Monday, October 30, 2006

Fritz Onion on JavaScript, JSON, Atlas at VSLive 2006 Boston

Among useful traits in ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the associated tool kit are improved Web service proxy handling and JSON-based serialization, suggested Fritz Onion, technical staff member, PluralSight. Onion spoke this week at VSLive 2006 in Boston.

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Saturday, October 28, 2006

Finale: Dreamland Sea Bound

By T.W. Zickcrewe
When I first got to town I went to demarks swing club
They had them shimmy dancers – and them Shakespeare plays


0.
When I got to that town
I found me a home
Glad but I found
the twilight zone

Not a horrible one
It cheered the late bloomer
An offbeat episode
With droll black humor

In a halfway house
Stuck halfway
The sun in the morning
was a big red flame


i.
In the land of trees
where there are no leaves
trucks and mystics
and misfit knees

The tie-dyed streets
All looked inviting
I wore some shades
To adjust the lighting

Wandered like a sailor
with a self-distain then
so I left Goldwater
for the golden plain.

ii.
The heater I had
would freeze and die
the girls down that way
walked streets on the side

People half-smiled
Didn’t know their M-O
When I started to talk
Their heels turned to go

Chased a shimmy dancer
In a Shakespeare play
I left that town
For Fortuna way


Why'm I heading for Fortuna?
Why'm I talking to myself?
Where's the girl I left in Boston?
In the fog? how’s your health?

iii.

the moon was a sliver
the stars were a wonder
Half-standing, half-sleeping
I heard Freddy Fender

Piensa en mi
think of me in my sorrow
a log flat floating
held a bishop with his bowwow

the caffeine and nicotine
like rich vicuna
they’d fall off their stools
and I’d split Fortuna.

iv.

No mightnight special
Just headlights on a Ford
They pulled the wings off hope
prayed long lord god

lumber trucks rolled
to the seaside nightly
all in my sleep
I was stumbling and groaning

I left that town
Id pack and go
Tracing my tracks
Too old sleepy hollow yeah

y.

Are you going to a funeral?
yes in a way
Spooned a hippie sufi dancer
And met Robert cray

Playing ov wright
Waiting for the night
the coastal highway played a
Hand of pure spite

Had to leave there daddy
Away I’d heave
To the notated music
To the dreamland sea

v.
I met sallie moss beach
And to No surprise – she broke my heart
But she was easy on the eyes

Clipping art from my sorrow
Catching glimpses of my woe.
Winding down the road
Like I got somewhere to go


To pick casabas
to go to Niagara
I’d slowly turn
under dark ladders.



vi.
I liked it in the zone
Moved on nonetheless
But I left those towns
On a peter pan bus

I heard a blues
Found a physics text
I got god smacked
And I got god blessed

God damn I was goin
With my hair still curling
One day to shake hands
With old Rod Serling.

x.

Oh Fortuna don’t you lie to me
Don’t say Thomas Pynchon was just baking beans

Brooming the salvation store army fine
Rolling and tumbling a dream concubine

Goldwater’s gone but no not me
On the golden plain to the dreamland sea………
I left that town
Cause it bothered me.
===
Ok well. We could spend years on this, just as well as weeks or days. I think we have spent years on this actually, from the chatter in the e-mails I'd say. Recall as well: The MeisterBrau Super Quart and the poesy in the Saturday night kitchen. Which seems to be the same story as here to me. Just a couple of pointers: Dave and I drove from S.F. up to Arcata-Eureka in 1977. Paul gave us a cabin where he was staying, where the rumor was, Thomas Pynchon had once stayed. We eagerly checked through his books, which were like yard sale college texts. No particular insight, although I have been buying such books at yard sales ever since, trying to catch up with Tom. Dreamland Sea was a song whose sheetmusic I found in Eureka-Arcata in 1976, and cut up to include in a little mimeo poster for Paul's RolyPoly Band  Rockhouse band.  I remember traversing Arcata Sq {I think} around then, and thinking it was a Twilight Zone episode. We met an old New York hippie there who could have walked out of 1968. Obviously I didnt settle there, or feel I quite would - Boston was my magnet. But I like this thing. Thanks all for taking part. In Pynchon nod I will credit this to The Whole Sick Crew. Changed here to T.W. Zickcrewe.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Poem in need of help, or I left Goldwater

i.
When I got to that town
I found me a home
Glad though I found
the twilight zone

