stevengharms.com

Note: The ‘blog will be turning into a bit of a travel journal until further notice:

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So last you heard from me you knew that I hadn’t met up with my friend at SYD airport and I was in some dumpy internet cafe…

Well, i found many much better internet cafe’s in the Chinatown district. I have seen the future and it is dozens of Asian youth plugging their days away with WarCraft online.

After visiting the internet cafe i headed back to the hotel and the staff had my room ready - it’s very nice and located in a corner on the 14th floor. It looks out into, uhm, well, buildings as I’m in the heart of downtown, but I can look down into George street (which is a bit like Amsterdam’s Kalverstraat + SF’s Union Sq.).

After all that travelling, walking and the heat I was about ready for a nap - about 3 hours later my pal BIG AL gave me a ring and he had found out that he had bookmarked a dynamic page on United’s website and had not realized that i had landed already and all. He hopped a cab and we went down to Darling Harbour.

The Harbour was packed with several really good restaurants and we settled on a steak place where I got to enjoy some Victoria Bitter. After dinner we headed to a popular spot called The Cargo Bar where the music was loud, the floor busy, and the crowd pleasant to the eye.

We left that scene and headed over to the Star Casino and played a few games. I found myself out before too long and we headed to the upstairs bar to waste money in a much more intelligent manner. After that BIG AL headed back to his place.

Sunday was a day for me to get my bearings in the Central Business District (CBD). I walked out the hotel and headed south to Chinatown. I found a pho place called “Pho Pasteur” which is highly recommended by my Lonely Planet guidebook. I continued wandering in the area until I came to a large warehouse market called “Paddy’s”. Inside people were selling knock-off CDs, shirts, rabbits, and candy.

While walking through I got a shoulder and head massage from these Chinese people. It was very nice.

I continued walking through Chinatown and stopped in a gazebo at the end and enjoyed a bit of rest. Afterwards I headed back to the hotel’s shopping district and bought some very boring stuff (Band Aids, you get the idea). I also got an appropriate beach towel from the large department store “Grace Brothers.”

I remember when I was first in Holland I became addicted to the V&D (Vroom & Dreesman) department store because, once I know the layout of it, I knew where to find everything. Magazines, notebook, gas grill - no problem. I have the feeling that the Grace Bros. will wind up being a bit of the same way.

I really like countries with “chemists” as a separate class of shopping establishment.

I’m continuing moving into the hotel, I left a request with the concierge that I be given a ton of extra hangars and power converters. Hopefully the ability to get my clothing hung up will help me feel ‘moved in’.

By the way, the “Space Bag” - ing of all my stuff was a great idea.

Today will be my first day at the office and, hoping to prove no weak-spined Yank I have figured out how to take the train there.

At the risk of seeming a little too much like a character out of “The Beach”, I am at a Web-basement in the Civic Center area of Sydney.

My trip went remarkably well. The row I was in (one of the 3 seat ones) had no other passengers so I got to curl up and sleep for the first 8 hours of the trip After that I intermittently napped, ate, and read magazines.

I landed in Sydney and then went through the customs process unaccosted. I toox a cab to the Sheraton on the Park. It’s very impressive and the overlook of the park is very nice. Regrettably, they hadn’t time yet to prepare my room so I had to kill some time on my own - I’ve been wandering about.

It appears that the American corporations and doing a fantastic job of colonizing .au. I have seen Burger King (“Hungry Jack,” same logo), Subway, and a gazillion McDonalds as well as the PepsiCo triumvirate of (KFC, PizzaHut, and a, thus far, absent Taco Bell).

I liked it better when it was called Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So this Web basement is dimly lit and I see the usual collection of web chess adolescents, LAN gamers, and hotmail girls.

I’m dying for a shower. I’ve not had any luck syncing up with my buddy BIG AL. The arrivals section was a disaster and I’ve not succeeded in reaching him on his mobile. Pity that.

I’m sitting here in SFO in one of the little phone cubicles. I have the iPod of doom charging and the PowerBook of Glory is open. I must cut quite the figure of .com trendiness here.

The last several hours hhave been fast paced and pretty hectic. Friday morning I took my last load of stuff to citystorage and then headed down to San Jose and met up with the guys at work and we went to lunch.

After lunch at Bennigans we headed back to the office and i worked on arranging some of the final details of my travel. I booked a room at the DoubleTree SFO and rented a car from Hertz.

After work my co-worker Erich took me to get the car and i paid the upgrade to get an SUV to accommodate my copious amounts of luggage. I then headed up to the city, ran a few last errands and then Patrick and I went to Chez Maman for a steak (on my part anyway.). After that I headed down to the Temple Bar where I met with some friends for a drink..or two…or…well we closed out the bar.

I checked into the hotel about 3am and then slept till 11, got up and headed down to my office to get some information I’d forgotten. I guess it didn’t bother me as I didn’t have anywhere else to go and, with to traffic on the road owing to the holiday, 101 was a breeze.

After that I headed back to a final Chez Maman, a couple glasses of wine and then into SFO.

I was very blissed to find a TMobile hotspot in service around here (w00t!), so I took care of a few details. I just imported the old MySQL backup into the database on the server.

So now i’m sitting here waiting for my number to get called to get aboard the flight to Sydney. Next time you see and update it will be from another continent.

Love to all those reading.

…oh - they just called boarding - better shut down and pack up.

Steven

Today is the last full day that I well spend in my apartment here on Mariposa street in the lovely Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. I may come back to the City again - I may not.

I do love it here, but nonetheless I have the feeling that it’s not /quite/ the where where I’m supposed to be. It’s certainly the closest - but I keep thinking that there is a somewhere else that I am meant to be.

But P-hill has a wondeful aura about it (if only the rent didn’t suck so bad!) and I’ll miss Farley’s coffee (where I’m typing this), Nadja my laundry lady, the staf at Chez Maman bistro. As the legendary Chinese sage said, this too, must pass.

I sit at Farley’s and right now two girls I hired via Craigslist are cleaning my apartment. I really lack the resolve to get it into the state that is required to not lose a big chunk of my deposit (I’m sure I will anyway, screw you slumlords).

But what about when I come back, will I return here? I have to think about that. I always thought that I would move to Amsterdam one day after I studied abroad there - 3 days there on business over a year ago showed me that you truly can’t go back, Angel, you can’t even look homeward, as Tom Wolfe would say. Are San Francisco and I destined for a break up? It started as a flirtation, checking out her website and visiting on the weekends. It soon became more than a casual thing and soon we were living together. Sure, the first couple months were full of the usual ecstasy, we were going out every night, her seductive whisper and fog keeping me up all night. I succumbed to her allures - but now we part.

Will it be as with loves in the past, once gone, lost forever? I still rue some of those that I have lost forever - will the lady astride the Golden Gate be another?

What to do? It’s still a big question mark - but now it’s two months out further in my future. As I like to have everything under control, I’m sure that I’ll have the instinct to try to plan everything out at the expense of the present. I think I’m going to remember that life advice from Master Yoda that one should not live as young Luke, always his mind in the future, never on what he’s doing.

I’ll dust off my rememberances of Alan Watts’ introductory Zen courses and take on “beginner’s mind” and focus ond what I’m doing at the moment with the entirety of my intent.

…And the Smiths record cues up on the tape player. No lengthy visit here is fulfilled without The Smiths.

…Incidentally, I heard T. Rex’s “The Slider” here and I can’t find it except online for over $30.00! Damn. It sounded like a glam “OK, Computer” - sometimes that whole Glam ostentation really did touch the Operatic that it so deeply chased.

One week from now I will be counting down the hours until I go to Sydney.

It’s a little bit strange that a change of such drastic nature is looming so close now.

It creates that sinking feeling in your stomach. It’s that sinking feeling I felt when I walked away from my family van and into the dorms in 1995, the feeling I had in the jetway as I left for Holland, the feeling I had when I saw my ex off at the airport, the feeling I had when I got the call with a teary voice in the afternoon once.

What is that feeling there?

No time for whimsy, I have to get busy packing.

I have just returned from a brief and hurried visit to New Mexico and Texas. I say hurried because I needed to cram in a lot of visiting in just a few days. I left last Friday for Clovis, NM where my mother and step-father are setting up a Country club. It’s really coming along and I’m really proud of all their hard work.

From there it was to Austin where I visited with my sister and my oldest/bestest friend in the world, Mike.

Dad came and picked me up Sunday and took me to Houston where he and I spent the evening with his parents. It went by well and I really enjoyed getting to see them all.

It was a great trip (the nastiness in New Mexico and the Houston humidity aside) and I was grateful to have a chance to see everyone before I leave for Australia.

Tonight I’m going to meet my friend Erin up at Goat Hill pizza - a bit of a farewell to Potrero for a while…

Today I met my friend and former Daily Texan columnist Roahn at the AMC movie theatre over off of Bay Street.

[ Appropriate that we should see a movie about a simulated reality at a shopping center that is a simulation of Main Street Shopping Center ( Yeah, Bob’s General and Clothing store’s wares were JIT inventory imported from Irain Jayan sweatshops back in those nostalgic good old days, eh? ) ]

I thought it was a very good ending, I got most of the answers I wanted and the areas that were left gray, all my pre-film thinking managed to build a connecting narrative. Bravo to the Wachowski brothers for giving us a great story. Thanks again for not thinking the audience so stupid as to have to belabor the story by spelling everything out.

…despite from the fact that the audience is that intellectually lazy.

After that I came back and worked on packing some more stuff, cleaning of the Mac and preparing it for sale.

My new Mac has been put on hold. I suspect they’re waiting for new components for the machines so that they can take care of some rather public complaints about the screen, paint, and tightness of case. Ah well.

Monday I go to New Mexico, updates may be sparse.

