I am happy. But not for long.

When I find her message, my heart jumps. I stare at the screen, try to read into her words any possible meaning. Naturally, I fail. Those words say what they say, they are an offer. Which is a start, all right, where there had been void for too long a time.

Still, they sound distant. They sound almost polite, like giving in to a whining child. Is this what she thinks about me? Is this what is left of the love we had, the love I still have? There more I think about it, the more grows doubt in me, starts nagging at my confidence which had just begun to grow again with her voice.

Call it paranoia. At the end of the day, I feel more depressed than elated. This is not the Esme I know who is talking to me. This is not the Esme who I am in love with. Maybe you can find reasons for that, after all she went through recently (but why is she not sharing something - anything - of that with me?).

It is late at night when I fall asleep with these thoughts on my mind.

It is not the slumber of a man whose love hat gotten newly kindled. It is the slumber of a man burdened with more doubts than ever.

Over the summer I had Backup woes, with a Laptop Hard Disk bitting the dust, a iMate unit getting roughly unmounted when the power flickered, and some chaos when after restoring from TimeMachine I found my automatic backups were not working right.

Much is better now, but I'm in trouble wading through too many copies and too much backup.

TimeMachine has been restored to it's excellent self after copying everything to a 1TB scratch-drive and erasing the old TimeMachine file structure.  Bit of a heart stopper there, as one wouldn't usually want to nuke the backups, but the automatic sequency otherwise could not be restarted.  I'm wondering if the LapTop was in the midst of a TimeMachine backup when the internal Hard Disk perished?

To Make things flow all excess and unused "stuff" from the LapTop has also been moved to the 1TB Scratch Drive.

The iMate drive from my MiniMac responded well to a repair permissions session using OS-X's "Disk Utility" and that Data is in the process of joining the other Mac's data on the 1TB Scratch Drive.

I've also ported over a mass of Data from several old Window's Boxes onto my Scratch 1TB drive.

SO now I have a huge mass of Data - the LapTop contents plus at least one full Laptop backup, the iMate drive, the MiniMac drive's data, the data from the iMac and stored data from several older Window's Machines.  All tucked away on the Scratch 1TB drive.

What a mess of stuff to work through!

I've ordered an Apple Time Capsule 1TB model intending to replace the present Linksys Wireles Router and various external TimeMachine Drives.  Once I have it up I'll have to decide which of the External Drives I would want to retain, possibly as part of a TimeCapsule/TimeMachine cluster.  

And then the Troublesome Part - I have to go through the mass of Data on my Scratch 1TB Drive to select what is rubbish, what is redundant, what is superseded by newer data, what doesn't interest me anymore and what needs to be archived.  

Sounds like a "Winter Project" if I can put it off until then.

73

Steve
K9ZW

I decided I would go for something different. So I went out and bought a MacBook. This had a 2.16 GHZ Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM and a 120 GB HDD.

This was probably one of the best decisions I have ever made. It is so easy to just stick with Windows because that’s all you’ve ever used. But trust me, once you switch to Mac, you never go back.

More than anything else, the thing I like most about my MacBook is the Operating System, “Mac OS X”. For all the Windows Users out there, image a OS that never crashes, that doesn’t bug you, doesn’t force you to reboot after installing something. Image if you could have had instant search back in 2004 instead of waiting until 2007. Image having Virtual Desktops. Image if the OS backed up everything you did either to an external HDD or wireless to a Base Station.

Those are just a fraction of the advantages of using a Mac. The Hardware itself is also very impressive. It has a built in “Sudden Motion Sensor”. This detects when the Notebook has been dropped and takes the following action. The system disengages the disk drive heads from the hard disk platters, preventing data loss and drive damage from a disk head crash.

There’s also the MagSafe power cord. This is a power cable, which is held in place magnetically. This means if someone trips over the wire, it comes out of the socket without damaging the computer or pulling it off the table.  There’s also a built in webcam and Micophone. The lid is magnetic, meaning there’s no latch that can be broken.

Other cools features include the Trackpad. This is what you use to move the cursor, except that by placing 2 fingers on instead of 1. You can actually scroll up and down the page. This means you never have to take your primary finger off the trackpad. The same goes for right clicking, simply put a second finger on the pad and click.

My favourite feature though has to be the LED lights underneath, which tell you how much battery power you have left. The power cable also has a little light on it, which turns green when the computer is fully charged.

Don’t forget Macs can run any Operating System, Windows, OS X or Unix Based.

I hope this helps anyone who was previously on the fence about buying a Mac.

While onsite, I learned that my customer had recently taken her computer to the Apple Store to find out why her Mac was locking up on a frequent basis. At the store, she found out that her IT department had installed RAM modules in her Mac that didn't conform to Apple specs. Apple Store technicians did a memory swap that stopped the system freezes. However, in the course of self-diagnosing her Mac problems, she thought her Time Capsule might be at fault and pressed the hardware reset button on the device without going through the process of restoring her wireless settings in AirPort Utility.

After hearing her story, I ran AirPort Utility to restore wireless service throughout the house. However, I ran into an unexpected glitch trying to reconfigure Time Machine as her backup program. At the outset, Time Machine responded to backup attempts with the cryptic message that "The Backup Disk Image Could Not Be Mounted."

In researching this issue, I found references to this problem on the Apple Discussion Board.

http://tinyurl.com/3scntq

None of the suggested remedies on the aforementioned support page resolved the backup problem. With the customer's permission, I reformatted the Time Capsule's hard drive using AirPort Utility and tried running Time Machine again. No go. This time I was stymied by a variation of the previous error, which now indicated that "The Backup Disk Image Could Not Be Created."

Further research uncovered a litany of cases and suggested solutions.

http://tinyurl.com/4qmqsf
http://tinyurl.com/3t3t9g
http://tinyurl.com/3r2dko

I verified that my client's setup conformed to the recommended checklist on the Apple discussion post:

1. Can you see the Time Capsule under Shared in the Sidebar of Finder? [YES]
2. If you click on it in Shared, does the Time Capsule disk appear in the Finder Window? [YES]
3. Can you see and did you select the Time Capsule disk in Time Machine preferences? [YES]
4. Is the name of your Time Capsule less than 27 characters and without any special characters or punctuation?? [YES] If not, this can cause problems.

I also disabled the customer's anti-virus program (Symantec) in accordance with an Apple KnowledgeBase article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1516

Despite my best efforts, all attempts at performing a Time Machine backup failed. To resolve the issue, I decided to search for a third-party program that could back up data to the Time Capsule. After finding that both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! were incapable of recognizing Time Capsule because it is a network device rather than a local or attached drive, I ended up recommending and installing Synchronize Pro X from qdea.com.

yes this is quite belated, but here are the topics and links referred to in the meeting. I'm trying to get things a bit more up to date with the website this year. So hopefully only these few posts will be out of date.  If you miss a meeting (you really shouldn't, but just in case) you can hopefully find all the cool websites we looked at, or download and figure out the interesting programs we found.

Movies we want to watch as a group some time:

Any other suggestions, leave it in the comment box.

• Watched funny clip on io9.com
• "Scifi Love Question"

Quicklook - the OS X feature that gives you instant previews of common document types. Try selecting a photo on your computer, and without opening the file, hit your space bar; that's quicklook.

Some dandy hotkeys for doing a screen capture (taking an image of what's on your screen)

command + shift + 4 = use cursor to make a selection of desktop to 'capture'

command + shift + 4 + space = hover over the window you want to take a picture of

command + shift + 3 = image of whole desktop

"stacks" - a folder on your dock

Open up a finder window and drag a folder (such as your documents or applications) to the doc near the trash can and it should let you set it there. Once placed, clicking on it will give an expanded view of the folder contents. Handy for getting your docs and such quickly!

...Rambled about iPods again

Meeting officially over, followed by comments, questions, random fun

• We want to know how to send student email to mail.app

• Time machine

• iWork?

• Grand Rapids Apple user group

• No pants on the bus!!??!

• zomg

• Watched some old youtube clips

• Mentioned Gawker

Thaaaat's all, folks!

Oh PS... that really MESSED UP clip by Rob on Vimeo.

The answer comes when we ask this question to ourselves. One may say he would want to travel back in time so that he could have prevented something bad from happening. Another might say he would want to know what would happen in his future and subsequently make his life simpler. This as most would agree, are very logical and perfectly acceptable wishes.

But it is not so. I am not too very religious, but there is a very reverberating saying in the Bhagavad Gita that goes like - "What has happened has happened very well; what is happening is happening very well and what is going to happen will also happen very well". This is one of the most intriguing sayings that caught my attention at a very young age itself. I am not trying to get too philosophical by saying all this. But all I am saying is, the wait will be worth it! And the things that have happened serve us as sweet memories or painful lessons which will be helpful for our future.

