"BOZO AS IN CLOWN OR BOZO LIKE THE TRIBE?" .'.

what?

BOZO AS IN CLOWN OR...

So, I read Africa Adorned last night and - despite having seen a fair share through rachel's influence - was blown away by the Tuareg pieces. It made me want to get some wax and metals and create lots of cool things (since, it seems, most of what I like resembles what I'm trying to do).

Guess it's that age-old trap though, the poor person mantra: "If I only had the money I could..."

I appears that the only way to escape that cycle is to actually remember what you want to do once you have the money, rather than washing it away in the daily grind.

Nonetheless; I berated myself for thinking "only if" and longing after gas torches and plaster, yet at the same time, adoring photos of people performing my desired tasks with clay and wood fires. Thusly sparked with the necessity to prove to myself that I wasn't as bad as I thought I was, I tore up some old tea candles (thin, flimsy aluminium), flattened them out by hand (a long process) and played around with some designs... Needless to say, they weren't anything special, but sometimes little moments like that can give you all the fire you need to make those moments last longer next time.

For an example of what my tea-light experiments didn't look like, click here


Meanwhile, I've also added a little email form in the contacts page.

Please give it a go, if you really must spam it, let me know before hand so I can redirect the mail to childe...

Categorised image gallery thingo coming up next - it's nearly done but I stopped working on it to write a calendar script for rachel (I'll post it to the public domain after a bit of ironing)

This whole tribe.net thing is interesting to me - don't get me wrong, it is just another piece of "social software," but it feels a lot more like the Good Ol' BBS Days than most of the web-based BulletinBoardSystems, small communities, like interests... Everything except files..



I'm working on another language (how many are there? I've lost count (and fluency)) which has deeeeeep symbolism, it's helping me to appreciate how well put together certain linguistic and majiqal systems are.
Most languages or alphabets can be designed pretty quickly if you have a goal in mind (beauty or efficiency of script, for example; or even established thought patterns, philosophies and memes to be embedded in it's structure (and thus, carried through into the speaker)) but this one is proving to be quite an interesting puzzle.
I can't really go into much more detail without having to go into too much detail at this point, but I'm essentially building the language all willy-nilly. I'm starting with interlocking symbol systems which form a set of wheels (this is a visual structure to aid my memory, sort of a memory cathedral), the intersections between low-level symbols define higher-levels, which in turn create even higher ones... etc..
I'm about a 3rd of the way there and other than the base elements, their names and most of the low-level symbols, I have no idea what the language will be like.

Dabbling in linguistics was so much easier when I only thought in romance languages and german. I've been poking around in hebrew and arabic books here and there, a little thai on special occasions and it has simultaneously (and at the same time) fascinated me and ruined me.
It becomes very clear how much language influences our view of the world, learning another language is like NLP++ in my opinion, but yes, this is a well-beaten path which I will come back to some time.
It's ruined me in the sense that there are too many cooks upstairs at the moment - the information hasn't been fully integrated and is just bouncing around burning eggs and bumping into people - which is a great state for brainstorming, but not for calmly combing order through a concept...

any thoughts?

Pentaphobe slopes off wondering how many thoughts he left open, if anyone will notice, if if so, whether they'll close them up so the flies don't get in.

Fiddling around (and pestoing the natives) .'.

Pentaphobia is slowly growing (not so's you'd notice) into a web-site.
In the absence of any real programming or music making, my few moments on Rachel's computer have recently been spent making a new backend for the page.
Most of it is still in the early stages and is set aside for me to play with. If you get the urge, take a look in the audio section which I'm currently playing with (comments and criticisms appreciated though bare in mind that I haven't put any work into the visual interface, that'll come later)

I was also going to upload a whole lot more music, but I have to arrange an mp3 encoder on this machine first - not too long now, I have another coupla hundred that are pretty good, a few dozen that are AWESOME and a couple that are so good that I'm keeping them to myself (they'd just make the other tracks look bad).

I also just made some really nice pesto, I'm going to go eat some of it now.

Starving lathe fight, why stores hot internet .'.

erk, I ate too much zinc today and my belly hurts :(

It's strange, as I slowly age (not 'grow up') and watch people following their paths, I feel the longing for some direction blossom. So far I've felt it to be okay to not have "one true passion" but (especially in America) it seems important to have some semblance of a direction.

Thus far, focus has been on different things: movement, freedom, growth, pseudophilosophy - but now that I'm actually staying still, that "dream job" desire is growing.

But what would I do? Narrowing my interests down to a single vocation is tricky - I can think of many things I enjoy, many things I'm good at - or at least capable of - but no one item that I can imagine devoting my time and life to.

Music is certainly up there - but that's not an option until I'm equipped with the hardware again - animation? graphic design? ditto. I'm certainly feeling the urge to dance, as it's something I've always enjoyed and being totally immersed in the belly dancing world is fuelling that fire. (Hmm.. fluid word with fire word...)

I must say, it feels a bit rash to rush the dream. Seems it would be too easy to fall into the spiritual equivalent to "domestic blindness"; looking everywhere for something when it's right under your nose.

The people that seem happiest didn't seem to necessarily pick the things they could already do - Pyroptix, for example is IMHO the most amazing fire dancer on the planet - his passion and intelligence made him so, his devotion and love for his art. These qualities existed before the skills that now set him apart.

