Binary World 2.0 is back!
Through some kind of miracle, my server works again. Continue to read my blogs at:


http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/

The Artform of the Photograph Elevated
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: photography
Recently I've been reading a book on photography. Unlike my usual photography reading, this isn't a book on how to TAKE or MAKE pictures, it's just a book on the work of the greatest photographers of the 20th Century. They've inspired me in a way that's nearly impossible for me to describe. But I've been presented with all sorts of techniques and concepts that I am now fiddling with. My photography has progressed from the time that I was a little child simply photographing the events of my childhood to taking pictures for aesthetic reasons to attempting to create art. I don't know how inspirational this phase will be in my photography, but I'm excited by all the new ideas bubbling inside of me. It's as though the book was the key to unlock something inside of me which has been waiting to be expressed. Something always called to me from Dali, for example, which I have been expressing recently in my art. Here are some examples:






Here's another I was inspired to do from the work of an artist whose name I cannot recall right now:

Civ 4 will be out soon!
Linux Uptime: 17 days, 2:16
Time in Civ3: 3 hours 41 min 45 seconds
Score in Civ3: Eric X the Pathetic

I have been playing the Civilization franchise ever since the first Dos version. At first I didn't like it, but as I learned the complexity in the game, I began to like it more and more. In Civ1 and 2 my brothers and I used to want to play together so we would each take charge as governors of certain cities and all settlers that came out of those cities. Civ2 also improved the graphics and made the gameplay even more realistic.

With Civ3 we could finally play together as different Civs. The game was also made a bit harder as evidenced by the fact that I could no longer make it into the space race by 1850 as I could in Civ2. However, I loved it even more and, as I was older, I understood the concepts even better and began to receive higher scores.

I usually win cultural victories and it's not unusual for cities around me to succumb to my superior culture. In one previous game I got 10 cities via cultural conversions. I usually play as the Japanese and take advantage of the piety to use temples to placate my citizens. I used to be the smallest of the civs and least protected, but I managed my alliances correctly and would win those cultural victories.

As I began to do better, I realized that I needed a lot of land to ensure that I could have the resources to take my civ to the next level. In Civ3 you needed coal, for example, to build railroads. If you didn't have it, you had to hope for a trade or destroy the other civ. I had never attacked another civ until civ3 when I had to get that plutonium or whatever else I wanted. A bit more realistic, no? Therefore, I can't wait until Civ4 comes out on 25 Oct.

Smackdown in New Orleans
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: News
Linux Uptime: up 15 days, 23:37

Yesterday as I was running on the treadmill I was watching MSNBC and, to my horror, saw a 64 year old man beaten by the cops. This wasn't just a "Cops"-like takedown of a criminal. They grabbed him from behind and punched his head into the wall of a building before tackling him to the ground. They say he was resisting arrest, which he denies. However, even if he WAS resisting arrest, how could you beat the pulp out of an old man? How many strong old men are there? This guy had a white beard and all - unless he was a karate master, they probably didn't have to worry.

The victim/alleged criminal says he was speaking to an officer on horseback about the curfew when another officer came and said something rude to him. He told the second officer he thought he was being a bit rude and finished up his conversation with the first. Then, on his way back home, the second cop beat him from behind with a bunch of other cops. It was all caught on tape and it's etched into my brain as MSNBC had the tape on loop. It was only a minute or two long so in that half hour I saw the tape about 15 times. It wasn't pretty.

The officers have been charged for the beating and they plead not guilty. Our speedy justice system, which is sadly one of the speediest, gives them a trial in January. By then who knows what anyone will remember. Anyway, I hope they get punished. I don't think they should necessarily go to jail for life or anything, but I just can't see how to justify what they did. Again, it wasn't like the person resisting arrest was a young man who could have hurt the cops. And, the man says he was never put under arrest to begin with.

There was also some random asian guy in the video who wasn't a cop, but was helping them tackle the guy. What the heck was that about? Aren't the cops supposed to keep people from getting involved in official police business?

Oh yeah, and I didn't want to mention it before so that I wouldn't cloud your perception of things, but the victim was black and the cops were white. To me, that's still secondary to the fact that he was an old man.

Watching Disney Movies as an Adult Part 2
Mood:  chatty
Topic: movies
A long while back (I don't remember which blog it was) I wrote about watching Roger Rabbit as an adult and getting a lot of jokes I didn't get before as a five year old. Cinderella just came out on DVD and I bought it for my wife since she collects Disney movies. While watching it last night, I realized something which didn't mean anything to me when I last saw Cinderella - the name of the cat.

If you remember from the last time you saw the movie, the cat was evil. Not only did it try and keep the mice from acquiring the parts for Cinderella's dress, but, when the Duke was about to leave, it wouldn't let Cinderella get the key to her room. The cat even purposely got the dog in trouble early on in the movie. The cat's name: Lucifer. Shocked you didn't remember that?

What better name for an evil character than the embodiment of evil Himself. Obviously to call him Satan would have been to obvious, but I don't think that Lucifer went over the heads of the adult audiences. Additionally, we must remember that at the time period when Cinderella was first release, many adults went to the movies to watch cartoons. The Disney cartoon was a family event, but it didn't preclude the adults from having fun.

If you look at the songs, plots, and characters, you can see that Disney was for older audiences. I guess that's when the tradition started and, even today, Disney movies always have some references for adults.

Yeah...what did you think would happen?
Mood:  chatty
Topic: News
Today's big news story, other than the Supreme Court stuff, involved the numbers from Detroit. Boy were they dissapointing! GM was down 25% from Sept last year and Ford was down 19% Toyota, on the other hand, had their best September EVER. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. Detroit was making all of their money on those gas guzzlin' SUVs while Toyota was focusing more on lighter cars and their Prius, which has been selling like bootleg DVDs on Canal Street.

I've been predicting (along with a few hundred thousand others) that this would happen as soon as gas got exepensive enough. With the cheapest gas around here coming in at $3.03 today (down from a high of $3.27), I don't blame people for avoiding SUVs like the plague. Maybe Katrina and Rita, while extremely devasting to many personal lives, are just the kick in the pants America needed to help it get off of oil. Let's hope our good old American ADD doesn't kick in and that we do something before prices go back down, allowing us to complain again next time they spike.

I give up, I think
Mood:  sad
Topic: Site Info
My current ISP doesn't allow me to run a server and I don't have the money to switch to an ISP that does. So, for now, unless I get alternative funding, I guess I'm going to come back to blogging here and having this be my permanent site. I'm pretty sad because I loved the independence of having my own site and blog. Being able to do pingbacks and trackbacks. Well, look to here for future posts.

instructions
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
I've decided that from now until I have to shut down my server, I'm going to be blogging with my server's blog It's A Binary World 2.0. Amongst other things, it automatically sends to some blog search engines whenever I've made a post and has led to 200 visits to my blog so far this month. So, from now on, go there to read my blog until I let you know that I'm going to have to shut down my server temporarily until late 2005.

I've made quite a few posts over the last few days so you should have plenty to read.

Quotes
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Quotes
"The truth is a hassle" - Mo Rocca

"This is the way I did it and it worked so I didn't think anymore" - Prof Land

"It's fun to program in assembler; so manly" - Prof Land

"I majored in the most unmarketable major of all: Sociology." - Alysha Cryer

more posts over in Binary World 2.0
May as well us it while it's available. Go to http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog/