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!

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

Related Post:
Unpublished Book: Memoirs of a Reluctant Cult Observer (Fiction)

This is a "me too" post inspired by FriendFeed's "25 Things You Don't Know About Me" meme.

The FriendFeed thread is over here.

<clears thing="throat" />
<vocalises thing="memememe" />

•  1. Born in California, LA area.
•  2. Ran wild in Santa Barbara. Chinese Mansion, Banana Road, Mountain Drive!
•  3. Parents went full-bore with rich-widow neo-hippy crazy-artist themes. Fun while it lasted!
  
•  4. Parents got sucked in to (and spit out by) a Cult (I Am merged into Children of the Light). Mother was a "High Priestess". They had their own branch!
•  5. Witnessed brain washing and "aggressive" therapy, and forced labor, insomnia and fasting. And a melange of beliefs such as Theosiphism, Christianity, Buddhism, and anything else lying around. Everyone had glamorous past lives, and the lucky ones were planning to "ascend" this plane by "transmuting" their "substance" (and leaving no corpse)
  
• 6. Escaped Cult with parents at 5a.m. unannounced, and traveled across the U.S. then to Europe. One of the nicest people, Anne, never escaped. The photos below are hers.
•  7. Attended Catholic school in a tiny village in Mallorca, Spain, where I learned French and a little Catalan.
•  8. Attended a Community College near Brighton. A Yankee mutt tested well enough for "posh schools", so they placed him in this alternative co-ed school for O-Level prep. 2 hours each way. Invaluable to his spotty education.
•  9. Studied piano in SF with Robert Sheldon, a student of Egon Petri. Petri taught Victor Borge.
• 10. Worked as an ESL and music teacher in Barcelona
• 11. Attended City College of San Francisco, where I started to program computers at the Electronic Music Lab
• 12. Got a job playing piano, then one programming children's games for Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. In "Forth."
• 13. Went on to work and live in the Silly Valley for a few years in the 80s.
• 14. Learned on the job from graduates of SRI, Xerox Parc and Stanford AI Lab
• 15. After long stints at companies in the North Bay, career as a C++ programmer flamed out in the crash of 2000
• 16. Co-inventor of ImagePump, which was sold to several people, even without a patent. Still in use today. People said nice things!
  
• 17. In 2004 I started working with Robert Elvin to provide music for his indie film "The Savant" released in 2008. People said nice things! 
  
• 18. Started full-time programming again in 2007, this time Eclipse, Java, GWT, GXT, MySql, tomcat
• 19. 2 sisters live in Ireland, one sister lives in Las Vegas
• 20. I'm highly Skeptical, even of these "facts."
• 21. I have a large extended family on my Mother's side, as she had 6 sisters and a brother 
• 22. I wrote a "pocket primer" for the "Performing Pianist"
• 23. I prepared my own edition of Isaac Albeniz' Navarra for piano
• 24. I have been known to mess around with multi-track digital audio. Magix Samplitude is my weapon of choice.
• 25. I am a frustrated radio producer, not much of a blogger, and not a journalist either - I like to help journalists, though. 

Banana Road - Me & Kirsten 1

Banana Road - Me & Kirsten 2

Santa Maria de Mallorca Googlemap

Barcelona Googlemap

This project has been simmering on the back burner for a long time.
This blog may however not be the appropriate venue.
This is not a promise, threat, or binding agreement of any kind.
Any similarity to actual persons or places is purely coincidental.

Chapter Outline:

1. They killed my father and danced on his grave (a slight exaggeration)
2. Free school & Unitarians
3. Theosophism, Ojai, New Age-y Latecomers
4. Mountain Drive, Banana Road, Communes, Hippies, Millionaires and Us
5. Pretending to be Into Drugs (at 8 years old)
6. Everyone In The Pool (nudity required)
7. Los Angeles "dumb-lady" cult style vs. Huntsville "brainwasher's" cult style
8. Seizing Control of Minds, Wills and Assets
9. The Inner Circle, Monetization, Branches, Franchising & Event Marketing
10. The Dark Art of Human Brainwashing (a.k.a. behavior modification, basic training)
11. The Very Best of Intentions
12. The Carrot & The Stick
13. The Escape
14. The Jim Jones Legacy
15. Signs you may be In a Cult
16. A Cult by Any Other Name
17. Scientology & Anonymous
    
18. 131 flavors of Jeebus
19. Signs a relative or friend is in Jeopardy
20. Things that may help with Cult Inoculation
21. Modern Trends in Anti-science, Bad Education and "Beliefism"

UPDATE: William Safire, On Language: Bleeping Expletives (New York Times Magazine December 31 2008)
 

WTF? srsly, the spell-correction for "kerfuffel" is "motherf***er" not
"kerfuffle"... minutes ago

I think the situation is pretty Fup ... Duck ... agree! -ed.

