Stung Eye

The eye of the bee holder.

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Gloria

"Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand? And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds for us now, of course; we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome..."

Peace to your pieces.

Part Apart

Amsterdam early 2005.

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Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein

Unknowingly prisoners of [our] own egotism, [we] feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

PARK(ing)

An investigation into reprogramming a typical unit of private vehicular space by leasing a metered parking spot for public recreational activity.

growabrain linked to my framed photoset on the 15th. I always like to return the favour.

Palm in the Middle

I've Flickr'd our 2004 photos from Portugal, Germany, and the Czech Republic. I also added a few photos to the Spanish photoset.

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Have you forgotten what we are?

We are animals.

We are energy.

We are capable of much more.

A Video Reminder:

  Warning; what you are about to see may kick-start your sense of wonder.

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Le Parkour is a physical discipline of French origin, in which participants attempt to pass obstacles in a smooth and rapid manner.

Parkour is said to be L'art du Deplacement, consisting of uninterrupted forward motion over, under, around and through obstacles (both man-made and natural) in one's environment. Such movement may come in the form of running, jumping, climbing and other more complicated techniques. The goal of the practice of parkour is to be able to adapt one's movement to any given situation so that any obstacle can be overcome with the human body's abilities.

Flipping, and other acrobatics, isn't part of pure Parkour. We'll call it FreeStyle Parkour.

More (FreeStyle) Parkour videos:

If your ready to bounce off buildings, or to spin spin spin:

Or, you can remain in front of your computer, and play this Parkour video game from the CBC.

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Some more links:

Losing Ground

Shannon and I both found jobs, (with our ex-employers none the less). Until the new year we are living on the 3rd floor of my parent's house. Soon, the old routines will be new again.

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I recently watched the movie Primer. As described by Kottke, this movie is very indie, was made for around $7000 USD, and will (only?) appeal to nerds, engineers (aka nerds), and philosophers (aka nerds).

The movie deals with time-travel, and due to the branching time-lines explored, and the resultant paradoxes, it was a challenge to follow. Luckily the 'net comes to the rescue:

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The idea of building a time machine in your garage might seem far-fetched, but what about building a brainwave analyser? An EEG can be used to experiment with biofeedback, or potentially to control digital/electronic equipment with your mind.

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With a 9-5 looming, I'll have to follow Steve Pavlina time management advice if I wish to build an EEG in my spare time. His advice seems well tested: he graduated with two degrees in only three semesters, (holding a full-time job in the final semester).

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During my brief job hunt I restructured my CV as a webpage using XHTML and CSS. I then attempted to replicate the design in Word for dead-tree printing. After ten minutes of Word-Wrestling, I returned to my XHTML version and created a printer friend stylesheet.

Related:

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An orange HB pencil lounges on the desk near my monitor. [5 minutes elapse as I contemplate the pencil and its relation to the keyboard beneath my fingers: similar in function, foreign in form.]

Related: Pencil Revolution.

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Philosophical & Religious findings:

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Nearly three years ago, I linked to some images of fractals found in plants from the cabbage family. More recently, I stumbled across an essay on fractal food, Self-Similarity on the Supermarket Shelf.

Reabsorption

The city is soaking us back into place.

Also:

Fresh is the taste

In the late 90s I watched a "documentary" at the Pyramid --before a DJ Spooky show, I think-- where some kids claimed to have found the ruins of an abandoned subway under Winnipeg. Since then I've heard many rumours about a past proposal for a 'peg city metro.

From the truwinnipeg.org site:

In 1959, when renowned civil engineer Norman D. Wilson was asked to examine Winnipeg's long-term transportation options, his report recommended building a subway.

Wilson admitted the expense would be gigantic --up to $500 Million 1959 dollars-- but prophesied that if we failed to build, Winnipeg would suffer. Parking lots would become more valuable than buildings, giving land owners incentive to demolish. Cars would take over our downtown.

"In fact if a metropolitan city were to be wholly or even largely dependent on the private automobile for transportation, so much space would be taken up in roadways and so little left for business purposes, as to destroy the value of the district for the business uses that attracted the traffic in the first place." --Norman D. Wilson

If the subway had been built, there would be a metro stop at the end of my block.

enclosed

Last fall I visited the University of Manitoba armed with homemade wooden frames.

The result was framed wonder of the everyday.

Tapas for all

The second country we visited was Spain. We flew from Paris to Barcelona, travelled down the East coast (mainly by bus), and then cut across the country towards Portugal. (October 2004)

three

Somewhere in Winnipeg, a decision is made.-> Somewhere in Winnipeg, a decision is made.

Sorting, Tagging, Tweaking

I've started organizing our photos from the past 14 months. Here's a collection from Paris, our first stop outside Canada. (Late September - Early October 2004)

Some of these were posted back on Oct 11th 2004.