Yet Another Bikeshed

Nice has a different meaning in Hindwiish California

Ghandi has a car and a big belly now. Also, people to clean his home so that he doesn't have to. He is a big fan of the wii.

Here, Ghandi plays some with his wii and Deductive reasoning

Another quality of being nice is that you do not even have to get the bad logic correct.

Sleep deprivation and imprisonment are non-violent in Hindwiish California

One day Ghandi says, "I understand you are sleeping in my computer room, I will respect that."

The next day, nice means promises and simple due respect do not have to be remembered or maintained.

I was able to joke last week in Montreal about the sleep deprivation. The nice Ghandi toolkit could not navigate himself around the expanded sofa bed I was sleeping on without jarring it violently and waking me up. A week later still being sleep deprived by Ghandi and I am unable to joke about it.

My solution (to move that Pentium II ram and other couple of boxes into the large room with twice the closet space that is all his here) was met by what I (if I were nicer than I am right now) would call "violent opposition". I suppose that offering real solutions is not the best way to acquire more wii accessories, here in Hindwiish California.

Perhaps he is too nice. One of the local Hindwiish elders could perhaps use some verbal and language skills to tell me what makes them frown on these nice nice streets they walk on....

All done now, bwii bwii!

First, the ghandi-toolkit assistant (already with a big belly but not then in need of more wii accessories) reported that he came from a loving family with two educated and respectable parents. That they had opted to not follow the caste recommendations when they married and were such better people for this.

Next, the pre-wii ghandi-toolkit assistant (with a bigger belly) reported that his dad had beat him once for telling a really really big lie.

Now, the wii-toting ghandi-toolkit assistant says that his father beat him repeatedly and decided not to do that to his younger brother.

He did not mention if he had sleep deprived his dad and caused him to stay in the computer room. He also did not mention if he had stolen his dads' menstrual cycle and denied him access to money to live on and people who were friendly. Maybe Ghandi used his network to make his dad do this and then I get the same niceness because, Lord Knows!, nice Hindwiish California needs more wii accessories!

what to pack and what I was packing....

The only thing in this posed image that I really needed was the clothes pins which unfortunately I did not take with me.

I am fairly certain that the trout and the bacon took the whole round trip with me which seems to have become one of the facts of travel for me.

Anhk said "No white socks." so what you see there are the shoes and slipper layers I wore into the country. The three novelty cdrom were actually five and I traded them with Anhk for a bottle of his husbands calm breath tincture. My poorly engineered engineering bag filled with nicorettes, dramamine, my nurse (who I call mom) stuffed into a smaller than usual container and various hair clips and pinchers to assist with whatever weather and/or strapped hauling tasked that were to come my way. I can carry my baggage, but sometimes it really hurts my hair.

the enter and sniff tour or ode to the three legged quail

The talks that first day were lively and interesting -- I am certain that image making with free software applications will become better and better. Pictured here is a three legged pigeon that I photographed in Norway. It should be a quail for what I am about to say about Friday in Montreal.

That evening, we took the enter and sniff tour of Montreal -- miles and miles, it seemed, of full restaurants with happy and chatty patrons. Mitch suggested, a couple of times on this quest, that we eat in a random ally.

Hours later we had walked away from the Montreal poutin and all the way to Brazil where a beautiful waiter totally understood the paperwork involved when leaving Canada.

The rouge beer and the green salad I ordered were delicious and were consumed easily and with much hunger inspired gratitude. The raw tomato as my least favorite salad ingredient has been replaced in more recent decades by a certain green that can be found in some mixed greens. In a different decade, I grew this green myself and tasted it. I know for a fact that this one salad ingredient has the potential to taint the whole meal -- such long lasting taste. The memory alone will make me concerned about what might be in my mixed green salads.

In the moments between the meal courses, the cigarette smokers excused themselves and went to the outside of the restaurant to reniconate. We had the first of two or three such breaks.

Soon after returning to our seats the other other two tapas I had ordered appeared: roasted quail and french fries. I could hardly speak while suppressing the giggles, "This pigeon has three legs." This was the first time I had ever eaten quail, and given the opportunity, I would order it again. It was that good. I ate one leg with my fingers and attempted to eat the other with a fork. I suggest that you skip the fork when consumimg such a small yet dignified food as is a quail.

Next, I shared escargo with Mitch even though Yosh had told me, almost at the same time I was packing for this meeting, how little snails are made into this buttery appetizer. This is the third time I have eaten escargo, this time the poor little snails were tender and an unlikely privelege to eat -- equal to the butter sauce they were simmered in. Mitch might not know that escargo is not usually perpared so perfectly.