So folks, there is no necessity for a time machine at all. But man still wishes to conquer time. This is also due to his desire to control nature. There is still a painful lesson to be learnt - None can control nature and time even if he manages to stop his watch somehow. :) Just kidding, But that is the fact. Live with it. Stop pondering over the things that have already happened and don't worry about what is going to happen in the future. All these are well left untouched by our minds when we are occupied. So enjoy your life and don't try to stop yourself from having a WTF!? moment. Adios amigos! Until next time! :)

It wasn't my decision to keep those memories in mind-I'd prefer those things gone-it stays there and sometimes it just comes out, glimpses over my thought just like that.

Dan itu cukup buat aku ngrasa nyeri di ulu atiku, tersumbat di kerongkonganku, kering di mulutku, sampe akirnya aku narik nafas panjang trus ngluarinnya sambil bilang 'Uh...'

Banyak perasaan campur aduk di kepalaku saat 'Uh..' itu kluar. Malu iya, kasian ma objek kelakuanku dulu itu juga iya, nyesel, sedih, sakit, takut karma.. Banyak. N I tell U, it's not a nice feeling U'd want to feel more and more, the mixtures of those.

For an example, when I yelled at my Dad a year ago. I was mopping the floor, he called and asking things to me. I won't mind if he was just asking like that, but he was constantly repeating 'Hah?' 'Ha?' like that, like he wasn't listening to my explanation at all. I was tired, I got mad, and yes, I yelled at him. God, how I regret my action after. I mean, he was disturbing for me at the moment, but I shouldn't have yelled at him. He's my father afterall, the one working hard to fulfill all my needs, the one raising me with all the love he has, and I got mad at him? How very immature.

I didn't say any sorry though.. I just texted him using nice words and all that may please him. His reply was normal. He wasn't mad at me back. I thought 'Well probably my anger wasn't really shown.. Good thing then, I needn't to say any sorry, since he doesn't even realize I'm being mad at him'. I was quite relieved.

Later my Mom came out of her room and asked 'Who called just now? Why did U yell?'

Gosh, even my Mom heard it. Means my anger really was shown. There was no way my Dad didn't know it. He was just pretending that he didn't know...

I really regret what happened at that time. My Dad was being so nice by not giving me lectures about 'How a Child Should Behave Toward His/Her Parents'. Even now, by only thinking of it, my lungs are seems shrinking by itself and make me having trouble breathing. I have to struggle only to inhale small amount of air..

Uh..

If I could turn back the time..

Bujungez

I read Esme's mail on the market square of the big city in the south. I had just been talking to some guys who had created a web community for youths but behaved as if they were twice my age. On my way to the airport, I had stopped by the market to buy some food and a beer. After a long day without food, the beer makes me feel a little dizzy in spite of the sausage sub I had had with it.

Sitting in the last warm rays of sunlight, I logg into my yahoo account via mobile to find her mail. She is allright, she writes. That's good to hear. Les is with her, he's sick and she is nursing him. Apparently he is still in love with her, but I can't get through her words to detect what, if anything, she still feels for him:

but once you open your heart to one person, anyone can come in.
when he looks at me his eyes shine…despite everything that happen to us they still do

That's what she writes. It frightens me. What does it mean? Did I make her lose her self-defense? Did I make her vulnerable for anybody?

"No. Noo. Don't", that's what I want to shout at her. What the heck is going on?

I keep on reading. It doesn't get better. Esme, she tells me, was hoping I would accept her one day as part of her life ("you are, honey. Right now. For the last weeks you have been nothing else", I cry). She was hoping that if she had enough patience, I would come back for her one day ("I want that so badly, my love. Tomorrow. Today. Now. To come and hold you and never let you go", I cry).

But there is hope no more, she writes:

I can confess this now as i dont have it in mind anymore
now i know you never would have done it

I stare at the tiny screen of my Nokia. I scroll up. I read. I scroll down. I read. Up. Down. The words remain the same. Knives and arrows, aimed at my heart, poking, stinging, penetrating, slashing, ripping.

Go on, words. Rip me to shreds, I cry. You can't kill me, words, I cry. I've been dead for a very long time, I cry.

