(I found some memories, you don’t have to read most of it, you can skip to my realization that I was not expecting to do a journal type post and that none of this shit matters, down at the bottom. I like most of my posts to have a point. This one is different.)

Well a brief look showed my social security number, in a lot of places, on a lot of forms. I’m sorry to say (only sorry for history’s sake) that I’m going to be shredding any form with that number, not that anyone would probably want to read it now anyway. It was interesting to note that while College’s incorrect and illegal use of social security numbers may have taught myself and so many of my friends our own numbers, that blatant misuse of the said number stems from much earlier on and I was just unaware. I’m going to save stuff for my Baby Book too and hope my parents keep it. I always figured this was more their job as they would remember what went on back then better.

IEP: The Individualized Education Program - is a document I have many copies and versions of. Thousands of man hours went into this document over the years. There are multi page letters from my parents writing in concern for specific provisions the IEP grants both for not enough enough help and again for too much unneeded help. Resource room, educational waivers for languages, assistant teachers, and untimed tests are part of evolving plans the school and my parents set out for me. I only really remember the untimed tests, it helped in math because if I didn’t know the math I could take the time to figure it out using the questions as clues and English because I wrote very very slowly and had a hell of a time with spelling, grammar, and getting my letters in the right order. The first version I have here is from 3/8/95, I was 11.

*SHREDDED*

I’ve got an old faded fax on heat transfer paper from Anthony J Alvarado Superintendent who apparently had letterhead with two fonts on it. April, 1995.

Dear Parent/Guardian:

District Two is please to inform you that your child (”Francis” is scrawled in) has been accepted to the NYC Laboratory School for Gifted Education for sixth grade beginning September, 1995.

It goes on but I hated that school. Here’s an excerpt from a “MID-SEMESTER PROGRESS REPORT” during I think my second year there, so 1996. It was the only comment I got, and the form states clearly and underlined “Unless noted below, your child is doing a satisfactory job.” so I think I was pretty top notch. Subject: Spanish, Teacher: Mr. Pena didn’t agree.

Francis needs to make an effort when it comes to class participation and paying attention in class. Up to now, he has shown none. I’ll do the best I can to help him with his work.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: CLASS PARTICIPATION, COMPLETES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS ON TIME, TESTS/QUIZZES/PROJECTS

Thinking back he was probably my age and I had trouble with languages and he had no experience with kids who didn’t learn the way he was taught to teach. But as it turned out his best was getting fired for biting another student while wrestling later on in that year. I had managed to schedule my resouces room to whever I would have his class so I didn’t even know until a day after he never came back. True story: I hate a bodega on Vanderbilt Ave. because it’s named “Pena’s. My report card had a couple of comments, but mostly praise in math and science, and even a good word in Spanish albeit a lower grade then everything else.

Ah, this collection is brought to you by my application to William Alexander Middle School 51, where I spent my 3rd and final year of Junior High. If I recall we had to argue with them to keep me out of the stupid kids classes, we couldn’t get me into “Regents Rainbow” but I got into “Rainbow” it was the same thing but I didn’t get to take the tests so I wouldn’t have to repeat the classes the following year in high school. I can’t tell you how much of my time was wasted over those years, that little tidbit isn’t even the half of it.

To: Gulotta, Francis B.
Class: 142
From: Pupil Personnel Services
RE: SPECIALIZED SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL RESULTS
=========================================================
Taking the specialized High School Exam in Science represents a wonderful challenge and experience that you should feel positive about.

This year over 25,000 New York City students took the exam for only 4,000 seats (admissions). This represented a very competitive and difficult acceptance process.

Yadda yadda I got into “Brooklyn Tech” which wasn’t a bad deal. The real winner of such an environment was Kaplan who states their goal the following way “At Kaplan, our mission is to help individuals achieve their educational and career goals. We build futures one success story at a time.” I have to tell you, the amount of kids trying to prepare for that test was phenomenal. If you could afford to take that class and payed attention. You would probably get into a specialized high school. All they did (and they did it well) was to train you on basic verbal and math problems and let you practice taking tests about them over and over and over. They got our money we got into “special” schools and the Board of Ed got to create a cottage industry of people who could teach “examination skills”.