Pippin got steak with a large serving of shoestring potatoes, which made me very uncomfortable -- the memory of a cook whose last name I do not remember who I never lied to, no matter what my future then was to look like.

As funny as the quail was -- there was too much there for me to consume and still walk all the way from Brazil to Montreal in the healthy stride that most of the gimp people are known to me to maintain. Pippins plate had also been so sobering to me. I sent the plate back with the third leg untouched.

Later, the waiter would catch me still eating french fries though. I told him that I was biting the fries instead of my tongue.

Another reniconation break -- this one was more memorable due to the conversation. Pippin mentioned this one word three times or more and did not have to. I could have mentioned the next chef with the plastic mandoline -- but I the rest of the french fries were no longer with me and I was biting my tongue.

For dessert, I ordered water. French menus make it sound so good "Eau de source". And it was good, I think -- when it finally arrived on Tuesday. My mind was full of three legged fowl and seeing how things actually work in a kitchen so many years ago. The waiter recommended that Mitch get a Porto. Tor shared his cheesecake with me; my nurse, the miniature jar of non-dairy creamer was not in attendence at this dinner and just because those dairy foods hurt me doesn't mean that I do not love the taste of them. I cannot remember much more.

When we finally made it back to Montreal, the other LGM people had finished their beers and gone to where ever they were staying, and our small party did the same.

I did not sleep well that evening. I tossed and turned worrying about that pigeon. Long long ago, a home economics teacher once told me that her dad had been told that he needed to limit the number of eggs in his diet and I remember feeling the distain for her hack of the doctors perscription. She found a farm that had chickens which produced very large double yolked eggs and bought these eggs for her dad. This is the thing that I didn't understand for the first forty years of my life, perhaps -- that in this decade of being alive in whatever kind of life you are living in -- that it will probably be your own shadow which can scare you the most.

Even amid these dark and scary and sleep depriving memories -- I would eat this meal again! Eating this again would be even better than writing about it here....

pigs ears

I made and carried these cookies to the meeting. Not much more than pie dough shaped then baked and smeared with ginger preserves -- I opted to tell my lie about the ingredients to Simon when I told him that I had saved up 40 years of ear wax just for such an event as this second LGM was. Simon graciously tried the cookies anyway, after an almost on cue mention of a giant Booger Ball.

One of the things about going to this third meeting with the people who have invested their time with GIMP for so many years, is a formative familiarity which breeds a comfortable contempt. The Simon I have known for all these years -- I should have never shared this icky imagery with.

The Swine ears pictured here are not from the same batch I took with me to Montreal to share. I used less ginger preserves on the ears I made to share. These ears were in my trials batches. I experimented with apricot preserves, honey mustard and orange marmalade as well as a honey-garlic-pepper spread on the ear before applying the ginger preserves. Ginger can be hot to the tongue, so I spread it thin to both share (causing more ears to be made) and share (not everyone likes the amount of spice that I do).

Not that many of the gimp people ate the ears and there were plenty to share with the rest of the attendees. Two batches, one was made with lard and the other was made with shortening (in a futile attempt to make a vegetarian version) the lard based ears was one of the best I have ever made of such a homemade food, flakey and perfect. Fit for kings, perhaps.

In times of frustration, I might have used a phrase like "I don't give a flying fig" to express my disdain for irritating situations like the one I found myself in with these people in my project. If I could get the address for one who was not present at this meeting, perhaps I can send this curse more directly and literally this time about those who should be friends who did not try my cookies.

<<Operation Carbon Neutral>> or this ash tray was trayashed

Inside, Louis was asking people to fill out the enviroment study forms that had been included with the meetings packet. He used the word "please" and should not have had to. The questions on the form were interesting -- I perhaps made the mistake of thinking back too far in time to answer these questions in a way that would be useful for Louis' study.

The image shown here is one I took of some cocktail glasses I had to remove from the ashtray that was located at one of the two designated smoking areas that were around the host building. This container was a traditional public ashtray, the top filled with sand to put the hot part safely out. These plastic glasses shown in this photograph did not belong there. After arranging them for the photograph, I put the these used cocktail containers in a receptical a few paces away that seemed to be dedicated to receiving such used items.

I have to believe that if you put things into the right places, that the right things will be done with them. Please keep your trash out of the ash trays.

About cigarette butts

As a gardener, I learned that the only plants that respond poorly to nicotine are nightshades -- in the world of edible plants, this is the tomato. When I was tending to my garden, I would be careful to weed, prune and water the tomato plants first and discard my butts in other places. There had been some encouragement to wash your hands after smoking before handling the plants. While I loved my tomato plants, I had to drive to my garden and I did not love them that much. Their growth and fruiting never seemed stunted by the lack of handwashing before their maintenance.

Today I read the wikipedia entry and see that potato and eggplant are also nightshades. Back in my gardening days, I was only careful with the tomatoes and my eggplants and potatoes grew just fine even with a lack of caution from me and my cigarettes. Even that information is appearing to be a whole lot of nothing when you are talking about the amount of nicotine found in a cigarette butt.

As an enjoyer of public sewer systems and municipal water: here in California, they have a sign on all of the drain openings in the road with a picture of ducks on it explaining that anything that goes into this drain will end up in water that wildlife lives in. I have first hand experience with ducks. If you have a bag of bread and a lit cigarette and go into a place where there are a lot of ducks, the danger is that they will think that the cigarette is bread and try to eat that. I would actually consider purchasing water with nicotine in it (for air travel and such) since I think the stomach lining can manage this better than a patch on the skin or gum in the mouth. I would not purchase for personal consumption, water which contains automobile coolant or oil -- other things that go into these drains. I have been throwing my butts into these drains.

Walking on public roads and nature-like paths; the cigarette butts look bad. When it rains, they collect in one location sometimes. On pleasent woodchip lined nature walks, they stand out. On public parking lots, you can see the butts. But (excuse the pun) that is it. They do disintegrate quickly and I would not mind them in my garden. If they hurt the nightshades that grow on lands for public enjoyment, there is probably not enough nicotine to hurt these poisonous plants as much as ingesting the berries will hurt a human.

panoramic demonstration splash (almost spew)

In this photograph are pictured (left to right) Tor, Simon, Lars, Joao, Yosh, Michael, Roman, Mitch and Kamila. Several splash-like images were taken after this presentation of panorama projection technology.

The low cost presentation by the Society for Arts and Technology at what I think was their Art&D location, is generally the kind of thing that I like to pay attention to. I wasn't particularly well placed to hear the discussion at the first part of the presentation. Then when we moved to the projection area, the low cost panorama which did not join each others at the edges so well, caused me to be a little queasy and unattentive; this explanation was theirs, btw. With due respect to the presentors, the panorama which caused my dizziness was better than my own attempts at this artful endeavor.

I did fake bitch slap their photographer for photographing me as I am now, about a size and a half too big for my own personal standards.

crack

This building and the one attached to it were useful and interesting landmarks for me as I knew that when I saw them, I was near to the building which I slept in and which kept the things I travelled to Montreal with. I saw these buildings every day, yet it took yosh and his lens corrected near-sighted vision to see the crack which was in the side of the building.

Later when I write more about this stay, when I can be me and not some movie inspired muse, mis-housed and mis-located because no matter how hard I worked, apparently this life has been built for two to live in it and not the one I really really wanted to be.

All that I have written about this trip so far has been inspired by someone elses muse and not mine; perhaps a movie inspired muse at that. I miss the woman I was so much -- for whatever reasons, thinking that me and people like me would like to have access to free software apparently made that strong and mostly good woman disappear. The woman who liked to explain how the government works in terms of magic tricks; the one who talked freely with already indulging youth about how to manage the indulgences. The woman who did not have a television and rarely watched movies and liked it that way.

I was proud of who I was and where it seemed like I was going. While on one hand I was gratful to not be sleeping on the floor like I did for the last LGM (that was more my fault than any one elses) I had an equal amount of misgivings for the posh suite that I shared with Yosh. I slept easier on the sofa part of the sofa bed than I did on the bed part of the sofa bed. And by far, the most comfortable I slept (not just in Montreal) was the fourty-five minute nap I took on the firm and perfect bed that was there in the suite. Nice things are nice, that was definately the case for this suite. I would have rather been with the others in the student housing they were all complaining about. Honest.

my assessment for the purification of the air on non-smoking flights

I was surprised by how much I did not need the nicotine chewing gum or the motion sickness pills on my first flight. That was six or eight hours to Europe and I know myself to have problems in cars and on boats -- depending on the conditions, so I acquired and still have with me some motion sickness pills and some nicotine gum. On the flight home, at take off, my ears wanted help with the transition and the only gum I had available was the nicotine gum. I blame this on ignoring my nurse and partaking in some fine French dairy cuisine.

Flying is so cool, I am surprised how much I enjoy the "dangerous" parts, like the take of and landing. Then on this five hour flight, it was kind of fun to people watch. There was a red headed flight attendent -- perhaps I was still affected by the fine Rhone wine I had drank the night before, but I seriously had to quell the urge to chase that one around and see what she was made of. Then I watched her manage the coffee for that flight with the same respect that the wine had been given at the truly remarkable meal the night before. Then, a woman who looked just like the queen of England stood up and took a bow -- this flight home was particularly fun, until the need for ass mints occurred.

