Posts are missing yes.While the legal process moves forward nothing relating to the joy that was the end of June will be posted
In the meantime…
Small otter fluff
Filed under General
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Marian Call. House concert in Chandler 23 Jun 2010.
Filed under Arizona, Culture-internet, Marian Call
Here’s a hint.
I am so late doing this I’m practically ashamed. E.G, The house only holds about 40 people and , well you think hell 40 people that’s easy Probably so easy that telling everyone would lead to a lot of disappointed folks which I’m still aiming for:)
Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell & Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz & Erin McKeown. Call’s sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types — computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide. Marian is currently touring all 50 states and hopes to play for you soon — find more information at http://mariancall.com.
If you like what you hear then how about hearing it live, like two days from now?
When we originally requested a house concert it seemed plausible. laughably in hindsight, that we could accommodate this at our house. Thankfully friend and fellow fan Mandi stepped in to save the day and for this Phoenix and surrounding areas all you have to do is leave your house on a Wednesday night and come out for live music.
RSVP to
mandi AT neuroticbynature.com
For details on where to go, what to bring and how much fun you are going to have.
Decade in the Desert: A new user’s guide to haltse
Filed under Anarchy from the UK, Arizona
Having just made contact again with the folks back home in the UK as they come on line with Facebook et all and find that I am still alive, still haven’t changed my name to , well they don’t even know me as, haltse it’s been obvious that I needed an update post on the things that are interesting in the USA that haven’t made it over to the UK. There are people that are into Zombies that actually don’t know who Jonathan Coulton is, I know, mind blown. 
So here’s a quick list of what I’ve been up to since leaving Scotland back in 1997.
Moved to GA 70 mile NW of Atlanta worked for 2 seasons at tax software co helping cheap people achieve things with hardware that was pushing obsolescence into itself , seriously I edited modem strings, printer files and more CLI work than ever should be attempted with members of the public.
After GA moved to CA on the eve of the millennium. Took 4 days to move people in the UK , sorry it’s not a long way down to the chip chop,, that’s peanuts to America:)
Yep everyone has been there and I don’t mean on vacation. Not to give it away but Californication was a nice couple of years working for a dot com that turned b2c b2b and b2b2c so quickly that it had to fail. Actually it didn’t fail , people were paid, had jobs for a couple of years and had a lot of fun with nice people while doing it.
Became permanent resident,Marriage failed, company above was bought by AOL and I moved to Arizona where I managed to lose the friend I came here to be near ( I’m good at this it’s a motif for my life apparently )
Started working for GoDaddy.com , haven’t stopped working for them. Privately owned , which I like, ok I only like it if I like the owner which in this case is a good match. There’s little chance I could have achieved as much in the UK than I have here because ,well to be blunt it’s not a wait till Friday to get drunk and take Monday off kinda culture.
Met my wifelette, Erin, spawned a Dobhran, he’ll be five in September. we’ll be 7 or 8 cos I never get the anniversary right.
All the links to my photo sites, blogs and the like can be found through the sidebar but just in case.
http://flickr.com/photos/haltse
Besides I’m haltse everywhere that matters
That’s the precis. And just about all of it is contained somewhere in the posts to this blog.
New likes.
Ice Hockey. I’ve finally found a team sport that I appreciate. I still like watching tennis ( mainly the women’s:) ) but to coordinate a pass of a small rubber disk,while travelling backward on a slippery surface while others are trying to hit you + doing that for 80 games a season: Anyone visiting during the season will be attending a game.
Watches. Watches that cost more than my first few cars:) They were cheap cars. Aviator style watches do it for me oh yes:)
Hawaii ( only been once, not enough)
Really good food. Thai Food, Mediterranean food, slow food and I’ve upped my heat capacity to stupid levels. www.extremefoods.com is my best friend:) How bad is it? Well I collect hot sauces now.
Really good cooking ( I do some things well, Erin does way more things well but )
Ghost in the Shell. I want me some cyberisation:)
Lego games on the xbox..
Media, way too much. some highlights http://www.mariancall.com a singer/songwriter that’s so good that I donated monthly to help pay for the recording of the new album.
http://www.richardcheese.com seen him so many times live and it’s never gotten old his band kicks ass too. , www.mynameischance.com ,www.freezepop.com , http://www.amandapalmer.net/ white stripes and I started really liking the Proclaimers and some weird www.slimcessnasautoclub.com
Books.
R K Morgan : Sci-fi Altered carbon especially.
Robert Rankin.
Grant Morrison ( Invisibles, The Filth and countless DC reinventions. )
Orson Scott Card’s Ender series.
Heinlein, yeah I was late to that party but am now in attendance:)
So much non-fiction that it hurts. Omnivore’s dilemma was good and am currently reading Life, Inc.
Still Likes.
motorbikes,firearms , tori, NIN, red headed women Fish, Dick Dale , black pudding , cider and
Things that are meh:)
No more buffets, fast food is the last choice , always. TV stopped watching networks and use that time to xbox.
More in a bit:)
Otter sans hotsauce
Filed under General
Today’s otter shot of the day is a tasteful reminder that the central question of existence is not who am I? or What am I? but where shall we have lunch.
Raising hell in Arizona.
