Performed at <a href="http://piksel.no">Piksel 2009</a> in the Landmark contemporary art museum in Bergen, Norway. November, 19th 2009. <iframe width=480 height=320 scrolling="no" src=http://giss.tv/dmmdb//player.php?ID=1058&mode_clip&baseurl=http://giss.tv/dmmdb/></iframe> 2009-11-21T10:49:48Z 74 false 2009-11-25T22:37:04Z It's about time! I wrote some Perl poetry. I'm rather proud of it. Copy and paste, it'll execute. <div class="code"> <p />#!/usr/bin/perl <p /> my $years = rand 110; <p /> foreach($years) {<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;tell about.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;do potential($years);<br /> } <p />sub potential {<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;use strict;<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;my $time = $_[0];<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;if ( $time > 0 ) {<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;sort $time * potential($time - 1);<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;} else {<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;die;<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;}<br /> } </div> 2009-10-14T00:05:24Z 73 true 2009-10-14T01:07:24Z "If it involves Twitter and you can think it, it exists" <p /> Does this exist? <ol> <li>"fave" tweet with link</li> <li>robot finds user.faves</li> <li>robot extracts link</li> <li>robot places link on del.icio.us</li> </ol> 2009-09-28T14:33:54Z 72 true 2009-10-14T00:59:41Z Interesting conversation tonight. <blockquote> 11:39 ashencoho: Ezekiel 23:20.<br/> 11:41 Lee Azzarello: Bowery, 1978<br/> 12:00 Wednesday, September 23, 2009<br/> 12:00 ashencoho: eh?<br/> 12:01 Lee Azzarello: do you like punk rock?<br/> 12:01 ashencoho: not really<br/> who dis?<br/> 12:02 Lee Azzarello: dunno, you sent me a message first. who are you?<br/> 12:03 ashencoho: no i have no idea who this is<br/> 12:06 Lee Azzarello: interesting, this is the second time I got a message on AIM with a bible passage<br/> 12:06 ashencoho: from me???<br/> 12:06 Lee Azzarello: and it's the second time I responded with a random location and date<br/> yea, from your AIM nick<br/> 12:06 ashencoho: nick???<br/> 12:06 Lee Azzarello: login/username/nickname<br/> 12:06 ashencoho: haha you got the wrong guy cheif<br/> chief<br/> oh ok<br/> well this is scott<br/> and i dont like the bible<br/> so i dont quote it<br/> 12:07 Lee Azzarello: neither do I, but check this:<br/> 12:07 ashencoho: well i mean the bibles ok, but people use it to justify ridiculous shit<br/> 12:07 Lee Azzarello: 11:39:31 PM ashencoho: Ezekiel 23:20. tha'ts from my AIM client log tonight<br/> 12:08 ashencoho: ok?<br/> 12:08 Lee Azzarello: so that's not your AIM username?<br/> ashencoho<br/> 12:08 ashencoho: no, it looks a lot like yours...<br/> 12:09 Lee Azzarello: but mine is spelled differently, or are you seeing mine with the same username from me?<br/> 12:09 ashencoho: why are you IMing me if thats the screenname that IMed you in the first place?<br/> 12:09 Lee Azzarello: that's what I'm trying to figure out. neither of us have that screenname<br/> 12:10 ashencoho: what the fuck<br/> im abandoning this<br/> 12:10 Lee Azzarello: but somehow we were connected by some weird bible quote<br/> 12:10 ashencoho: what??<br/> 12:10 Lee Azzarello: for serious<br/> 12:10 ashencoho: i just want to know how you got my screenname in the first place?<br/> 12:11 Lee Azzarello: I didn't. I just replied to the original message from a screenname "ashencoho"<br/> 12:11 ashencoho: oh ok<br/> 12:11 Lee Azzarello: and somehow that got to you. I understand that your screenname is not that now.<br/> neither is mine<br/> 12:11 ashencoho: well this says your name is PassedOutCoho<br/> 12:11 Lee Azzarello: woah. weird<br/> 12:11 ashencoho: haha<br/> this is so odd<br/> 12:12 Lee Azzarello: obviously some christian propaganda<br/> 12:12 ashencoho: not cool<br/> where are you even from?<br/> 12:12 Lee Azzarello: well, thanks for clearing this up<br/> I'm from NYC<br/> 12:12 ashencoho: holy crap<br/> im in north carolina<br/> 12:12 Lee Azzarello: not too bad. I saw a NC licence plate today<br/> 12:13 ashencoho: word<br/> well this is too weird for me<br/> i feel like we're both getting hacked right now<br/> or maybe its just me<br/> 12:13 Lee Azzarello: eh, whatever, we're just talking about the hacking, right?<br/> let's call it a night<br/> 12:13 ashencoho: alright, peace<br/> 12:13 Lee Azzarello: peace<br/> </blockquote> 2009-09-23T01:17:28Z 71 true 2009-09-23T01:24:31Z I wrote about Anthology's calendar aggregation <a href="/posts/19">last January</a>. Here's the email I wrote: <blockquote> Hello John, I noticed the calendar on the Anthology site didn't have a iCal format available. I wrote a script to scrape the site and generated one on Google calendar. Here's the deets: <p /> <a href="http://lee.rockingtiger.com/posts/19">http://lee.rockingtiger.com/posts/19</a> <p /> If you want some help in the future generating an iCal feed without my silly hack I'd be happy to help make it a feature of the site. <p /> Thanks for keeping it real! <p /> Best,<br /> Lee Azzarello </blockquote> The response from John Mhiripiri Director of Administration & Exhibitions <blockquote> Hi Lee, <p /> Thanks for your interest. We will try to have a look at what you've done. <p /> John </blockquote> Oh snap! Thanks dude. I guess scheduling underground art films is so hard you have to blow off free help. But I joke. He probably didn't understand the point of creating a syndicated calendar format when he had a perfectly good print edition and a web page. So now I'm writing again. This time I received a flyer from The Kitchen. Another arts institution in NYC. Great calendar, on paper. Went to their site, even worse. Their online calendar is burried in a Flash file. Fail! <p /> This has to change. I want to see events on my phone calendar without doing hours of data entry. Note to The Kitchen, if your intern does data entry, I don't have to because your intern <strong>already did it!</strong> <p /> I have some ideas on how to solve this problem. 2009-09-11T21:25:13Z 70 true 2009-09-11T21:25:13Z I've become very interested in logic. How it effects human behavior and machine behavior alike. Just today I discovered that my brain does not respond logically to inverse logic. I approached the exit to a shop. There were two doors, one was locked and one was unlocked. The locked door had a paper sign taped above it's handle with an arrow pointing to the unlocked door and words stating "please use other door". As I approched both doors to exit, I pushed on the locked door, looking directly at the sign. A few seconds went by and I pushed the unlocked door after reading the sign and understanding the meaning. <p /> I interpret my initial failure as a reaction to indirection. The sign did not inform me which door to use, though it was placed on the door <strong>not</strong> to use. After reading the sign it was obvious which door to use since the arrow was pointing to it, but the keyword "other" is indirect. It does not specify anything more than the fact that this door is not functioning as a door, so it should not be used. It does not answer the question of where the "other door" is located. <p /> I think a more direct instruction would be to place a sign on the unlocked door stating "please use this door". There's not contextual shift and the problem remains within this single point of view. <p /> Of course the most logical solution would be if the shopkeeper would unlock both doors, since a locked door isn't much use during business hours. 2009-08-25T15:47:09Z 69 true 2009-08-25T15:50:09Z Listening to 4 minutes of Herzog speak gave me some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion">emotional contagion</a>. So much that I transcribed it. <p /> <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3xQyQnXrLb0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3xQyQnXrLb0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> <blockquote> <em> Of course we are challenging nature itself and it hits back, it just hits back and that's all and that's grandiose about it and we have to accept that it is much stronger than we are. Kinsky always says it's full of erotic elements I don't see it so much erotic I see it more full of obscenity. it's just...and nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there's a lot of misery but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery i don't think they sing they just screech in pain. <p /> it's an unfinished country it's still prehistorical. the only thing that's lacking is the dinosaurs here. it's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape and whoever goes too deep into this has his share of that curse so we are cursed with what we are doing here. it's a land that god if he exists has created in anger. it's the only land where creation is unfinished yet. taking a close look at what's around us there is some sort of a harmony, it is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. and we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like barely pronounced and half finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. and we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. there is no harmony in the universe, we have to get acquainted to this idea there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. but when I say this i say this all full of admiration for the jungle, it is not that I hate it; I love it. I love it very much but I love it against my better judgment. </em> </blockquote> <p /> Fucking hell Werner, where do you get your certainty? Can I have some of that drank? 2009-07-28T14:44:24Z 68 true 2009-07-28T14:47:04Z <!-- Facebook Badge START --> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Azzarello/605856332" title="Lee Azzarello" target="_TOP" style="font-family: &quot;lucida grande&quot;,tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: #3B5998; text-decoration: none;">Lee Azzarello</a> <br/> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Azzarello/605856332" title="Lee Azzarello" target="_TOP"> <img src="http://badge.facebook.com/badge/605856332.1417.886391843.png" alt="Lee Azzarello" style="border: 0px;" /> </a> <br/> <!-- Facebook Badge END --> 2009-07-16T16:50:31Z 67 true 2009-07-16T16:50:31Z <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf" id="lalaPlaylistEmbed" width="300" height="254"><param name="movie" value="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="allowNetworking" value="all"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="flashvars" value="playlistId=-8286497768172647718&host=www.lala.com&partnerId=memberplaylist"/><embed id="lalaPlaylistEmbed" name="lalaPlaylistEmbed" src="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf" width="300" height="254" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" wmode="transparent" allowNetworking="all" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="playlistId=-8286497768172647718&host=www.lala.com&partnerId=memberplaylist"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 9px; margin-top: 2px;"><a href="http://www.lala.com/memberplaylist/-8286497768172647718" title="bun" target="_blank">bun</a></div> 2009-07-02T17:46:53Z 66 true 2009-07-02T17:46:53Z Taking a break writing here in