I just found my “SBST” documentation for a meeting they had, that stands for “School Based Support Team” I don’t know why I had one other then this one meeting. They were a diverse group a special Education Teacher (I didn’t like her), a General Education Teacher (Leaves of Grass is all I need to say about him. I really didn’t like him and he didn’t like me, but thankfully he didn’t let that get in the way of doing his job. I stopped actively hating him after this.), a district Representative, an Educational Evaluator, a school Psychologist, a Social Worker (normally, I apparently didn’t have one, which makes me sad), and a Parent Memeber (My mom). They met on 4-4-2000 to discuss… oh well this document doesn’t even say! I remember so never fear. Those 7 people and my Dad who waited outside managed to remove the language requirement for me graduating high school. I had tutors, extra books, private lessons in and outside of school, and I had worked my ass off royally to try to pass a single language class for a long while. And after that day I never had to worry about it again. I’d probably have my GED or some shit if it weren’t for this.

I overheard someone I didn’t know from that SBST say “Lets just move on this, I don’t want to have to deal with his father.” which was music to my ears. My dad didn’t want to be there, or something about it bothered him so he was on edge. This is how I remember it anyway. He communicated these facts to this SBST member before their meeting. And while he sat outside during the meeting, his presence was obviously present inside. He half explained it to me later as “Sometimes you have to make them not want to deal with you more then they have to.”

I just found a very nice letter from an old psychologist writing in support for waving the foreign language requirement. It’s odd how you don’t remember someone at all and then once you place the name or thought of the person, it’s like opening a hidden box of memories. She was an interesting lady, I don’t remember if I learned or was helped by her at all, but I enjoyed going to visit.

An updated IEP from 1999.

I got some odd forms here. One is an authorization from the Chancellor for my mother to be on the SBST, another is a declassification plan for me, and lastly a letter saying I’m classified as “NOT DISABLED”. Oh and another version of my IEP this one from late 2000. And now I’ve found another meeting of the SBST with much less people but my mother still being the only one I know. A booklet about Parents rights and another one about Parents of children with disabilities rights. Man, who knew all this was such a big deal? I recall some drama over it but I mean, I was busy trying to make friends and get good grades. I guess taking on all this paperwork is another thing I can be forever thankful to my folks about.

I found here some statewide Student Performance Report for my bother, sticking him in the lowest range of students when it comes to reading when he was 10 years old. Ha!

Another IEP this one from even later 2000.

My parents writing pages of letters requesting that I be released from some special resource room brooklyn tech was forcing on me. That lady was annoying and I didn’t need the help in math or science, but those were the only two areas she was trained in helping. My parents are pleading with her to remove me from her clutches.

Back to my first Junior High School. I’ve got a letter here written May 30, 1997 it’s 3 pages long and it’s from my parents to the school’s “Co-Principals” (they sucked) let me quote the opening.

Dear Ms. Breslaw and Mr. Menkin

The Lab School is failing utterly to protect the emotional well-being of its students or to enforce a climate of basic civility. The school does not avail itself of resources developed by the Board of Education in its mediation programs or Peace Process which might facilitate the psycho-social environment of the school. As a result the school has become a bastion of prima donnas and students who are afrait to act humanely because there is no encouragement to do so.

Wow! And my Dad(?) wasn’t wrong. I blame this kid Alex. I don’t blame him a lot because he’s dead now. He had a disease that was going to kill him in a few years and only he knew it. He was the bitterest son of a bitch you could have met. He snapped at everything. Everything was a mortal offense. And I was his friend. I was also depressed (who knows why) and way overweight (I loved my milkyway bars) and had a dandruff problem I didn’t know how to fix (discovering how to properly wash my hair probably saved my life, it’s taken years but I now am able to leave the house without a shower if I want to with out fearing I’ll return to *that* kid again) and who knows what else. I needed a big change of environment and people in my life and leaving that school did it. Reading this letter my folks wrote I can’t blame them for being angry. In two years I went from bright and happy to failing and fucked up and I was like 12 years old.

I’ve seen my own son transformed from a popular, happy and well adjusted top student to a child who huddles into a ball with his teeth chattering from anxiety every morning before school.

Apparently the “Vicious tone” went beyond my memories of Alex and me being an easy victim. According to this letter, several parents brought this up for discussion individually during PTA meetings. And other kids are quotes as saying they go along with it because they fear being the next victim. Part of me wants to play my experience off as being whiney and lacking social tact, but reading though this letter shows there were a lot more problems there. I know I wasn’t the only student to leave that year, but I had no idea the level of fucked up bullshit going on there. While it would have only had been a start the DOE’s mediation program while intended for gang violence seems to have been the parents solution to the “white collar climate of harassment that is prevalent in the Lab School.”

Our son may leave, but the problem remains. For the sake of the children, the staff and the students should receive [mediation] training.

I think I’ll save that letter for my Baby Book as a reminder how to kick someone’s ass across the pavement using a pen as a way to stick up for your child. I wish I knew these people who were CC’ed but there’s a few of them.

More quips from Mr. Pena about how I’m falling behind in Spanish. A note from a math teacher saying that ever kid can learn math and I am no exception, I just need to be prepared for class and organize my notes better. I think by that point I had 1 notebook because I had to, but I was doing fuck all, all day long. I wanted nothing more then to die. Which is how I remember it. I didn’t want to kill people or leave, I didn’t think I could leave. I remember wanting to die. Fuck that school for making me think things couldn’t change.

More notes about how I could do better if I prepared myself.

My special ed folder. All that from before wasn’t even in the main folder. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Do you know how long it’s going to take to shred all this crap? Ok I’m done. I had planned to write this about some funny Rowan Orientation crap I found in this mess. I didn’t expect to find or write about the Lab School or how we had to work the system to get basic shit out of it. Old report cards, student loan documentation, how I was a depressed and suicidal 12 year old, fuck all of it. So much drama attached to it all.

It’s funny how almost none of it is of any consequence.

When I try to get into the office its a RFID swipe card that beeps me in. The server room has a regular key. My laptop has a long password and keeps all my files (not my music) encrypted when its off, my desktop has nothing, no private data, just some games and movies, so no password. It doesn’t even stay logged into my email.

During my day I type probably 5-10 different passwords a combined total of a few hundred times. Maybe not that much. I’ve started using SuperGenPass for websites so even though its one password to me, its a different password for each website. Which is very very good. I do a similar thing with my shell and ftp accounts (of which there are many) I generate a random password (often using this handy site) and save it to my OSX keychain. I still use a text file for passwords sometimes and even though its locked behind filevault (the encryption on my laptop) it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

My mail has a long, annoying and different password then everything else. I change it from time to time too, its annoying. But since almost everything else I use a password for will use my email to verify me its important. I’ve known that for a long time, I’ve only stopped using my ‘legacy’ default password for everything (which has grown in length over time but still plastered on any site that would have it) about 2 or 3 months ago. It was a sad and sorry state of things, but I changed it before it bit me in the ass.

I do use openID (check the source of roborooter’s home page and you can see my provider information) which let’s me log into any site using only my url and let me log into only my provider for the password. (So I don’t have to trust or use a different password for every other site.) So far I use it for only a few things, but more all the time. Stackoverflow, livejournal, sourceforge, roborooter.com itself, and a hodgepodge of other sites I can’t remember. I could actually check and remove access to my openID for some of those sites if I cared to.

This is my context when I walked up to the turnstile this afternoon and pulled out my keys. Or yesterday when I walked into the turnstile’s bar and smashed it against my groin with a loud thump. I had already logged into my network account, why did I need to log into the subway again? For most people a metrocard is money, I pay a lot for (and use it plenty) a monthly card. I have unlimited rides, not a dollar amount on a card. For me my metrocard is just another form of authentication. “Hi, It’s me let me in, I’m good for this month. What? Oh OK I’ll log in again.”

-Francis

(Now with better spellings, more links, and a recovery from DreamHost’s databases reverting.. even with review, writing a post on my blackberry has it’s disadvantages.)

“We used their surface and projected the truth onto it.”

He didn’t actually say that but the sentiment is there. They also got his age wrong. A few years prior they wrote an article about the high school he went to. The reporter talks about him a bit but only has once quote.

“So, is there a proposal, or did you just want to open the discussion?”

And again a number of years prior (this is like 10 years ago now) we have a quote from an article about the boy scouts in Park Slope.

“Not really”

I’m fairly certian he’s mentioned in one more artcle about a town meeting her went to that was on domestic violence in specific communitites, but I’m sure I’ll be corrected soon enough. The quotes don’t do him justice, but the articles might, they’re not bad reads. I’m proud of him. Not for being in the newspaper but for doing things that he believes in. It’s just cool that they’re newspaper worthy.

-Francis

PS (I got more updates in the works but I’ve been a bit sick.)

Me and Miracle Berry Tablets

Miracle fruit or berries makes sour things taste sweet. An effect that apparently is quite amazing.