Not a horrible one
It cheered a late bloomer
An offbeat episode
With droll black humor

In a halfway house
Stuck halfway
The sun in the morning
was a big red flame

In the land of trees
where there are no leaves
trucks and mystics
and misfit knees

The tie-dyed streets
All looked inviting
I wore some shades
To adjust the lighting

Wandered like a sailor
with a self-distain
I left Goldwater
for the golden plain.

ii.
The heater I had
would freeze up and die
the girls down that way
walked streets on the side

People half-smiled
Couldn't figure their MO
When I started to talk
Their heels turned to go

the moon was a sliver
the stars were a wonder
Half-standing, half-sleeping
I heard Freddy Fender

Piensa en mi
think of me in my sorrow
Like a log flat floating
Or a bishop with his bowwow

the caffeine and nicotine
Were like rich vicuna
they’d all fall off their stools
and I’d split for Fortuna.

====

So this guy it seems to me is going from town to town til he gets where he’s going. I said to my self well maybe don’t specify a number of North Pacific towns and if effect trash them all as strange somewhat unpleasant places. So I defacto changed the name of Carlotta to Goldwater. Jimmy Rogers [Chicago Bound] and Dylan’s new one [If It Keeps On Raining] have been on my turntable. And Freddy Fender just died. I think now this piece has almost a meter, is rough-yeah, but the scene is set .. so throw in some more guff. I dont think I used everything we had garnered together up to this point but it’s still there to use…And yeah I change things..but they could get changed back…whadya think? .. How about some more? Just dream! This thing does some conjuring for me. It’s a stew, let me know how you’d do it here there overall. To me it recalls about a trip Dave and me took to N.Calif. to see Jeff and Paul. Ah, I am going to Las Vegas on Nov 5…so I sure am not thinking of this going further than that. Altogether now: Muse! Let us prove Hugh Otten’s or Sister Mary Berry’s literary efforts could come to real strange frutition! Hamlet is calling!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Help me write this tome-song-poem Take 2

i.

When I got to this town
> I found me a home
> Glad though I found
> the twilight zone

> Not a horrible one
> It cheered a late bloomer
> Was an offbeat episode
> With droll black humor

>
> In a halfway house
> Stuck halfway
> The sun in the morning
> It was a big red flame ....

I went to the land of trees
> where there are no leaves
trucks and misfits all around
> trouble enough to shake your knees

> The tie-dyed streets
> All looked inviting
> I wore some shades
> To adjust the lighting

> People seemed to half-smile
> Couldn't figure their MO
> When I started to talk
> They turned their heels to go

>The heater I had would
freeze up and die
the girls down that way
walked streets on the side

the Caffeine and nicotine
Were like money round there
they’d fall off their stools
and crawl in their beer

they'd pull the wings off hope
and prayed lord whiskey
i left that town
hello [new city]


I'd like to see if people can come up with a few more 'first-thought-is-best-thought' lines before any editing for continuity. Let's try a couple, three more rounds. You can cry uncle. But I wont let you go!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Help me write this tome-song-poem

When I got to this town
I found me a home
Glad though I found
the twilight zone

Not a horrible one
It cheered a late bloomer
Was an offbeat episode
With droll black humor

In a halfway house
Stuck halfway
The sun in the morning
It was a big red flame ....

So what do you think? What comes next? Comment or e-mail. The frame is this so far... a guy's journey... like Chicago Bound by Jimmy Rodgers. He starts out in this sorta timewarp hippie place, sees things, moves along...

