There seems to be an almost delectable thread of irony heading through my life as I head into Thanksgiving Day. Strangely enough, a few days ago I could have spouted for what would have seemed hours at all of the wonderful things to be thankful for, but somehow enough things have happened to come to a head that the same time that it’s a bit more difficult to extract the wheat from the chaff.

I guess I can’t pretend to be surprised about not being appreciated at work; apparently the majority of Americans are unhappy with work, but it doesn’t help the spirit of Thanksgiving to find out you were passed over for promotion *again*. Couldn’t it wait until *after* the holiday for once?

Then a long time friend turns out to only talk to you when he needs something … There’s no surprise in that, until you find out that he’s going to great lengths to abscond with something and avoid communicating with you at all. That’s just not necessary. Couldn’t we save some of these wonderful gifts for Christmas?

Another friend is moving away, and can’t be bothered to call you before he leaves. I couldn’t make up something this ill-timed if I tried…

So what am I left with? I’m going to finish this posting the same way every other glib Thanksgiving post has ended for as long as there have been glib Thanksgiving posts; by explaining all of the things that I *am* grateful for, after disregarding all of the awful things I’ve seen fit to grouse about.

Family looks like it’s the only thing you can count on. Whether natural or adopted, human or animal, your family is just about the only thing you can count on, no matter how bad times get. (Unless you’ve got parents like the Ramseys or Yates, in which case, run like hell.)

Ugh. This is what getting older feels like — everything turns out all sweet and saccharine, no matter how bitter and corrosive it started out.

Thanks to my brother, who is much better with gimp-perl than I am, there’s a vastly improved version of the original RenderFilmNoir.pl script, available here.

If you get a chance (shameless plug), please patronize his Flickr page, as we does work very hard at being a great photographer …

The Nokia 770 turned up as a prop in the summer movie “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”. Having read the actual source material, I can’t say I was impressed by the movie, but I really have to give credit to anyone who would feature a gadget like the 770 in anything. I saw a few livejournal entries on the same subject, but they seemed to like it. Well, if I’m going so far as to admit that I actually not only watched this particular stinker, but actually paid enough attention to see a Nokia 770 …

I take no credit for this at all, but the maintainer of the go7007 linux driver recently added support for the ADS DVD Xpress DX2 (which until recently was conveniently available at Walmart and other retail stores) after I took a picture of the board and asked him *very* nicely. If you get any kind of mileage out of it and decide that you really *have* to send someone money, please send it to him. (To avoid spam, check out the name of the package maintainer.)

I’m posting a copy of this as a kind of public service, since I haven’t seen any upstream releases in a while. Disclaimer that your mileage may very. I have had great luck with this, and have used it to preserve old VHS content … I would also recommend using the ffrecord tool, since it has better av sync than the included tools.

• Original driver : Original Driver on Sourceforge
• Patch : Patches for Wischip Go7007 Linux Driver
• Site for device : www.adstech.com

UPDATE: As of March 2010, I have posted an updated patch against a newer kernel, available here.

My dog Ebony passed away today at 8:00pm EDT (Thursday, June 21, 2007). He was sixteen years old.

He lived a very well documented life. Natasha rescued him from being drowned along with the rest of his brothers and sisters when he was a month old, and bottle fed him until he was old enough to eat food on his own.

It took me a long time to get him acclimated to me, since he never really had to get used to anyone, but I played the guitar and sang to him every day until he accepted me. From that day on, he used to sleep next to me or at my feet and guarded me as though his life depended on it.

I promised him that I wouldn’t let him die alone, since I figured that the most awful thing for anyone would be to die alone. In April he was diagnosed with terminal meta-static tumors. One nice veterinarian suggested that since he wasn’t in pain, I should just bring him home and let him live out the rest of his life until he died peacefully. Today he didn’t eat or drink at all, and collapsed after I carried him in from the outdoors. He bled out and died in my arms; I pet his head the whole time.

Its often said that everyone thinks that their pet is special, or that their pet has some amazing personality. Ebony was a very unique dog, and did touch all those with whom he came in contact. Stan is beside himself, and can’t figure out what’s wrong. He keeps looking for Ebony, but can’t find him. I wonder if he has any concept of mortality, or could understand that he’s never going to see him again.

Ebony wasn’t judgmental like most people or animals, but seemed to know whether or not a person was capable of good things, and measured them by that. I wish most people were as wonderful and understanding as he was. Every time I wonder if knowing people or having pets is worth the pain of loss and death, I remember the moments he gave me with no quarter. I can’t regret something as wonderful as him, no matter how painful the end, no matter how hard I cry.

I have never been in the room when any person or animal has died ; I always made sure that I was somewhere else, since I didn’t think I would be able to handle it. Ebony went very gracefully, and looked almost peaceful. I shut his eyes for him when I got up to cover him.

It’s almost disturbing that after someone dies, many people seem to come out of the proverbial woodwork to mourn them. I suppose it’s natural that there’s a tinge of regret at not being able to express yourself to someone anymore, not being able to apologize for some real or even imagined transgression.