From the supplier’s website.
The active ingredient in the Miracle Berry Fruit, known as Miraclulin coats the tongue and blocks out the taste bud receptors which are responsible for sour, bitter and acidic flavours. The outcome is that all foods which taste sour, bitter or acidic miraculously come to taste sweet.

Once I was told you could solve the problem with transporting “Miracle” berries by freeze drying them (they spoil quickly) and that you could buy said berries online for $20 dollars, I immediately bought them.

It comes with 10 pills each formerly being 3 berries. Think geek says you should cut them in half for twenty servings. The official supplier claims that even fresh berries start loosing their effects due to age and that problem doesn’t exist after it’s been freeze dried.

I’m going to have to try it to find out =)

-Francis

I do talk about things in public, to strangers, to coworkers, to family members, there is a place in my life for it. I don’t think Roborooter is a good place though. I do however think that Roborooter is a place to talk about abusive copyright practices.

Take down notices are becoming a problem. A big problem. It started with a way to keep people from posting copyrighted materials on their personal servers. Send the server a notice and they take the content down. Sort it out later. No big deal.

When that started there was no way to know, to fathom, that every single person’s computer could host content. At the time they were very effective. These days content makers owners who wish to protect their copyrights have to send out thousands of them to keep up with things like youtube and myspace (which is evil and must be destroyed) and the people that run content sites get flooded and instead of assesing what is valid and what is not they cover their asses and remove everything.

This means if I don’t like your work, it is very very easy for me to have it removed temporarily and maybe even permanently regardless if I have cause or not. With the nature of the internet if you get removed from the net while you’re popular you’ve lost out incredibly.

This leads me into a video created by the Students for a Free Tibet about their NYC Chinese Consulate Projection Action, which was removed from youtube because the IOC (International Olympic Comity) said it violated their copyrights. It looks like fair use to me, but even so, you can’t watch it right now on youtube.

Vimeo on the other hand, has not responded the same way. Vimeo also has nicer higher quality videos that we can all enjoy.

NYC Chinese Consulate Projection Action 08.07.08 from Students for a Free Tibet on Vimeo.

I’ll end with a link to the EFF’s No Downtime For Free Speech campaign. Those guys owe me a hat.

-Francis

1. Make the Hacker Crackdown Available as a torrent file. (You can just grab the full download if you like.)
2. Educate about what comcast was doing (blocking torrents)
3. Complain that while the torrent’s flowing nicely a bunch of specific people had trouble torrenting it. Specifically the Comcast customers.(Not a complete lie, the torrent had about 250 downloads as far as I could tell and at one point 17 seeds. But if you were a comcast customer using torrents you knew what was going on and wouldn’t complain to me.)
4. Come clean, off the full download via http and remark that I actually do have the bandwidth to spare to host a large file. Probably enough to spare to host 10 full and popular audio books, but probably not 100, where torrenting could go into the 10,000’s easily. If people were so interested.

For the record as of right now the torrent is still on The Pirate Bay and has 2 seeders neither of them are me.

I had goals.

1. To spread the hacker crackdown by Bruce Sterling.
2. To try to do a story arcing blog post.
3. To educate people about torrents and Comcast.
4. To be crazy like that.

I had poor execution.

1. I got distracted
2. I told people what I was up to and then no longer felt like I had to do it. Almost like success.
3. I didn’t do it all at once - I’m not sure if that was practical but it would have gotten it done while I had the drive.
4. I never wrote down my plan until now.

For the record even without my help (ha!) Comcast got smacked around by the FCC. It’s not law (and we’ll have to fight to make it law) but it’s a big first step towards net neutrality.

If only I had the cash to burn...

This would have been the best website ever. But some squatter will pick it up no doubt.

To aid in my tagging I got a wordpress plugin called Simple Tags which lets me see all my previous used tags when choosing tags for a new post. (Which is genuinely useful!) It’s also got a bunch of things I don’t want or need. Like auto tagging, and suggesting tags. I thought I’d play with them though.

The suggested tags for my post on the Quick and the Dead were: Movies, gene hackman, story overview, life of crime, assassins, ill gotten gains, entertainment industry, and typos.

Fuck you yahoo!

They don't have anything to hide.

