Kocichka
A collaborative poem on a rain stick in videopoetry created by Jeramiah Frick, Tim Wood and Ingrid Wood. Words by Jeramiah Dean Frick and Tim Wood with editing suggestions by Ingrid Wood. Symbols accompanying words by Ingrid and Tim Words and Symbols penned onto rain stick by Ingrid Camera: Sander Bomgardner Editing: Tim Wood (c) 2014, the creators Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
ISIS takes control of major portion of Iraq. Becomes country?
ISIS (the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant) has taken control of Ninevah province which includes Mosul. Confirmed by Iraqi top official. Happened in a very short period (sounds like three days). Iraqi army resistance collapsed pretty rapidly. Lots of refugees fleeing Ninevah, etc., Now… what’s important? ISIS Effectively controls a country I found a map that purports to show ISIS territory (before new events): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Territorial_control_of_the_ISIS.svg/1654px-Territorial_control_of_the_ISIS.svg.png Yellow: Syria, Iraq Red:ISIS territory Ninevah is the Iraqi province that controls most of the “Syrian” border northeast of the red. It’s more clearly shown in link in third section The combined area (existing red plus Ninevah) seems comparable in size to Jordan. And it straddles about half of the old Iraq/Syria border. ISIS ISIS is (of course) a former Al Quieda affiliate. If memory serves, they’ve been the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes by any of the anti-government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Wikpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant. Partition There was already, effectively, an independent Kurdish state (The Kurdistan “regional” government) in “Iraq” north and east of ISIS territory. They have their own army, the iraq flag doesn’t fly on their territory, etc., Seemingly Independent in all but explicit name. Wikipedia has a map of their territory (that also happens to clearly show Ninevah) about 1/3rd way down their page on Iraqi Kurdistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdistan I would suspect it’s going to difficult for Baghdad to keep control of significant chunks of the areas that are in dispute between Kurdistan and the Baghdad. And … Continue reading ISIS takes control of major portion of Iraq. Becomes country?
Hotlines to God
The Trace of God, a book I helped publish, was released about a week ago. I posted this related piece on Facebook a few days ago: I remember an interview with Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he claimed, in essence, to have a hot line to God. The Creator was his personal adviser. My reaction? “He’s a loon. Hot line to God?” When someone says they’ve had “an encounter with God”, “a mystical experience” that’s the common reaction. When it happened to Barbara Ehrenreich, an atheist, she didn’t talk about it for decades out of fear it would get her labelled as crazy. Most Fundamentalists Christians have that reaction. Miracles, holy fire, burning bushes… that stuff ended back, you know, with the Disciples. Funny thing is, I keep backing into studies about the effectiveness of prayer, stories about meditation changing people’s lives and so on. The assumption I’d picked up didn’t jive with what researchers we’re finding. When Joseph Hinman approached me about publishing his book, The Trace of God, I was definitely of two minds. I’ve never been involved in publishing a book about God, let alone one making a sane, rational argument that mystical experience is real? But, what I found is someone who took all that research, looked at all the arguments floating around and made a case that needed to be heard. He shows that when someone has one of these experiences, they’re part of a very very large group, probably the vast majority … Continue reading Hotlines to God
We no longer know better
After Sandy Hook, there were calls to arm teachers (or at least put armed security guards in every school). A number of my friends were part of that chorus. And one of my friends was a teacher at that school. Even in a smaller city like Colorado Springs, lock downs at schools are so frequent they barely rate being tweeted. Add in so many weapons in so many hands in so many places and, eventually, the Peter Principle will kick in and whatever is possible will happen. A careless overworked teacher will set a gun down for just a moment… and a young child who wants to play cops and robbers (not realizing it’s a real weapon)… or an older child who’s been bullied uses it on classmates… or a kid with abusive parents or being bullied will take it… A “bad guy”, a bullied student will pull a gun in a classroom and a teacher will try to stop them… miss and hit a student. A gun accidentally discharges… because the safety wasn’t set, failed, got knocked off as the gun floated around the inside of a bag. Children or teachers end up dead because of a weapon that was meant to protect. Recently, we’ve had “Open Carry” groups taking weapons, some military-style assault rifles, into public restaurants to protect their right to carry by exercising it. The marriage in the next booth blows up because the returning vet, stay-at-home spouse, the whoever finds out just how badly they’ve … Continue reading We no longer know better
Recent Found Images
Each piece is two images printed on a pair of metal plates. The front image is found digital photograph (unmodified other than minor adjustments/mostly cropping). The back image is printed across the plates in an image pair and is a composite of the images on the front plates. All six pieces were featured at a short-lived gallery in Waco TX. The first and last set were part of the Modbo Small Works show (December 2013): Decision, Offering exploring childhood’s choices and, by analogy, our own in reality and in our minds Light/Post, Rising Spin, Blur exploring motion and trying to capture the experience of a moment Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
Officer, those really arn’t my skidmarks. Really.