So, while we bring our shameful and Puritanical tendencies into the 21st century, remember:

• 1) Just because you can use bad language, racial epithets, expletives, does not mean you should. Supporting evidence: lack of UK or Canadian "obscenity law" as we have; lack of expletives in BBC, CBC; Lack of their desire to follow our shining example in making "sounds representing words representing offensive concepts" a soundcrime (but not a spelledwordcrime.) These are quite different from a more personal kind of offense such as defamation, slander or libel, which isn't about the language per se being offensive, but is damaging an individual or group. Scandal rags, busybodies, gossips, bloggers, character assassins, trash talkers - may exceed their right to speak freely and lose the protection of old man Bill... O'Rights.
• 2) Inability to refer to or use offensive or bad language without creating a problem for someone else implies a lack of education or imagination. "...defecate, fornicate, micturate!" (translation left as an exercise for the reader). The Irish version of "s***" - is shite which you will notice is just an S-bomb with an "e".  Also popular in Ireland is feckin'. "F-bomb" and "S-bomb" are good terms for specific expletives. "Fudge" and "Sugar" to quote my Grandmama Della.
• 3) Penis penis penis. Refer to South Park on Comedy Central. Adults skeptical of the value of this show have to wade in way past the F-bombs and S-bombs to get at some valuable ideas. Almost all medical terms for body parts are completely OK. (At least for now.... until Science is classified as offensive by puritanical clerics). If you actually find a justification to say "penis penis penis" perhaps an award is in your future. Perhaps not.
• 4) "N-word", once again, is OFF LIMITS to HONKIES who don't have STREET CRED with the AUDIENCE at the venue.  Very nearly the only way to do this right is to insult all parties ad nauseum, including the speaker or author, and not just echo or establish pejorative stereotypes that can encourage racism and intolerance. Example Asian Drivers. At its most innocent it's a nonsequitur fallacy; the issue is Anyone who is a Citizen who decides or wants to Learn To Drive at an Advanced Age with optional Language Barriers. Asian rebel teens drive just as well as American rebel teens. The humor of Carlos Mencia is sacrificed on the altar he constructs to honor this error. His comedy is stereotyped, revelation-free, and his signature "deet-dee-dee" running gag is an example of the straw man fallacy. By mocking really stupid behavior and getting you to laugh at it, you both can feel like "f***ing geniuses" by comparison.
  More importantly much of his (better) material is not "borrowed" but "stolen" in the worst way; this is proven by his response to the allegation Joe Rogan made on stage. One more thing: Even if you think all you have to do is engage in some quick self-stereotyping, Mr. Beaner, you're wrong. There, I said it.
  
• 5) Acronyms "WTF" or phonetics and unspellings "s**t"  are appropriate if the equivalent written or spoken form is also O.K. Watch out for phonetic forms, pity the poor radio people! Vietnamese family at health clinic with Aunt Linda, "...Mrs. Yu  asked, "you want I get my son Fuk?"" Also a problem.... "gung hey phat choy phuc." Very easy to screw up.

Help preserve our Cultural Epithets and Expletives, but not the censorship laws enforced in the courts. If the epithets are lost, or devalued, they become useless. Your right to offend with intent to offend is lessened.

Imagine having to make up a bunch of new Shakespearian Insults to hurl at that Arthritic Excuse for a Not Even Fair Weather Friend of yours. Now do that in 8 languages. Now do those in street slang (Modern Urban Vernacular) by location. You are [expletive-adverb elided] crazy to want this; I say keep the expletives underused and offensive, but remove the bureaucratic mechanisms to defend society from soundcrimes and spelledwordcrimes. Forum and context and other writing and rhetorical rules apply. That's all that applies. What do you mean, you improperly Christened serf? Say it clearly.

