Anagram: Subtle Alterations/ Intolerable Status

          

       I am going to, over a period of a few weeks do a cleanup on this blog.  I have a number of videos that need to be replaced, and some pictures that need to be changed up as well.  There’s are two simple reasons for this.  One is I’ve noticed that there are a bunch of music viddy’s I’ve [placed on this blog, that at the time worked but have been taken off for whatever reason.  Second was a question someone asked me in my comments, asked if a picture with the title “Open road”, perhaps the most often looked at pic anywhere on my blog, was from a stock photography site.  As i recall it was, but when i went to look for it, nothing.  So to be safe, I’m going through my image library and I’m deleting all the pics that I can’t identify as being used properly, and replacing them. 

    If you spot any viddys or pics that need work, drop me a line and let me know.

    

 No news or politics at this point.  I was going to do something on the White House correspondents dinner, but i did something that made it impossible to do that.  I missed it completely.  It was on C-span for several hours, and i missed the whole damn thing.  What was I doing? Well for one thing, I watched the Yankees get there asses whipped, AGAIN.  Man these guys suck.  But enough of that, it’s not like we didn’t see that coming. I also cleaned up some crap around the house with My wife, made dinner, fed cats, and watched a movie that I only break out once in a great while.  Shichinin no Samurai, AKA Seven Samurai, one of the best flicks ever made.  I really only fell in love with movies after i saw this for the first time, unless you count “Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure” and the like, and I think I was in my mid 20’s when I first saw it. 

    

          Hence the Seven Samurai Viddys and UKiyo-e Pics, which you will have noticed I have a predilection for anyway.

     That’s about it from this end.  Tomorrow is mothers day, so go see your mom and tell her you love her!

    Catch Ya Later!

Today’s Nuggets are by Robert A. Heinlein from the Book “Stranger in a Strange Land”, Via Wikiquote: I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time — and then shut up.

A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human ‘wisdom’…and the other twenty percent isn’t very important.

A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.

Remind me to write a popular article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

Anagram: Fervor Unearthed Talent/ The Traveler And Fortune

        

       I do this thing every once in a while, where I read Aesop’s Fables, just to read them. The simplicity of the tales mixed with the lessons imparted are, I think, beautiful, even if some lessons aren’t so easy to soak in, even in adulthood. Here’s one for you, titled the traveler and fortune.

A TRAVELER wearied from a long journey lay down, overcome with fatigue, on the very brink of a deep well. Just as he was about to fall into the water, Dame Fortune, it is said, appeared to him and waking him from his slumber thus addressed him: “Good Sir, pray wake up: for if you fall into the well, the blame will be thrown on me, and I shall get an ill name among mortals; for I find that men are sure to impute their calamities to me, however much by their own folly they have really brought them on themselves.”

Everyone is more or less master of his own fate.

       I went through about 18 of them before I settled on this one to start things off.

       It’s early in the day, and frankly I am still at the Drinking coffee/ playing games on the computer/ playing guitar portion of my day.  I am going over to my parents house later to celebrate my Father’s 65th birthday with my wife.  Should be fun.  Maybe it’ll be a pain in the ass explaining about losing my job, but I’m not worried about it overmuch.  What’s to explain? I pissed off the wrong person, and they canned me. Yes, i was defending my own self interests, but it was a little too strong a defense for too small a thing, and I paid for it.  Pretty sure I’ll here that a few dozen times.  Or they won’t say it, toss me a platitude, and simply think I’m an idiot.  Which in this case fits, but that’s besides the point.

     Man, I can be hard on myself, can’t i? 

    No worries.  I have chord exercises to do, coffee to drink and I have to get ready to scoot.  Enjoy an Allan Holdsworth video and a few quotes.

    

That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, By Michel De Montaigne, Via Wikiquote:  Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

 It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

Anagram: Alpha Inventions/The Invasion Plan

       This is gonna be a short blog on a short subject.  I have, for the last few months been using something called alpha inventions.  It is a nice way to get some cheap clicks on your blog, but there is for me, an issue or two. 

    I may be getting clicks, but no comments.  Which tells me that this thing is something of a sham.  I have gone to their site, which i will not link to, sorry, and put my blog into the stream, sometimes up to 20 times a day, especially lately, just to see what effect it has. It averages out to about 6 views per placement.  Not bad you say, nice way to get numbers.  But comments do not come, and it’s not just me.  I have noticed reading other blogs that are regulars on that site, from simonsez, to windfarms, to broken country and a number of others, that continually have no comments on them. I used to drop comments myself at first, but i stopped after i found it to be a pain in the ass to stop the blogs from going by, read the content, post comment and restart Alpha.  Damn thing took forever to restart.

