reechard’s anti-blog

Unfortunate Necessity: Content Disclaimer (Rules)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00:00 -0800

WARNING: DEFUNCT SITE!
POSTS LEFT HERE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EASY WAY TO GET THEM OFF.
ALL AUDIO MEDIA FILES HAVE BEEN REMOVED, IN PART BECAUSE VOX HAS NEVER EVEN GUARDED AGAINST SCRAPERS WHO COLLECT ALL "FREE MP3S" ON THE INTERNET.

I CAN BE CONTACTED VIA MY GOOGLE PROFILE IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS. THANKS FOR PLAYING, IT WAS FUN!.

WARNING TO VOX NEIGHBORS: I may be moving soon; If you want to keep in touch, let me know! And, BTW, I don't hate you or your comments! One of my reasons for leaving Vox is they have given me no good way to get my content out and yes, I requested long ago that they fix this problem. Also, I really really hate the "compose" widget. Lots of time wasted doing things twice, thrice.

Please por favor s'il vous plait, be tener avoir, 13, years old años ans;
Be not no ser être pas, religioso or intolerante of non-religiosos.
Comments from unidentified, unfriendly sources are discouraged and will be moderated; Vox lacks support for Disqus Intense Debate and Backtype
If you are a data-miner or scraper, go away.
Conspiracy Theorists Not Welcome. Conspirators Only.

On "reechard"

My given nickname is pronounced "ree-shard". The spelling is a compromise. "Walker" is an adopted name, so... to hell with all the other Richard Walkers... and I tell you, they are legion.

Belief disclaimer: I Believe in Music, Art, Language, Philosophy, Debate, Rhetoric, Logic, People, Community, Nature, Animals, Plants, Food, Wine, Sex, Water, Fire, Earth, Air. I Disbelieve in God, Oprah, Religion, the Occult, Superstition, Aliens, UFOs, Ghosts, Spirits, Reincarnation, Karma, Faith Healing, Therapeutic Touch, Chi, Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Hypnosis, Repressed Memory (Therapy), Voodoo, Paganism, Witchcraft, Neo-Shamanism, Urban Tribalism, Spells, Feng Shui, Ley Lines, Auras, ESP, Channeling, "Intelligent Design" and Astrology.

Belief disclaimer: I strongly support your right to believe what you will.

Best-of-blog posts:

Unlikely News: Liberace Schools Ted Haggard (Tired Queens Revolt)
Unseen TV: Leo Laporte Media (TWiT.tv, vidcast)
Unbridgeable Chasm: Lane Hartwell & The Richter Scales
Unimpressive Journalism: Why ZDNet's Jennifer Leggio is Wrong (and why it matters)
Unabashed Plea: Leave Wikipedia Aloooooone (sob)
Unread Commentary: SF MoMA, Thomas Hawk, Simon Blint (Photography is not a crime)
Unleashed Art: Remix Culture
Unfamiliar Sound: Dj Mix Technique Number One (Several Reversals)
Unpublished Blog: Emily Blog Post Number 01: Expletives (Blogging for Wankers)
Unpublished Score: Navarra by Isaac Albeniz (my edition)
Unread Book: The Pirate's Dilemma (Matt Mason, 2008)
Illegal Proposition: Abuse and Damage the Source (Letter to Lessig)
Unheard Music: Da Capo al Fine v2 (Wise Guy Mix)
Unseen TV: Break a Leg (Comedy, WebOnly)
Unpublished Book: The Performing Pianist; a Pocket Primer (2002)
Planet Earthling: Galactic Terrorists or Roguish Evolutionary Dunces?

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Impossible Dream: Barcelona apartments to rent - Holiday apartments Barcelona

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:43:28 -0700

Impossible Dream: Barcelona apartments to rent - Holiday apartments Barcelona

http://www.apartime.com/

Apartime offer you a selection of Barcelona apartments to rent. All of our Holiday apartments Barcelona are fully furnished and equipped, as well as located in the center of the city. Enjoy this great alternative for traditional hotel accommodation by booking on-line one of our Barcelona holiday flats. Personal check in / check out service makes the Apartime experience as easy as entering a Hotel.

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Impossible Dream: Homesearch Barcelona

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:41:58 -0700

Impossible Dream: Homesearch Barcelona

http://www.homesearchbarcelona.com/

Homesearch Barcelona® is local Spanish real estate consulting firm, providing international buyers in Barcelona integral services for their real estate investment , from the property search up to a successful purchase. Our unique service was designed to meet the highest European quality standards and is based on efficiency, cost effectiveness, discretion and total transparency with our clients. For us, quality of service and professionalism are a key elements and that is what differentiates us from others. ABOUT US

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New Tech Blog: Soft Machine³ (announce)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:23:29 -0700

UPDATE: March 27, 2009: Moved to squarespace on my own domain.

Dear readers, for reasons too numerous to mention, I'm getting off of vox. ~~I'm liking Wordpress quite a bit... but it's not surprising that a man dying of thirst enjoys a tall glass of ice water.~~ I'm LOVING squarespace.

