The planet Trill. Content goes here. -B
and it will be unwrapped soon...
IF, that is, I don't find myself in a mental hospital by the end of the day. I'm holding out optimism that Bitscape will arrive at Hacking Society tonight, Sept 2, in Tobias at around 1900 (maybe a little after) with all his mental facilities fully in tact.
Copy of what I posted to yanthor.net a little earlier:
My latest update - Bitscape - 12:01 02 Sep 2004
I introduced a terribly nasty race condition into my own database by trying to put things in out of order and publish a movielog after the rambling which PROceeded it had already been put up. Clear as mud, huh?
In any case, when I thought I had finally untangled the mess my divergent primary keys had created, my pages started coming up with different mime types in the http headers. I don't know why.
Anyway, the raw dumps and tarballs have been saved, and are being moved over to Ivanova now. Since Jaeger has info about Scott's old dns registry reseller (as opposed to the new one he was hiring me to code the API for), I'll let him handle the details of transferring dns authority. It might take a while, especially since he has one of these "real job things".
Meanwhile, my dad is trying to vacuum, which doesn't hurt my concentration as much as the venomous RepubliNazi Propaganda that was blasting out of every radio in his apartment when I arrived this morning. I don't mind listening to what the enemy has to say, but having it blasted at me when I'm trying to think does not help me fix his firewall, or the viruses on his Windows computer.
I have to get out of here, and walk in the sunshine for a while right now. Be coming back online later. Peace.
While attempting to play with my dvd ripping skills, I thought I'd take a trial run. But the results were more bizarre than I expected. I encountered multiple blocks of DRM (some simply by making things so obscure that it would take a rocket scientiest to figure out what was going on). But I kept clicking, running commands, and persisting. I apologize if this one doesn't fit the taste of most of my readers. But when I saw Sarah Michelle Gellar and Britney on the same stage (or at least what appeared to be), I had to see what I could do.
Here's the really wierd part though: Though I intentionally degraded the video somewhat, I thought I had left the audio unchanged after the first conversion. But when the final avi came out, and I watched it, I swear, the vocal levels of the lead singer ended up much louder than they had been when I first tried watching the same footage on dvd. A bizarre side effect of transcoding? Can't tell. Maybe they hid multiple takes/versions or alternate mixes in just to throw us off. A double layer dvd would have the capacity, would it not?
And how did they get all the cmompanies involved to agree to the release of this footage? My theory: Somebody in the art department decided to just stop talking to the lawyers, and give the fans a show. So... It's almost done uploading. If I'm going to do this more often, I should probably....
Wait, I don't need to hog Jaeger's bandwidth. I can temporarily put it up on Hydrogen. Just for a little while. It can end up on p2p later, if anyone cares to put it there. But until you have sat through the footage I am spreading now, no one had better dare tell me she is a talentless hack. She fucking sung and danced her heart out on that stage (rehearsal?), and appeared exhausted at the end.
Saturday Night Live Archives. Still ever so slowly uploading to hydrogen. (Also here [Update: no longer], but only for a short while. It will remove itself from public web access on Ivanova in 2 hours, and into /home/bitscape. This so I don't hog Jaeger's bandwidth into the evening.) This is the one I meant for everyone to watch.
There was another good clit ( s/t/p/ ) that I also accidentally ended up ripping. But I'm wasting enough bandwidth already. --B (9/2/2004 14:06:30)
:: 14:16 I'm wrong. It WAS the same audio. But there are definitely some interesting games going on with the acoustics. She starts the song out flawlessly lip-syncing, the soundtrack intentionally skips the word "it" (IT might seem like a crush) while she continues to mouth, and then throughout the song, the mixer gradually brings her vocal levels up, thus making the breathy panting an actual live product, and the final line comes directly from the mic set attached to her headphones. Astounding.
:: 14:22 Conclusion: Just like in Mulholland Drive, you cannot trust what you hear, no matter how genuine or fake it may sound. The soundtrack can always fool you.
:: 14:24 Done uploading to hydrogen. Taking local link down, but leaving file in place until around 16:00 so anyone who started a download can get the rest, hopefully..
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This morning, before bitscape.org went into conniptions and I decided it was time to jump ahead with the move, I wrote 2 pieces of content in the early morning. Here they are, taken directly from an SQL dump and made pretty here. For posterity's sake.
Roughly in the order they were typed (with later modifications to the top of the movielog entry to remind myself of things). The first is a movielog entry. The second one is a rambling. I'll let them speak for themselves.
