It’s 5pm on Sunday. C2E2 is officially over! It was a great convention, my days were packed. So many great panels. Bought a few things, Scott commissioned some artwork, and I had a chance to meet my grand niece. All in all very much a solid win!
What an adorable pair, these two! Keeping my lap nice and warm!
When I was much younger, in my teens, I attempted to grow a beard. It was mostly born out of curiosity, how it would come in, what it would look like, and how other people would react to it. I never had the most common issues, which is patchy growth or thin wispy scruff growing in where real hair should be. My hair was rough, strong, and exceedingly curly. Of course, when I was a callow youth I didn’t know enough to actually care for a beard, to style it and maintain it, to direct it. So when it came in, I appeared all a mess. Because it came in super curly and practically kinky, forming ringlets all by itself, I endured light mockery about being a hodgepodge of lanky button-nosed Irish dope mixed in with a Hassidic Jew. So I got scissors, trimmed it as far as I could, and then shaved it all off.
The response to that still rings in my ears, “Oh God! What have you done! Grow it back!”
So for years and years I pursued a standard goatee, shaving inconsistently because I never really felt like my appearance was anything worth fretting over, so I’d get scruffy, then neat, then scruffy, then neat, with little forays into yeti territory with event-driven neatening up. I also had a cheap and trashy pair of Conair buzzers that I would use on my own head to give myself haircuts. Ever since I was 13 and went on a trip to Florida with family, I blundered into the buzz cut and never looked back. That made self-maintenance a ten minute trip in the bathroom with a subsequent small hair explosion as I tossed my hair cuttings outside after I was done buzzing everything down. I did this for years and years.
As I aged, the same firm flow of testosterone that gave me my voice, and really fast growing facial hair also began to kill off the hair on my head. Male pattern baldness, which I’ve romantically referred to as “Sexy Bald Captain” after Patrick Stewart in his role as Captain Picard on Star Trek. I have made easy peace with balding. I could attempt any sort of coping mechanism or I could accept it. I elected to accept it.
So, fast forward years and years forward. My partner, Scott, started to grow out his beard first, and it was a certain curiosity to see how it would play out. Right along this time, during a thoughtless session of self-maintenance with the aforementioned trashy Conair buzzers, I went about giving myself a haircut. Absentmindedness led to me forgetting the usual 7mm guard on the buzzer and I took the first swipe, from the temple back, and the buzzer did its duty and sheared off the hair, practically right down to the skin. I took my goof to a professional place, a Great Clips, and they helped salvage my look from my absentmindedness by leveraging what I had done into a new style, a faded cut with a buzz on top. The reception of this new look was shockingly positive, which was a rather big surprise to me, leading me to think “Why did none of you mention this before!”
After the style recovery, Scott had made contact with a local barber in our city, who runs Junior’s Old School Barber Shop. As Scott was going to seriously pursue a beard and wanted expert care and guidance. We went together the first time, and as I sat there, pretty much an audience to the proceedings, I learned more about beard care in that ten minutes than I knew for all the years leading up to that moment. I felt like I could perhaps give it another shot myself, with the ringing chuckles in my ear about it coming back in ringlets and looking like a transporter accident between a Irish sheepherder and a Hassidic Jew. It was Scott inspiring me, and Junior with his teaching and instruction that led me to where I am now.
I had no idea about all the things that I could explore, and try out, with what nature was always trying to give me. For all the facial hair growth, not a single follicle will ever come back on my head. So perhaps it was time to see where I could take a beard myself. Properly inspired, and myself a new customer for Junior and his Barber Shop I let the wild take me.
I never thought I would be this pleased with myself. The feel of it is hard to describe. It feels nice to fiddle and futz with the growth, the longer it gets the more interesting the sensations become. As I learned more and more, starting with Junior’s advice and observing Scott pursuing his beard options, I started my own exploration. A trip down the beardy rabbit hole.