Define offensive language and talk about offense in words on paper or spoken or signed in your  languages and more. Over the internet, automatically translated to a dead language and back. How do you say "f***" in Euskadi? in Latin? or is it "f***" with a noun? Is a meaning of "f***" personal nonsexual or sexually offensive? without the noun? I'm curious to know what we would use for "f***" if it were no longer functional as expletive? f*** or word-meaning-f***? Or abstract offensive concept equivalent-to-f***?

What about when an expletive needs translation  away from or towards religion? "I defecate on the host" is a very common offensive exclamation in Spain not technically offensive in English. Here the "meaning" of the insult is lost when semantically broken up and properly translated... it lacks the description [common-expletive accepted-usage offensive-esp-to-catholics not-a-literal-description]

Usage of "%^@$*" (from comics) is offensive by lookslike-euphemismfor-expletive, whether or not you mean to use whitewashed offensive language; euphemisms are stand-ins for expletives. My teacher assumed I was using cynical-intenttooffend-bywayof-euphemism; I really had no idea what all the punctuation was about. Srsly. I was like eight years old!

Of course I followed rules on public scope and guidelines on offensive language; appropriate for all ages; the topic of bad language doesn't require such. Spoken form should substitute "f***" with "f-word" etc. watch out for anything that soundslike-expletive; spell it out letter by letter when nothing else will do. You silly "gee eye tee."

that's enough for the premiere Emily Blog Post!

(c) all rights reserved by Richard Walker in case I decide to do something commercial with this one

NOTYET:

• Jeebus Phishing - Identity and Anonymity - Commentary - Traffic and Metrics -
• Forums and Communities (cite the Guardienne du Sanctuaire issue)
• Memes Themes and Net Trendiness: LOLcats pwnage twitter etc.
• Trolls Sluts and Whores link slut; eyeball whore; forum trolls;
• Hackers Crackers and 13375 black hats, attackers, elite speak;
• Spam Spam Bacon Spam and Spam (except in Hawaii for Breakfast)
• Eggs Beans and Crumpets
• Smileys Emoticons, Sarcasticons, Smileys
• Keywords Tags and Adsense safe s e x mascot; use and misuse of tags; jeebus singles 4 u
• Racial Epithetiquette

Here’s a short quiz on Fame and Stardom.  First, let us assume you are a Supernova in the constellation of Hollywood Stars, and your name is Tom C. Consider these alternatives, pick the worst one, then turn the page and read on.

1. You are Heroically Heterosexual in spite of persistent, vicious rumours that you are not only Gay but are a Royal Queen.
2. You are Secretly Heterosexual, in spite of rumours planted by your Agent and others that you are really Gay, in order to garner publicity and encourage endless Gossip and Speculation.
3. You are Secretly Homosexual and make a lot of headlines with your failed attempts at getting and keeping a good Beard both on your Face and on your Arm.
4. You are Secretly A Boring, Clean Cut White Male whose life revolves around a Crazy Cult.
   

... (pause) ...

Clearly, alternative number 4 is the last thing you want people to think or discover about you. You cannot put a price on the kind of Free Publicity you can expect in the other situations. 

When in doubt, have someone start a nice juicy Rumour; you may want to back this up with some Staged Scenario to make it fly.  Who cares if it is true? 

Truth is entirely beside the point.

Synopsis: Alarming information feeds from the remote Galaxy ZEWEUWQQI, sometimes called Sleeping Satanic Spirals, indicate activities which call for immediate deployment of counter-insurgency demolition forces under Galactic Planetary Decree #225.344.239.294

DON'T PANIC!

and Two Bonus Rules!

• Heed Not those who declare thou hasn’t Talent or Discipline in Sufficient Measure
• Confuseth not Talent with Good Lighting and a Fabulous Frock
• Develop an Arsenal of Concert Tricks with which thou canst Defend thy Stardom
• Thou shouldst perform as long as thou Canst and anon leave them Wanting More
• Thou must a peer on the Telly at any and all Costs, as Frequently as is Possible
• Thou shouldst Act anon as does a Star, and be thee Ready for Fame Henceforth
• Have about thee an aura of Mystery always, and be Seen at the Laundromat never
• Watcheth thine own Back, lest thee be Stab’d in It
• Tragedy on the Stage may oft Lead thee to a Swift and Surprising Success
• Trust Not a Body, not that of your Family, your Friend, nor of Thine Own Self
• Seek to Employ those who thou canst Coax, Coddle and Persuade with Good Ease
• Surround thyself with those who Sayeth Niceties about Thee Only, to Thine Face