Analog2Digital

I haven't posted on this thing in forever and a da...

2004-02-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted on this thing in forever and a day, but I had to add a note for this: Mozilla Firefox 0.8 is out. It's the best web browser on the planet. It will make you like using the Web much more, and it will make the time spent more efficient. Download it now.

From a posting on a Taoist mailing list: Hi Meg...

2003-05-18T10:17:00.000-04:00

From a posting on a Taoist mailing list:

Hi Meg,

I was raised Catholic also, went to Catholic grade school, and gradually fell out of a belief in "God" through high school and college. In college I discovered Taoism, and have grown more solid in my recognition of the Tao every day.

I think the situation you pose is one of the several big reasons I couldn't continue to follow Catholicism. I knew many people who attributed every good thing they worked for and earned to God, and left every difficult decision and problem in the hands of God. A Catholic would pray to God and ask that the gas they had left last long enough to reach another gas station. A Taoist would check his gas before he ran out, and, if he couldn't avoid running out of gas, would do what he could once he ran out to get more gas, or find another means of transportation.

I think the difference is in accepting the reality of reality as it is, rather than believing in an idealized version of reality that will repeatedly disappoint. I think the difference is trying to attribute every situation to someone, whether human or God, rather than attributing situations to their actual causes and substance. I think the difference is, at root, whether or not you take life to be as you see and feel it, or something other than what you see and feel.

Taoism is not as narrow a philosophy as Rationalism or Objectivism, which believe that our human capacity to reason is all we can rely on, because the world has an order and energy all its own which reason often fights against or thinks it can contradict. Taoism also doesn't posit humanity as paramount or unique among the universe, because although our brains give us certain advantages, they also create as many problems; and other plants, animals, and elements have other advantages that make them better equipped for their own spaces (for example, would you say that a human is superior to a fish, if a human being would die from drowning by attempting to live one day as a fish? or would you say that a human is superior to a bird, if a human can't even fly?).

Taoism is also not as limiting as modern Psychology or Post-Structuralism, which believe that we only have access to the world through ideology, language and perception, and therefore can never experience reality as it is. Taoism recognizes that language and perception are the way we usually interact with the universe ("The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao" "... for convenience I have called it Tao"), but proposes that if we quiet, "still", our rational minds, we can come to understand the unity and complexity of reality on an almost intuitive level, and understanding that makes everything else clear.

Meg, and others reading, I don't mean to dismiss Catholicism, and I think coming from a background of Catholicism can help you in undertstanding the Tao. But there are certain beliefs I believe you do have to overcome (that our access to God comes through the church, that God will provide or make true what nature doesn't, that heaven exists only after we die) before you can really understand the teachings of the Tao. These are realizations that you have to come to yourself, in your own way, but the more you read and talk about Taoism, and relate them to your own life and reality as you see it around you, the deeper your connection to the universe, and the easier you'll be able to answer a question like what to do when you run out of gas.

Have fun with it, though. Life is ultimately a wonderful gift given by no one, a fortuitous state of events that makes us aware of itself, and you should laugh and enjoy it.

-Bill Pena

> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 12:25:04 -0000
> From: "meg"
> Subject: kinda talkin to myself here....
>
> keep in mind that i was brought up catholic ;-)
>
> im driving down the road and i think to myself, what if i suddenly
> realized i have NO gas left in my car. as a catholic, i would say a
> prayer that i "PLEASE dont run out of gas and just make it safely to
> the next gas station".
>
> so then i wonder, as a taoist, what would i do/say/think?
>
> then i remember that a taoist "goes with the flow" and trusts in the
> tao and the natural progression of things. so i may run out of gas,
> or i may not, but either way i flow along easily and be content. and
>
> in a way, this reminds me of the catholic teaching of letting god's
> will be done.
>
> what do you guys think?
>
> meg

So I haven't written anything here for a long time...

2003-03-30T13:14:00.000-05:00

So I haven't written anything here for a long time. I'm working on setting up a Movable Type weblog that will work more consistently than Blogger. I appreciate Blogger and everything it's done to make setting up basic weblogs easy for the non-techies of the world, but it goes down way too often and was way too many bugs. Maybe their recent purchase by Google will give them some more resources, but Moveable Type works now, it's Perl-based so I can hack at it myself, and has features that aren't even on Blogger's horizon. Hopefully I'll have the time to get this up and running soon.

I've got a job! I was getting sick of looking for ...

2002-08-21T20:22:00.000-04:00

I've got a job! I was getting sick of looking for a job, and despondent over the prospects for a web designer in this economy. So, I'm now working as a Help Desk Technician, doing tech support for Matthew Ferrara Seminars. It's kinda cool how my job now is, well, to be a total geek. I've done tech support before, while in school, but now I'm helping real people solve a weird variety of computer problems, and it feels good. It's my job to futz with computers and learn their ins and outs, and I know I'm actually helping real people whose lives are not centered around technology with their real problems. It's a huge divergence from my Web/Information Designer gig at O'Reilly, the oracle of the uber-geeks, and it's giving me a little more perspective on where the Internet really stands with normal human beings. Tech is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

Dammit!! I am officially sick of Blogger. I'm havi...

2002-08-21T20:14:00.000-04:00

Dammit!! I am officially sick of Blogger. I'm having all sorts of problems with my site template ot loading, and I've been forced to use one of their templates now so I can get my posts back up. I don't get. So, if anyone has any great things to say about any other weblog services or software, please tell me. I gotta switch to something that works *always*.

One of the biggest questions that has ever faced h...

2002-08-13T16:33:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest questions that has ever faced humanity, second only to "Why are we here?," is "How did we get here?" Cultures around the world have come up with creation myths, and now there's a fantastic (Flash-based) site that has brought many of them together as The Big Myth.

Though most of the myths are pretty different, there are some interesting trends. Many of the myths include the idea that there have been previous "unworthy" lots of humanity, whether created shoddily or just misguided, some that were destroyed by God(s) by a Great Flood, banishment to the Underworld, or some other mass extermination.

There's also a theme of the sky and earth being two embodied Gods in a tight embrace, who had children that struggled to break the embrace of there parents - separating the earth and the sky - in order to be free. In most of the myths there's a male and female being that create the rest of the world, but in a few they love each other so much that their children have to break them apart or kill one of them in order to be born.

Lastly, I was surprised at how few Gods demanded worship from their creations, something I thought was pretty "universal." Some of them were lonely, and just wanted companions; some of them had children who, in later generations, became humans; and sometimes humans just "happened" out of the primordial earth. Most of the Gods seemed to treat humans as their children or wards, rather than their servants, and stressed interdependence - between individuals, between men and women, between heaven, earth and humanity - as the way to order.

In the end, I think I just learned that, again, that probably no one has it right, either now or in ancient times, but that creation myths can tell us a lot about the development of ancient cultures and their value systems. And that's all we have; ourselves, each other, or ways of life. However we choose to begin the story, its the current chapter that really matters.

This job search thing is debilitating. It's taking...

2002-07-29T10:29:00.000-04:00

This job search thing is debilitating. It's taking me forever to find job, and it's driving me stir-crazy. I've got a ton of skills, but they're all for an industry that seems to be suffering the biggest slump of all, New Media. I need to do something, but I don't know what. I've sent out a ton of resumes, now that I've moved to Massachusetts, but no one's biting. Then I read more depressing articles in the Boston Globe of other people who are hung out to dry, about the paucity of work in the tech sector, and it just makes me wonder whether I'm even in the right career. For so long I've been caught up in what's avant-garde, and now, after 9/11, everyone's going back to basics; I feel like an anachronism. A forward-looking artist type in a country that's fighting for survival, fighting problems that go back centuries. And the more I wait, the more I'm thinking advancement will mean spending more money on new training and certification, money that I don't have. With my mother retired and disabled, and my fiancee disabled from a ruptured disc in her back, I don't have another source help to pay for school; in fact, I'm spending time and money helping them, too. So should I scale back my dreams? Find a job in retail or I don't know what, something that will at least guarantee me health insurance? I thought that having written a book on web design would get me somewhere, but I'm seeing nothing. Ugh. So I'm losing sleep aimlessly worrying, wondering what else I can do.