favor of a short adventure in apartment hunting. <script type="text/javascript" src="http://godsandgangsters.tumblr.com/js"></script> 2009-06-29T17:53:22Z 65 true 2009-06-29T17:53:22Z In an homage to the Television Apocalypse, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/show?p=ZpFp6lZZQdI">Youtube is showing</a> classic television shows like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outer_Limits">The Outer Limits</a>. It's excellent psychodrama. Here's a transcript from episode 1008 titled The Human Factor. <blockquote> Man: if this machine works it will be possible for two minds to communicate directly. To share the same thoughts and emotions simultaneously. <p /> Woman: emotions? <p /> Man: psychiatrists think the intellect is a useful but devious trait. this machine will let me know what the subject is really feeling, way down underneath the intellect. <p /> Woman: I'm not sure I want to go through with it. <p /> Man: be a good girl. (pats her on the shoulder patronizingly) <p /> Man: take a look at the oscilliscope. <p /> Woman: Huh. Well you can't tell too much from that, can you? <p /> Man: Not too much. But in a moment I may know what you really think. because I intend to amplify those waves and feed them back to a machine into a terminal instrument which is capable of translating them back into the thoughts and emotions that produced them. and that terminal instrument is my own brain. Now relax, I'm bringing up the power. </blockquote> 2009-06-12T16:27:56Z 64 true 2009-06-12T16:40:11Z It's 2009. The Bandwidth of a consumer Internet connection is going up. Laptop computers are ubiquitous, small storage devices are everywhere and can meet or exceed internal storage, everyone's making movies, sounds, pictures on their computers. I'm doing this. But where the fuck am I going to put this stuff when I don't want it available on the laptop but I don't want to delete it? There are a lot of solutions to this problem. Most notable is Apple's TimeMachine product, which makes the decision for you by dedicating an entire external USB disk to the role of incremental backup. But what if I want to control what gets backed up and what doesn't? Some things should not be backed up. Cache files, auto generated image thumbnails, temporary files, garbage directories generated by OS X, private documents with very particular accounting of where each copy resides. Apple has taken the road of abundance and thrown assumptions of privacy and efficiency out with the bathwater. Fortunately, OS X and GNU/Linux have neato user obsequious tools like rsync and rdiff-backup. For my Mac, I wrote a simple script that backs up my entire home directory in one command with an optional file to exclude directories to backup. <p /> <code> #!/bin/sh<br /> EXCLUDE_FILE="$HOME/bin/full_backup.exclude"<br /> rsync -rv --progress --stats --exclude-from=$EXCLUDE_FILE $HOME/ $1 </code> <p /> Search for EXCLUDE PATTERNS in the rsync manpage for the exclude patterns file format. Basically, one on each line with shell wildcards accepted. This will copy everything in my home directory except for the files (or patterns) in the .exclude file to a directory passed in as an argument at runtime. It will also give you an realtime progress meter for each file! Neato. 2009-05-24T18:00:05Z 63 true 2009-05-24T18:04:20Z Kevin Farrell and Devin Maxwell are <p /> <a href="http://drop.io/four_trio/chronological">Four Trio</a> <p /> <em>This recording is produced with love by <a href="http://arsenicfreemusic.com/">arsenic-free music</a>: "we have arsenic-free music, they don't"</em> <p /> <div><div style="text-align: left; color: #595653; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 5px;">Their take on Giant Steps</a></div><object width="400" height="100"> <param name="movie" value="http://s3.amazonaws.com/stlth/static/production/swf/audio_controller.swf"></param> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="song_label=converted-04 Giant Steps_converted.mp3&amp;music_track=http://drop.io/download/public/m5ynaqihsbsgjpeph9no/7d344fcf925f07ae745281711c33d9edf17da4c4/8ec58f50-2942-012c-c82b-ff9d8a403a9c/a2d2c3f0-2942-012c-3f23-fc3c6d38834b/v2/content&amp;autoplay=false"></param> <embed src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/stlth/static/production/swf/audio_controller.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="opaque" width="400" height="100" flashvars="song_label=converted-04 Giant Steps_converted.mp3&amp;music_track=http://drop.io/download/public/m5ynaqihsbsgjpeph9no/7d344fcf925f07ae745281711c33d9edf17da4c4/8ec58f50-2942-012c-c82b-ff9d8a403a9c/a2d2c3f0-2942-012c-3f23-fc3c6d38834b/v2/content&amp;autoplay=false"> </embed></object></div> 2009-05-22T18:34:12Z 62 true 2009-05-22T18:35:10Z Doom Metal. An excellently named genre. I can't stop listening to Nadja's cover of Needle In The Hay, my favorite Elliot Smith song of all time. Oh yeah, and Lala is my new favorite music site. <p /> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf" id="lalaPlaylistEmbed" width="300" height="254"><param name="movie" value="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="allowNetworking" value="all"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="flashvars" value="playlistId=29231P32195&host=www.lala.com&partnerId=memberplaylist"/><embed id="lalaPlaylistEmbed" name="lalaPlaylistEmbed" src="http://www.lala.com/external/flash/PlaylistWidget.swf" width="300" height="254" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" wmode="transparent" allowNetworking="all" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="playlistId=29231P32195&host=www.lala.com&partnerId=memberplaylist"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 9px; margin-top: 2px;"><a href="http://www.lala.com/memberplaylist/29231P32195" title="doom" target="_blank">doom</a></div> <p /> 2009-05-19T17:33:13Z 61 true 2009-05-19T17:34:44Z I learned how to make materials, atmosphere and a sun! Here's my first test render with the finalized model. <p /> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazzarello/3498310722/" title="First Lighting Test by lazzarello, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3592/3498310722_4e6edba71c.