horrors he witnessed during World War II, has died at age 84.

Vonnegut died on Wednesday after suffering brain injuries following a
fall weeks ago, said Donald Farber, Vonnegut's friend, lawyer, agent
and manager.

Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction, but his 14 novels
were classics of the American counterculture, resonating with the
U.S. antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam War era.

The author's Web site, updated after his death, displayed a simple
black-and-white image of a bird cage -- a symbolic element in his
writing -- empty with an open door. "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007,"
the page read.

"He was a beautiful man," Farber said. "I never hung up the phone
without having laughed, he always left me laughing, no matter what
the circumstances of the world."

"I last spoke to him the day he fell," Farber said. "He was in good
spirits. Every time he spoke with me no matter what the
circumstances in the world, he had a funny angle on it even if it
wasn't a funny thing."

Despite battles with severe depression, Vonnegut was known for his
witticisms.

"I've had a hell of a good time," Vonnegut once wrote. "I tell you,
we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you
any different."

Irwyn Applebaum, president of the Bantam Dell publishing division of
Random House, said, "By all counts he was one of the great writers of
the 20th Century and continued to be one of the great writers in the
21st Century."

Bantam Dell publishes some of the author's seminal works, including
"Breakfast of Champions," "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle,"
which made him a literary idol in the 1960s and 1970s, especially to
students.

A defining event in Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden,
Germany by Allied Forces in 1945, which he witnessed as a young
prisoner of war. The bombing killed tens of thousands of people,
mostly civilians.

Dresden was the basis for "Slaughterhouse-Five," published in 1969
against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural
and social upheaval.

"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre," Vonnegut wrote.

Vonnegut became a cult hero when the novel reached No. 1 on
bestseller lists and even more popular among many young Americans
when some schools and libraries banned the book for its sexual
content, rough language and depictions of violence.

The novel featured a signature Vonnegut phrase, "so it goes," which
became a catch phrase for Vietnam war opponents.

After the book was published, Vonnegut went into severe depression
and vowed never to write another novel. In 1984, he tried to take
his life with sleeping pills and alcohol. His mother had herself
committed suicide.

Vonnegut mixed fiction and autobiography in his work, which also
blended elements of science fiction and touched on authoritarianism
and the dehumanization of man by technology.

Fans said he invented a new literary type but some critics accused
him of recycling themes and characters.

"Cat's Cradle" was published in 1963 and initially sold only about
500 copies but it remains widely read today in high school English
classes.

Vonnegut's last book, published in 2005, was a collection of
biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country."

A fourth-generation German-American who was born in Indianapolis,
Vonnegut is survived by his second wife photographer Jill Krementz,
their daughter and his six other children. Two of his children are
published authors.

Mark Vonnegut, named after Mark Twain whom his father admired and
bore a striking resemblance to, wrote "The Eden Express: A Memoir of
Insanity" about his own descent and eventual recovery from mental
illness. He speculated the illness was partly hereditary.

Daughter Edith Vonnegut, an artist, wrote "Domestic Goddesses," which
takes issue with traditional art imagery in which women are shown as
weak and helpless.

A friend has recently inspired me to begin riding a bike again. I think I'm hooked.

Tonight will be my first Critical Mass.

6pm, Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco.

See you there!

Okay so I got a new macbook and I'm having a blast with the Photo Booth feature -- when I'm not getting weirded out about having a built-in camera in my laptop. (Yes I'm keeping a post-it note over the lens...)

And if we're not careful, 2007 will be the equivalent of a "same shit different day" kinda year for this country.

So let's make sure we do a couple important things:

We need to put pressure on the Dems to BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

We need to CODIFY NET NEUTRALITY INTO LAW.

And, if you can believe it, I think we all need to have MORE FUN,

and get MORE SLEEP.

Those are the equivalent of my new year's resolutions.

Thanks in advance for your help in accomplishing any of them :-)

p.s. "play more music" was in there too - but I already started that one in december...lots going up soon on that front soon, promise! :)

The details don't matter.

It's all good, and I wish Dabble nothing but success :-)

The important thing is to use lisa@lisarein.com from now on, for everything for me. Forever.

(And do drop me a line - this will be the first chance I've had to catch up with people in years!)

thanks!

lisa

Yeah this year was a mixed bag to say the least.

