If you have a Mac, and you’re running Mac OS X 10.4.x, you really should do yourself a favor.

Install the developer tools (on the Tiger install disks, or from develop.apple.com), and play around with Quartz Composer.

It’s a visual graphics synthesizer. You can, for instance, create a new iTunes visualizer from a template and start messing around with things. As you save your new creation, you can watch it respond to the music in iTunes. You change things by patching modules together with patch cords, like an old analog synth.

It’s simplicity itself to make a new screensaver. You can even have, for instance, a screensaver that responds to the sounds coming in the microphone. Stuff like that. Lots of nerdy fun.

‘Quartz’ is Apple’s name for a graphics API that wraps up Core Graphics and OpenGL. You can do everything you do in Quartz Composer from code, too.

None of my creations are cool enough to display here, but I made a custom screensaver that shows the time, date and CPU load in about ten minutes.

Just because I know some of my readers are interested in it: Gulf Coast wind farm will be built, despite being in the middle of migratory flight path. They plan to mitigate, and turn off the turbines during migration times.

Which sounds like a load of hogwash to me. But oh well.

Anyway. Also some happy news: Texas pulls ahead of California in wind power generation.

Leaked storyboards!

No doubt you’ve heard about ABC’s plans to mark the anniversary of 9/11 by lying about it. Their ‘docu-drama,’ called ‘Path To 9/11,’ is a narrative where things that didn’t happen did happen, such as Sandy Berger failing to order CIA agents to kill Osama Bin Laden. Stuff like that. Stuff that’s basically a big fat lie about 9/11. ABC will lie about 9/11 on 9/11.

Anyway. Back a while back, in the recesses of ancient history known as 2003, CBS was about to air a bunch of stuff about Ronald Reagan. Conservatives clamored that the show be dropped, which it was. It aired on Showtime rather than CBS, with a panel discussion before and afterward.

And the always-excellent Glenn Greenwald here shows conservative reactions to 2003′s ‘The Reagans.’ See, when a conservative is made to look bad, the truth is paramount. But if you’re going to lie about Bill Clinton, then fine freakin’ dandy.

I saw my printer at a thrift store the other day. Same brand and model. It was $9.99. I thought about buying it, just to see if the ink cartridges were any good.

Every step is full. Every step is a whole world unto itself. You lift your foot and put it down in front of you, and then fall forward a little bit onto it. That’s a step, and if anything else can represent the whole of existence, then it can, too.

Stop thinking about it. Just step. It’s a step. Step by step you climb through switchbacks and tangled roots and over sharp stones and boulders and padding across the soft spongy floor of the forest. Step by step you move across the snowbank, ice axe positioned, ready for self-arrest in case your step doesn’t step-to.

A single step could be motion between life and death. Perhaps even back again, too. A single step could spell ruinous pain for the rest of the trip. Step and sprain, step and stress. Step and hurt. Paying attention to a single step could mean not taking a trip to the hospital in a med-evac helicopter.

The single step is the practical currency of all human life. Taking a step forward. Walking the long road, or even the short one. Pavement spoils us; the trail re-educates us. You gotta learn to crawl before you can learn to walk, and you gotta learn to walk before you can learn to hike.

Something flows out the feet. Something indescribable comes from connecting to ground. Walking up a stream is called wading, but it’s walking. The current flows around us and through us. Push against the current or flow with it, you can’t deny it’s there.

Breathing and walking, three in two out. Vary the count as needed. Listen for the need. Listen listen listen. Listen to the heart, the muscles, the slightest gasp reflex, the tips of the fingers and toes. Listen. Don’t look to where you’re headed, listen to where you are. Where you are will match up to where you’re going eventually, if what you’re doing is walking.

Thinking. Thinking is walking in your mind. Listen to where you are, breathe. Three in, two out. Listening to where you are means you don’t think any more about much of anything. “The leaves have fallen though it is not yet autumn.”

Whatever.

Step by step.

“Give us this day our daily adventure…”

I think my favorite place on the planet at the moment is the high valley of the North Fork of the Skykomish River.

Next time it’s a hike up to west Cady ridge. Today I followed that trail only a little farther than the bridge over the river. It’s a lovely gorge through granite at that point. I didn’t take any ‘documentary’ style photos, just navel-gazing close-ups of river trickles and rock patterns. None of them are very good, mostly because I brought the wrong polarizing filter. Too small for any of my lenses. Argh.

The North Fork up at the trailhead altitude, however, is a delight. It’s relatively flat and broad, perfect for soaking your feet and cooling off. And just downstream is a dramatic cataract through more granite.

I so seldom read my guestbook, and looking at my Footprints, someone from South Korea was looking at it, so I took a peek to make sure no one had uploaded trade secrets from Samsung or whatever.

Hellnohateyou asks: Where does the stat for NT come from? He’s referring to the top of my Xanga page, where it says:

Tragically, as many as 9625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical.

Since I’ve got a few new subscribers, I thought I’d talk about this *again,* mostly because it’s one of my favorite things.

And also because there’s this great Metafilter article about it, so I don’t have to explain as much. Start here (the link to this page from Metafilter is broken).

One of the many misconceptions about people who are autistic and who have Asperger’s Syndrome diagnoses is that they lack a sense of humor. The above shows: The joke’s on you.

Buy one of my books. Or two or three. Or four.

Some of these were books I already had. Others I got in three big boxes for free from a craigslist ad.

Zaadz.com is a new-age hippie re-mix of Tribe.net.

Update: You have to *apply* for membership. If your ”Tell us about yourself” comment isn’t good enough, they’ll ping you again for a better answer:

Subject: Re: Zaadz needs to know a bit more about you

I’m really grateful that you took the time to apply to join the Zaadz community. Before I can approve your application I need more information about you than you provided. Please reply to this email and tell a bit more.

Thanks and looking forward to welcoming you to our community!

My response:

I’m one of those people you have to ask. If you want to know something, you should ask it. ‘Tell me a little more about yourself,’ is tremendously vague and exclusive.

Maybe you’re unlucky in that your email found me *during* the first cup of coffee, but I’m not going to plead for entrance into a system I don’t really know much about.

Neurotypicals are so judgemental. Without even knowing it.

In all (or maybe too much) fairness, I can appreciate having an entry threshhold. If it guarantees the quality of what’s inside, then fine. There are plenty of other social networking sites to use if one doesn’t make it over the zaadz threshhold. And there’s the issue of people who show up just to be disruptive… It’d be nice if such disruption could be guaranteed to benefit everybody, right?

This is, to me, an interesting issue. If you want a certain kind of community, how do you make it happen? Do you make it by-invitation-only (BIO…. feedback. )? Do you let anyone show up and then have areas of exclusivity within the larger scheme?

And if your goal is to change the world, you better start convincing the world that you’re including them in the change.