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="First Lighting Test" /></a> <p /> I have decided to give the movie a working title of "radio astronomy". Not too catchy but it makes me feel funny when I say it. <p /> Also, the Wacom tablet is not worth it. While the x.org drivers and the kernel drivers in CentOS 5.3 work well, somehow the application specific configuration is different and crashes, making the pressure and tilt useless. Would be nice to debug sometime but right now I'm not doing much painting or drawing. 2009-05-04T21:27:08Z 60 true 2009-05-04T21:27:08Z A picture tells a thousand words. Here's my story from this weekend <p/> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazzarello/3480436726/" title="New 3D workstation by lazzarello, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3308/3480436726_7e1e618f1f.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="New 3D workstation" /></a> <p /> On deck: Wacom tablet installation and configuration for the OS, Blender, Gimp and Inkscape. Oh my! 2009-04-27T12:56:23Z 59 true 2009-04-27T12:56:23Z Dove in head on. Here's my list: <p />The Good: <ul> <li>Yum has become extremely fast, on par with APT</li> <li>Xinerama configured through the Gnome System Administration menu</li> <li>Docuwiki is clear and thorough. Points to external repositories</li> <li>Audio and Video hardware autodetected</li> <li>USB Wacom tablet autodetected</li> <li>Gnome Wacom tablet configuration panel installed by default</li> </ul> <p />The Bad: <ul> <li>Video hardware autodetection does not have <a href="http://ati.amd.com/products/catalyst/index.html">3D drivers</a></li> <li>No Flash plugin</li> <li>Limited multimedia codecs</li> <li>USB soundcard autoconfiguration fails</li> </ul> <p />The Ugly: <ul> <li>Xinerama desktop spanning requires manual x.org config</li> <li><a href="http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/fire/Pages/fire_linux.aspx?type=2.4.3&product=2.4.3.3.1.3.9.1&lang=English">ATI proprietary drivers</a> require individual kernel module compilation and installation which is not documented anywhere. Requires hacking through the filesystem and running build scripts in <code>/lib/modules/fglrx/</code>. Also requires crucial settings for 3D acceleration to perform in a visually acceptable way (read: 3D objects do not get clipped by a noisy black plane). These settings are also not documented and probably manifested from my particular hardware configuration.</li> <li>ATI drivers "documented" on a <a href="http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux">unofficial wiki</a> that is out of date</li> <li>CentOS forum has <a href="http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=18281&forum=39&post_id=67915#forumpost67915">first-post obssesed freetard douchebags</a> ready to lead you down a rabbit hole with no end</li> <li>After configuring 3D drivers, Xinerama is rendered non-functional and Gnome is unaware of this fact. All screen control is given to the proprietary ATI Catalyst control panel.</li> </ul> 2009-04-26T17:51:11Z 58 true 2009-04-26T17:51:11Z Got a nice 2 way AMD64 workstation with an ATI R350 video card. Old hardware but better than anything else I have for the previs work. CentOS is...well it's interesting. The video card worked by default for GLX mode and the monitor resolution was auto detected to 1280x1024. <p /> There are a lot of missing pieces, most of which are related to software. CentOS has a much more conservative selection of packages then I'm used to. Notable differences from Debian: <ul> <li>Gimp 2.2</li> <li>Missing ffmpeg</li> <li>Missing Inkscape</li> <li>2.6.18 kernel</li> </ul> There are wacom tablet drivers and userland utilities to configure the tablet, though Gnome provides no configuration panel, therefore manual editing of xorg.conf and command line tablet calibration will be required. 2009-04-24T13:05:47Z 57 true 2009-04-24T13:05:47Z About 11 days ago I set out on a journey to create a custom Debian package repository to serve my own custom built packages based on very specific versions of source code. Through the oral history of my predecessors and some experimentation, I have accomplished my goals. It was not easy. I'll outline my process step by step here, so other can continue the tradition. Yea knowledge! <p /> Before you start out with any labor, you must first answer some preliminary questions and sketch out your architecture. The first question you have to answer is "who else will be using these packages". If the answer is "no one" this article is not for you. <code>apt-get install checkinstall</code> for that. If the answer is "many other servers and workstations controlled by others aside from myself all running various versions of Debian or Ubuntu", then read on. <p /> My needs <ol> <li>Build packages from scratch for 32 and 64 bit systems</li> <li>Serve both binary and source packages from a centralized repository</li> <li>Maintain all crucial dependency information for custom shared libraries</li> <li>Serve multiple architectures and distributions from a centralized repository</li> <li>Ignore restrictions in policy