Friday, October 13, 2006

Hezzbolah's a' poppin'

img

During wW2 the Alliled side was sometimes called the United Nations. How do we end up with a World War? When many armies are at it. UN of Eleanor Roosevelt, not Franklin, was by way of answer to this. The UN is now, amongst other places, in Lebanon, where Hezzbolah supporters were supposed to get a lesson the wings of Israeli war planes. For some reason or other, the Pope of Hezzobolah can still get a crowd as shown above. World War seems hovering in ancient-new-future pics like these.

Noorda

Ray Noorda of Novell, dead this week at 82, was the first famous technology personage I met. Though he wasn’t famous at that time, and, to gauge from the reaction at his passing, he’s not too famous now. I'd studied local networks in college so I knew about Novell, and got to take the meeting, even though I was junior staff .

Anyway, I have no great anecdote to share. But meeting Noorda meant a lot to me. It meant something because I was getting closer to a world I’d only read about in magazines. Not as technology maker, mover or shaker, but as a technology writer. Noorda was very polite. But polite in the manner of Gary Cooper. Sort of like a physician. Maybe he was a bit surprised that I was slightly awed.

I wrote a bit focusing on his technology maneuverings on TheServerSide.NET

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Year of the Ether

SpacecowboyJack

Back on 10-11-2005 this blog started out with something on the order of a note about Elmore James and feedback. This blog was a replacement for my Radio Weblog – which had overburdened my PC.

Tried to stay to a narrower topic on this one, and seemed to have run out of steam concerning certain planetary matters. The moon is getting shorter shrift for sure. It was about a kid growing up with technology as an overwhelming undercurrent. Where art met science and sparks flew. Meant to write about Wayne McGuire and his opus 1968 essay on the Velvet Underground. But it’s still on the todo list. A list of learning about electronic machines and waking up the era of google – inside the contraption.

But continued to write essays when I felt, and reviews when I heard or read stuff.
Looking ahead: May go with the flow again – that and continue to place bpieces of observes apparatus time in this binary archive [for future visitors?] – may try to narrow things down again, always a problematic quest.

This site will continue to be something of an experiment. Used it last year to learn about MP3 and podcasts and RSS Includes, etc. Some of the things you may see wonder why its there, well, maybe, sometimes, it is part of Moon Herald Traveller Labs experimental aspect. With delic.io.us and Digg Swarm and the NYTimes Reader and Flickr – their continues to be a whole lotta shaking going on – they call it Web 2.0.

The latest in way of experiment is the introduction here of “Google AdSense.” Is the Jackster going commercial, a voice in the pantry asks. No, it’s not really about the $35 or $40 I may accumulate before the end of the millennium via placed Google ads. It’s just that Google AdSense has become an intrinsic Internet artifact that I should try to understand with my own hands, not just intellectually. Google went from nothing to billions and billions with these little clingy pattern recognizers, which became for many the golden lucre of the Ether. Sometimes I wonder – I hear sirens – if AdSense and clickthroughs aren’t just a variation on the famous Ponzi scheme - as mutable, critical, and silly as the bulbs in the Restoration Dutch Tulip market implosion, or closer to home, as tenuously viable as Web 1.0.

But I thought I should see how AdSense works: And here are the results: The engine was stymied for a few hours – couldn’t find anything to adhere. Then in the 10th hour it started posting RNA tags, but these didn’t lead to ads. Then, at about the 20 hour mark, it saw multiple references to Dylan. Which made for useful clickable ad info. Dylan is going to be a mile from here at BU on 11.11! Course the next question is Where’s the money, although, to his credit, his prices are not gougers.