The things I didn’t know were washes, balms, and conditioners. I also had no concept of a boars hair brush. I just thought of brushes as things that my mother and sister had, paddles on handles that would help them discover snarls and knots in their hair and lead to crying and cursing. A whole new collection of things were now open and ready for me to explore, things devoted to help what I was quickly growing to grow in straighter, smoother, easier to manage, and more pleasant to have and to touch. Thankfully my IRS refund arrived just as I was looking at the pile of new possibilities. There are many brands, many makers, and as many formulations all promising a variety of positive outcomes. Junior recommended the Reuzel brand, and specifically the Reuzel Beard Balm. That’s when it struck me that there was an entirely new class of personal care products that not only could do good things for me, but also give me a very enticing and attractive scent that I absolutely loved. I think what really tipped the scales, more than the inspiration and the learning was feeling what a good Boars Hair Brush can do. From the first moment I tried it, with the Reuzel Balm, the condition of my beard improved and the sensation of using the brush became a kind of indulgent pleasure. Now I carry my brush around with me everywhere I go and if I have some time to myself, using it has become a delight.
I then visited Junior myself, with what nature was handing me and he helped me bring style into my life. He gave me guidance and suggestions, and now I can’t imagine going anywhere else to get my hair cut, my beard trimmed, and all the other careful and delightful things that a excellent barber does for his clients.
I have since then explored more products in this arena. It started with the Reuzel Beard Balm, but now it has branched out to Honest Amish Beard Conditioner, which is much looser than the Reuzel Balm, and has the unique scent somewhere between Pumpkin Pie and Honey. I also have Beardoholic Conditioning Beard Oil, which is unscented but still works delightfully well. I have also purchased and enjoy Beardsley Beard Conditioner, which hilariously gives me the distinct aroma of a fruit salad. I am also quite fond of Lush Cosmetics Kalamazoo Beard Wash and Conditioner. The last thing I bought for myself was a beard comb, not that my brush wasn’t doing wonders for me, and it was, but I thought that a nice comb designed for the very hair I was trying to grow would be a smart move, and it definitely was. It is made of sandalwood, and the scent of that is pleasant in its own distinct way. I selected the Hundred Beard Company Comb.
All of these people, and wonderful products, have all worked together to give me a wonder. I couldn’t imagine ever living without a beard now, and if you are local in Michigan, I would make the trip to visit Junior. If not, finding a barber like him would be the best way to start. There is so much they can teach us all.
Lastly, a picture of yours truly, with the hard work and careful conditioning that all of this has resulted in, at least up to this point:
We’ve finally got Ysabel’s Room in order. I moved the bed to the library where the resident cats eat and hang out. It’s next to a big pair of windows, so that’ll work out for bird watching and relaxation. We set up the introduction crate with a kitten cavern and a poly pad cushion on the base of her crate. The crate is in the corner so she will feel maximally safe and protected.
Then we put one of the Google Homes in the room and set Spotify to play feline relaxation music in the background.
Ysabel will be ours at 3pm tomorrow, Friday 6/29/2018. We’ll go to KL Cat Hospital and then home.
Wish us all luck!
Today we drove up to Western Michigan University and joined the community in the anti-NRA #NeverAgain March from the flagpoles on campus to Bronson Park.
It was surreal to park on that campus again. We walked up to the flagpoles and the crowd was quite well organized and burgeoning. Several schoolkids were there with the event organizers to speak to the crowd and offer their viewpoints and context to what we were about to accomplish. Here’s a sample of what we saw:
The group was peaceful and orderly, there was no violence and no exclamations. As we walked away from the flagpoles, and down past the entry to Sangren Hall on Western’s campus, that was the only point that I noticed any counter-protestors. There was supposedly going to be counter-protestors from the local Open Carry group, but Western’s Public Service does not allow open carry on University grounds, so the only counter-protestors we saw were some people with signs. There were very many of us and maybe a handful of the counter protestors.