that only apply to uploads to be merged into stable by a Debian Developer</li> </ol> <p /> The first step is building the packages from scratch. I'm building source packages on a 32 bit system and building the binaries on specialized build servers in Amazon EC2 for 32 or 64 bit CPUs. Download the source tarball and extract it. Then configure and compile the code to test that the source will run. If true, delete the extracted directory and reextract it to a fresh directory. Then check if someone has already built a package of a different version of the same source code. If so download that source package. You can probably use most of the work and skip over a lot of the mysterious oral history contained in the <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/">Debian New Maintainers Guide</a>. In my case I could download previous versions. copy the debian/ directory form the source package into your freshly extracted source tree. Now the fun starts. <p /> Make a copy of the original tarball of the source but rename it to end in .orig.tar.gz. Then enter the debian/ directory of the already extracted source and open the changelog and stare at the contents for a while. Then duplicate the topmost changelog block and update it for your information. Don't forget to make your package a version bump or at least have a different version. Save and close. Next install all the following packages. There are many helpers for building packages, there are merely the ones I selected. <code> aptitude install pbuilder reprepro nginx dpkg-dev debhelper devscripts fakeroot dh-make autotools-dev cdbs dpatch </code> <p /> Next open the control file. Verify all dependencies for the versions on your build system. All we need to do here is make sure the package knows about it's supporting libraries. Adjust the version numbers as needed. Now you have to open the rules file. If you added any custom configuration options when you first compiled the code, you need to find the section that calls ./configure and add those options. You also need to read through the build target and see if the original author of it is doing some weird things with the build process. If it matches up pretty well with your own successful compiliation then you can move on. <p /> In some cases you might need to patch the source code or perhaps the original author's patches won't apply cleanly to your new source code. This is what dpatch is for. Compare the old patches with an interactive dpatch shell by entering <code>dpatch-edit-patch [patchname]</code> where patchname is what you want to call the patch. Tuxmaniac has a <a href="http://www.tuxmaniac.com/blog/2008/01/25/dpatch-just-superb-a-short-how-to/">Short tutorial</a>. <p /> Run a test build/clean directly with <code>fakeroot debian/rules [build|clean]</code> Where build or clean is the target you wish to test. If the build process is functional, it's time to build the source and binary packages! Yea! But not yet...Aw :c <p /> Build dependencies. During your testing you might have noticed that the test build fails due to missing build deps. You can install these deps by hand each time but that's a pain. Fortunately pbuilder provides a nice shell script that will figure these out and install them. Just run this in your debianized source directory: <code> /usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-satisfydepends </code> <p /> Magical! You have all build dependencies installed. Now you can try and build the package. I'm using debuild like so: <code> debuild -us -uc </code> <p /> If debuild succeeds, you should have a bunch of files one directory up. An explaination of their roles: <ul> <li>A bunch of files that end in .deb. These are your binary packages</li> <li>A file that ends in .dsc. This is the description of the various archives of source code used to build the binary</li> <li>The orig and diff tarballs. Orig is the original source archive you made before you began "Debianizing" a copy of the source. Diff is an archive of the differences created through the "Debianization" process.</li> <li>A file that ends in .changes. This is a bunch of checksums of all the files created for this package</li> <li>A file that ends in .build. This is a log of the process debuild performed. You can debug errors here or just have a log of all the steps taken to Debianize the source</li> </ul> <p /> Whew, that was epic. Fortunately, now that you build once, you can build anywhere! To build binaries for another architecture, you merely have to upload the .dsc, .orig and .diff tarballs and rebuild on another system that meets your requirements. You can extract source packages with <code>dpkg-source -x *.dsc</code> <p /> Next up, serving them from a repository! 2009-04-23T18:14:22Z 56 true 2009-04-23T18:19:14Z <p> Found <a href="http://whataboutwallabout.com/resources/promoposter.pdf">this poster</a> in the hallway of my office this morning. It is advertising the <a href="http://whataboutwallabout.com/">Wall About film festival</a>. Sounds cool: I haven't heard of it, the poster is designed well and it has the word "film" in it. Relevant to my interests. Then I had the misfortune of reading the text on their web page. I'll copy verbatim to save the agony of looking at the whole thing. <blockquote> <strong>Wallabout is:</strong> a collaborative project putting cultural assembly into explicit practice; a collective celebrating artists’ efforts and the co-production of art; a festival promoting the continuous flow of creative episteme and the techne. It is a question leading to a question leading to a question. Wallabout is committed to challenging our minds while exulting the works of to-day. Wallabout is about it all. </blockquote> Sad thing is I'm still interested. Can't judge poorly the whole event for one bad writer. Fucking art. </p> <p /> 2009-04-20T12:52:35Z 55 true 2009-04-20T13:18:07Z I rented this DVD as a reference for my film not knowing what to expect. Well, here's the 8 minutes of chapter 2, see for yourself: <p /> <div><div style="text-align: center; color: #595653; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 5px;">Discover Simple, Private Sharing at <a href="http://drop.io">Drop.io</a></div><object width="400" height="300"> <param name="movie" value="http://s3.amazonaws.com/stlth/static/production/swf/videoPlayer.swf"></param> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="mediaPath=http://drop.io/download/public/ka42dsxwfpyiusbcgd3s/3f90e330ba80fd9f596f74afe367d73355dea33c/6375ea70-0f65-012c-7aad-f9bad4d77ed5/55309c20-0f68-012c-087b-f8763d828cd8/converted-the_mirror_meadow_wind_h264.mp4&autoplay=false"></param> <embed src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/stlth/static/production/swf/videoPlayer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="opaque" width="400" height="300" flashvars="mediaPath=http://drop.io/download/public/ka42dsxwfpyiusbcgd3s/3f90e330ba80fd9f596f74afe367d73355dea33c/6375ea70-0f65-012c-7aad-f9bad4d77ed5/55309c20-0f68-012c-087b-f8763d828cd8/converted-the_mirror_meadow_wind_h264.mp4&autoplay=false"> </embed></object></div> <p /> That shot when the male character leaves but is stopped by a wind explosion across the whole meadow. Yeah, that's only 11 minutes into a 2 and one half hour film. So that's how you want to play, I see. <p /> The movie is un-fucking believable. It's long, meticulously composed and shows seamless technical mastery of camera, light and color. And some of it happens to be in black and white. The story is deep and reflective (The Mirror, ha!) and I couldn't stop thinking about it after it was over. 2009-04-19T21:00:59Z 54 true 2009-04-19T21:11:19Z "Workflow" is a word I hear a lot but no one has a definition for it aside for what "works for them". So perhaps a good workflow is what works for me? Let's see. Since I'm a real software developer and a fake filmmaker, I will take my software workflow, which is quite productive and adapt it to directing/producing a film. Here's my software toolset as it stands: <ol> <li><a href="http://git-scm.com/">Git</a>, the awesomest revision control system for files on a disk</li> <li><a href="http://www.vim.org">Vim</a>, a text editor. Yes, a fucking text editor. It's totally crucial. Stop using notepad, really</li> <li><a href="http://www.blender.org/">Blender</a>, a 3D modeling and animation program that can import and export many other program's formats</li> <li><a href="http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7635018">Autodesk Maya</a>, the mothership of proprietary 3D applications. Not free, in fact you better have a hook up cause this shit is as precious as a fistful o' Benjamins</li> <li><a href="http://www.inkscape.org/">Inkscape</a>, a 2D vector drawing program. Its paths can be imported into Blender</li> <li><a href="http://www.gimp.org/">The Gimp</a>, a 2D bitmap painting program. Good for doing "photoshop stuff"</li> <li><a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a>, a photo sharing community online. Has extensive metadata for photographic reference and camera details for most photos</li> <li><a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a>, a crucial architectural reference for cowboy previsualization, h'ya!</li> <li><a href="http://manager.drop.io">Drop.io Manager</a>, a private collaboration webapp. Transfer, preview and share any file without worrying about your secrets leaking out on the intarwebz before production's complete (fee required)</li> <li><a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice Calc</a>, a fucking spreadsheet application. It does that stuff and yes, everyone needs a spreadsheet sometimes</li> </ol> And this is just pre-production. I'm satisfied that I have got this far with the use of only two fee-based applictions. Of course Maya is useless when opperated by me since it's a highly specialized skill to opperate in a meaningful way. I have inside connections to a special individual who knows these secrets (much love <a href="http://www.rockingtiger.com/">T</a>). <p /> Out of all these programs, probably the git + vim combo is the most unusual. I'm going down the editor/DRCS route since I'm working on a myriad of computers (read: I don't have a "graphics workstation"). My primary offline storage device for all assets is a USB keychain I carry with me at all times, so it's nice to have a system to sync that with other storage media and not worry about blowing over crucial changes. <p /> So yeah, that's my "workflow" right now. Seat of my pants style. This list will only get more complicated when the Red camera comes into play. Stay tuned... 