Despite my title referencing worth 1000 this photos comes to us from Gizmodo’s own Photoshop contest. (Click the image to see more of it). I find this kind of stuff cute, but I think other people think I find it offensive. Not that I’m a great defender of art, but I’m a great believer in less surveillance. As England is proving, we as humans don’t know how to manage ubiquitous surveillance. Recordings are lost, they don’t seem to stop crime, and most footage nobody looks at. And even if we did, figure most of that out, who gets to watch everybody? Maybe they could make it a premium channel.

Back to art, Worth 1000 is a trove of quality “Photoshops”, they have themed contests, I highly recommend checking them out.

-Francis

Prosciutto Artisan Baguette

Ingredients
1/2 artisan baguette - or a malted grain wholewheat baguette
1 dessertspoon of real mayo
4 slices of tomato
2 slices of prosciutto
Shaved Italian matured cheese (enough to cover the prosciutto)

Cut the baguette almost in half lengthways (leaving one edge still attached) and spread the mayo over the bottom half.
Arrange the tomato slices, followed by the prosciutto, the cheese and finally the basil leaves along the bread.
Close with the top half of the baguette, pressing down gently to keep everything in place.
Eat in the sun with eyes firmly shut and you may just believe that you are in Italy.

I’m not a professional writer or part of some fancy marketing department but I would have called it “Prosciutto and cheese on a roll”. Still delicious sounding to me. =)

-Francis

Until it broke, and you had to hit the + to get a photo at all.

It was shitty hack. Code that was never planed.  I killed it this morning. I’m backing it up but.. you don’t want to see its code. It was a mercy kill. It will be tough but.. the 16 people who were using it will have to move on.

I like to think that in a world of fb apps that include inviting friends to be zombies or go out on hot virtual dates with bumper stickers and snowball fights, my app was a little bit of hope. Hope for functionality without advertising or annoyance. Too bad it was broken.

I will miss you “Random Profile Image” but honestly.. not that much.

-Francis

_{If you really do want to see it’s code let me know.}

Update: I had over 3.2k photos logged (I don’t have the photos, I just knew about them so I could pick a random one.) that’s an amazing amazing amount of photography to share.

And I’m even invited to a dinner tomorrow night, chemists make wonderful chefs.

-Francis

PS Oh and you better belive I’ve got a backlog of stuff to share.

I’m on hold trying to straiten out 3 of 4 billing snafus companies have me in. The first two were easy, this one Broadvoice is just not answering their phones and I can’t get into their website. They do my business phone line and they can suck it.

I’ll call them back later, Next up is Sprint who’s been charging me for insurance even though I’m not eligible. This exact thing happened the last time I lost my phone. I figured they messed up and insured me anyway, and I was able to get a 3rd replacement phone, but only because they continued to charge me after I wasn’t eligible. Don’t ask about the other two, but the 3rd phone was lost at a concert. Oh.. faithless was worth it… but maybe not if they didn’t replace my phone for $50 bucks. They made it very clear that they were being nice and I’d have to wait a long long while to be eligible for insurance again. (A year or two?) So while there’s a chance I’m currently eligible, I haven’t been all this time and they never stopped charging me.

Which allows me to convolutedly tie this all back to the title of this post and the very excellent movie.

The Quick and the Dead

Quick Story Overview

Gene Hackman is a misundersood former bandit who’s given up his life of crime and settled in a failing town. He’s taken over and provided it with a thriving entertainment industry. The problem is people in the town are bitter about his violent past and want to steal his money. They hire quick draw assassins to take him out so they can take his former ill gotten gains for themselves. This of course has made Gene Hackman paranoid and he has hired bodyguards to protect him and vital town locations like where he keeps his money, the clock tower, and the saloon.

He even lets his son Leonardo DiCaprio run the local gun store. They have a strained relationship but what father and son has never gone though a rough patch? Eventually Sharon Stone shows up and convinces them to fight to the death. They both die. The end.

Nah Most of that is lies. I’m really good at reciting movies, but I have to tell you it’s a lot more fun to make shit up. The movie is good, really good. It’s a western about Sharon Stone coming back to avenge her father and most of the movie she’s like this;

And then at the end she suddenly becomes the 80s;

Which doesn’t break the movie, but not growing up watching Sharon Stone movies confused me a little. Apparently her hair is her thing.

Umm so Gene Hackman is a twisted baddass and makes everyone fight to the death because he runs things, has henchmen, and is an ass hole. I bring this up because if me and Sprint where in this town, I’d gladly shoot them in the chest a few times.

