Welcome Back!

February 24th, 2011

I am back … thanks for staying tuned in during our commercial break, aka really long hiatus from blogging. I am starting to feel like my ranting writing is a bit like an NBC sitcom, you never know if or when it’s coming back … and what night and time you will find it. Things have gotten very bust since our last chat; well when I say “chat” I mean my rant, and you suffering through reading it. It would be a bit much to bring you up to speed on everything since my last post so I will just trickle and pour as I feel suitable.

I find that I waste way too much time on Facebook. Not that I mind catching up with old friends, colleagues and acquaintances on FB. No that’s the cool part, the mind suck timeless brain numbing games are so damn addictive. I swear off one and another comes along … and with my very short attention span I am hooked … and then four weeks later I have wasted 50 hours building some virtual widget in a fake world. I so had great ambitions in life other than raising faux-livestock. I am trying my best to swear off the senseless games. Of course that time being re-allocated to writing and ranting may not add any more value to the world, but at least my brain doesn’t turn to mush; however you the reader should be careful, mileage will vary on your take away.

If you are new to the Bucket-of-Milk blog welcome! There are many types of blogs out here in the cyber-sphere, some are educational, some are informative, and many have a focus target for the audience … this would not be one of those blogs. Instead this blog is a soapbox for storytelling and bantering one-way written verbal vomit as projected by yours truly.

So let’s get back to the Bucket-of-Milk before it spoils any further.

Off the Grid

September 23rd, 2010

Off the Grid

Barn Burning 101

September 22nd, 2010

Barn Burning 101

Fresh Start

September 21st, 2010

Fresh Start

Old Québec City Moulin à images

September 9th, 2010
Moulin à images

Moulin à images

One of the most unbelievable scenes from my vacation this summer in Old Quebec City was the Moulin à images … which the English translation websites refer to as the Fabulous Image Mill.  Basically we were walking around enjoying a quiet evening along the St Lawrence, just having enjoyed an impromptu Cirque du Soleil show under the bridge of the freeway and on the way back to the hotel saw the biggest projected screen I’d ever seen. Well it turns out it indeed is according to Guinness Book of World Records the largest screen.

The Moulin à images are projected on the 81 huge, ancient grain silos of the Bunge Company in the harbor of Quebec City. The silos become a projection screen 100 feet high by 2,000 feet wide (over 3 football fields) with the great Saint Lawrence River as a backdrop. Officially recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest projection surface in the world, the collection of silos is the equivalent of 25 Imax screens, about a 1/3rd mile long.

The 40-minute show narrates Quebec’s history since its foundation by Samuel de Champlain, through the colonial period, covering the politics of the region, the importance of religion and the major role that it played, the successive periods of administration under France and then under England, technology advances and more… Four centuries of history from 1608 to the present day.

Sometime hard to follow at times, perhaps due to cultural barriers, the pure scale and imagery was epic.

Here are some links to additional information:

The Image Mill in Québec City

Watch on your monitor

Québec City’s Moulin à images | Quebec Tourism

The Image Mill

The Majestic Plastic Bag

September 7th, 2010

I remember some of his early work in American Beauty .. but this epic movie tells us his true vision and destiny .. that’s right the great westward migration to the PGP (Pacific Garbage Patch)… Hopefully after watching this you will know the answer to one of life’s prolific questions “Paper or Plastic?”

The Original Driving Fast, Taking Chances

August 21st, 2010

The original Driving Fast, Taking Chances short film cult classic from 1976 by by Claude Lelouch, showing a high speed drive through Paris. Ofter imitated, never duplicated. The gold standard by which all other high speed cars in movies would forever be altered. Codenamed “It Was A Date” or ” Rendezvous” it became a very controversial piece of cinematography.

Wikipedia – Rendezvous

The Geek in the Reflecting Pool

August 18th, 2010

My name is DJTECH, and I’m a computer geek. I realize it is a twelve step program to overcome my computer junky behavior. Step one is why I’m writing this, to recognize and accept that I have a problem. I don’t know if I will ever be cured of my technology addiction but there are twelve steps for Technologists Anonymous. That said my aspirations to join technologist anonymous didn’t really work out. Apparently my addiction to technology and the internet goes much deeper … perhaps an intervention and being sent to an isolated island is the only answer that will ever work.

