<p>months and months ago, my dear friend, James Miska, was playing house shows at boing! pretty often. so one of the times i borrowed a camera from my <em>friend </em><a href="http://crashycrashy.blogspot.com/">stef</a> and recorded his show. i <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/9/19/1/james-is-the-cutest-ever/">wrote about and uploaded the songs</a> forever ago.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/veganstraightedge/59550082/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/29/59550082_692a7f1085.jpg" alt="hugs not drugs." height="375" width="500"></a></p>

<p>i love these songs. i listen to them <em><a href="http://homestarrunner.com/vcr_hs.html">like every single day</a></em>. seriously, there's a real magic to them. and like all art, music should always be free. so continuing in that spirit, i'm more than excited to do the same with the record he finally recorded. but, first a little back story...there was a band called trial. they were swell, but broke up, like all good bands seem to do. they decided to play a few reunion shows [seattle, wa and two in europe]. kids flocked from all over the country to sing those words one more time as if their lives depended on it. a handful of us from salt lake went there. enter, james and i.</p>

<p><a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/5/1/the-northwest-passage/">he and i hitchhiked there together.</a> that was his first time hitching at all and my first time not going solo. it was <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/13/2/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-2-rursday/">an </a><a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/11/2/1/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-3-friday/">awesome </a><a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/13/1/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-1-wednesday/">trip</a>. [look, i know i know. i'm sorry that i haven't finished blogging the rest of my travel journal. <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/11/18/2/trial-reunion-show-journal/">i'll get to it.</a>] one of the highlights was getting a ride from a kid named krist kruger. he plays music under the moniker Southerly. he picked us up at a flying j in boise, ID, where we slept the night before, and took all the way to pendleton, wa where he was playing a show and invited us to come along. AWESOME!</p>

<p>james and i were both stoked to have the ride and go to see a movie with him and share our food and to see him play out. but if he's no good? guh! [pulls on his collar] what will we do? fortunately, we didn't have to cross that bridge, because he blew us away.so fast forward 5 and half months to valentine's day 2006. southerly is playing a show here in salt lake at kilby court. james talks to the dude and gets on the show and surprises krist. it was real great. but in addition to the show james released his new / first record title "Saol, Ceol". camillo recorded him in his kitchen. it sounds real good. profesh.</p>

<p>i had approached him a few weeks before about me wanting to do a small record label again, but this time internet only. [in the past i have done small labels called Pen15 records and riot.nrrrd.records]. he was downs, but still wanted a real cd. so... sure, i threw my hat into the ring on that one too. we busted our asses on it, i stared at my computer for like 40 hours on it, james did some handwriting, emily did some velcro and staples and we put together a nice little cd package.</p>

<p><a href="http://audio.theresistancearmy.com/">the resistance army audio project</a> will be built out further later. but for now, here's james two records: <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/9/19/1/james-is-the-cutest-ever/">live at boing</a> and <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2006/3/7/2/james-miska-saol-ceol/">Saol, Ceol</a>.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/veganstraightedge/653534295/" title="saol, ceol front cover by veganstraightedge, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1193/653534295_dfabd0a8df_m.jpg" alt="saol, ceol front cover"></a></p>

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/atom?m=752">Google Dreams Big</a>:

</p>

From my personal interactions with Google's execs, with I completely agree that Google is sincere in this vision, and really is thinking big. But whether it's Google who builds this platform or someone else, or whether it's a tapestry woven collectively by many companies and projects, the vision that they lay out is one that we seem to be moving inexorably towards, barring the collapse of civilization as we know it. (Insert your disaster here.)

<p>I'll go with "industrial collapse &amp; civilization crash as triggered by the over-dependence on / rapid depletion of fossil fuels, especially oil and natural gas, overpopulation and radical climate change. ...generally speaking the mentality of a cancer cell ['growth for the sake of growth']" for $400, please.</p>

<p>i want to apologize for and explain the recent downtime this site has seen. first, my site [<a href="http://theresistancearmy.com/">the resistance army</a>, generally; my blog (<a href="http://veganstraightedge.com">tofu == love</a>), specifically] was being hosted on an <a href="http://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/stats/powermac_g3_233_dt.html">old beige 233 g3 powermac</a> with a whopping 128mb ram and a 4 gb hard drive. a powerhouse of a machine, right? it was back in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomington,_Indiana">bloomington, indiana</a> in a friend's office just sharing his network connection. it wasn't a screaming fast network, but was way good enough for my paltry needs.</p>

<p>the reason it was back there was like this. back in 2001, i got laid off from a pretty sweet flash programming job at <a href="http://wisdomtools.com">wisdomtools</a> along with 30 or so other people. hard times and over inflated companies. so while i was looking around for some more work, i stumbled across imagination street which now defunct. they were a small web shop that had a sweet office setup in bloomington right above plan 9 video and the book corner. needless to say they were paying a pretty penny for that space. as business slowed down they realized they couldn't do that space anymore. not enough scrilla. so they moved across the square above talbots [ugh, god forsaken talbots. seriously <em>who</em> in their right mind shops at talbots?]. they got a pretty good setup at a pretty sweet location subletting from a guy who realized he didn't need a whole floor of office to himself. enter <a href="http://bloomington.in.gov/council/volans/">steve g. volan</a>.</p>