Everyone (who matters anyway) is a baddass in this film. I’ll leave you with that remark a picture of Russel Crow. Oh and this guy was part of the film and really enjoyed it.

_{And now to go back to dealing with Sprint.. I really posted this so I didn’t have to look at that god dammed stupid cover of 21 dog years whenever I looked at my site.}

I read about half the book, I’m just not going to share all of it with you. I’m also sure it shows more about how amazon internal politics and culture works. Everything I’ve read and seen about any of the big west coast tech companies makes me glad I live on the east coast. All that morning sun over the oceans turns them wacky.

The author is like Chuck Palahniuk of fight club fame. Choke, and Survivor are also good. I haven’t gotten around to Invisible monsters yet because if I read too much of his writing I want to kill myself and I’d probably enjoy it or think it was funny. He’s dark and ironic and funny. Mike Daisey is ironic and a little funny and tries to write with the same style. He failed it.

Mike Daisey, I didn’t finish your book so I don’t know if your girlfriend broke up with you over all the devotion you showed to amazon, or maybe how you left. I hope some where in there she did leave you. I don’t like you, and I don’t think you’re very funny. I’m also happy you seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t care.

-Francis

PS This is probably one of my meanest book reviews ever, but I don’t like the book. Also the fact the FISA Amendment Act passed hasn’t quite hit me yet. Watch out America.

Let me start with three things. The last one being something new and more important.
1) You know my position on Telecommunication Immunity that is only part of the bill. And frankly I think I missed the point. The FISA Amendments Act would not only grant immunity to the crimes committed but it would grant immunity to all crimes they might have committed without revealing them. We don’t know what they did and if this bill is passed we will never know. There was an amendment to reveal that information.
2) I’m not against FISA, and I think it might need amending. I’m also not against the intelligence community or the ability for them to do their jobs. I’m against judgment of our constitutional rights taken out of the courts and into intelligence offices.
3) I’m also against the provisions for the legislative branch to be able to have sole discretion to authorize and keep secret surveillance of us citizens. This includes congressmen and senators.

That last bit kills me. It throws off the balance of power, and makes one branch of government susceptible to another.

Tim Ferriss author of the Four Hour Work Week interviewed the well known Daniel Ellsberg I didn’t know him, but he’s the guy responsible for the Pentagon Papers. He’s a patriot right up there with Mark Klein.

What Every American Needs to Know (and Do) About FISA Before Tuesday, July 8th from Tim Ferriss on Vimeo.

Please take a minute. 60 seconds. Go to the EFF website here and put in your zipcode to find your Senator’s phone number. Its a simple script you can read, you don’t have to be scared of it. They just need to know you are a constituent, and that you don’t like a part of the FISA Amendments Act. (Or the whole thing!)

That’s it. It matters today, we’ll see what happens during the vote tomorrow. Do it. It’s not worth sitting back on this one.

-Francis

I had my headphones on, so I just looked at him.

He took the card and flipped it over, read the front for a while. (You know, the side with a big picture and the phrase “Did you know you can refuse a subway search?”) and then flipped it over and took some time reading the back. The seat next to him was empty so I sat down, took off an ear of my headphones and said he could keep it.

The people in front of us kept looking at me, and then up at the other post card I had put near the ceiling. I’m glad I put it back side facing out so they could read what it’s about. I don’t think many people bother to turn them over and I don’t think people need a pretty picture to get the point. I mean the back has a lot more to it and is probably more interesting during the boring commute to work. They guy finished up and put the card back up where I was trying to stick it. Nodded at me and then just stared forward like everyone else. I put my head phones back on sat back and enjoyed the ride.

A few stops later someone new was in front of me and grabbed the card from behind me. He picked it up and spent a few minutes reading over the back. The people who had seen me put it up started looking at me again, I just smiled and sat back. The guy flipped it over a few times and then he pocketed it! I couldn’t help but grin a little. I’m not so sure about the first guy, but this second one obviously was learning something. He seemed genuinely interested which makes me wonderfully happy. =)

Despite my personal thoughts on Security Theater (that’s actually a good link) this card is kept generally neutral and doesn’t question if the subway searches keep us safer or not. (They don’t!) They do explore why you don’t have to be searched and take the position that giving up your rights needlessly is a bad idea. I’ll have other cards that talk about why bad security is worse then none at all. Which is an idea I’ve gotten a lot of resistance to. I’d rather know something is unsafe then to think something is safe and be wrong.