The event organizers helped a lot by telling all of us that counter-protestors were expected and that the best way to interact with them is to not interact at all. This was an exercise of First Amendment Rights on both sides, the teeming horde of us in the #NeverAgain march, and the handful of counter-protestors. Nobody that I saw made contact, there were some glances, but nothing overt that I witnessed. The march downtown was met with lots of honking horns from the rerouted traffic. The police were kind, principally silent, and really to keep watch around the edges and to handle traffic. We came into contact with one police officer who was attempting a charm offensive, he thanked us for our orderly civic display and we thanked him for traffic control and keeping watch over us all.
The march itself was very pleasant. There wasn’t anything remotely provocative about any of the progression down to the central park downtown. There were no accidents that I saw, no foolishness from anyone, and we all demonstrated our political viewpoints in a very calm, exceptionally orderly manner.
Afterwards, when the words were said and the kids had their moment to shine, the march broke up and everyone drifted away. We ended up going to Kelvin & Company for a snack because we really wanted a break from the chilly wind and all that walking. After our little stop, we dropped by another new store on the Kalamazoo Walking Mall, RocketFizz. We enjoyed some Special Dark Hersheys Chocolate Bars and I bought a bottle of butterscotch root beer from a bottler in Washington State, Oh-So brand, I think. The walk back was long, and upon reflection if we had stashed the Juke somewhere downtown we probably would have had a faster way to get back to campus. Political marches aren’t very common, so that we missed out on a logistical tip wasn’t so awful. We got in a lot of walking steps on our Fitbits, at least.
I go through cycles of having an interest, and then not having an interest in social media. Twitter and Facebook are the core services that I’m thinking about here. Amongst these services, I’ve given up on Twitter. I no longer engage with anyone in Twitter and the leading edge of loud, noisy chatter has carried on without me. If I do run the Twitter application, it’s mostly to witness some event as it unfolds, like a news source, or to jump on some shame bandwagon when a public figure makes a terrible mess of their lives by saying or doing something stupid.
I am about to give up on Facebook as well. There are many reasons for this renewed effort to leave the system. I am tired of the see-saw polarity between stories. The negative political stories mixed in with the positive reaffirming stories build up a kind of internal mental noise that clouds my day and keeps me from being focused. Another reason to leave is the interface has become somewhat moribund on its own. You can sometimes comment, sometimes not. The only option to express your reactions when it comes to feelings is “Like” and the entire service has become self-balkanized. I have friends and family on Facebook, but out of all of them, I only follow a few and I’ve muted the rest. I don’t really miss the engagement, but always having to think about tailoring my thoughts based on the audience has started to give me fatigue.
I think then that it may be time for me to go back to writing blog posts on my WordPress blog. The blog encourages longer format writing, and I expect that engagement will drop as I won’t be using Facebook. In a lot of ways, it is a kind of social addiction and the only way to break it is to wean off of it. Perhaps cold turkey is not right, but rather cool turkey.
I don’t expect anyone to follow me off of Facebook. I will share my blog posts to Facebook so people can still see what I write, but the engagement will drop off. Feel free to comment on my blog if you wish. Otherwise, that will be that.
On a more technical note, I changed how the stories are shared across systems. The original way was to publish a WordPress entry, which would share to Tumblr, and that would then share to Twitter and Facebook. I have torn that down and set it so that WordPress itself shares to Facebook, Google Plus, Tumblr, and Twitter. It’s a more direct path that doesn’t require people to slog through my Tumblr. I think it’s more direct this way.
Yesterday was one hell of a powerful storm. The wind was magnificent and the storm itself was chugging along at a heady clip, around 55 miles per hour by the reports from the weather service. The tree in front of my residence is a red oak, and I’ve always known that red oaks have a reputation for shedding lots of branches and it did not disappoint! We lost about 10% of the canopy in front of my house including one big branch that dug a foot long gouge out of the turf in the grass between my house and my next door neighbors. I pushed the torn sod back into place and stomped it flat with my shoes, so that’s fine, but the front of my house looks a little like a war zone where the trees and the wind went to battle.