Rachel too, on advice from her father "just picked something and gave everything to it." (terrible paraphrase there, old boy - should get rid of the quote marks)

However, "just picking something" is, at the moment a luxury - as in order to earn money at something, you must at least have some skill at it. In order to become good at it you must have time, or the money to make time.

Excuses, excuses - there's always a way, just have to be dog-headed about it.
I'd love to say "too many skills, not enough formal pieces of paper" but again that would be an excuse.

Toby has an interesting link on his blog about coca-cola, there's going to be an exhibit of works attempting to reproduce the nazi coke adverts.. bit of fun.

off now, food time

testing, testing.. .'.

Man, I'm hesitant to say this - what with Childe being a real, certified philosopher and all - but aint' it funny how life plays it's little games with you?
Three weeks ago I was "signed" and making an album for a large label.
Two weeks ago I was getting a little concerned about them not calling me back, but prepared to do an independent release if things didn't go well.
One week ago I discovered I no longer had a computer.
Today I'm heading off to work for a group of environmentalists.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a restaurant/bar job or two (one of the quickest, easiest ways to earn decent amounts of cash here in the states, what with tipping and all)
Next week I have rent due.
In two weeks my girlfriend is making her first ever trip abroad, to Spain, for a good month and a half.
In a month I hope to have a computer again and intend to continue work on the album (I'm a stubborn bastich)

That's a short cycle, the good old riches to rags tale - how many times izzit going to happen?

.. Although, my sign is supposedly associated with the pheonix - so either I'm going to burst out of these rags all shiny and new (queue the swedish accent: "look at me! I am a beautiful butterfly!") or I need to move to Arizona.
"What were the skies like when you were young?"
"Purple and red and... on fire..."

BOW YE ALLE BEFORE TANGENT MAN!

It's really tricky not to fall into the whole "if only" mode at times like this, eg.

"If only I'd played a little less Zuma and just churned out music, I could have completed an album and mastered it on Rachel's computer and be [slowly] selling it."
--or--
"If only I'd taken my computer in for repairs when the screen first started flickering (and it was still under warranty)"
etc..

urgh. I'm in no state to be writing, and yet I'm going to start work in 2 hours - hehehahahah. oh dear.

btw: which doofus came up with the word "abcederian" ?? Sounds distinctly american. like that whole thing about saying "zee" instead of "zed" so that it will rhyme in the alphabet song.

Sir childe! Will you please let me know if I do anything silly like saying "realize" instead of "realise"?
I'd greatly appreciate it - the further I can stay from bush-like spelling, the longer I'll let myself live :)

The great work, threat we gork. .'.

I know I've touched on this before, but it's quite interesting to me how much more religious people (okay, I) become when in a bind.
That's either an interesting commentary on fundamentalists, or a deep secret to majiq :)


heh, just logged onto snorkel for the first time in a while, and the quote of the day was "So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
And why can't he ever remember his Bible?"

well.. time to tromp around SF and look for more work....... yay. :-|

ooo err. .'.

okay, so I was a little cocky in the last post, everything was great with my computer, but the first time I shut it down it was gone again.
Unfortunately repeating the things I did before are not helping now, so it's just a matter of sitting and hoping :)
Needless to say, most of the updates I was hoping to do will be waylayed, but I'll still be checking my email here at pentaphobe.net so drop me a line, maybe some condolences or something :)

Waving dead chickens and the mystical sequences.. .'.

So yeah, I tried everything I could think of, ended up calling IBM support just to see if there was anything I was missing - LOTS of "did you do this?" 'yup. twice.'
Finally: "Did you clear the capacitor?"
TA DAHHHH!
Crazy - push the power button slowly 5 times and then hold it for ten seconds (?) bang!

I have a computer again :)

Time bombs and tribal dancing... .'.

I went off to TribalFest with Rachel for the weekend. It was great fun, sun, dancing, awesome music (Gypsy Caravan were awe-inspiring) and all sorts of ancient jewelry and the like.
Got back on Sunday night all prepared to make some more music and put the finishing touches on the new website (it's just festering on my drive but I refuse to do my old trick of putting up an unfinished site - all webpages are Works In Progress, but that's no excuse for dead links and nothing but dark corners, cobwebs and dregs).
So yeah, got home, opened up the laptop... nothing.
yup, that's right, power button, one quick blink of a light and then it's off again.
Tried everything, no luck at all.
Could put a damper on things somewhat..

The best bit (truly) is this: I got online (with rachel's machine) and went to the IBM website to check my warranty status - IT EXPIRED TWO DAYS AGO.

.. yay.

A new blog and [almost] a new site.. .'.

Well, I've been spurred into action by the recent update of the features over at blogger, so now I can dump the guestbook and folks can leave comments in here.
A brief update on the things that are:

I'm working on an album at the moment, so I've pulled the music from the site, I will still be uploading free music (effectively anything that won't go on the album) and I'll set up a paypal account for purchase of other tracks (once I've worked out licensing stuff).

I have the game on the backburner at the moment as I'm trying to get the album done before the next Bellydance Superstars tour, but the lads are still furiously hammering away and things seem to be coming along nicely.

Back into yoga and I'm doing a bellydance class every week which is, aside from really helping my back, giving me a better understanding of the requirements on my music.

Anyway, leave a comment or just say "hi"