But there’s also a line. When did it become nouveau chic to get choked up at a funeral of an acquaintance? (I’m talking to you, crying emo kid. You didn’t even know him well enough to sob like your mom killed your dog.) Are you really crass enough to stand outside a funeral and hawk your barbecue to the mourners? Are you really that much of a terrible human being that you will wait your turn, to start your eulogy with “I never actually met him, but …” ?

“But, where’s your sensitivity?”, you cry, in some sort of mock outrage. We all are saddened by the death of a loved one, a friend, a colleague, even a celebrity whom we may have admired. Then again, there is a line … where does this change from grief to showboating? Is your grief bigger and better than mine? Can you be sadder than I?

The Jewish tradition of צדקה (pronounced tzedakah) holds that to give, one must give without the knowledge of the receiving party, else it would constitute a selfish act, committed for the gratification of the giver. This falls in the same category of action. Grief and pain are not to be bottled up and hidden, but also not to be paraded around like a set of Boy Scout merit badges. Get your humanity back, it’ll feel a lot better to think that when you die, your funeral will contain somewhat more reality than a Milli Vanilli album. Or maybe, just maybe, you’re a terrible person, live a terrible life, and the only way you’ll be remembered in a kind way is to have a bunch of faking sycophants lined up to give mock eulogies. Don’t worry — time will take care of that question for you.

Our first few stopmotion animation tests were successful. As per everything else we do, everything was done with Linux and freely available opensource software. In this case, gphoto2, imagemagick and mplayer (with ffmpeg thrown in for the .flv conversion for Gootube.

We used my Canon 350D mounted on a tripod with Adam’s fixed focal length 135mm lens, with fixed lighting and a green background for eventual chromakeying. There was a quick hack involved getting gphoto2 to immediately spit out a photo, instead of trying to logically process it, which was solved with:

gphoto2 --set-config "Capture size class"="Full Image" --capture-preview --filename "${OUTPUTFILE}" --force-overwrite

(If you choose to try this, remember that whatever format you set your camera to will be the format that it comes out in, so don’t set it to RAW unless you really don’t value your time and want to have to convert it using dcraw.)

The first video can be viewed at .

I told a lie tonight ; I told it twice. I was asked by a stranger if I was “okay”, and I mechanically replied that I was. Not that I wasn’t “okay” in the physical sense, just that something seemed to be … missing.

It seems that the very moments when we are the most contemplative and the furthest away from understanding our place in the universe are the very moments when we find ourselves the most desperately alone. And yet, even surrounded by well-wishers, are we that far away from being alone? The disjointed nature of not feeling your place in the larger puzzle pushes us to not relate with those around us. It’s an odd sense of being ; not depression, not sadness, just a strange sense of loss and emptiness. Words cannot express.

And yet I am one of the lucky ones. I’m not hungry, I have food in my stomach. I’m not indigent, I have a roof over my head. I’m not ignored, there are those who love and care for me. I know no suffering, I have led a fairly sheltered and protected life. I don’t *want* to be oppressed, miserable or unhappy, and I don’t think I’m any of the above.

Writing always seemed like the deepest form of narcissism; shouting blindly into an uncaring void, hoping that some imaginary audience would either applaud or revile the deepest of translated thoughts. Who are we to be the heroes of our own lives, the narrators of our own volumes, the winner of our contests? If we are allowed to continuously revise those parts of us which we feel to be the least fit, will we find some kind of sick perfection? Perhaps if and when we become capable of viewing life without the forced blinders of individual perception, we can know something more of why and what we are missing.

Most local musicians in Eastern Connecticut have heard of Mike Praytor of “The Sound Factory”, a local promoter and musician. He was found dead in his home this past Saturday, April 7th, 2007. There has been an enormous outpouring of support for his family, especially his two children, from the local music community.

It’s strange, I’m not really one for writing eulogies or waxing rhapsodic about life accomplishments ; I’ve been more of the mind that there is a certain aggrandizement which occurs after someone dies. Yet, I find myself unable to think of anything bad to say about Mike. He was a friend to everyone he came in contact with, a talented musician, loving father, and a tireless supporter of local music of every genre. You never realize the impact someone has had on your life until they aren’t around to do it any more, I guess.

It hasn’t been that long since the passing of the great Hunter S Thompson, creator of the so-called “Gonzo journalism”, and all-around lunatic. Apart from being eminently quotable, Hunter Thompson was deeply involved in politics; he especially hated Richard Nixon, whom he frequently wished malfeasance upon.. I’m unsure as to whether Hunter really would have approved of where his “Gonzo” journalism has gone.

Glen Greenwald recently pointed out that so-called “blogger” journalists have been creating their own “facts”, and in some cases completely fabricating stories, in an effort to influence the news which they purport to report. The aim of these fabricated new stories seem to be the adjustment of the average American viewpoint toward a center that is far more irrational than anything reality-based could ever be. Arguably, some of the freedom in America is the right to be informed ; the Freedom of the Press of which we have heard so much. Where is the fabled “American Dream”, that freedom that we are trying to export to other people so desperately even over the cost of their own lives?

Where does the benefit lie in defrauding America through lying to the American people? This is a perversion of the spirit of Gonzo journalism, which was supposed to celebrate the “American Dream”. But, to close this out, here’s a quote from Hunter Thompson regarding the current situation in this country, from “Kingdom of Fear”:

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. – Hunter S Thompson