My next door neighbor, across the street lost a giant part of her tree and it took out her power and cut mine as well. Thankfully her house didn’t suffer any structural damage, just a big bit of tree where it doesn’t belong. I had a time warning neighbor kids away from the area since it was a downed power line. Nobody approaches downed power lines, even if the power is out. Much like a toaster, a downed power line remembers and seeks bloody revenge, you don’t handle the line as much as you don’t rescue the piece of toast in the toaster with a fork. When my across-the-street neighbor returned I let her know that I contacted Consumers Energy and let them know about the downed line and the damage.
Losing electricity has returned our lives to simpler more fundamental conditions. When the sun is up, daylight makes living easy. The water pressure and water quality are unchanged, so the sinks, toilets, and showers all work properly – except that the hot water tank has an electric heat control, so whatever hot water comes out of the tank will be all there is for a few days. Much of the technology in our lives no longer works. The network connection is of course dead, along with the entertainment center. We don’t have TV per se, but the general entertainment for that part of our lives is no longer possible while electricity no longer flows. Life goes on, and without technology it can continue to go on quite well. It’s important to establish a solid thread running into the past, I’ve always been fond of old technology, especially things that do not require electricity. So we have a lot of battery-powered devices and wind-up clocks and automatic watches to keep the time. Our refrigerator is very slowly reaching the same temperature as the surrounding environment that it’s in and that’s unavoidable. We’ve transferred much of the expensive food out and into the freezers where Scott works. The rest of the contents of the refrigerator are not exactly perishable, things like OJ and mustard I doubt will suffer very much even if they are warm. We’ll lose other bits in there but that’s life. Cooking has become slightly different, as I have a gas range the cooktop is perfectly serviceable with a handy source of ignition but the oven, which requires electronic temperature control doesn’t work. I can cook around that limitation, however the inability to refrigerate means that making anything that we can’t eat in a single sitting is probably a bad idea.
Living this way, without electricity, even temporarily is healthy I think. It reminds us just how reliant we are on the fundamental utility of electrical delivery and distribution. Candles provide light at night, however they are open sources of ignition and are potentially disastrously hazardous, especially with a cat who has no fear of fire because he’s never actually come into contact with it in his life. From what I can see, he lacks even an instinctual aversion to it, which we have to manage. On my list of things to acquire is an LED lantern, something that can last a good long time, puts out a disturbing amount of light, and won’t set a curious feline on fire. Entertainment has changed, it’s different but still equivalent to what our usual fare is during evening hours. Instead of TV programs, network entertainment streams, or movies, we’ve swapped all that out for card games, board games, talking and reading books. Again, retaining that thread that runs into the past is essential. The smart money is on technology that does not require electricity. I’m amused quite deeply that here, steampunk pops up as a relevancy. If everything in your life that used to be automatic is now clockwork powered, you still have a semblance of convenience however the source of power is yours truly. For my watch it’s just movement that winds it, for my emergency flashlight it’s ten minutes of vigorous shaking, but I will need to find some way to provide a pool of safe illumination at night and early in the morning and perhaps some way to charge all my connected devices by human power.
Earlier this morning, when I was taking a “Marine Corps Shower” which is to say, the fastest most efficient and bracing method to clean oneself, I thought of a possible way with a carefully geared pedal generator that one or two people could operate that would be able to collect enough energy from pedaling to keep a refrigerator running, at least give it a boost so it could chill down for a cycle. I’m sure if I’ve thought of it, a product exists somewhere out there that can do just what I’m thinking. It’s definitely a first-world problem that only occurs to you when you don’t have the convenience of electricity at your beck and call. That we rarely think of life without electricity, we really ought to. Take a weekend and turn off the house mains (except for the fridge, you want to simulate a disaster, not initiate one) and then look at life without. What needs to be available to make life possible? A box of candles, perhaps. A LED floodlight with a deep-cycle battery? Much better! Events like these, where you are thrown backwards test your ability to cope and your cleverness.