Father's Day update -- You can rest easy, I found ...

2002-06-22T08:43:00.000-04:00

Father's Day update -- You can rest easy, I found him. I got a call from him, in fact.

I've always hated Father's Day. I probably always ...

2002-06-16T16:47:00.000-04:00

I've always hated Father's Day. I probably always will. Although I've come to know people who have nothing but good things to say about their fathers, and are close to them throughout adulthood, I can't shake the feeling that this contrived celebration lets everyone forget what a divorce rate of 50% means. Some of us don't have fathers. Some of us probably never will.

My parents divorced when I was 1 year old, and, from what I've heard, I'm glad they did. But after that, I've only seen my father sporadically, known him through short visits spaced by 3-5 years. I honestly don't know how many times I've seen my father, though I have a crystal-clear image in my mind, one that I can't remember to forget. So this Father's Day, I tried to call him, after 4 years since our last meeting.

I don't have his phone number. And, apparently, it's unlisted. So I tried to call my grandmother and get his number from her; I'd tried on Mother's Day, and it didn't work. I tried again, and it's not their number anymore. This scared me, because I haven't talked to her in as long as I haven't talked to my father this time, I was scared, and now, I don't even know if my grandmother's dead.

So I called my uncle, and I left a message on an anonymous answering machine, hoping it was his, hoping he can call me back. I even tried an online US Search service, but my credit card is overdrawn. Great.

So I still hate Father's Day. It reminds me of all the time I longed for a dad. It frustrates me as I try to make amends. But it makes me take stock, and makes me want to love it some day. So I'm trying.

When Mozilla 1.0 came out, C|Net gave it a rather ...

2002-06-12T01:03:00.000-04:00

When Mozilla 1.0 came out, C|Net gave it a rather bizarre review, in which they harp on Mozilla's inability to render Internet Explorer-specific web pages. They claim that, since IE is the market leader, pages tailored for IE should be acceptable as Web standard; "That's reality," according to C|Net. That is absolutely insane, dangerous to the very structure of the Web, and biased toward Microsoft's market share and against the health of the industry.

Let's make this perfectly clear. There is one standards body for the Web. It is headed by the man who *invented* the World Wide Web, and its mission is to collect the best ideas of different companies, including Microsoft, Netscape, Sun, and research labs and universities, to foster the most useful, accessible and cohesive hypertext network possible. Microsoft is an enormous corporation, but they are not the owners, inventors or legislators of the Web. The W3C is the only standard that all browsers should follow, and anyone not writing web sites in standard HTML/CSS/XML/JavaScript takes on the reponsibility of alienating part of their audience and hindering the free exchange of free information. I wrote my book in part to show and prove this point, and C|Net is creating a huge disservice by propogating the idea that Microsoft-only extensions to open technologies should be followed merely because of Microsoft's size.

On a sidenote, they also criticized the IRC client "ChatZilla" for not being compatible with AOL Instant Messenger or any other IM services. Of course, they missed the point; IRC is a unique system incomparable with anything resembling a "Buddy List" or AOL's "Chat Rooms". Don't believe me? Check out the Quote Database - distilling disinformation for your comedic pleasure.

I just found out that if I were a Debian package, ...

2002-05-28T01:49:00.000-04:00

I just found out that if I were a Debian package, my name would be bpenaterm. I can dig that.

Check out my Portfolio.

2002-05-14T19:06:00.000-04:00

Check out my Portfolio.

The Best 404 Error Page Ever.

2002-04-01T20:21:00.000-05:00

The Best 404 Error Page Ever.

If you're using a modern web browser (incl. Netsca...

2002-03-06T12:01:00.000-05:00

If you're using a modern web browser (incl. Netscape 6+ and IE5.5+), you can take a look at my new resume, with an all-CSS layout. With nary a table to be found, it's an exercise in CSS positioning as well as a plea for employment.

SatireWire | Passed Over, Syria, China, Libya Form...

2002-03-09T19:36:00.000-05:00

SatireWire | Passed Over, Syria, China, Libya Form Axis of Just As Evil

Macromedia - Flash MX : Top 10 New Features Finall...