Movielog: Tales of the Kama Sutra: The Perfumed Garden
[Edited to add: I typed this sometime between 7:30 and 8:00am this morning, immediately after watching the movie. It was written BEFORE my last rambling, which revised my theory regarding the girl who broke my heart at the ASR "AmeriKKKan Terrorista" 2004 wilderness training camp in Del Norte. Now I'm getting it into the database. A second attempt. [To self: please remember to reverse sync the last rambling back to argo later.]]
"We will be together. If not in this life, then in another."
I watched it again. The same film, roughly 24 hours later. This time, I remained conscious throughout, and began to understand what has been happening to me, and why. Spoilers follow.
Historically, in the western world, the only time the Powers That Be have allowed propaganda such as this to be distributed to the masses is when a nation is about to head into a long, ugly, bloody war. With that out of the way, let's move on.
A cheap B-film probably made on a shoestring budget, it is designed to elicit in anyone who views it a deep sense of compassion, empathy, and a horniness so urgent that I guarantee anyone who watches it will be fucking like bunnies in the field until the President calls their husbands and offspring off to fight!
Getting into the content of the film itself: I took a few notes.
A crash course summary that brings the principles of the ancient Kama Sutra up to speed with the modern world, it is so fast paced that most will probably see it only as a B-grade soft core porn flick, and they would probably be right. But that's not what I see.
I'll begin by talking about the character Lisa (played by actress Amy Lindsay). Naturally, during the initial stages of the piece, I was drawn most to her erotic beauty, and ability to seduce. Her role, roughly translated, is that of the corporate cortisan (i.e. "fashion designer"). Every bit of my sorrow was directed at her character, up until the appearance of the ancient statue come to life (catch the clues?).
The alluring statue raised from the dead of past lives told people her name was "Lani", but her original name, revealed in flashbacks, was Lachani. Her character was played by actress Rajeshwani Sachdev. (This according to the end credits, if I wrote it all down correctly).
As her backstory was revealed, and everything foreshadowed heartbreak as the film approached the end, I scribbled a bunch of brief sentences. I'll see if I can read some them, and thus not get lost on tangents. My transcribed notes follow:
Lani (Lachani) - ancient statue come to life. Was forced into service against her well. More powerful than any other cortezan (sic?) in the palace. Invoked the jealous ire of the head cortezan, which is why she was forced to serve to repay her debt. Was sent to see the king. Broke her vow.
I could not help but admire, love, and respect her. The end was a heartbreaking tear-jerker.
Lisa -- Gave everything she had her entire life, and never received satisfaction. I feared the ending would be tragic for her. But it was not, because ultimately, her love paid off. They remember. Finally. A broken heart rewarded. She got a happy ending.
Hey, I WARNED that there would be spoilers, didn't I?
This is all I can write at this moment. So I'll transcribe the other quote I took down, at the very very end.
"I have waited lifetimes for you. I'll wait yet another."
Let the healing tears flow.
[EDITING TO ADD: Don't visit there. It's just a bunch of ads and popups. Might have IE trojans too.] Oh yeah, and a url at the end of the film, which I mean to visit when I get back to Argo's terminal. www.perfumedgarden.com. I'm not sure what's there, but I'd like to see what their website looks like...
IMDB URL: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0169122/ (The year for it on imdb seems to keep changing. It says 2000 right now.)
Random Rambling: Quick revision of theory
Start: 2004-09-02 08:38:01-06
End: 2004-09-02 08:47:32.37511-06
I take back everything I said 24 hours ago about the girl whose name began with L, who I met briefly at the ASR2004 camping trip. I also apologize for my quick jumping to conclusions.
L___ was not a whore in any way, shape, or form. It was only the overwhelming size of my ego which allowed me to believe such a story of my own concocting.
Here's one that fits the facts much more easily. The simplest explanation, in keeping with Ockam's Razor (sic?).
Before I ever handed her the note, L was already in love. In fact, she had brought her partner to the event, and done so under the radar of every male who was there. She carefully and politely evaded intimate contact with all the men. She sensed that I was strongly attracted to her, but tried to be polite in pushing me away.
Her short, stocky, and possibly transgendered friend with whom she had traveled was the person she cared about the most. They went back to their tent at about the same time -- but did so while nobody else including me -- was looking. I stayed up all night thinking about how I would pass the note to her.
In the morning, she appeared satisfied and sleepy. (In rhetrospect, as if she had already had sex; thus my premature jumping to conclusions.)
She didn't want to hurt me, because she had seen the pain in my eyes. But I made it impossible for her not to.
Here is my new theory, which works much better: L*** is either already a lesbian, or is sitting on the fence. Regardless of what you label it, she is already commited to one partner.
I believe she did read my note, and did exactly what I had asked in it. She wasn't interested, so she left me alone. (Which is what I had said I wanted.)
I apologize deeply for every slander I have written about her and others of her type. I hope she fares well on the road.