Filed under Demon Haunted World, You have nothing to fear, rants, state gone wild
While I’m not a fan of a particular side be they tea partier, coffee clubber or orchata orgiest I am a fan of removing emotional bullshit from arguments relating to Arizona’s new immigration law that makes it illegal to er be illegal.
There seems to be a problem requiring people to adhere to the very thing that we immigrants have knowingly signed up for. Not a fan of it but it’s the price of admission I pay to play here. It’s a nice conceit to think that you can wander around sans state or federal ID but seemingly the very thing I’ve had to live with doing for nearly a decade now, carry my card and have it available for inspection, is problematic because the police will somehow act like jerks in a way that’s different from their usual M.O:) The funny part is that people are crying to the Fed Gov to protect them from the near word for word rendition a federal law that which they find outlandish, racist and fascist to jackboot when AZ restated it.
“
“Permanent Resident Card
The Permanent Resident Card, Form I-551, is issued to all Permanent Residents as evidence of alien registration and their permanent status in the US. The card must be in your possession at all times. This requirement means that you are not only required to have a currently valid Form I-551 at all times, but also that you must carry your currently valid Form I-551 on your person at all times.”
The part of the law that is egregious I will get into later .
Slow-mo Dobh meets Casio’s time expansion machine
Filed under Culture-internet, Dobhran, video, vlogs
Trying an embed from a video service I work on.
There’s no sound , feel free to whistle along.
Google may be the future of mobile search but can’t find it’s ass with both hands in the present.
Filed under Uncategorized
The other day I was searching for the opening hours of a local restaurant. After running to find a phone-booth to covertly speak a request into the iPhone (sardellas) that I was looking for which was about a mile away from my current location.
Google’s mobile iPhone app gave me a restaurant in Rhode Island a couple of thousand miles away as my number one and two result.
What the hell is the use in that? A geo-enabled device making a request from a mobile app gets results for places that are hours away by jet!
Yes it’s rather cool that I can talk into my phone, have it get the right phrase, and see results within a few seconds but it would be nice if it could be done with more attention paid to the context of the search.
Main stream tedia bashing post. Pit bull attacks kid internet to blame.
Filed under Media mayhem, media, rants
It would be nice if every crime, malady or take this story from what I consider the bottom tier of reporting US Local reporting at the city level.This story is on a national feed based solely on the mechanism that allowed people to purchase the dog that went on a biting spree.
The real story is that had this been sold from a classified in the newspaper’s owned by the TV station it would have gone unheralded. Just about everything you see reported against CL is from the people that didn’t just have their lunch stolen but turned up at the grocery store to find a black smoking hole.
CL has it’s faults but were they are indistinguishable from say the same advert on a supermarket notice board or, and I know this would be a rare one ,from a paid classified ad in a newspaper it shouldn’t be the headline of the story.
Mm, Pandora is a bit insensitive to this case.
Filed under Uncategorized
Now there’s a single minded dedication to ensuring that you get only the “real” Amanda Fucking Palmer, oh wait they don’t return any results for that. May as well ask which Bjork, which Tori Amos and which Jean Michel Jarre which I kid you not occurs. Anyway that’s my UI annoyance for today.
otter of the day.
Filed under General
It’s interesting but we seem to have to rediscover that exchanging value is a valid business model.
Filed under General
From the 500 hats blog comes a nice summation that matches many of my feelings with regards to how programs are pitched, created and go to 2 cups (He has a much better line but I’ll not steal it totally out of context.) He brings up login friction, e.g., how easy it is to actually use the service and creating infrequent use apps can cause problems by itself.
So listen up I’ll share a little secret with you — there is one very simple way to avoid forgotten passwords.Basically, it’s this:
Make a Frequent-Use Product.
That’s it, you say?Yeah, that’s it Sherlock.Make a brain-dead simple, frequent-use product.If users login a lot, then they don’t forget their passwords
While my favourite inner-Austrian applauds lines such as
Newsflash folks: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE… It wants to GET PAID on Fucking Friday, just like everybody else on the damn planet.
It’s kind of sad that this has to be restated that making a program that needs to be useful is another.
Do not like. The crappy ,Damascan, conversion rate on samaritan clicking
Filed under General
Point of this.
To let you know how much I dislike the affinity posts, re-posts, tweets and retweets about serious issues that run the risk of causing the appearance that something is actually being done.
Problem 1
I wanted to know what my friends were up to, their thoughts, accomplishments joys and sadness. Instead it’s a pile of app-generated crap intermixed with memes copied from others that often contradict how that person sees themselves.Challenging them has usually resulted in a defensive “I’m just sharing it” and usually without a review of the original material ergo they really aren’t in any way responsible for the material.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
Oscar Wilde’s above quote fits into a tweet by the way. Sad thing is I follow you because I am interested in what YOU have to say and not you by Proxy.
Problem 2
The Facebook child abuse cause has over 2 million members and has raised around $1600 dollars or eight hundredths of a cent per member.You’ll find the same disparity reflected over and over again within groups for domestic-violence,anti-torture, land mines and just about any other topic of human misery you care; sorry you –pretend- to care,about matters.
The actions don’t match up with the words. It may give someone the idea that it’s under control, I mean 2 million people wow, that’s an achievement that’s worth well it’s worth about $1600. Rather trivializes whatever the cause de jour is nes’t pas?