     Perhaps its the way this damned thing is set up.  Blogs go by after about 10 seconds, which doesn’t give you a lot of time to get a handle on content.  When I was there I was busy waiting for the “My blog” area to clear so i could put in my blog info, so not much reading. I was also busy weeding through all the categories trying to figure out what category to place my blog in.  Not to mention there were really only a few good blogs out there on alpha.  Easier to go through random blogs on WordPress.  Better content, more control.

    Not a lot of time to put in to read any of the blogs that go by while you are trying to get your blog on.  Not to mention the thing has bugs.   It would, as soon as i went to put my blog in, crash.  Give an error message and give no choice but to close the window.  Not to mention that some blogs need quick time (or some other program) to run video(or something)  on them, and it would bog down the system, causing the window in question to freeze.

    As far as hits goes, it sounds to me like Alpha is set up like this. If you have a window with alpha running in it, regardless of whether you read the blog that shows up or not, that blog will get a hit.  If you like hits where no one actually looks at or reads your blog and cares what it says, That’s great.  I want readers, not just meaningless hits where there may not be a reader involved.

    No Thanks.  I’ll post my blog on twitter, Facebook and digg instead.  I may only get a few hits, but at least those hits will mean something.

    And to think I’ve been padding my numbers with junk for the last few months.  I wonder if there’s any way to have wordpress take all the Alpha clicks off of my stat sheet.

    An actual blog with politics, financial news, and maybe even some sports in a few. Later.

Anagram: Accept Hurt/Cut The Crap

     

      I don’t have much to say today, so I’m just going to throw out a few videos that have in past, caught my eye.  Enjoy!

    A Weird, yet cool video, from the Movie Dark Star.  The Ultimate smart bomb, and an existential conversation with said bomb. Curious and excellent stuff. 

     

      Remind me to watch this movie from front to back. 

    The next video I have queued up is from an Interview on the BBC of Carl Jung.  Here he is speaking of Death and perception.

    

   This is a segment of a much longer interview. I have yet to see the entire thing, but I have watched two segments of it on Youtube.  Truly deep and well worth watching. 

    The Next and last Viddy is the from a most excellent movie that came out on PBS in 1980 called “The Lathe of Heaven”.  It’s the story of a man who has dreams that change reality.  A truly excellent movie, which shows how he tries to cope with it, and the psychiatrist who tries to help him, and himself in the process.  Based on a novel by Ursula Le Guin

   

That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote:  What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you picked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.   Epicurus

Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received and, I fear, never will receive much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succours. But if Truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her.    John Locke

Anagram: Irresolute/Leisure Rot

       Please take the poll at the bottom of the page.  Thank you!

 

     I have been thinking a bit about this years resolutions.  Yes it is the 2nd already, and maybe you are supposed to have this done already if you are gonna do it, but I do things the right way, and if it takes a little longer then so be it.  I’m really not sure what resolution or resolutions i am going to make though. 

     I made several of them last year, and most of the ones that I did make last year backfired.  I resolved to save money and be more fiscally disciplined.  And while I was more disciplined, spent less money and was more intelligent in how I spent my money, i wasn’t able to save any money.   I also promised to run smarter longer and better than I had the year before and to stay a healthy runner all year long.  NOPE.   I was hurt or ill most of the year and ran maybe 20% of the total distance i had the year before.  I also said i would eat more healthily and intelligently.  Not really.  If I had I would not have gained the 20 pounds I gained last year when sitting on my arse not running.  And I never figured out that bug in guitar tracks pro that made recording immensely difficult, so the guitar recording thing never panned out.

          Needless to say if I do this I am going to do it right.  For YEARS i didn’t make any resolutions (except the annual “I resolve that i won’t make any resolutions” resolution) and it was because I was afraid this would happen.  That I would fail miserably.  I don’t like failing and try my damnedest not to. 

       With that in mind I want to set some realistic goals for myself, but ones that will push me past my comfort zones in my life. 

      There are a number of different ones I want to make, and I am thinking of doing the following.

     Resolving to Run more this year. That should hardly be difficult. I was hurt or ill or just plain lazy for 7 or 8 months last year.  The weight will come off if I just get back to it without getting hurt or getting ill.

      Resolving to eat less crap.

     Resolving to get a second job and make enough money to get a better apartment for me and my wife, large enough for Us, all our crap, our cats, and a Baby, should we be lucky enough to have one. 

       Resolving to play my guitar as much as possible,. and to record, if i can ever figure out how to get that damned Guitar Tracks pro 3 working without all the echo.  Maybe that’s just a phone call to Leo Laporte away from being done.

      Resolving to write more than just a blog this year.  Get somebody somewhere to publish something of mine.  No matter how small. 

      I need some help on this, so you tell me, which one sounds best? Most Feasible? Least Likely? Check out the poll, and drop me a comment!

    

      That’s It For me!  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Newspeak:  The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. — When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.   George Orwell

The Aim of an Argument … should not be victory, but progress.   Joseph Joubert