They say that our electrical power delivery will be returned this Monday around 11:30pm. That being said, they are saying that to everyone, so we are hoping that this is an engineers estimate and that our power will be back on sooner than this. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Now I need a way to charge my phone by hand. Funny, your priorities…
I’ve been toying around with a wonderful free utility from BitTorrent Labs called BTSync. You can find it here: http://www.bittorrent.com/sync.
What really drew my attention was the lack of centralized service that stands at the core of BitTorrent technology. It’s distributed, without any company or cloud provider dwelling in the background. All the hardware is owned by you, the “secret” code you use to share that identifies your sync experience also forms the encryption key so that the data that is flowing across the network is secure from prying eyes. Because you own all the hardware and encryption covers the data exchange, you can store whatever you like in your BTSync’ed folder and not have to worry about anyone else peeping over your shoulder or removing material from your storage without your knowledge or permission.
This free system has clients for workstations and mobile devices, so it really can be a drop-in replacement for services like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive. You can share the secret with anyone you like and anything you place on the folder set up with BTSync will synchronize across all the connected devices. You can also send “Read Only” secrets to sync your folders to people who you want to have your files but don’t want them deleting or changing your files and since this uses BitTorrent technology you won’t have to pay hosting fees and the more people share the data, the faster the system sends updates and changes and new data to all the subscribers.
I’ve created a Work folder, a Sync folder and have them set up on my work machine, my work laptop, my Mac Mini at home, and my iPhone and iPad. Since I own all the hardware, the maximum storage that I can store on this system is only limited by the smallest storage unit amongst all the shared machines. The folder lives on a 1TB USB HD at home, at work I have hundreds of GB’s available and the same as on the laptop. The storage in Mobile isn’t the same as a full workstation as the BTSync app doesn’t actually download data to store on the mobile devices directly but rather downloads a file list making it possible for you to pick and choose what you need on mobile when you need it. If you need security in the storage components you could leverage Encrypted Disk Images in Mac systems and TrueCrypt Encrypted Volumes on Windows machines. For Linux clients, you could likely use loop filesystems set with EncFS or something like that.
The applications for BTSync are amazing. Freed from middlemen companies I can store anything I like without having to worry about some company evaluating what I’m storing or even being able to respond to warrants to reveal what I’m storing on the service. Something like this could be a great benefit to companies that need to share files without having to worry about “buying into the Cloud” since everything is free. You can run a BTSync on a server, host a folder and share the secret out to all your employees and have a very handy share drive and even if your central server fails, copies of your data are stored on all the connected workstations so to recover the data all you would need to do is download the small BTSync client again, re-establish the shared secret code, identify a folder and watch as all your connected clients swarm and return all your data back to the “central depot” server.
Another wonderful option is to host a family shared folder, where you can store anything you like, securely and backed up amongst all the connected workstations. Alternatively, if you were an aspiring artist you could place a folder with all your work and establish a read-only secret and publish it on your social networks. Not only would all your fans be able to have your work, but you’d also be able to cleverly transform them into a swarm of willing backup sources for your work. If an artist has their secret code and a copy of BTSync client and they lose their primary system and all their data, they can just get a new system, re-establish the client and secret and smile as all their work comes back home as it was stored on all your fans computers. That’s amazing to me!
Getting started using this utility is a snap. Download the client and install it on your system. Then on whatever storage medium you like create a new folder. In the BTSync application itself you can create a new shared folder with a single click, there is a “Generate” button which creates the shared secret for you, you can then determine if you want it to be full-sync or read-only sync and then point the app to the folder you want to share, then minimize the app and you’re all set. Send the shared secret code to anyone you want to share with and your data will immediately be sent to their systems according to your preferences.