(I know it's not over for another month, but it always feels like the year's already over by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.)

Somehow, William S. Burroughs was able to make me feel a little better:

And, of course, I already got the best present (s) ever on Wednesday :-)

Hey I just got another present -- we just took control of the Senate!

Rummy and Mehlman are history too. wow.

I'll be on a panel October 17th at the Digimart Conference going on in Montreal October 16-18.

The panel I'm on is called
Your Space On My Tube - How to Engage with the Online World and Make Money, hosted by Scott Kirsner of the Cinematech Blog.

Scott's really bringing together a neat group of people, including the Eepybird guys, who did the Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments.

I'm really looking forward to it.

It will be great to be in Montreal again. I used to go to Montreal every year for the small, uber-geeky XML conference that used to go on there every year. I haven't gone to that conference since 2000 or so, and I had really missed Montreal.

Getting ready for the conference also forced me to write up an updated bio.

A couple of you have bugged me about this over the years, and I just didn't have time to think about it until recently. Sorry!

I'm finally going to go back and bring it all up to date. There's a lot going on, and I want you to know about it, so you can help me do better at everything. (Like always :-)

So a lot is going on lately. There's so much going on, that I don't know where to begin in explaining it. So I'll just start putting stuff up...

It's all good, in different ways. On the creative musical and video front, I've been preparing a lot over this last month that I'm ready to start rolling out over these next few weeks. On the Dabble front, we're ready to roll out some new features and are adding a ton of new content collections from all sorts of cool websites. On the Wide Hive Records front, we have a number of new releases, and I sing background vocals on three different tracks on one of them: Salsa Blanco.

On the political front, I finally made time for a political fundraiser last Friday night, to meet a number of Congressional Candidates in this upcoming election, and I was instantly rewarded when none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stopped by to say hi.

I'm quite a fan of Bobby's lately, as he has been one of the few people to speak out about the 2004 Election irregularities in two different Rolling Stone articles (Was the 2004 Election Stolen? and Will the 2006 Election Be Hacked?), and on numerous television programs.

It was great to be able to hand him a copy of Stealing America. (There are a several clips of him included in the film.)

It was also a big reminder of the unprecedented attack on the environment by the Bush Administration - another critical reason why we have remove this administration and all the professional crooks that are running it at our earliest opportunity.

My new focus on social networking applications quickly seduced me into creating a Flickr stream.

I'm mainly going to be uploading a backlog of pictures from the last few years -- lots of wide hive stuff, two trips to europe, SFSU peeps, etc. (And I'll try to keep things current too.)

Enjoy!

There's a Discovery shuttle launch today at 11:38 am PST. (for you west coast types)

Here's a link to the NASA TV site.

Here's another NASA TV link.

It should be broadcast live from there. Launching at 2:37pm EST.

Here's a
NY Times article on it.

There may be better ones. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it, cause I just found out.

Have a great day guys!

Hey I'm actually venturing out into the world again
(now that I've overcome my post post-education burnout :-)

I'm hoping to show everyone the new application I've been working on with Mary Hodder:
Dabble.

Dabble is a video search and remix community. You can use it to bookmark all the videos you like on all the different hosting sites and keep them organized all in one place.

We're still in a closed beta, but I'm allowed to invite my readers -- and anyone going to
Vloggercon. So send me an email and I'll hook you up.
(And then you can invite your friends.)

Email me your RSS feed too, so I can add it to our search engine.

Hope to see you this weekend. I'll be the tall girl with the long hair wearing a "dabbler" t-shirt.

see you there!

Hey guys. I'm trying to find:

1) Barbara Boxer making a statement on (i think) Jan 6, 2005, when the votes were being certified.

2) any footage of the December 8, 2004 hearings put on by John Conyers.

Thanks in advance if you have either of these.

Okay so it had been a long time since I'd been to a large concert. Like, I dunno, 5 years at least.

So I'm at the Paul McCartney concert at HP Pavillion last November 8, 2005. I always carry my Canon Exlim S3 in my pocket, and I had forgotten about it being in my pocket till we were 5 blocks away from the car and in line to get in.

"Well I just won't use it." I say to myself.

So then, right when Paul kicks in to "Drive My Car," I start feeling guilty that I didn't get a ticket for one of my favorite cousins, who recently played and sang the Beatles "I Will" in one of her recitals. I should take a little movie for her, I say to myself. Then the scientist in me kicked in. "I wonder what the sound would even be like on this thing? Would it just be distortion, or would its condensor microphone kick in and do its job?"

Then I started looking around. Wow. It seemed like everybody was using their phone or camera to take a little movie or picture. Oh. I get it. Things have sure changed, I thought to myself. I can't believe I was worried about having this thing in my pocket.

So I start taking a movie, and then my dad noticed what I was doing and bumped into me and kinda wrecked my shot. (You can see at the end of the clip.)

"Oh dad." I tell him. "It's not a hassle anymore."

"No, I don't think you're right." He said.

About 15 minutes later, a guy a few rows in front of us starts recording with his little photo/video camera. Sure enough, after a few minutes, an usher called him on it, and escorted the guy from his seat -- and confiscated his camera I think, because we saw him return to his seat later sans camera.

Ok. So things aren't so progressive.

Well, at least I got my little experiment file. (I'm a grad student experimenting with digital media and this movie constitutes research for my grad exam.)

I am continually amazed at the sound quality I am able to achieve with this fairly-reasonably priced tiny little camera. (casio exlim s3)

So anyway, here it is:
30 seconds of Drive My Car

Just FYI, often if you hit a bad link from my old archive.org account, like this:

http://ftp.archive.org/movies/lisarein/radio/kqed/crowdestimation.html

just replace "http://ftp.archive.org/movies/lisarein" with:

http://www.lisarein.com/videos/

So this:

http://ftp.archive.org/movies/lisarein/radio/kqed/crowdestimation.html

would become this:

http://www.lisarein.com/videos/radio/kqed/crowdestimation.html

but please do email me and let me know to fix the page itself
(as you always do)

Hey guys.

I know I've said this in the past, but I'm really going to try to stick with it this time and start blogging more regularly again. Lord knows there's a ton of stuff going on -- personally in my own life, and in the world at large -- that I mean to keep a record of, and this is the only way I know how to do it.

I think this last year, in 2005, I probably got more information from you than I ever gave out!

Thanks again for your continued interest and support. It really means a lot to me.

Ok...let's get this party started...

So this is the first day I've had in months to try to get organized, and man, oh man, is my stuff all over the place.

As a result, I'm going to be posting a bit of "backlog" today -- stuff from the last 6 months I never got around to linking to, even though I had already uploaded it. (Doh!)

Please let me know if any links don't work, etc.

thanks!

Well it's time for another family purchase, and, as always, I'm depending on you to help me make the right decision.

We need something with either firewire and rca outputs, if possible -- so they can hook it in through their VCR or download to a computer.

Good sound is important too -- of course :-)

thanks in advance for the usual great advice!

remember my email is:
lisa@lisarein.com

Hey guys - I could use your help regarding the best XML Editors and Parsers as of late. Right now, I need an XML Editor with an XSLT parser -- and preferably an XML Schema validator, built in.

I'm also interested in php modules for XSLT.

And for XSLT tutorials -- so I can ramp back up!

Thanks in advance for your usual great advice.

lisa

Update 9/27/05 - video can be found here.

Beware that it requires Quicktime 7.

Or dispell the myth that it exists.

thanks!!

Here's what I have on it:

Camera phone enters new creative territory

That record's been out for a year already, so I guess it's a new video for the old song? Help me out here...

NEW YORK--Billboard magazine has learned that rock band the Presidents of the United States of America shot its latest video using only mobile phone cameras. The video for the track "Some Postman," culled from the band's last studio album, "Love Everybody," was filmed in Seattle in just one day using a variety of Sony-Ericsson mobile video phones.

Director Grant Marshall of Film Headquarters said he had spent 18 months looking for a band willing to go along with the mobile-only film concept. The band currently is playing limited U.S. dates and is planning to tour in Australia in October.

Hi gang,

So I'm pulling together as many resources as I can on Music Distribution (traditional) and Digital Distribution (itunes, napster, bittorrent, free mp3s etc.).

Please email me at lisa@lisarein.com with any you can recommend.

I'm looking for background stuff as well as current/recent articles on trends.

more on this soon!

lisa

So one of the reasons why I've been so bad about blogging lately is that I'm quite obsessed with learning everything there is to know about running a record label -- in this case, the everluvin' Wide Hive Records.