On my way to the airport, I read Esme's message over and over again. It doesn't change, no matter how hard I look at the screen. My chest is killing me. There is no more space for me inside this body. I have to breathe deeply to overcome this feeling of being squeezed to mush by a fate cruel enough to let me taste life before kicking the bowl filled with pure love just out of reach. To hell, fate.

Is this the end, finally? The end, again? The very end?

Shall I fight, challenge fate a last time, rage against the machine, take arms against the windmill of fortune - or shall I prove dignity under pressure, find me a clean, well-lighted place and sit and wait and watch the world fall to pieces?

I wrote about games as art last night. Today: Games As Time Machines! I like to think that we all experience the feeling of time slowing or accelerating many times throughout our lives. If not, maybe I am crazy after all. Anyway, this seems to happen pretty reliably when playing games. For me, time speeds up. I don't know where it went, and suddenly three hours went by in what seemed like three minutes. It is a nice way to speed up time when you want to speed it up, but usually I don't want that to happen, or when I do I can't play games anyway.

Maybe you are so blessed as to have time slow down when you play games? If so, please tell me your secret! That would be awesome, thanks. :)

There's a saying "Time flies when you're having fun." I think that's pretty much the jist of it. But if there's people out there who have the opposite happen to them, I'd love to hear from you. And take a sample of your DNA. :D

Pweeze?

more about "Re-Time Culture...", posted with vodpod

Tic...tac..tic...

Scorre il tempo, inesauribile ed instancabile, sguardi contemporanei di persone, vista del tempo, visuale del presente e visione del passato....tutto si muove anche se sembra fermo.

Re-wind mentale e sincronizzazione della vita in un contesto di quotidiana follia teledisinformativa. Insetti urbani che occupano la città in uno sciame di essere umani. L'occhio osserva, scruta, fissa. Non si può più rallentare e fermare il tempo scorre e basta. La macchina del tempo può fare di tutto, teletrasportandoci in multi realtà contemporanee.

Beer and popcorn keep me alive for the time being.

Nothing from Esme. I'm not insisting myself. If she needs time, she'll have time. I still have hope. Hope is what dies last. Me, I'm dead already. So hope's next.

But I'm not the type for the waiting game. Gives me the creeps. I like it in or out. Don't like to rush it, either. I dunno. I'm climbing up and down the walls, trying to behave as normal as possible. This gets harder day by day. Fortunately I'm still working long, so there is not much time for confrontation.

But there is confrontation.

I mean, reporting on what happened in the near future is the thing to do now, right? What with McCain winning tonight's debate before it happens, and China successfully launching its 3rd manned space flight before the pre-flight check was even finished...

Who invented the time machine, and why didn't they announce it prior to today?

People Under The Stairs released a free promotional mix, Funner Than Leather, to warm people up for their newest album, Fun DMC, that hits stores on Tuesday.  The mix features Shawn Jackson, Time Machine, and Raashan Ahmad. 

Get the download here.

This video is supported at least in theory - may not be practically possible with our current technology. If you get into the physics of time travel, it very quickly gets extremely complicated and theoretical.

Here I propose a very simple way of travelling at least to the past. And let me say this at the very outset that this proposition is fictional and not scientifically supported - at least not yet!

Lets assume you are floating in space near earth - with Einstein. Imagine there is a giant dish antenna on earth that continuously beams - say scenes from the most watched TV show in the world of all time (source wikipedia) - none other than the famous Baywatch. Also assume for the purpose of this discussion that the universe is at a standstill - this is just to keep things simple. In the space ship you are lazing (more likely floating) on the couch watching Baywatch. The TV waves travel towards you and away from earth at the speed of light. Now here you are watching your favorite life guard running on the beach and the scene is breathtakingly beautiful!! You could pick up the remote to pause the scene OR you can speed the spaceship away from the earth at the speed of light at the instant the particular frame reaches the spaceship TV reciever. This way the frame that you wanted to pause and the spaceship are travelling at the same speed in the same direction and the frame will appear to be frozen on your TV. Isn't that a cool way of pausing!! Now if you accelerate so that you are moving in the same direction but faster than light you would catch up with the previous frames that were telecast. On the TV you would see that your favorite life-guard who was frozen until now is slowly moving backwards. If you accelerate further the life-guard moves backwards even faster. If you keep going faster you can see that the show starts being rewound as you keep catching earlier frames. You gain speed and you end up at the beginning of the show!!