2009-04-18T21:13:23Z 53 true 2009-04-18T21:54:44Z I'm working on a short film. It is currently untitled. Here are my production notes up until now. <p /> Doing previsualization from nothing to something. Can't get a permit more than once so that rules out coverage on location. Started with a top down photograph of the architectural footprint from Google Earth, used the software measuring tools to determine some rough distances between points. Took the photo and brought it into Inkscape. Began tracing paths and curves around significants parts of the landscape. Got the proportions right. Imported curves into Blender, two week crash course in 3D modeling. <p /> Got the right paths converted into polygons and through a lot of guess work, some arithmetic and a lot of measuring defined one unit in a realistic scale. Read online that the building is 6 stories, guessed that one story will equal 10 feet and fudged the height of the building to 60 feet. Couldn't find any specs on the water tower so calculating height is impossible. But lo and behold, there is a treasure trove of photographic coverage on Flickr, and thanks to Flickr's camera metadata reader, I got lucky and found a dude who did helicopter shots with a Nikon D50. Both building and water tower in frame. Got the lens mesaurement and the aspect ratio of the shot. Exported data from Blender to Autodesk FBX format, solicited T for some help with that precious software. Imported FBX and T did her magic by creating the same camera and locking it to the photograph. The original geometry was composited with the photograph and the camera was moved and scaled to make the 3D building fit with the size and angle of the photograph. That gave us the water tower height reference in a perspecitive view. She created a cylinder of the proper height and exported both building and water tower as a Wavefront OBJ format file. I imported that file back into Blender and now I must match it up to the scene I have. <p /> This process was facinating. The photographic reference was what I was missing all along. It's amazing that I can use the Internet as a reference for not only visual information but also camera and lens details which can apply to a 3D world. It made me think of my first calculus class, since the number of known values was so little but it wasn't merely a 2D plane so things like angles, tangents and lens curvature influenced the results. We have come so far from those days of proving our physical world on paper to taking what was written on that paper and transforming it into a computer program so we are no longer required to do the math necessary to make the simulation correct. 2009-04-18T19:57:12Z 52 true 2009-04-18T19:57:37Z Two small notes about chef conventions (assumptions), after I got my test installation running. <ol> <li>It assumes the target system has sudo installed</li> <li>It uses the name of the directory in cookbooks as the recipie key</li> </ol> These were two unexpected annoyances but were easily worked around. The Resource class that handles APT is quite nice, despite my initial concern that it was only installing one package at a time. 2009-04-02T13:00:40Z 51 true 2009-04-02T13:00:40Z I'm experimenting with <a href="http://github.com/opscode/chef/tree/master">Chef</a> after attending Ezra Zygmuntowicz's talk about it at Philly E-Tech conference last week. The back story is that I began writing my own framework in Perl two weeks ago to automate building up EC2 instances. I made some progress but it was far from extensible. So I'm trying chef. If all goes well I'll have a framework in place to create new nodes so I'll never have to log into them, they will "just work". The goal being a base Debian EC2 image creation and a tiny bootstrap script passed as per-instance metadata to get chef installed. <p /> First Impressions? Not too good. Here's my test, ported from a subroutine I wrote in perl with some file I/O and a big ol' system() call. <ol> <li>Generate list of debian packages to install</li> <li>Install them</li> </ol> <p /> Sounds straight forward, right? Chef failed for two reasons: <ol> <li>There is no configuration option to pass to apt to allow untrusted packages. I'm pulling from a repo that needs to first install a GPG key to authenticate, but that package is untrusted. Chicken and egg problem. Chef halts.</li> <li>The list of packages is treated as an array of strings and each string is iterated over. This is sub optimal since it means apt will be run array.size times. I would much rather run apt 1 times by passing it a big ass string delimited by spaces.</li> </ol> <p /> But these are trivial issues. I'm happy that this kind of framework is being developed and I hope to contribute to the Debian centric classes. Pretty soon it might actually feel like writing a recipie and cooking for reals. 2009-03-31T19:25:50Z 50 true 2009-03-31T22:04:57Z Three days of rest for the vacation and I'm ready to go back. The way back was not as eventful as the way out. I woke up late. Real late. Didn't leave Philly until 1PM and I had to catch the ferry at 7PM. That's 6 hours to cycle 85 miles. And the weather forecast was for rain at 5PM. Sounds AWESOME. I also had a 10 pound load (including laptop computer) and no matter which way I turned there was a headwind from the north. <p /> It was everything I expected. Not since PBP 2007 did I suffer so much on a bike ride. Fuck that. <p /> With more time and better weather the route is very pleasant. Few turns, good roads and a nice pace between towns. <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106643782940848623407.000462801eb9159b52b1f&z=9">Here's my map</a> and near <a href="http://drop.io/philly_ride5018/asset/philly-cue-sheet-reverse-pdf" title="philly-cue-sheet-reverse-pdf">finalized cue sheet</a>. WARNING! Page 3 is the route back. Page 1 and 2 is the route out. 2009-03-29T18:12:41Z 49 false 2009-03-29T18:13:42Z <div><script type="text/javascript" src='http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/view.js'></script> <div id="mediaPlayer"></div><script type="text/javascript"> var scribd_doc = scribd.Document.getDoc(13688958, 'key-hizespz3z8ffyr23evi'); scribd_doc.addParam('height', 450);scribd_doc.addParam('width', 650); scribd_doc.write('mediaPlayer'); </script></div> <p /> The above article was my inspiration for traveling to Philly by bicycle. To test out how this random article holds