2002-03-04T14:25:00.000-05:00

Macromedia - Flash MX : Top 10 New Features Finally, a version of Flash that I might actually consider using. Combined with Flash 5's ActionScript, which is based entirely on ECMAScript (JavaScript's big daddy), I'm really digging where Macromedia is going with Flash. XML, video and HTML support, dynamic loading of resources (images, movies, etc.), and new accessibility and internationalization features, all great enhancements. Hurrah Macromedia!

O'Reilly Network: Hierarchical Menus with the Unde...

2002-02-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

O'Reilly Network: Hierarchical Menus with the Underrated style.display Object [Feb. 22, 2002]
My latest article is up ... take a read and let me know what you think.

" One of the most common DHTML requests I get is for a Windows Explorer-style hierarchical menu, where there's a list of topics or "folders" that a user can click on to reveal subtopics, or "files," within that folder. It's a common desktop metaphor that seems ever more necessary on the Web, especially as we see navigation bars incorporating larger and more complex content while still trying to fit on the screen. Hierarchical menus are a solution to the common problem of having too many links in too small a space."

Click Here to Download the Internet! (yes, it's a ...

2002-02-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

Click Here to Download the Internet! (yes, it's a joke)

I've implemented a new DHTML menu along the left. ...

2002-02-19T16:19:00.000-05:00

I've implemented a new DHTML menu along the left. If you're using Netscape 4, well, this page will look absolutely horrible now, but I, personally, feel no qualms. If you haven't already, upgrade to Mozilla, the next-generation browser aimed at developers, or Netscape 6.2, which is now very stable and very friendly. If you're still using Netscape 4.xx after 5 years of release, and 1.5 years of a new release available, that's your own damn fault now. It doesn't support one CSS object that I really like ("style.display"), but I'm using it on my personal site anyway.

So grab a newer browser, dammit!

Yahoo! News - 240-to-189 Vote Caps Seven-Year Effo...

2002-02-14T11:13:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! News - 240-to-189 Vote Caps Seven-Year Effort to Ban Soft Money
Finally, a bill has passed both the Senate and the House for campaign finance reform; the story of of this battle is incredible, even in the last two days as frantic blocking measures and threats of filibusters were hurled from the political swine too accustomed to feeding from the corporate trough to give it up without complete and utter self-humiliation.

" In one late-night switch, Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who had planned to put forward a limit on soft money but not an outright ban, instead sponsored a Shays-Meehan bill from a few years ago. That measure took a more absolute stand against soft money than the current version.

" Mr. Ney admitted he opposed the bill he was sponsoring but said he was trying to hold his opponents ``accountable'' and show that their legislation was not as pure as it once had been. Denying that his intent was to kill the Shays-Meehan bill, he said, ``Purity and honesty today is what we are all about.''

" Supporters of the bill said the Republican tactics showed their failure. ``Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue,'' said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. ``Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate it is an implicit concession that they have lost the fight.'' "

I've decided I'm going to start posting here more ...

2001-03-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

I've decided I'm going to start posting here more frequently.

I was thinking about the concept of "seeing straight" last night. What do we mean when we say "I couldn't even see straight?" It's a coarse qualification we're making, just talking about our immediate vision, as conceived by our eyes. However, being able to see straight, walk straight, think straight, encompasses a complex coordination between senses, the layer of perception, and interpretation to create a cognitive map of our physical and metaphysical space. For example, we know if we're unable to hear, we lose a "sense of direction" that we often can't describe, but is the very sense of hearing that helps localize. There is another sense - it's a fact, we have more than five - called bodily kinesthesis, which is the ability to localize your own body in space without looking; this is the sense cops test with the "close your eyes and touch your nose" test. In effect, clumsy people are akin to blind people!

My point is, Seeing is a distinct and powerful thing, a concept that extends to our mapping of relationships between ourselves and the world, and which, at it's purity, erases that distinction so we understand that we are part of the world.

Sometimes I can hardly see see straight. That's why I wear glasses. But I can still See, so I'm doin' alright.

I'm working on a couple of books now; one's signed...

2001-04-09T19:06:00.000-04:00

I'm working on a couple of books now; one's signed, and it's called "Webcasting" (with MP3 and RealAudio), and the other is still in development, but is design-oreinted and very cool.

When I was thinking about the concept of writing a book, what that would mean to my self-image &em; a professional author! to think! &em; my career prospects, etc., I actually found myself wondering whether I'd use my own name on the book. I actually considered publishing under an alias, ala Jacob Nape or Creon or Alonso Quijano. I was promptly smacked around by everyone so I'd realize what an idiot I was.

I was actually afraid of pinning my name to potential failure, to something I'd never done before, but couldn't run from. Then I started writing ... and it was good. So I signed on the dotted line ... Bill Peña. I'm still scared, but, hey, most people never get the opportunity to fail, especially at 22. I got more in me.

Nuptials Updates: We've moved the date of the wed...

2001-05-22T15:04:00.000-04:00

Nuptials Updates:
We've moved the date of the wedding to Saturday, June 1st, 2002. It's going to be held at Mary's parent's house, on the edges of the woods near the coast. Outdoors. Niiiiice.

We've been making lists, checking them twice to remember people's *real* *full* names. We're not up to the address stage yet. Mary called "the tent people," which reminds me of nothing but the movie Very Bad Things. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing ... hey, it was funny, I've got it on video.

I'm crafting and etching copper boxes as part of the wedding. More on that, later.

I'm the last person to start anything resembling a...

2001-11-26T01:10:00.000-05:00

I'm the last person to start anything resembling a chain letter, but in the midst of 24/7 coverage of "America Strikes Back", this story has not reached the American public, and this is the best way I know to right that wrong.

The "Defense of Western Civilization Fund," recently founded by Lynn Cheney, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney, has released its report
"Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It." This report cites 117 instances of particularly unpatriotic acts of speech within universities, including a panel discussion on terrorism titled "Break the Cycle of Violence," and statements like "It is from the desperate, angry and bereaved that these suicide pilots came." Some quotes are from students, cited by name, others professors, also cited by name, but all plucked delicately out of the oceans of dialogue on terrorism since 9AM, Sept. 11, and made examples.

They are 117 examples of how our government will not tolerate criticism of its foreign policy. The Bush Administation is actively trying to make us believe that to pause, and think, and discuss the implications of our actions is anti-American and, somehow, akin to intellectual terrorism. Although the administration has obviously taken its time to carefully persuade the rest of the world's leaders and build a global coalition, it has grown arrogantly disdainful of persuading its own people. Rather than engaging in the same dialogue going on across the country, the Bush Administation feigns and demands consensus, at increasing risk to the dissenter.

I went to Brown, and now I read of professors and students I crossed paths with cited in this document, called the root of western civilization's demise, demonized for questioning the government, while the government defends "liberty." I can't accept such hypocrisy.

Please forward this document to as many people as you know, and awaken them to the idea that discussion, contemplation, and, yes, even disagreement, is the first and most important right of every American - the 1st Amendment. Whether you agree, disagree or don't care about Operation Enduring Freedom, you have that right.

We have seen this right attacked during the Red Scare, when the country feared a communist at every corner, and was attacked from within by power-hungry demagouges like a cancer. Now Lynn Cheney has proved herself another such demagouge, but this time, we can see through the rhetoric, and save ourselves.

FBI software cracks encryption wall So now the FB...

2001-12-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

FBI software cracks encryption wall
So now the FBI is using the tactics previously employed by the "ILOVEYOU" virus to compromise Americans' computer security with their own backdoors. This government-issue virus, called "Magic Lantern," installs a keylogger, a program that (now read this carefully) records every key you hit on your keyboard and sends it to the FBI. The FBI has admitted it exists, after denying it for a few weeks.

God dammit, I'm getting sick of this. It's not bad enough that I don't trust having a direct connection to the Internet because I'm forced to use Windows on one of my computers, and its hundreds of ensuing vulnerabilities (let's put it this way; there's only one point of entry to my home network - SSH, and it's currently blocked). Now I have to wonder whether my passwords and e-mails are being transmitted to the FBI, and - who knows? - seen by some other third party while in transit?!? How can we possibly work and live in a free international society when a certain nation-state is compromising communications within its own country, and therefore compromising the security of anyone who communicates with us?