Now imagine that instead of Baywatch .. :-( all the world events are beamed and you are watching these world events unfold (or refold).  You go faster than light and you see Sarah Palin saying, "I can see Russia from my backyard!". Faster and you see George Bush getting elected the second time (as if the first time wasn't enough). Faster and you see Bill Clinton with none other than you-know-who!! Faster and you can get back to the 2nd world war, 1st world war, American revolution, ..... faster and you can reach the birth of civilization, or when dinosaurs roamed the earth (maybe you can actually find out why they are extinct), to the birth of earth itself roughly 4.5 billion years ago. If your spaceship still has fuel or you the money (at todays gas prices!) to fill her up, you can go further back to the birth of our solar system, our galaxy, or to our universe!! Thus you would have reached the beginning of time itself!!!! I am not sure about you but Einstein in your spaceship would be one happy dude!!!!!!

first is love. second is death. third is void.

I never realized that these three things - so different from the outside - at a closer look are basically three sides of the same coin.

If a coin had three sides.

Isn't it amazing how philosophically creative one can become after a sufficient amount of Islay?

Makes you think, don't it?

The time machine can be found here. Have a go!

Life without Esme is starting to become reality. The throbbing pain, the checking of e-mail and SMS just to find nothing, the memories becoming threadbare - all these signs of a love lost are closing in on me. I try to keep them at bay by re-reading our story, by re-arranging reality, by re-inventing history.

But sometimes I feel that I am not strong enough to keep this up for much longer.

I sent her an SMS the other day. It was one month after we met in the classroom of the university. One month only. Can't believe it. Within one month, no, within days, my life had been turned upside down. Everything I had taken for granted till then was in shreds. Everything that had been important to me is in question since then.

I am in question since then.

Esme, I love you. If it were possible, I would love you now more than I've ever loved you. The pain is growing day by day, my longing for you with it. And you are further away from me than ever.

It is not only that I am still caught in a relationship growing more and more unbearable. It is not only that there are two kids who would be suffering from a separation which otherwise would have been performed already.

It is also that I have no idea about Esme's feelings towards me. Does she still love me? And even if she does, does she still want to be with me?

I have no bloody idea. I only have my feelings which ruin me physically and mentally, which make me focus only on one thing: seeing Esme again. To hear the truth from her lips. To see the truth in her eyes. To receive the coup de grace from her own hand.

To die happily, because I have loved.

Traveling again. After a day at a marketing fair in the West, I find myself at a party in a location on the banks of our biggest river. I don't care for the people, but the booze is for free and the bass hammers my stomach. I know most of the songs, they're from the 80s, reminding me of my disco days when Acid and House were hip and I wasn't.

With too may cool people the dance floor is still empty.  There is cig smoke in the air, biting my eyes. I hide in the darkness, holding on to my bottled Norwegian spring water and a Malibu Sunset, or was it a Sunrise?  Dunno. A guy with something that cannot be his real hair is the first to enter the vanity square, delivering an impressive breakdance impersonation on Gloria Estefan's "Conga".

My stomach is filled with glaced ham and pangasius filet, drowned with beer and water. One sip more, and I'll burst. Gee, they're even playing Boney M's "Daddy Cool". Luvit. Anyway, need fresh air. Leave the room with "Sex Bomb" trailing behind.

Esme keeps quiet. From the desktop of my phone, she looks at my with a quizzical expression on her face. Drop-dead beautiful. But silent.

I'm having problems with a backup harddrive and keep getting "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory."  Really useful information.

So I decided to try to find out what is actually wrong, so step one was to try to create a directory myself on that drive.  "Error Code -50" Now that was useful.

So I tracked down the Apple error codes, and found that it means "Error in user parameter list".  Guess that is good to know.  Don't know what it means (yet).

I love the idea of time travel but Doctor Who kinda ruins it for me. Scarves? Police boxes? The only cool thing about Doctor Who are the Daleks who hold that classic 1960's vision of the future appeal.
Back to the Future is where it's at. Imagine strolling about town on a DeLoreon modified into a Time Machine? Or riding into Fopp on a hoverboard wearing self-tying Nike kicks?

But what would Marty McFly be playing his music on? The JVC 540W mini-system. Duh.

Right, okay. It's pretty much a regular CD player but check out those awesome booster rocket things on the side. Too be fair it's pretty damn ugly but it's the closest thing to the DeLoreon I'm ever going to get in my bedroom and it's one step closer to being Marty McFly.

Now I just need to get myself a bomber jacket and a pair of these: