Undulating Ungulate

Hopefully this evening we will be switching the site over to its new host (thanks, Joel!). There may be weirdness/site downtime…

Filed by billy at 3:09 pm under meta
Comments Off

will be offline from Friday-Monday (at least) while net is switched over. so contactable via txt only.

new flatmates moving in tomorrow. will be different.

man, babies popping up everywhere right now…

Aegypt by John Crowley is amazing.

everything feels somewhere between busy and empty lately.

Filed by billy at 8:33 pm under meta,the moose
2 Comments

Back when we were blogging a lot of political/underground/fringe stuff, we had a pretty regular hit-count from the US Military. It ran at a stable level across the months, like we were being monitored, rather than they were tracking individual items. The attention seemed to drop away a little once the shift in content was more established; or maybe they got lost in the spam, and the spam killing measures that quartered traffic a month or so back has revealed them again.

This is last month’s site traffic by origin.

Fully 1% of all site traffic was “US Military”. How bizarre.

(I guess maybe they noticed the thing about the organics last month.)

Just while we are on the US Military, check this out: the testimony of Spc Brandon Neely, a straight up country boy from the USA who enlisted in the army, graduated in 2001, and ended up at Guantanomo Bay as an MP. His testimony is in response to being generally horrified by what was going on, and is fascinating, if brutal, reading.

Filed by billy at 11:11 pm under meta,technology
Comments Off

Comments may be a bit fubarred for the next little while. For some reason the moderation.php file won’t open, so if you post a comment and it doesn’t appear, it will be stuck in limbo. OTOH, if you have had a comment posted successfully in the past, then if you fill out the comments form with the same details, it should remember you and commenting should be fine.

Filed by billy at 10:49 am under meta
3 Comments

Filed by billy at 3:28 pm under meta
2 Comments

My loyal lappy seems to be struggling with basic functioning, in a possibly terminal fashion, or at least one requiring major surgery. This puts many plans sideways until rectifiable.

Oh well. It’s sunny. Time to go outside.

Filed by billy at 1:03 pm under meta,technology,the moose
Comments Off

If you have any inclination to do Outward Bound, then definitely go for it. The experience is amazing but you need to be open to it; it’s not so much about what you are doing as how you are doing it, and the people you are with. If you don’t have any inclination to do Outward Bound, then don’t. It’s a self-selecting sample, after all. Also: the fitter you are in advance, the better.

I’m still not reading any news. Which means there is little to blog about, since I’m not that into blogging about my life, such as it is. The domain is coming up for renewal. I’m not sure there’s a lot of point in continuing with the site. Also finding it hard to justify the hosting costs.

I’m not even sure why I would go back to paying attention in the way I have been. The patterns and trends are well in place. A close monitoring of the unfolding catastrophe benefits what exactly? May as well spend the time gaining skills that will be handy when the shit hits the fan.

Today I will start reading the draft of the non-fiction book. Depending on how that goes, and the meeting later today regarding the doco, I can make the next life-decision. Yet more change a-coming.

Hard to believe This Charming Mystery was only a couple of months ago; it feels like another life. This year has turned my world inside out and round and round and it’s not over yet. But winter is the time of letting go, drawing in tight what matters, and dropping the inessential; Spring is just around the corner, despite the gray and rain, and expansion will come again. Everything to its time. The point is to make use of it while we have the chance. Ain’t nothing lasting in this world.

Filed by billy at 11:55 am under meta,the moose
Comments Off

It is time to refocus my energies on writing. The moose’s extensive daily information trawling, and resultant blogging, will cease for a time, or at the least pull back drastically for a while.

If the world ends, I suspect the rioting mob in the street shall inform me, though it is a very peaceful hillside upon which I look out.

For those who will feel a void, here is a rundown of what I regularly read for news and information in the absence of TV and papers. All are linkied on the sidebar. All reward daily visits.

In no particular order:

Technorati: updated every few hours. The top thirty news stories being linked to by blogs listed on Technorati. American centric but a reasonable snapshot of the zeitgeist.

Cryptogon: regularly updated blog focussing on politics, economics, and how fucked we are. He’s totally outdoing my efforts in this area. Hugely recommended.

Cabal: an RSS catcher for a set of diverse blogs, including Kurzweil AI. Can be hit and miss, but a lot of gold.

Technoccult: for all your high weirdness, the occult, sex, drugs, liberty, mad science, cults, fringe culture needs. Excellent stuff.

Disinformation: long standing countercultural/fringe everything site, now an open source blog. Politics, crazy shit, counterculture, whatever.

What Does It Mean: The motherlode. If I’m feeling brave I read this daily. Roughly 30 headlines per day for each of USA, Russia, China, England, France, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Venezuala, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, the UN, Japan, India, Pakistan and Australia. It’s probably best to avoid the articles written by the site, as they seem a bit paranoid/batshit, but as a collection service for world news on one page, it’s pretty extraordinary.

Oh, and through my LJ I get No Right Turn for NZ political stuff and Juan Cole’s Informed Comment for Middle East/US stuff (though to be honest that is mostly too depressing to read.)

Metafilter and Whitechapel if I get bored/have time on my hands.

A lot of the rest of my sidebar are very specific info sources, and while totally awesome, don’t get daily love. And I’m not counting friend’s blogs as news, though they can be.

Kia kaha, kids.

The moose shall return.

Filed by billy at 4:37 pm under meta,reading,the moose
2 Comments

Will be mostly offline for a few days while housesitting. If you want me, txt.

—

More on the Pentagon paid objective media military experts:

A New York Times article detailed the connection between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries, reporting that “the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform” media military analysts “into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.” A Media Matters review found that since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article — many identified as having ties to the defense industry — collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.

(via amsam)
–

And in breaking news, a movie about a revolutionary new technology for powering cars: blood.

(chur, our recently shorn brother sound-moose)

Filed by billy at 2:51 pm under meta
2 Comments

Post-atomic.com has morphed to blogger: it is now at http://post-atomic.blogspot.com/.

The moose has been invited to contribute as part of the blogging team on its relaunch. Which is kind of neat since I’ve never met or interacted with anyone else involved, though we are strongly in sympathy in the open-mindedness of our worldviews.

No idea what it’ll be like. So far it’s an unusual mix. I think I may use it as a bit of a weirdness release valve…

Filed by billy at 11:30 am under meta,the moose
Comments Off