More via boingboing (geez, I should just syndicate everything they blog, eh?):

WorldChanging, a sustainability ‘blog.

He sat in the tub, about two inches’-worth of absurdly hot water threatening to climb over his calves.

He was sideways to the tub, sitting in a poor excuse for half-lotus the perfection of which was limited by the size of the tub.

He slouched. He thought to himself, ‘You’re not supposed to slouch while meditating. You’re also supposed to be attentive and focused on a point in space about three feet away. Straighten up and wear yourself properly!’ Then he thought to himself, ‘Bite me.’

Hello. I am an insomniac and I’m about to go to bed.

In other news, earlier today something with ‘phthunk!’ in my car’s muffler, and now it labors to idle. Time for a new muffler. Two hours later, I was eating paté on ‘rustic’ bread, and managed to chip a tooth by gnawing through the crust.

So, two things to get repaired tomorrow. Woot!

I haven’t posted much music of late, so I’ll let Warren Ellis take up my slack. Go read his blog, because he links to music a lot. And also go read his blog because it covers a lot of ground.

Hello. I am Gentoo Linux. I am installing. Please wait. For three days.

Via boingboing:

A really great article about complex mythologies created by homless children in Miami. It’s a bit like the birth of a new religion.

G33KL0G:

So I took sean’s advice, and put gentoo linux on my decrepid PC. It took 9 hours last night to compile the kernel, and I used the stage-3 GRP option for everything else (so as not to have to wait a week for it to compile everything).

Portage rules, as does rc-update.

So far so good. It’s installing Xfree at the moment, and the tension is mounting… Once I’ve done this, I can finally reboot to see what happens. Will it work? Will it find my network card? Will it find the network??

Well, of course. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? GRUB can’t even find the kernel. W00t!

Ok. We edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and we’re set. Now it boots, but doesn’t realize I just installed Xfree. Fucking penguins!

I have a new hero: The Freewayblogger!

See especially this one, and this message from the freewayblogger.

I forgot to mention that in between all the other things I mentioned in my last ‘blog, I went to see the new Matrix movie.

Stop reading now if you don’t want to see spoilers.

There are a couple things that are important about this movie. First of all, it’s an astonishing spectacle. There’s so much visual stuff crammed into it that it’s hard to take in. Second of all, after all the big philosophical build-up, it’s either a huge shaggy dog story, or the sly-est in-joke ever to exist. There is, in the end, no answer to the question of freedom or choice. We are all here, as they say, to fulfill our purpose.

A lot has been said about the Christian imagery at the end, where Neo gives himself up in order to save Zion. Some of it is very obvious, some less so, like when the machine says, “It is done.” Perhaps it should have been “It is accomplished.” But this is all a ruse. Zion continues to exist, but at the cost of the freedom of all the humans still in the Matrix, who won’t ever know what they’re missing. Neo has offered himself up in order to defeat Agent Smith, who was more a threat to the machine world than the human one. Neo hasn’t absolved anyone of their sin.

The philosophical balance of the first two movies is basically eviscerated; the story ceases to be about the conflict between urge and will, perception and enlightenment, choice and determinism. In part, this comes from some of the really interesting bits of storytelling; the fact that the prophecy is a sham, designed to further control the humans, in particular. But in that instance, Morpheus never wakes up enough to invent a new philosophy. He just spends the whole third movie riding shotgun while his ex-girlfriend saves the day.

So maybe the message of the third movie is that once the shooting starts, all philosophical bets are off. This would seem to be at odds with Neo’s ability to stop the bullets (and the squiddies) in mid-air, however, which is why it’s so disappointing. And maybe another message is that without a prophecy to bouy one’s spirits, one is basically fucked, and it’s only by making bum deals with one’s enemy that one can even think about short-term survival. This is also disappointing, when the filmmakers have been tantalizing us with the promise of resolving the ancient philosophical issue of free will for two whole movies.

Neo isn’t Christ 2.0, he just looks that way to the uninitiated. And that’s exactly how it is with prophecies.

I haven’t blogged in a while. I wonder if I can remember how to do it.

I’m watching my old pentium computer install Debian on itself. So far it’s the only installer that figured out how to sync with the monitor properly, so color me impressed. It also comes on 7 (!) CDs, which you can download and burn, or you can mix and match your install from CDs and over the network from debian.org or mirrors. It’s kinda cool.

My parents left yesterday for home. They went up to Victoria and had a good time without me. They’d never seen salmon spawning, so it was an adventure for them. They were guided around by one of dad’s friends from work. Now they’re back in TX, telling the tale to their friends.

I really need a new place to stay. The deadline, it doth loom. Especially if I’m going to Texas for Xmas, a decision I haven’t made yet.

I don’t have anything profound to say right now. In fact, I have very little that’s trivial to say, either.