So, allow me to make a bold claim that this won't be a "tech blog" you've seen the likes of.

~~For the moment,~~ it's available via:

http://softmachinecubed.com

~~http://richardwalker.wordpress.com~~

Do drop by, won't you? I'm looking forward to it ;-)
-Richard Walker ("reechard")

At this site I will share and discuss tutorials, web development, programming techniques, concurrency & scalability, MyEclipse, Java, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Ext-Gwt (GXT), Android phone, Chrome, Firefox, Firebug, Yahoo Pipes, "Cloud Computing," tech blogs, digital media, wikis, open source, and social media. Comments are welcome, but I reserve the right to moderate them.

The content found here is my own, where I am a free agent, not affiliated with an organization or commercial entity. The purpose is to share knowledge with a wider community, not limited to colleagues and clients.

Hence, this. Thank you for coming by! Drop me a comment here or there. Whatever you do,

DON'T PANIC!

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Anti-social Network: Lonely on Hulu (but not for long)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:22:17 -0700

UPDATE: I haz 2 friendz nao :)

Lonely on Hulu, originally uploaded by reechard.walker.

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Unmissable Event: Bootie SF with Reechard and guests April 25

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:54:00 -0700

Bootie SF April 25

Bootie SF at DNA Lounge

Bootie SF Site

Upcoming Event info

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Unseen Film: GRITtv Presents a clip from the new Yes Men movie

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:18:16 -0700

GRITtv Link

The Yes Men, those impervious impersonators of the world's most toxic rich people, are up to their hijinks again. Word over the wire is that they're coming out with a new movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, but their funny-bone still seems to be intact: t hey promise that "this film has one of the very few underwater ballet scenes you will ever see in a political documentary." Take a look.

GRITtv Presents: A Clip From The new Yes Men movie

Grit TV Banner

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Unpublished Book: Adventures of a Reluctant Cult Observer (narrative nonfiction)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:19:19 -0800

Richard Walker, at age seven, lives a privileged life in a Chinese mansion in Santa Barbara with his mother Sharon and father Nelson. But when Nelson dies suspiciously, Sharon marries David, a younger man, and they move to Banana Road and are ensnared in a cult. Four years later, brainwashed, abused and poor, they escape Los Angeles in the middle of the night, in secret, and never look back.

Adventures of a Reluctant Cult Observer is a [word count] work of narrative nonfiction.

Richard Walker, Banana Road

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Unsubmitted Suggestion: Local Food Production (recovery.gov)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:14:48 -0800

UPDATE: Suggestion successfully submitted.

Well, I tried to submit this to recovery.gov but it failed. I can only assume it's due to a spike in traffic during Obama's address to Congress.

It's a small thing, but many small things together make a big thing.
I'm so glad "clean coal" wasn't mentioned :-)

An oft-overlooked aspect of energy independence is local food production and distribution.
I just thought I'd point you at a local San Francisco organization that is doing that now, by developing private gardens and distributing organic produce. I am not affiliated with MyFarmsSF, but my sister, a gardener in Ireland, approves of this effort. She was considering similar possibilities during my last visit to Ireland, when the Celtic tiger had recently disappeared and the recession was in full swing.

http://www.myfarmsf.com/
Best regards,
Richard Walker

MyFarm-HowItWorks

Recovery.gov

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Uncomplicated Technology: Twitter Follower Mosaic Variants (picasa3)

nobody@vox.com(reechard) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:49:10 -0800

UPDATE: Pat Phelan reports:

Fantastic news from Ken:
Walter Higgins at Sxoop Technologies is making great great use of Twitter’s open API and is now combining it with Zazzle to create Twitter Mosaic to offer personalized goods based on avatars of your Twitter friends or followers

The guys at Sxoop Technologies have made it easy to get all the avatars of your twitter followers.

Start up your browser, clear the cache of all temporary items, and generate the mosaic using this tool:

Twitter Follower Mosaic

Twitter Mosaic Step 1

The tool simply arranges the avatars in a grid on the page.
As a side-effect, you will now have all the avatars in your browser cache.
Find your browser cache. For example, with Internet Explorer, navigate

Tools >> Options >> General >> BrowsingHistory >> Settings >> View Files.

Select all .jpgs and .gifs, or "sort by URL" and find all the images from "s3.amazonaws.com". Copy them all out to an image directory for the twitter mosaic.

Now, fire up Picasa3 and look at the twitter mosaic elements. They should all be 48 pixels square. Select all of them, and navigate to "Create >> Picture Collage." This is what "picture pile" mode looks like:

TwitterPicturePile

And this is Frame Mosaic mode where I selected my current twitter background as the center, and skewed the result:

TwitterFrameMosaic Skew

Have fun! It might be nice to sort the images based on content, to go from saturated to desaturated in X and from simpe to busy in Y. Exercise left for industrious hackers and signal processing students.

Thanks @walter!

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