<p>steve was one of the two brothers who started <a href="http://bluemarble.net">bluemarble</a>, a local ISP in the early days when an ISP was still a reasonable business to start. bluemarble has since merged / been bought by <a href="http://www.smithvilledsl.net/">smithville</a>. steve had since moved on from bluemarble and was doing his own thing under the name of the agate workshop [which he still does]. he also now owns and runs and awesome video store / small theatre call <a href="http://thecinemat.com/">the cinemat</a> in bloomington. steve's an awesome dude. he's young enough to be a friend; old enough to be a mentor kind of role. the hours we've spent talking are so dear and valuable to me.</p>

<p>so anyhow, imagination street moves into steve's offices. i continue to do contract work for them. then one day out of nowhere, they're like "uhh... we're filing bankruptcy and closing up shop and moving out. sorry." weird. i understand. the bubble bursting and all that. but i had grown accustomed to having an office and desk and internet and stuff OUTSIDE of my house. so i worked things out to sublet directly from steve just a desk in his office / storage room. my friend <a href="http://runskip.com/">boice tomlin</a> got in on it, too. then later kurt whitsel whom also worked at wisdomtools and was laid off the same time i was. and for a time things were good. we were each paying very very little to have a desk and an office and screaming network connectivity.</p>

<p>[ boice later moved to portland and was living The Life there for a few years, i think. and it seems like he's back in bloomington and is still doing web development which is awesome. his company is called <a href="http://runskip.com/">runskip</a>. boice was one of those people in my life helped to steer me down a path i might not've taken, but am glad that i did. that path was <a href="http://php.net/">PHP</a>. php ended up being a really big change for me and was all i did for the next few years. so much so that i've considered getting a <a href="http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A40305/high/dsc010660.jpg">php tattoo</a> (like this but on my calves). the path of php is littered with curly braces, question marks and semi-colons. its a messy path. but its the path that lead me to where i am today. ::cough:: <em>rubyonrails</em> ::cough:: and i'm happy with where i am these days. so thanks, boice. i owe you one.]</p>

<p>then i started traveling a bunch, then moved away from bloomington. so i moved my computer into the server room and just used it as a webserver for my little projects. then steve started getting charged more for t1 line or whatever he had. so i started getting charged more. and for what it was [my own machine collocated that i had physical access to, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address">static ip</a> and no sharing with other people ] the price was still great. but i reached a point where i didn't want to be a sysadmin anymore, b/c frankly i'm no good at it and it bores me. other people love it and are very good and doing it. so needless to say, i'm sure i did plenty of things that you shouldn't do as a sysadmin. so things went wrong.</p>

<p>my machine had the physical limit of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006F7S2/102-3945705-8156166">10.2.8</a>. ugh. i couldn't run a lot of the updates i wanted to. i also didn't know how to install software packages remotely under <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021129093614/www.apple.com/macosx/">jaguar</a>. [look, i know there is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPostFacto">XPostFacto</a>, but i thought it was flaky when i tried it. and i also know i could've run linux on my powermac, but i'm not into that.] so somehow someway something bad happened. and recently steve started noticing some Serious Network Slowdown, ran some tests, deduced it was my machine and unplugged it. that's fair. it was causing problems for everyone else. i had even noticing that it was making my blog posts incredibly slow to upload. all this happened while i was traveling recently. so i couldn't really do anything i got home. so there was two weeks on downtime.</p>

<p>steve put it back up long enough for me to download what i needed. then i migrated to a new host: <a href="http://textdrive.com/">TextDrive</a>. and things seemed good again. then i was rearranged the domains on my TxD account and managed to bork my blog. again. but things are sorted out now. i've got about 20 posts started in the drafts folder. so i'll try to stay on it a little better.</p>

<p>and that, my 4 loyal readers, is why the site has been wonky lately and is now back in full effect.</p>

<p>Currently playing in iTunes: <i>England</i> by Ghost Mice</p>

<p>i'm alive and safe.</p>

<p>i went east.</p>

<p>thank you, my friends. you inspire me endlessly.</p>

<p>its not funny like 'i told you so', either. its actually not funny at all.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/ulicqeldroma/eu.html">ulic qel droma</a> has always been my favourite jedi. not so much because of what he did or didn't do, but i just thought they told his story really awesomely. [yes, awesomely.] but i feel more and more like him.</p>

<p>i, like ulic, have allowed myself to wander down the wrong path. the path that leads to the dark side. and like ulic, i have seen what i've become; the person i have always despised. so like ulic, i'm leaving.  the best thing i can call it is a vision quest. which isn't quite right though. i need to get perspective. distance usually gives me distance.</p>

<p>unlike ulic, i have friends that care about me enough to help me rather than just kicking me to the curb. also, unlike ulic, i hopefully won't get shot with a blaster through my chest.</p>

<p>maybe in time, like ulic, i too will find redemption.</p>

<p>to those that i have wronged over the years, i am truly sorry. i hope to one day make it up to you.</p>