Long ago you used to be able to smoke on airplanes. Then they herded all of the smokers into the rear end of the air vehicles, separating them from the delicate non-smokers with a glass wall. Me and my poor nose now know the reason for that. The line to the restroom was long and busy for the whole trip -- then the gentleman next to me awoke and I saw him smelling his shirt to see if it was him that stunk so badly. I assured him that the stench was not from him, or me for that matter -- instead it was from everyone who was using the inflight toilet.

If there had been one more hour on that airplane with that line to the restroom, I would have authored a questionaire for each person in that line to fill out explaining what they had eaten since the last time they had gone number two so that I could at least know what blend created that odor. My cigarette smoke would have actually helped to dull the perfume from the rest areas.

Given another hour on that airplane with those people and their over clocked digestive systems, I would have had the time to make a mockup of an ass-mint, an insertable tablet whose design would help to lighten their odiferous loads. Loads that seriously needed to be lightened.

Long long ago, during the cold war when I was still in high school, I was in the smoking lounge inbetween classes as I so often could be found. I have a memory of Helen Tester (yes, that is her real name -- and no, I am not certain it was her with the question) asking me this: "Do you think that your shit doesn't stink?", my answer back then was honestly that I was pretty sure that my shit does have an unpleasent odor -- an answer that I might have kept to myself because I was unprepared for this pop quiz then.

I never once since that time ever thought that my shit didn't stink. I have on several occasions considered how most of the complaints of most of the people could be efficiently managed with good ventilation. The flight back from Montreal did not change this assessment of this seemingly unchanging human condition.

Until the time that good ventilation can be designed into the buildings and other containers which hold people: my assessment, ass mints.

On the navigation to and back from French speaking territories in the name of free software

This small summary is just to say that I was there and that I was looking around and once again enjoying this idea of getting together with the people that I like to think I am communicating with via irc, web logs, Changelogs and bug reports. There was more, much much more -- I am still sorting through images that are both in my camera and on my mind.

It feels like there have been so many misunderstandings and false assumptions since I started with this project and group of people -- these two LGM perhaps have cleared up many that occurred since my life went in a direction that I did not want it to go. This is one of the things that is good about the GIMP people being able to gather in real life occasionally, this chance to meet eye to eye and to discard with wrong ideas and impressions that the independently operating imaginations got wrong.

If patterns of behavior and social gatherings had a smell that your nose could identify; some of the places I have been and attended since early in 2003, as well as comments made by users of free software on the irc and on personal web logs since that time -- I would have to say that there is the stench of an abuse of what should be a really good thing. A stench I did not smell this time from GIMP people.

Yesterday, I was remembering a good time in my life when I was at the university sitting in the student union. The music in my mind did not match the music on the jukebox. The food was not expensive and no one knew who controlled the television set that was there and on. Everyone brought their own newspaper and the time in between the classes often was more educational than some of the time spent in the classes. Everyone came from their own lives to be there and went back to their own lives after their classes were finished that day. I mention this now because this is what I felt when I first became involved with all things GIMP; when my brain saw the beauty of what a project like this should/could be. All the social environments have changed so much since those happy times -- it might be time for the users of free software to review what it is they are doing.

My job there at these meetings, if there is one, is to try to be a good world citizen, not abuse the host city and to stick to what I thought working with free software would do for me -- which was supposed to be expose me to more people and perhaps improve my life style where I lived along with those material goods and clothing I had accumlated in the several decades leading up to my involvement with this idea. Since those very good days, (2001 - 2003) I appreciate being allowed to stay in a warm and safe place, relying on the financial security of others. I do not appreciate being thrust in what looks to be a game where free software is a front for some really stupid not well thought out things/games.

Stifling the screams of "it wasn't supposed to be like this" also stifles the much deserved "thank you". I don't presume that I am the only person in this condition.

The job of biting my tongue and enduring the judgement and schemes of others while being stuck in something that I never actually wanted to be stuck in is getting to be very boring. Seeing exaggerated versions of similar stories in the noise and trying to live my life without emulating myself in other times of my life -- can someone please write a how-to for doing that?

So much more to say about this LGM in Montreal; not all of it is pretty either -- I probably have enough of my soul back, if not my muse, to be able to write more about last years LGM in France, as well. It was at the very least, good to see old friends and great to meet new ones!

It will be so much easier when I get my self, my soul and my muse back.