What do you think of the ads? What do you think of Kim Ill Jong? Have you heard Jerry Lee’s new record. It is great when people comment via email or comments or what.. as with the Dylan thread of Sept 2006. See you in the Ether! Throw out the compass! Prepare to reverse polarization! -Jack Vaughan

Monday, October 09, 2006

Sentiment Analysis software to monitor opinions

HSD money pegged to probe opinions in overseas publications. Let's face it: Spooks on all sides have prowled the serial rooms for years, looking for drabs of info that would combine for analysis that could support predictions. What could happen during the new era of natural language processing with Web as the oyster?

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Saturday, October 07, 2006

Science Week

RNA hayride
Nobel week and ignoble week. RNA is a big winner. Especially where we are looking at a process of copying and transferring information. Chemist Kornberg gets merit. "Much of his work has focused on an enzyme called RNA polymerase, which makes messenger RNA and controls the process of selecting certain genes from the thousands that make up DNA to duplicate at any one time. Dr. Kornberg’s research groups characterized how RNA polymerase played a central role in the transcription process by hooking on to certain parts of the DNA chain and making RNA that produced exactly the protein a cell needed at the time. Also winners for health prize are Mello [of Umass, Worcester!] and Fire: for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.

Outta body
Each day, first thing I do, I try to levitate. No success yet. I'd settle for outofbody experience if levitation fails. But calling on different part of the brain seems to be a path. Where smell, thought, memory and sound intersect may be the place. An expert on phantom limbs discusses research in the area, which so far casts doubt on out-of-body experience. Anyone in line too long at a cash register knows it is conceivable. "Research shows that the self can be detached from the body and can live a phantom existence on its own, as in an out-of-body experience, or it can be felt outside of personal space, as in a sense of a presence,” Dr. Brugger said.

One small step
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Neal Armstrong has always said that he said"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Aural research now bears this out. Mr. Armstrong has said he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to sound-editing software and a computer programmer, Peter Shann Ford says he may have proved Mr.
Armstrong right. Who would doubt Neal?

Butterfly effect
What butterflies accomplish with the rudimentary ganglia filling their noggins is staggering. Especially the Monarchs, who take a fabulous journey...Once I captured a full shoebox full of catepillars, to await a spring day when they would all flutter alive. Put the box of them in the window well all winter, great disappointing mess in the spring, not the flutter event. Jerry Lewis, dusting about, in a movie, decides to dust the box of display mounted butterflies. Open the box, and they alight. Ah, film!

Arts

Weathered but Scrappy, Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks On
On a Tuesday afternoon in Sept 2006 Jerry Lee Lewis sat down at a red baby grand piano at F.Y.E. Records in Rockefeller Center and proceeded to rock and roll. His left hand pumped boogie-woogie chords, his right splashed and jabbed, and his voice easily leaped up to the high notes of “Great Balls of Fire.” Said Jerry Lee: "I didnt know it was going to stir up such a stink." His new record is good, especially for a record using the 'duet' format. Some of the performances are called in, but the country stuff is great; Jerry Lee runs roughshod over all. It is up there with Live at the Star Club, the Palomino Club Recordings and that thing he did with Andy Paley.

Tony Bennett takes phone call from Hank Williams
Bennett in performance in NYC, 2006. Now and then there were vestiges of the throbbing lyricism of the crooner of 40 years ago. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “For Once in My Life,” both sung quietly until their stentorian finales, were suffused with a husky, bittersweet nostalgia. An arrangement of Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart” for guitar and voice swung it delicately. After his version became a hit in 1951, Mr. Bennett recalled, he received a phone call from Williams in Nashville, accusing him of ruining the song. Jake saw Hank Williams III at Paradise in Boston last night.

St.Louis Henry
ST. LOUIS, Sept. 28, 2006 (AP) — Henry Townsend, who ran away to St. Louis when he was 9 and stayed for a long career as a blues guitarist, died. He was 96. Mr. Townsend lived in the same brick bungalow in St. Louis he had shared for 40 years with his wife, Vernell, who performed with him before her death, but he died while in Grafton, Wis., where he was being honored as the last surviving artist who recorded for the old Paramount label, said John May, chairman of the St. Louis Blues Society.