Something just struck me. We’ve done some amazing stuff with ECT in the last 30 days. We’ve been building a writing/editing/publishing tool with ECT. It was used to publish a kindle book last summer that’s selling nicely. In December, for the first time, it was used to publish a book in Kindle, paperback and hard-cover editions: The Ants and The Coffee Pot. pressWoodInk was asked to appear at a publishing panel and local book fair. In ten days, Ants went from a dozen image files and a copy of the text to being available for purchase in all three formats. The book even has a book trailer on YouTube. A few weeks later, another book was published with ECT: City Limit (GrandViaduct). For us, it’s gravy that they’re great titles with striking covers. It’s doesn’t hurt that people are doing great work with our technology. I mention covers for another reason. Amazon doesn’t want covers to appear at the front of books. Some people have found a way to force the cover to appear at the front. But, it has what’s called the double cover issue: the cover appears twice. We discovered a way to deliver what readers expect: to pick up a book, see the cover and then open to the beginning of the book. And we rolled that into our technology. And, I’m now using a release of Nootcards day to day. I open it on my phone, tap create and then tap in my notes, maybe give … Continue reading Officer, those really arn’t my skidmarks. Really.
What I choose to see
For Abbey Clements and Opalina They are voices overexposed beautiful coldly vulnerable They are blue angels They are drift loose Two pairs of hooked wires hang from the branch She chooses to be hooked and by the hooks raised up And so one after another do they 4 ohio 2 towers 20 children but not like this not to the rhythm a slow metronome of sledge hammers on oil drums pacing the muscles the muscles lifting lifting up the strange fruit shame and vengeance humiliation hanging is not for hearing it’s how you own the words it is about power and most of all control they become those Names shame and vengeance humiliation become their power become and will 4 ohio 2 towers 20 children it’s not now not like this Contrails over Gotham ashes ashes they both fall down an un-designated London is calling the strange fruit follows into the night to control the wires awe and shock the monkeys vengeance 4 ohio 2 towers 20 children it’s not now not like this Not like Jeremy speaking in class Klebold in Columbine in the name of vengeance this time an Elementary 4 ohio 2 towers 20 children it’s not now not like this On the hillside Smoke blocks the light … Continue reading What I choose to see
Apocalypse Now
At its simplest, how do I deal with “the bad guy” is another version of what do I do when things go wrong, when it breaks. Breaks means, of course, that it used to work. That’s what you want back. With websites and web applications, that “used to work” is the combination of what the people who host your website provide and your website. Usually the people who host your website will also back it up. So, some disasters, are simply a matter of calling them and asking them to restore it from their backups Except when they can’t or won’t. The company that, at the time of the attack, hosted one of our customer’s sites didn’t restore the website and our login until almost a month after the attack. I don’t think they were hanging out at the pub trading stories instead of handling our trouble ticket. Or maybe they were. Either way, if your website is down for almost a month, you’ve got a problem. Going forward, part of ours is providing independent restoration of those websites. In other words, if their support people can’t be reached, we can restore things. And, if they’re completely down, we can restore the website to a completely different website. And in about the same time. Now for the fun bit. Even if “the bad guy” (yes I’m enjoying putting that in quotes) gets inside the walls, destroys the hosting company and takes us out, too, there’s Plan C (or Plan 9…). … Continue reading Apocalypse Now
Clean up
We learned a few things in cleaning up after several of our customers had their sites defaced. We’ve have better methods to protect sites and, when things happen, we’re better prepared to clean things and bring them back. We learned a whole bag of new tricks to secure websites. It’s impressive what’s possible. At this point, we could literally write a book. Perhaps Security Best Practices for WordPress. But, that’s really only one piece. Last year, I read an article about how they approach take to security in Africa. Our approach is to build the strongest castle possible to keep “the bad guys” out. In Africa, companies often don’t have the resources to pay to build those castles. They assume the bad guys will get in. They’re right. Sometimes “the bad guy” is one of the employees. Or “the bad guy” convinces an employee they’re the server repairman. Or, “the bad guy” finds the security hole that only shows up at low tide under a full moon that allows him to crawl through the castle wall. If the castle walls won’t keep “the bad guy” out, what do you do when it happens? Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook
Posts I don’t like doing
One thing I’ve been proud of is that none of the websites we’ve created have ever been hacked. Until last month. WordPress released an update (3.4.2) that had a security hole. Out of the many sites we’ve created, two sites we’re hacked. We believe that the just released WordPress 3.50 closed the hole and we worked with the companies hosting the two sites to restore the sites and install the update. Now for a little personal political commentary. As they say, eDao, Inc., it’s employees, owners, affiliates and lackeys are not responsible for what follows. Me, myself and I are responsible for the opinions that follow. One of the two sites —GrandViaduct.com— was replaced with a message of protest “against disrespect of the prophet Mohammad”. The image is cropped because you can guess a lot of the rest (and because I’m not going to give this site cracker any credit). What I will do is draw a contrast with Anonymous. Anonymous targets their actions. They don’t declare war against the world, they declare it against a specific company, group government. Sticking with that war analogy, they’re following one of the core tenets of the laws of war: you don’t attack non-combatants. On the other hand, this type of attacker is blasting anything and everything; whether or not they’re involved. He or she apparently missed the fact that the filmmaker is now in prison for what amounts to fraud related to making the Innocence of the Muslims. The U.S. government condemned … Continue reading Posts I don’t like doing