Haiku for May 31

nor'westerly winds
gusts howling at fifty k
thirty-first of may

Easy Rider Down

Dennis Hopper
May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010

Actor, Artist, Director, Painter, Poet, Photographer, Sculptor,
Father, Grand-Father, Human Being

"It's not who you boys are or what you look like,
it's what you represent that scares these people."
George Hanson quote from the movie Easy Rider

Struggled to find words for this, and put off posting it as I thought about it. I'm a fan of his art and his movies. Easy Rider is in my Top Ten Favourite Films of all time. It was a film that changed me. Whether that was a change for the better is debatable, but it helped shape who I am. Don't bother to post a comment if you haven't seen it. If your excuse for not seeing it, is a preconceived notion of 'biker movie', shame on you. Even if you can't get into the plot, it is still some of the best wide open vista road footage ever, and one of the top 3 counter-culture films of all time.

Rest In Peace Billy

Birthday Haiku

The b'day today... and I'm off on my annual pilgrimage




two birthdays today
silence substitutes for song
remembering yours


whoooops... totally forgot to post this after I wrote it

The first 'long weekend of summer'

It's 9AM. Saturday morning on the first 'long weekend of summer'.

My goal this weekend is to get on the motorcycle. It's all ready to go, and has been for well over a month.

If I can get some more yardwork done.

A sheep in wolf's clothing

With the underpinnings of privacy of social media sites on the internet, there is a groundswell of opposition to who exactly owns your data. The fine print in the legalese of the privacy statements of sites like Facebook and mySpace is precocious... and removing your data, from their 'service' is, at best, a painstaking ordeal.

Some have gone so far as to launch a QuitFacebookDay, although saying it and doing it are two wildly different undertakings.

Not exactly what you thought you were signing up for.

One such 'new' social media site is Diaspora*.

diaspora /dī-ˈas-p(ə-)rə, dē-/
origin: Greek, διασπορά – “a scattering [of seeds]”
1. the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network

In many ways open source works. And diaspora* is showing some of the 'theory' behind how they plan to make it work. They have a plan. They raised money by using Kickstarter, which itself, is a very cool concept, and I encourage you to check out the site. There's been some interesting projects funded by using it. The project is not overfunded, but they have certainly exceeded their initial expectations of $10,000 by June 1, 2010.

As of today have raised $175,894.03.

1759% funded with 12 days to go.

So as the 'who owns your info' debate crawls along, will an upstart protect your rights. The problem will be with the creators. At some point it will become big enough, to be a takeover target. That's the reality of it. Is it another great idea that will be bought out, and then data mined to provide more targeted advertising.

Only time will tell.

Eric Schmidt's anarchy quote

'the internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.'

Eric Schmidt
April 2, 1997

Eric Schmidt is now the CEO of Google.

Shaman or sage?

braincase: blockages and blurts

Monday morning... pre 7AM. Coffee, the sound of the wind howling outside. Feels more like fall than spring. Ms. Slippers (aka the cat) has gone out for her morning reconnaissance mission. I'm not sure I have anything to write about, other than hockey, and my bad mood.

I am tired. Drained. A talk with the lawyer on Thursday, put me in a bad mood, that is only now beginning to subside. More money and still no result. I'm not sure I'm getting good counsel for my money. All I know is that, it's expensive, and I'm no further ahead than I was before.

The braincase switches to the abstract. My friend Damons' dad was a lawyer, he passed away a few years ago. Mike Cooke was a great lawyer... and crappy business man. The kind of lawyer that would give you 110% in court and took clients on a 'pay what you can' basis. It's times like these, when a loss is felt so deeply, that it seems fresh.

In 9 days I'll be making my annual pilgrimage to the cemetery. Sadly. To wish my friend Mike Dixon a happy birthday. Mike was the best man at my wedding. We had the same birthday, he was exactly a year younger than me. After he got married, he sort of fell off the face of the earth. Saw him maybe a handful of times over 20 years. That's what happens when you marry up socially. You get a new 'class' of friends... her friends. Sadly, that usually means you are forced to abandon your friends. The friends that knew you best. A tragic end to a life and a friendship. The choices he made, still effect me to this day. For the past 4 years, I reflect on my failings as a friend.

I can't seem to move passed it.