up to the same ride on these "mostly good roads" 114 years later. What folows are my discoveries using this article, google maps and a hand held GPS device when I got lost. <p /> It is impossible to get from Staten Island to New Jersey by bicycle now. The Goethals bridge forbids non-motored traffic, the ferry to Hoboken requires navigating through the marshes of Jersey city and Newark. I chose to take the Seastreak, which departs from Wall street Pier 11 and ends up at the Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth county, NJ. <p /> Exiting the ferry at the Atlantic Highlands on a calm morning I set out for the hills. Nice riding up onto windy country roads. Revolutionary words on every road, monuments, parks, red hills, deep cuts. I turn up Red Hill road and at the top of it I find a monument of the American revolutionary army's victory over the british, causing the enemy's army to retreat. Red hill indeed. Following the red hill is the deep cut garden. Perhaps the British army felt that too. A deep cut. Violent words to remember a land by. A land where people continue to call home and travel back to after a hard day's work. <p /> The next discovery would define the whole trip. Only a handful of miles from the Highlands, it was monumental and something that should have been taken as an omen that my old-timey wheelman styles had very little remaining references. <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex">The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex</a> was a scientific research facility with a 44 year history. Notable inventions sponsored by the facility include the digital transistor (without that you would not be reading these words on a personal computer), the big bang theory, fiber-optic networking, and the frickn' laser. The facility is pure modernist science fiction. Imagine Phillip K. Dick and the design of Logan's Run. The era when The Future was the future. This archetecture left no doubt that humans rule the world. In this case it's science that brought humans to that power. A monument to our invention. <p /> <div> <img src="http://drop.io/download/public/gbzsftkpbnullb4mzub4/200b1f929507d6ed233e3b97bce1b7a2f9a9c7ea/4c434650-fc98-012b-2bde-f655d32cda60/3985f3e0-fec8-012b-004e-f22f9ddcac5a/1237990902044_large.jpg" width="360" height="480" /></div> <p /> Now it's abandoned. The 2,000,000 square foot complex has no occupants, no employees, no researchers and weeds are growing through cracks in the parking lot. The giant water tower in the shape of a transistor watches over flocks of geese. Brush gathers in the stairwells on the building's 4 sides. Baseball diamonds rust in an overgrown field. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazzarello/sets/72157616091818616/">A sign reads "Ocean Simulation Facility ->"</a> but points to a colapsing building. This place could have been victim to the Andromeda Strain. A perfect example of human aesthetics surviving the humans themselves. <p /> But it turns out that is not the case. <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/01/holmdel-bell-labs-facility-update-it-stays/">The complex is now a historical landmark </a> because the company Lucent sold it to understood its cultural importance. They didn't cancel their plans to redevelop the land, they plan to keep the footprint intact and to construct four independent buildings in the place of one giant. <p /> And then I got back on the bike and pedaled to Trenton. Nice day and quick going. Over the Deleware river and into PA. Now it's just a straight line down Bristol Pike to Philly, just like in the article, right? Wrong. This is where my plan falls apart the the modern world looks far more disgusting than the overwhelming aesthetic of progress within the Holmdel complex. <p /> The Bristol Pike has been destroyed. It has shards of it's former self but between the pieces are huge gaps that won't heal. A paper mill, a steel mill, polluted waters, chruning engines carrying tonnage, sand, silt, dirt. This place died with the cold war. In it's place is US highway 13. A massive truck route to carry the product from the mill to other, more efficient roadways like the Jersey or Penn turnpike. This place is not for humans unless they are wearing a steel exoskelton, which didn't exist for the wheelmen of the 1890s. They could not have imagined it. <p /> So it was a long hard adventure from Trenton to Philly, dodging cars, GPS routing, backtracking and riding on the most obvious but least pleasant route for 25 miles into a headwind. In three days I'll hang up my old-timey pretentions and do it for reals on the way back, with a real route through rustic territory. 2009-03-29T16:49:21Z 48 false 2009-03-29T18:11:07Z <object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3746166&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3746166&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://vimeo.com/3746166">Larkspur Bowl Downhill</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1364475">Lee Azzarello</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>. 2009-03-20T22:26:21Z 47 true 2009-03-20T22:26:21Z I made a program! It records the radio. It's your last chance to participate in this crucial part of the modern world. <a href="http://github.com/lazzarello/last_chance/tree/master">Download, install, be confused</a>! 2009-03-20T22:22:18Z 46 true 2009-03-20T22:22:18Z Inspiration. It's like opera. <p /> <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0eKUh1UrFyc&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0eKUh1UrFyc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2009-03-20T16:51:55Z 45 true 2009-03-20T16:54:14Z