I am fascinated by the World Wide Web, the social interaction and viral swarming that occurs in cyberspace.  I spent seven years working for one of the top PC security firms in the world, mostly diagnosing events caused or manipulated by social engineering. However that was the 1990’s … the internet was new, now the medium contains 10,000% more people (or subjects) than say 1997. The test bed and integration into our daily lives has factored beyond control … shit look how many people camped out for days for even a simple piece of technology that accesses the web like the iPhone. We truly have become an obsessive compulsive internet culture … me included.

I enjoy the randomness (yet not true anonymousness) of the internet, and the ability to virtually touch the lives of complete and utter strangers … the more the better. Sad but true, I live and thrive on internet traffic, the more visitors, page views, blog reads the better. I start my day everyday by generating WebTrends reports and analytical Google charts of all the people I touched the lives of. They have no idea who I am, and I have no idea who they are (other than perhaps an IP address) but it thrills me to know somehow on an alternate plane people find my content somewhat interesting (?) What does this all mean … who knows, but thru the little outlets of the internet people visit my zany world.

My cyber-addictions and paranoid anxieties are rooted very deeply in the DNA that makes me who I am today.  I spent seven of my early career development years in Silicon Valley. While I was one of the allegedly lucky ones who supposedly was in the “right place” at the “right time” I have the deep scars that a child actor gets when they grow up and realize the life around them is nothing like the shell that surrounded them during the developmental years.  Much like those child actors my sense of ethics, and right and wrong were swayed by less than wholesome individuals.

The computer industry as a whole has become multi-trillion dollar business since the early 1980s. Back then it was considered a phase or blip in the extended industrial revolution, nobody really anticipated that there in fact would be a complete technology revolution that would surpass the wealth generated by prior evolutions. Even my parents at the time just thought computers and the internet was a phase I was going through … and sometime I’d go back to school and get a real job. Well here is two decades later … no sign of the internet going away and we are an infatuated habitual internet culture.

Then there is the whole social networking aspect that takes place on the “information super-highway” (sorry old school name in case Al Gore was reading along) … MySpace, FaceBook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo, Google. Millions of people are swarming, storming and norming an idea or concept building & sculpting a whole subculture. Now you can be aligned with hundreds of other people in the click of a button that share your fascination with afghan knitting, patch quilting or more devious desires like women who are into men with one testicle … whatever your warped mind craves, there is a group for you somewhere easily accessible via the tubes and wires we collectively call the internet.

So how deep does the rabbit hole go? Well honestly it seems each day the vast depths of cyberspace seem to expand faster than the universe after the big-bang, it’s really just a matter of how much time you have to explore every nook, cranny & corner of the immenseness.

So what’s next in this insanely unpredictable industry where a search engine company can be trading publicly at over $400 per share, yet old school search directories like the Yellow Pages and that other “Yellow Book” is lucky enough if people even open them.  With huge printing costs … you have to wonder is their really a point to printed telephone books anymore? … What a waste of natural resources. Perhaps the phone book companies will RIP with the photo-mats of the world, or at least the photo development companies that didn’t take a hint that digital photography is here to stay … adapt or die … it’s the technology survival of the fittest.

My Smart Phone is Brilliant

August 14th, 2010

Not sure if I am impressed or scared to death that my phone can solve a Rubik Cube 7×7, when me the owner can barely solve the 2×2. Is this one of the seven signs?

The Eagle has Landed

July 20th, 2010

Buzz Aldrin – the original Moonwalker (Sorry Michael RIP) With only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, The Eagle has landed … I repeat the Eagle has landed. Talk about cutting it close on fuel … shit a day that almost did not become history 41 years ago today. [Thanks Gizmodo .. I was afraid nobody else was going to remember] Apollo 11 Landing

That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind! … 41 years ago today … and yet we haven’t been back for a (non-MJ) moonwalk since Dec 1972. It’s good to know America still builds rockets!