In the meantime there are at least two people in the subway today that know they have Fourth Amendment Rights and know how to safely execute their rights when asked to give them up with out probably cause.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It took a few hours to assemble about 300 throwies. But the pizza (some hard liquor) and cookies (courtesy of Becky) were good and everyone was good to go around 8 or 9.

I’ve attached the front and the back of the postcards, you may use them if you like. The front photo is from Runnx on flickr and I’ve attributed to him which is all his CC license requires. I think my next card is going to say why you might want to refuse a subway search.

-Francis

PDF download of the front
PDF download of the back.

(The video player wont load from the rss feed. So if you’re reading from there, you’ll have to click though to the post. Also I ditched the crappy flv version - never mind this is crappy quality anyway, it’s using some quicktime foolery so it should even be nice on an iphone - unless you’re on edge, in which case your iphone will request the extra crappy version)

-Francis

I just registered for the three day computer security.. well Hacker Conference “HOPE: Hackers of planet Earth”. So far they have a few keynote speakers listed including Adam Savage and of course Kevin Mitnick. Adam Savage is well known as a Mythbuster, maker, and lover of wonderful things. I even saw him at last years Mermaid Parade. I’ve emailed him to find out what he’s doing at The Last Hope, because while I’m sure he’ll find it cool, I don’t know why he’d be a keynote speaker.

Also presenting is a very interesting guy named Barry Wels who when not professionally testing locks for security flaws, (I’d be lying if I said it was about the money for this guy) writes for his blog Black Bag and runs a group called Toool. The saying goes that to get good at lock picking you have to practice over and over and over again. The 3rd O is for that extra “over”. Even more noteworthy, he got his government to hold off on electronic voting because of how obviously easy the machines were to hack. The mayor of Anderdam took notice of his groups efforts and made it illegal to use the flawed machines. Bary is another person I widely admire.

Hope isn’t as large as Def Con the Las Vegas based annual convention. But I couldn’t afford to goto that anyway.

So I’ve got 3 days for my $75 and I’m sure I’ll enjoy the crap out of it. I probably wont spend all three days there, but until they release a schedule I’ll have to just assume everything will be interesting and plan for that. I’m going to bring a mostly empty laptop and my camera, and maybe a bag of tricks.

While I’m sure I’ll meet people there, is anyone interested in going with me? We’ve got a home field advantage, most of the people there are staying 7 to a room at the cheapest hotel they can find. We’ll be well rested, well fed and not scared of New York.

At least not anymore then we should be.

Update!
Adam Savage wrote back to me. He’ll be speaking about

Obsession. The nature of. Subset mine.

Go figure.

-Francis

I got a small pack of stickers from The Anti-Advertising Agency. A guy named Steve Lambert made them and he’ll give some out to anyone who asks and sends them an envelope. All he asks is that you send him some photos of your work.

All photo credits (she’s much better with cameras that aren’t cell phones) goto Caroline, who’s website is forthcoming.

-Francis

It was made for a Gizmondo competition by “Noriko” - Composed with sounds of a failing Hitachi hard-disk. I lost his link, but you can probably google for it. It’s really quite beautiful and peaceful. Though once I was diagnosing a laptop and this song came on and freaked me out. You never want want to hear these sounds coming from your computer.

Oh and if you ever do hear these sounds coming from your computer, turn it off (pull the plug) and call me. ;-)

-Francis

Andrew gave me a neat idea for the header. Never mind I already did a lot of work for what’s up there, I’m going to try something out to make it a little more interesting.

I also need to integrate the gallery into it again. My old robot isn’t a random gallery image. ;-)

Let me know what you think.

-Francis

find . -type f -exec convert {} -resize 970×140 {}.970×140.jpg \;

And that resized everything. I wrote a quick rand with a sprintf to generate the url. It’s not automatic - it wont detect new photos but I can take the time to edit the range the next time I take the time to edit hundreds of photos.

The real joy was finding a 97×14 swash of image I wanted to show. I’m not being sarcastic either. Everything looks different when put though constraints. It highlights parts of the photo that would otherwise be lost. Street signs stick out the most, I’ll have large photo of trees and I’ll have picked out a swash of photo I want to show and the street sign will be sticking up off to the side, but it stands way out where I didn’t even know it was there before. There is even one photo where I took two swashes out of, there were two different photos I wanted to show.

Enjoy =)