joshua0 | Recent Entries

Here's something that's been kicking about in the back of my mind for the past few days, ever since I saw it happen to me. Every time I think about it, I get really angry, and I feel like I should write about it; and then I get too angry to figure out how to structure a post. The gist of what follows is that an internet service stole your personal information from me. There are lots of people I could blame, but at the end of the day, the data was on my phone, and then it was in the cloud somewhere that I don't control. It came from me, and I apologize. This won't affect most people, but as you'll read, there are some that it could -- and the practice by which it took place, on a wider scale, is extremely dangerous for a handful of groups of people that we already systematically oppress.

This post has been updated since it was originally written to include another example.

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This year, there was quite a lot of good music released. Here's my shortlist of things that I bought, and a few words about each. Most of these were released this year, but some were just things that I discovered this year. In chronological purchase order:

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So there's, in a bunch of words, last year in music. What have you got? What did I miss?

Tags:

music

zafu on top of zabuton in middle of room in new house

Change in the past 365 days -- people. places. practices. presence. Old habits give way to new habits. Old patterns of thought subside for new, and maybe then come back again. Storms surge, and pass, and surge again. The light starts to become visible, if only for fleeting moments.

So many teachers in this past year, to whom I owe my immense gratitude. People who are not my Teachers, but even still my teachers. It is a privilege to be a student. The work is never easy, but I couldn't have it any other way.

It's been over a year since I started wearing my first-generation Pebble Steel. I expected that I was going to find it an annoying gadget that didn't really do anything positive for me, but I was pleasantly surprised, and somewhat taken by it, really; I wrote a few programs for it, and up until a week ago, I wore it around with me pretty much everywhere. Last Friday, however, my Kickstarter reward arrived: a shiny new Pebble Time Steel in gunmetal black! The Pebble Time is Pebble's second-generation smartwatch, with a host of changes: color, a microphone, a new industrial design, and a new user interface layer. I've been wearing it for just over a week, then, and so it seems apropos to write another review, in the same vein of that which I wrote in March of 2014, of the first-generation device.

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Tags:

photo,
travel

Okay! So a few weeks or so ago, I spoke at !!Con, and before I forget (even more), I wanted to write down a few of the things that were particularly notable to me about it. In general, I liked the !!Con experience, and the biggest negative (that I arrived on a redeye at 7am, but that my AirBnB didn't exist until 3pm...) was mostly the fault of my own incompetency; but I wanted to take a moment to write down in a little more detail what some of the things that !!Con did really right were. This is all somewhat train-of-thought, so you'll have to forgive me if there are incoherencies... But without further ado:
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Anyway. That was quite a lot longer than I had planned on. But, hopefully, that gives you a flavor of things that made !!Con special. If you're planning a conference of your own, you should absolutely look to !!Con as a role model in a lot of ways.

(and, of course, photos)

Tags:

!!con,
trip report

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defocused candle in foreground, with reflection of candle in focus in the distance

yitgadal v'yitkadash...

( vignettes of memories )

golden rutted farm road among trees and barely-thriving grass

and I am just a one way street

(also, totally different, from later in the day.)

life advice from a bathroom stall in Yosemite.

(click for actual pictures of my first Yosemite climbing trip)

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a reality in photos

There has been a lot going on recently. Not, like, a lot externally. Well, maybe a little bit externally: I travelled to Germany for work, for instance. But there's really been quite a lot internally. Given all that, I think none of it is really suitable to go here these days, though. Instead, here are some snapshots of a reality that I'd like to share with you: I hope you enjoy.

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Life is made of small moments like these.

I have a lot of photos to post over the next little while, but in the mean time, congratulations to

gamergirl774 (and Patrick!) on their impending marriage!

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I guess there's always something killing me, and it might as well be you

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Upgrading a BitHead

Not the usual photoset, but it is a photoset, so I guess it goes here...

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...shifting and convolving, goes round again...

I went to Carnival again this year! And once again, I took some photos (which I sorted into mini-albums).

I took more pictures of things I saw this year, rather than trying to turn the world around me into pictures. The results are less pictures that look like pictures, and more pictures that look like the world, which is not quite as much fun to look at. Probably, there is a balance in the middle somewhere. But, there are a few in there that I liked.

For the past two weeks, I've been wearing a Pebble Steel smartwatch on my left wrist, replacing the long tradition of Timex Ironman watches that I've worn since I was about 10 years old. Since the device is something of a novelty, I figured I'd write at least a short review of it, and have a quick discussion of my feelings about it so far. ^[1]

( a review that is *way* too long to fit on your friends page )

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... and I still lose myself, in that orange-glowing moment ...

( a show )

captured in the light, we could count the stars

(I did not fly across the country only to go climbing, but it was a pretty good side effect.)

I went to Carnival! And I took some pictures, too.

This time, I tried to get better at taking pictures of people, but I took some pictures of things, too.

Joshua's weblog

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I accidentally uploaded your personal information, and I'm sorry

2015 in music

it's a new year, in an old house

Two weeks with a Pebble Time

Little Italy at night

Trip report: !!Con

Death Guild: DG XXII Anniversary Night

yahrzeit.

and roads like us will never meet

advice from Yosemite

recently

small moments like these

Death Guild: White Guild 2014

taking things apart and putting them back together again

a day at castle rock

Carnival, 2014

Two weeks with a Pebble

Above & Beyond Acoustic

a few images from a day

they say "all you need is a fast 50mm prime"

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