BTSync is the best of all worlds. You have a secure cloud infrastructure without anyone in your way, judging you or risking any intrusions from companies or governments.
January 1
Stroke of Midnight
Where were you last night when 2013 turned into 2014? Is that where you’d wanted to be?”
On the last evening of 2013 I was alone with my two boys during the winter storm raging overhead. My partner had the day before left to visit his family in Albany and I was tending to duties around the house and keeping my two boys safe and occupied. Actually I don’t know who was keeping who happy more. I certainly was a warm lap to sit on and the food-giver, but in a lot of ways they were almost always with me, keeping me company and keeping me occupied with their adorable (and sometimes destructive) antics.
I found a bottle of bubbly wine in our collection from M. Lawrence winery up in the Leelanau Peninsula that I had purchased long enough ago that I don’t really remember when. Around 11pm on New Years Eve I inspected and uncorked the bottle and puttered about the house, a small plate of christmas cookies and a champagne flute that I thankfully found hidden in the rearmost of the top cupboard in the kitchen where we keep all our wine glasses.
At 11:50pm, my iPhone rang and it was Scott with an incoming FaceTIme call. We spent the interval from New Years Eve to New Years Day linked virtually by FaceTime. It was a great use of technology and in many ways we had our cake and got to eat it too. Scott got a chance to visit with his family and we got a chance to spend New Years together, after a fashion.
After 2014 had arrived, I disconnected from FaceTime and finished my glass of wine and with cats in tow, padded off to bed.
Was it what I wanted to do? It really was a matter of what I had to do. I couldn’t leave my two boys on their own for a week as the eldest is the most fragile and I frequently worry after his health and activity level. I was able to use technology to cheat around the edges as it were, to be both at home and in New York with my partner at the same time. I’m so glad I was able to take advantage of the technology and it’s just one more, amongst a gallery of other reasons, why I’m so very glad that I have Apple technology in my life. It made it all seamless and easy. I could have done it other ways, but it would have been a mess. The Apple way is smooth and simple and just as easy as answering the phone.
– This is also the first of the Post-A-Day prompts from the book that WordPress.com assembled to inspire bloggers like me to write more and more frequently.
Lavabit and Silent Circle have given up when it comes to providing encrypted email communications. Mega plans on providing something to cover the gap and in general the only real way to deal with privacy-in-email is end-to-end encryption. There was talk that at some point email might give way to writing letters and using the US Postal Service but there as well you’ve got Postmasters writing commands taped to mail about how everything has to be photocopied and stored – so even the US Postal Service is full of spies, the only thing the US Postal Service can be trusted to carry is junk mail.
What is the answer? Pretty Good Privacy. PGP, or rather, the non-Symantec version of it which is the GNU one, the GPG. If you really want to keep what you write private when you send it to someone else, the only way to do that is for everyone to have GPG installed on their email system so you can write email using their public key, which converts your email to cyphertext, secure from even the NSA’s prying eyes, and requires your recipient to unlock the message using their secret key, which they have.
I’ve been playing with PGP and GPG now for a very long time and I decided I would at least make a route available if anyone wanted to contact me with privacy intact – my public keys are on my blog, they are also on all the keyservers including the one hosted and run by MIT and the GPG Keyserver as well. To send me a private message via email all you need to do is get GPG, set it up, create your secret and public key, get my public key, use it to write me an email and only I’ll be able to read it. The NSA will just flag the encrypted contents for later analysis and thanks to AES–256, they’ll be hard pressed to get to the plaintext in your message.
That’s the way around all of this. GPG for everything. GPG public keys for email, for chat, for VPN, for files, and HTTP-in-GPG. Everything pumped through GPG. Since the government won’t stop spying on us, it’s our duty as citizens to secure our own effects against illegal search and siezure, and technology exists to do so.
Encrypt everything.