It's part of my graduate research at SFSU, and my experience will also supplement a couple books I'm in the process of writing...

Anyhoo, our latest release is dissent's

Primal Deconstruction.

There are three different tracks you can check out in MP3 format.
It has been our experience during the course of my research that our downloads only increase as we increase the number of free mp3 tracks samples we give away on our website. (just to be clear, these are complete versions of these songs :)

Also, our number one and number two itunes downloads for the month of May 2005, were the two we've been giving away for free for almost a year. Interesting.

Anyway, more on all that later...just give it a listen for now, and tell me what cha think.

interested peeps: I'd be happy to send you an advance cd. Email me at lisa@widehive.com

Well, I didn't plan it that way, but July was a month off for me and my blog.

Well I'm back. I'll be blogging more regularly and podcasting in a week or so. I'm real excited to be back.

For the first time in my life, I had to rearrange things so I could spend more time in front of the computer!

I see all hell has broken loose in the mean time - with Bolton's confirmation as UN leader and Roberts up for a Supreme Court spot, so it's not like I don't have anything to talk about...

But I'm also getting back in to one of my previous missions of helping Americans understand how they are being cheated out of their side of "the copyright bargain." I've decided that we need to be more aggressive about this issue. Instead of just stopping the term from being increased, we need to start rolling it back to something reasonable, like 50 years or something.

I'll also be publishing some of my research papers from school that I've been working on this summer (the other reason I went A.W.O.L. last month.)

ok talk soon!

lisa

Hey I'm wondering if anyone knows how to generate special characters in Adobe Illustrator.

thanks!

Update 7/7/05 9:53 pm -- you guys are the greatest - by 1:51 am this morning - I had the answer to this. (Thanks Carl and Bill!):

é option-e followed by e
è option-` followed by e
ê option-i followed by e
ç option-c
á option-e followed by a

what would I do without cha? :-)

I'm producing a new weekly podcast for RU Sirius' new venture, Mondo Globo. The focus will be a combination of Copyright developments and Creative Commons licensed works.

I've been fishing around all the directories for good stuff, and I've found a few gems, but it's slow moving listening to every track one by one.

Then I remembered that I should ask you to send me links to CC-licensed stuff you already know is good.

Hand it over! :-)

Okay thanks,

lisa

Okay, so, like I said, I'm trying to be constructive about the fact that I'm going to be homebound for a few days, so I'm going to try to bang out this and last week's Daily Show clips for starters.

Can those with available mirror space please email me at lisa@lisarein.com so we can proceed?

I'm really sorry for being so swamped these last few months and flaking out on my Daily Show responsibilities. I'm trying to re-org my schedule so I have at least a few hours a week to get those suckers up.

Thanks for being patient. (Only a few of you have been politely nudging...which I don't mind at all :)

thanks!!

lisa

P.S. Will those of you that kindly donated mirror space in the past that I never linked to please re-connect with me so I can get that stuff up too? It amazes me how, what should be a quick thing to link to (once I've done the hard part - generating all the clips and uploading to the various servers) can get back burnered when things start picking up at the record label. I appreciate it so much that you would mirror clips for me, and I don't mean to be careless with your time and energy. Many apoly-logies for that.

Hi guys. I'm trying to help my dad out with a technical problem, and we just need to save jpg scans as pdf files, and I'm having horrible luck with the shareware I've tried to download so far. Any suggestions?

thanks!

I've sold Finetuning.com, so you should email me from now on to:

lisa@lisarein.com

(although all my mail will be forwarded for a while)

Also, if you want to access anything from my old finetuning.com website, you will always be able to get it at:

http://www.lisarein.com/finetuning/

thanks!

Hi guys. I'm just a bit caught up in another project transition period right now. I should be able to put things up this Sunday (or so).

Sorry for the hold up!

thanks guys

Well, it's that time again folks. Time for me to ask you guys about a couple things I'm looking for, so you can save me a bunch of time looking.

The first thing I'm looking for is some advice on a Family Tree program.

You know the kind, it lets you enter in a bunch of relatives and then generates a family tree map from the information.

Thanks in advance for the great advice :-)

lisa

lisarein@finetuning.com

Update 3/3/05 - Wow! Has a week gone by already! Tonight's the night guys. We'll be there from about 7pm on. Cubik and Origami are on from 8-11pm.

These guys are really cool. Their equipment consists of three turntables, a couple laptops, and even a bass and other instruments that they play live -- all blended together in their set.

Hope to see you there!

Hey gang! I'm having a party next Thursday night (not tonight, but next week - March 3, 2005).

Well actually,
Wide Hive Records is having a party, but I'm taking the opportunity to invite all my friends and readers since I haven't seen so many of you for so long.

Cubik and Origami is the latest offering from Wide Hive. Their first EP (vinyl only) is due out in May. Their second EP (vinyl only) and first CD will be out in June. Here's a sample that's not even up on the website yet.

We'll be there from the early evening on.

I've got about 50 test pressings available. Djs should Email me at lisa@widehive.com to let me know you're coming and would like a test pressing so I don't run out on ya.

See you there!

Hey, I just upgraded to a new Movable Type version, and I see I have email notification list capabilities now. So any of you who want to be on it, send me an email at lisarein@finetuning.com.

thanks,

lisa

Hey I got busy this week and kinda didn't check mail all week.

I'm just going through it now.

So if you wrote me a letter and I didn't respond. That's why. I'm catching up now.

I love to hear from you guys, so I didn't want you to think I wasn't writing back.

talk soon!

lisa

Update 1:55 pm: A reader suggested I turn my machine off for a minute, then restarted holding down the "C" key so it would try to boot from the disc, when it didn't find the system disc it was looking for, it asked me if I wanted to eject it.

Thanks again for being such great readers that always seem to be willing to help me out when I get stuck. What would I do without ya :-)

Hey guys, Tech support question here.

I put in a DVD and was trying to use utilities to burn an image and make a copy, when (all of a sudden...pow!) no seriously, it wasn't quite that exciting, but it is holding me up on a number of projects now: my dual G4 can't see the Superdrive.

How do I reinstall the drivers? I tried to eject it from the firmware and reboot holding down the mouse and all the stuff that "help" suggests. I googled till I was blue in the face, and now I ask for your wisdom to save the day.

Thanks in advance for emailing me at lisarein@finetuning.com with a possible solution.

lisa

So let's see how many of these suckers I can link to today.

They are all already available here, by date, in my archive (where you can always look for them in general). (The new ones are from late November and all of December.)

But, as you know, I like to include metadata with them in my posts here, so you can find them later when you're looking for a specific clip. (And so I can find them later when I'm looking for a specific clip.)

These all have mirrors too, but only for a month or so, so if it's after February 2005 and the mirrors don't work anymore, that's why.

Try to use the mirrors while they're there though, because I imagine bandwidth will get pretty scarce over the next few days as this stuff gets accessed all at once.

Thanks in advance for letting me know if any of this stuff isn't working properly, or if I have any bad links. I'll leave these clips on my hard drive for a couple days, to make sure everything made it. Then I gotta start clearing off my hard drives to get ready to install my home recording studio. (I got a Digi 001 and I'm quite excited about it!)

I also have a few tech issues that have been plaguing me that I'm going to need your help with.

Anyway, major catch up day today.

peace,

lisa

Hi gang.

I hope I'm not boring you guys with this latest onslaught of personal updates. I'm in the process of reorganizing my life and my focus as of late.

I've been getting ready for my last semester of graduate school, moving forward with a bunch of projects in my capacity as President of Operations at Wide Hive Records, moving forward with making my blog entries available as podcasts, setting up my home protools studio so I can start making my music available again, catching up on my Daily Show clips, rewriting my sadly outdated bio, and getting ready for a new year of fighting the horrible Shrub et al.

It is my hope that this will be the last year or two of the Shrub, not the first of four more years. I truly believe that there is enough criminal activity going on for something or other to turn into a watergate of sorts and enable us to impeach this group. (Or have enough stacked against them so they will step down before an impeachment occurs, although I don't seriously anticipate such an honorable move from such a dishonorable bunch.)

That said, I did want to let you know that I haven't forgotton about the video of Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and the other notables that stood up last week for every American's right to have their vote counted. I spent most of the weekend dubbing those clips and getting prepared to put them up. It's just that this "Gonzales the lunatic becoming Attorney General" thing is pretty important and I've decided to make trying to stop that from happening my first priority this week.

We need to do another letter writing campaign like we just pulled off for the Electoral Challenge. Gonzales is enemy of the people of the world #1. It's hard to imagine anyone worse than
John Ashcroft in the position of Attorney General of the US of A, but there it is: a man who recommends torture and offers a legal justification for doing so, potentially in charge of the criminal justice branch of our country. (Update 1/23/05 - write your senators asking them to oppose Gonzales.)

Yikes!

So there it is. Gotta run. Goodies to follow...

Hi gang.

I'm in the process of figuring out what actually got accomplished yesterday. I'll let you know whatever I can figure out as soon as I've done enough homework to be sure I'm correct. But here's a couple of things that happened, for starters:

1. History was made in that a challenge hasn't happened since 1877. So that's something.

2. Looks like the house and senate each spent two hours debating the issues surrounding the Ohio election and recount, and that there is supposed to be some kind of congressional investigation. So that's something.

3. The House Judiciary Democratic Staff has published a report saying some pretty strong things about Blackwell's involvement, including, but not limited to:

With regards to our factual finding, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.

I think this is the lead that needs following up on. (Via the congressional investigation and the other pending lawsuits.)

Like I said earlier -- I will publish my results in a similiar fashion to the last report for easy reference, once the facts manifest themselves.

Just wanted to touch base. That and many Daily Show clips on the way.

thanks!

This is from the December 30, 2004 program of ABC's World News Tonight.

Sorry for the hold up, better late than never :-)

Boingboing's Xeni Jardin is in this piece too.

Thanks to the Pete for his help with this.

Bloggers As Person Of The Year On ABC World News Tonight (5 MB)

Update 1/6/05 - Here's the video clip:

Bloggers As Person Of The Year On ABC World News Tonight (5 MB)

Hey did anyone record last night's ABC World News Tonight? I did, but the recording's kinda screwy. (My new cable really sucks here in the East Bay.)

I'll put it up later anyway, but just in case there's already a better version floating around, please let me know!

It's nice to finally get a little credit from the "traditional" press.

The story had an 11-year-old girl who they're calling "the world's youngest video blogger." I love it.

Happy New Year everybody!

I've been using T r u t h o u t a lot lately, and I just remembered to send them some cash.

I'm sure they need it, because they are a really small organization that runs on the fumes of hope that I run on most of the time. The hope that somehow, someway, we're going to fix our broken country and restore some of the ideals that it was founded on.

People write me all the time and ask if they can send me money. There are a lot of reasons why I can't accept cash from anyone, and even more reasons why I can't explain why right now. ("It's a long explanation and I'm too swamped to take the time" is the main reason.)

So if you get the urge to send me money, send it to them instead.

William Rivers Pitt, Marc Ash, and the other folks over there are doing a lot of my work for me right now by sending me important updates right to my mailbox.

Life would kind of be over for me right now if they weren't around, so, if you can afford it right now, let's all keep them alive.

thanks!

I just asked my readers-at-large what the best MP3 Player was, and there was only one other suggestion -- otherwise all email and comments said the same thing: IPOD wins.

So if you're making that last minute gift decision -- make the right one.

Thanks a lot guys. You're the best.

Peace,

lisa

I need to find out what the best MP3 player is out there, and fast :-)

I wanna say the IPOD, but not there's a Pocket DJ or something from Dell that someone told me is comperable (and can actually play more formats than the IPOD).

I have a feeling you guys can set me straight in an afternoon, so I thought I'd ask you.

lisarein@finetuning.com is my email to send suggestions to.

Thanks!

lisa

Hey sorry I haven't been posting much this week. You can get the Daily Show from November 10th here in the mean time, but I've been busy with our latest Wide Hive release, Dissent's
Swap Meet Seers.

There are 3 different songs available in their entirety
on the website.

Check it out! I'd love to know what you think.

I'll be back getting more stuff up tomorrow, or the weekend.

I've decided the world can live without me for a day. See you guys Wednesday night.

peace!

lisa

I decided that this wasn't a good time to take off for a couple days, birthday or no.

So I'll be right here keeping track of the post-election and shrub war developments going on.

Just a heads up.

Karl Rove is on Meet The Press right now, and I'll have it up around noon today.

I gotta say that it's rather frustrating watching all of these people talk about the Election as if all of these miscount reports didn't exist.

Obama, Illinois' new Democratic Senator, just said that he "shared a million votes with President Bush." There's no way that a million Democrats in Illinois voted for Bush.

We're now finding out that this is exactly what we're supposed to believe: that millions of Democrats took it upon themselves to vote for Bush. This concept is laughable to say the least. (Here's an article that deals with this specifically.)

I just wanted to drop you guys a note and say "no worries." This strange episode of the Twilight Zone will continue, but it may just have a happy ending, eventually. There seem to be a lot of folks paying attention to the facts now, and the hard math is on our side.

The question is: what will the Democrats do when it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the election was faulty. A recount is in order, to say the least, but I don't hear anybody asking for one.

But don't dispair. We're in this together guys. Thanks for sending me all the great links. I'm committed to archiving them here.

It's my birthday on the 10th., and I'm taking a few days off to rest up a bit. So if you don't hear back from me, that's why. But I'll catch up on everything when I get back, and I'm here all day today, so now's a good time to send anything over. I cancelled my trip. I'll be right here :-)

Okay, so I'm having trouble posting because of all the traffic on the server -- which is GOOD, I suppose, except that it's making it hard for me to post.

(Don't worry! The video should play back fine, we bought a larger pipe this week just for the occasion.)

So I'm just going to fight to get this post up for a while, with links to the directories of everything. And then I'll try to get the posts up one by one later today.

Frontline: Rumsfeld's War
(How Rumsfeld used the poor tactics that screwed up the military in Vietnam to screw up the military in Iraq. Really, except for, of course, the innocent people of Iraq who were killed/tortured by some of our troops, the rest of our troops are in the process of being screwed over worse than anybody right now.)

Frontline: The Choice 2004
(This chronicles the lives of Kerry and the Shrub from Yale on.)

Patrick Miller On 60 Minutes
The real hero of the Jessica Lynch story, and how the Shrub Administration actually covered up his heroism in order to peddle their false story about Jessica Lynch's rescue.

Well, after watching Sunday's "Meet the Press," it's becoming obvious what the Repub's angle is going to be this time around.

I'm watching the head of the Republican party talk about how there are too many people registered now. More registered voters than they are people eligible to vote.
Bet you 100 bucks that they are going to contest the election if Kerry wins on these grounds. He's talking about people like "Mary Poppins" registered to vote. Wonder who signed her up? Hmmm.

The Repubs are also talking about Provisional Ballots as if they were something questionable. The Provisional Ballot is a voter's only line of defense when their name isn't on the roster when they show up to vote. Lack of provisional ballots is one of the things that went terribly wrong in Florida in 2000. They are a good thing, not a bad thing. They can be counted (and re-counted) by hand.

It's obvious that this election ain't gonna be over when it's over folks. I'll be here at my post trying to bring as many pertinent clips as I can straight to you.

Well I'm busy preparing the Bill Moyers Now episode on the 911 Commission Report. After that, I've got to put up the Frontline I saw last night on "Rumsfeld's War." After that, I'll put up the Frontline on Bush/Kerry that I blogged about the other night.

Lots to do. Lots to do. Hope any of this will help.

For those of you who were wondering, (I assume the rest of you just knew I was confused and would figure it out), I did realize that the electorate votes do go with the popular vote on a state-by-state basis -- except for 1 or maybe 2 states where it's proportional.

So that means I just have to wait and see what happens in two weeks. Whew.

I've got the TIVO working, and I also just bought a Panasonic DMR-E858 DVD recorder that will allow me two burn DVDs, and, if necessary, when combined with my TIVO and a cable splitter, record two channels simultaneously. Hee haw!

Many of you are sending me clips now to archive, and I'll be getting those up as fast as I can. Weekends are better for that stuff now, as I am Wide Hiving and schooling during the week most of the time.

peace,

lisa

My Dad has asked me to help him pick out an HDTV this afternoon.

Only problem is, I don't know diddly about HDTV.

Can you guys help me out here? What do I want to look out for?

We're leaving this afternoon around 2pm, CA time.
(So if you read this after then, s'ok.)

Thanks in advance!

Lisa
lisarein@finetuning.com