Exhibit #One… 16 October 2004.
Listening to: Boris Blenn, “Portamento”.
Reading: Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues.
Watching: Run Lola Run (again).
Finally, the first EXHIBIT is in place where the CURRENT PCITURE used to be. As suggested by one of our regular message board visitors, I’m going to be posting three new related pictures (how they relate to each other will depend on a series of factors… same program, same motif, same color scheme) from now on. More updates are expected in the coming days…
Desperately Seeking Luttman… 07 October 2004.
Listening to: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Wicked Little Town (Tommy Gnosis version)”.
Reading: Raymond E. Feist, Silverthorn.
Watching: Hellboy.
Actually, I’m no longer listening to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, nor reading Silverthorn, nor watching Hellboy. That’s what I was doing two weeks ago when I started thinking about updating this site. Now I’m listening to Underworld —”Stagger”. And why I didn’t change that info? Hell, boy, who knows; I didn’t update the site either. But I did add two more galleries in the last three days, if you haven’t noticed yet, and will soon start to read Glen Cook’s Sweet Silver Blues. I’m also trying to contact Jude Luttman, whose FractInt pictures I deem to be among the best of the best, and whose website has vanished unexpectedly. Apparently Jude changed ISP because the old email address isn’t working anymore. So Jude, if you read this message, or if anyone has some news, try to contact me. It will be very appreciated. There’s also a new CURRENT PICTURE substituting the one you see at right; I hope you enjoy it.
And nothing more… 22 August 2004.
Listening to: Lisa Gerrard, Whale Rider.
Reading: Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana.
Watching: Hellboy.
I took a brief break from fractaland shortly after last update. Now it’s time to resume life, but I confess my mind is still on “vacation mode”. So today’s update is really small, comprising a new CURRENT PICTURE and a few additional changes, mainly in the SOFTWARE section. More is coming soon, of course, since I already started working with some new images. July 13th’s posting (The Shapeshifter’s Compentium, chapters 1-8) is still valid, so read on…
Second post for today. 13 July 2004.
Listening to: Love Spirals Downwards, “Depression Glass”.
Reading: Raymond E. Feist, Magician.
Watching: Donnie Darko.
All I wanted to point out now is that the Discussion Board has reopened after last March disastrous system crash that terminated with all of Fractovia in a flash. If you were a registered member, I invite you to register once more because all your information and settings were lost. If you are a new visitor, you can register as well. // And to continue the saga, keep reading the following post to get a glimpse of the lastest happenings in the Shapeshifter’s Compendium.
The Shapeshifter’s Compendium, chapters 1-8. 13 July 2004.
Listening to: Love Spirals Downwards, “Depression Glass”.
Reading: Raymond E. Feist, Magician.
Watching: Donnie Darko.
Chapter One: The Me
Maybe it’s a weird question, but will I need to change my name? Well, not my personal, but this web site’s? Fractovia is six years old right now (in a personal level that also means I’m six years older and possibly more mature-like, maybe not). In cybertime terms, that’s a lot of time. Even though this is just a simple web site, sometimes I regard it as “my creation”, something of which I’m proud of, of what I care about.
Chapter Two: The Unknown
Internet’s reality defies imagination. It’s different than anything else humanity has created so far. This new and ever expanding universe is so vast that anyone can spend days or months without getting a clue of the —once— lastest happenings. And I have a question: Do we give up being humans when we get online? Does our out-of-the-computer selves detach from our beings at the very moment we input a username and a password and hit the ENTER key? Do we become anothers when a server authenticates our unique case sensitive character sequences, or does that action transpose our offline somebodies into the binary chain? Are our two worlds incompatible?
Chapter Three: The Org
com, net, org… When I first paid for a domain name registration, I thought of buying the three top dots in order to protect fractovia’s identity. The first year I got the com and org, since securing the net would have been more expensive than I could afford in a yearly basis for a personal project. I didn’t want my site to become commercial, so I pick up the org as the main one. For that same reason, I dropped the com the next year, even though it is the most common dot of all, believing no one else would surely consider “fractovia” worth registering anyway.
Chapter Four: The Fool
Internet’s rules are different, anarchic in a way, where everybody does as it pleases him/her. It is a highly creative environment, full of freedoms and boundlessness that, as a side effect, induce the mind to mix up “to loose” and “to lose”. Yet, I still have another question: Is there a moral, an ethic of any value, sort or respect in there? Thankfully, Toulouse is still safe.
Chapter Five: The Deceiver
I am me no more. When I learned about Phil Thompson’s “cybermare” with his former organisedchaos.com domain a while… while back, I thought it was outrageous, a case of identity theft parallel to those that today are taken for punishable crimes. Phil is a great musician and artist, and his site, now organisedchaos.biz, receives hundreds of visitors daily, yet maybe significantly less than the .com may allot. But he isn’t Pepsi or Madonna, so when someone stole HIS rights to HIS name, he couldn’t do anything but to abandon the dot for another end. Now I face a similar situation because someone apparently thought mimicking me would prove him/her (from now on IT) advantageous, and have deliberately registered the .com and .net of my name. Now fractovia is facing the same split identity cybercrisis I thought it was safe from. Does that mean my site has become “worth something”?
Chapter Six: The Dots
Why would some other people want to impersonate you, to steal you? What benefit do registrars gain by selling others some part of your name? Why don’t you get the rights of all the dot ends when you buy the first in the series? Or why don’t you get, if nothing else, the right to be consulted when someone else wants to get one of those after you do? At least that would be fair. Or is that asking too much?
Chapter Seven: The Parasite
The essence is not in a name, it’s just a way for finding it. So if I change my name, what would happen to this web site? Possibly nothing: visitors would get confused the first few times, but after that, they’d get used to the new address. What would happen to the shapeshifter? Would it, having succeeded with the encircling maneuver, grab the dot org as well to complete the makeup? Seizing and cloaking itself with fractovia’s identity was undoubtedly a way to drag visitors to its site. I just hope that parasitical link doesn’t develop into something more frightful. It would be “devastating” to find out the other site has also started to mirror fractovia’s content.
Chapter Eight: The End
With some effort I could cope with the idea the beguiler is just looking for an extra bit of recognition it cannot get otherwise. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think that’s what it is, otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for usurping something that isn’t his/hers to start with. Maybe it intended no ill, but I don’t know, and maybe will never know, because Internet’s boundlessness and freedoms have granted us all the choice to care no more.
Transits. 20 June 2004.
Listening to: Arcanta, “Lakshmita”.
Reading: The Sorcerer’s Companion.
Watching: Big Fish.
I’ve been doing pretty nothing (so to speak) for the last two months, except reading a lot, which is always an enjoyable experience if what you’re reading is something you actually want to read (usually, students —me among them— know quite well about the “other side” of it). I’ve been trying to pick up with astronomy once again, as well as with photography, the other two activities fighting against fractals for a little bit of extra (and scarce) time. Usually, there’re no winners, but a droopy trio (and with me, a quartet) of… semifinalists? Yet, I managed to upload the remaining MP3 files that since early March (after that server crash) were resting in peace in oblivion, another room in the PASSAGEWAY, and a new CURRENT IMAGE, also done in Apophysis. More will come soon. // PS. The old computer got another Linux distro, SuSE, on mid-May. It’s still doing nicely.
And merry meet again… 20 April 2004.
Listening to: Tiziano Ferro, “Sere Nere”.
Reading: nothing in particular.
Watching: ibid.
Once upon a time, there was a computer loaded with three operating systems (OS). And then one day, when it wasn’t exactly expected —even though a weakening video card and a failing motherboard have been threatening its functionality for some time— it ended its happy days forever. Computers are known to resurrect sometimes, but not this one: the spirit of “Jack the Ripper” momentarily possesed me, so I tore it apart. Ten months later… With some parts of that machine and some others from another one, I managed to build a third computer, which is now loaded with three OS —and also with a weakening “heart” (it’s old, so its motherboard is out of shape too; expect “history repeats itself” in the near future). Thus, Debian (a free Linux distribution), as well as BeOS and Win 98SE (one free, one not), have all returned. With that very welcomed recovery, I’ll be able to expand the Software section to include more generators for those platforms. Tremendo!!! // PS>CURRENT PICTURE has been updated.
Still recovering from disaster. 02 March 2004.
After the system crash that destroyed my site last week, I started to upload everything again. As of now, five days later, most of the textual content is already in its former place, but the galleries will remain in a minimum for some time more. So thanks for your patience, folks.
“MMM Skyscraper I love you”. 27 February 2004.
Bad luck doesn’t exist…
These past few weeks have been “hectic” for me, with so much work to do that I hardly had some time to breath…
Last Tuesday (F24) morning I bought something from a store in New York and asked (and paid) for UPS Next Day Delivery because I was in a hurry. After they mailed the small package that same day (for which I was exceedingly thankful), it spent Wednesday and Thursday roaming through the Springfield, MA, area without reaching me (hundreds of miles away). As of tonight (Friday night), the package is back where it started in New York City, and I have no idea when it will finally get “home” (I paid for it already, so I guess I can call it mine). Here is its “schedule” (deleted 04:04:04 because it was too long).
And to continue the saga, tonight I received a message from my hosting company, telling me there was a BIG, big problem with their server, that my site no longer exists because they couldn’t recover it from their backup, and that I must upload everything again.
–“Hey Mr., we’re talking about 200MB, it isn’t something you can do in a couple of minutes over Dialup!!!”
–“Shame on… We’re sorry, pal.”
My 200MB site was replaced by the following message in an otherwise totally blank page:
Welcome To fractovia.org
This website is currently under construction.
Pleas Visit Again Soon.
Almost six years of stuff replaced by a brief welcoming they couldn’t even write correctly (PLEAS — or was it fleas, or was it peas?). Now I will have to spend the next few hours trimming down my “future” web site, so I can upload something really soon. Isn’t it sweet?
“Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday,
Ohh these sour times.”
Sour Times (Dummy 1994), Portishead
Purely coincidental. All this situation will have some immediate consequences: all of you who signed as members of the discussion group, well.. you’ve been annihilated. Since I have no way of recovering your info, the Board will close permanently. I thank you very much for your support. It will take me several days to upload the galleries once again at a 2.0KB/s rate, which seems to be the hosting company’s mean uploading speed, so all I can promise right now is not more than a couple of them.
In the mean time, good luck to everyone… See you “soon”… —jL