I’m planning on reading some of my magazine backlog and maybe working my way through part of Kernighan and Ritchie’s seminal book on C programming. I have to move quick on that.

Other than that the rainy season is upon us - hopefully that will equate to snowy season.

Whatever happens I will be soon so far away as to not be affected.

Since I’m about to go to Australia I decided that I should meditate upon the things that I already know about the country. I would like to have a recorded state that I can use to see what I learned or how my perceptions changed. Lessee…

Halfway through the HTML-ization of this knowledge, it strikes me that I have been a very effective subject of Australian cultural export and advertising barrage.

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… Neighbours

1. Every woman in Australia is hot.
2. Every woman in Australia is jonesing for a singing career (Imbruglia, Minogue times two)

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… Colin Hay of Men At Work

1. Vegimite is a type of sandwich
2. Recently I’ve started to wonder if “Man From down Under” was actually an allegorical song about being from a place of disconnectedness. I saw Hay sing this unplugged and instead of a kitch song appealing to tourists it seemed to describe, albeit in a rather upbeat form, the same sentiment behind Bowie’s Space Oddity
3. Always call before ‘swinging by’ someone’s house lest you induce a feverish round of paranoia. Please, answer Who It Can Be before rending these kindly folk frozen with fear.

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… Crocodile Dundee

1. In Australia NEVER EVER EVER lean too close to a pool with a canteen on. This extends to swimming pools.
2. Australia is full of good-hearted simple folk who respect throwing back booze, truthfulness, and displays of strength….to say nothing of nicotine!
3. Australians tote much larger knives

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… The Crocodile Hunter

1. A total tool can get a TV show in Australia - and, much to the chagrin of his counryman, dominate the county’s cultural export scene.

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… Nick Cave

1. My fear of dying as subject of a murder ballad will now peak when visiting either Texas or Australia
2. Stay away from women married to John Brown
3. Most Australian famous people move to London

Things I Know About AUS thanks to… INXS

1. There is a pretty girl named Kate whose acquaintance I am anxious to make
2. Leather, leather, leather

Things I know about AUS thanks to…Mad Max

1. Still not a fan of Assless Chaps
2. Leather, leather, leather

Things I know about AUS thanks to…AC/DC

1. Do not sleep in your car
2. Upon returning home from the corner shop with chips and a lager, I may, on occasion, come home to find my model girlfriend riding a mechanical bull

So tonight or tomorrow thousands of Matrix cultists will find out how far the rabbit hole goes. Anyone care to make some predictions?

If you prefer to go in with no hints / discussions delete this now…

Yes, I am a very big loser.

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The Architect in The Matrix ][ is really an analog for the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, a false god that arranges reality to conform to his ideal.

Some Gnostic Christians believed that there was a God-the-father with whom man was to have a relationship. The Demiurge interceded and messed things up (that’s why evil exists in the world [Classical Philosophy’s _The Problem of Evil]).

Christ’s return would herald the removeal of the Demiurge and a return to communion with the True God. It’s really just another way of looking at redemption.

The word Demiurge comes from the Greek Demiurgos which means custodian, or craftsman…or architect.

“Hello Neo, I am the Demiurge.”

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The Matrix and Zion are simulations operating paralell to one another, not the situation of one ring inside the other.

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Problem of modelling human choice for machines is, how can a human make a choice to do X when all logical reasoning points to doing Y. This ability to deny binary logic is why they must offer the choice of choosing the matrix, or rejecting it and entering zion. This is the essence of humans (“Hope”).

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The Oracle modifies Neo’s programming by giving him food. The bond / battle between the Merovingian and the Oracle is demonstrated in II where we see him deliver the orgasm cake

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Neo is a program that thinks it is human. When the machines produce an accurate Neo they will produce the perfect Matrix

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[ WILD ASS GUESS ]

Humans invented AI and programmed them with somethintg similar to Asimov’s laws of robotics with a strong paternalistic urge (never kill a human). Seeing Humans’ tendencies to wipe one another out, they determine the best world for preserving biological function (fulfilling their programming) is to put the minds in a virtual ‘corral’, the Matrix.

Yet some minds reject it, thus defeating their ability to comply with their programming.

Thus more artifacts are introduced to help the persistence of the matrix (agents, the zion simulation, a history of a machine-human war).

The goal of the iterations of The Matrix / The Zion is to produce a 100% human-mind encompassing virtual world such that the paternalistic AI can fulfill their programming (preserve humans) flawlessly.

It turns out that modelling choice against all logic and love have continually caused problems for the machine modelers.

There is a huge threat to the fulfillment of the machines’ mission, Smith. Smith represents the possibility of the destruction of the ability to fulfill the mission (destroying the Matrix). Whether we like it or not, in this world, there is symbiosis (symtechnosis?) between the machines and men, although it has been falsely cast as a war.

Trinity is preggers. But wait you say, how can a program have a kid with a woman? Well, she’s virtual too in the Zion simulation so that is possible. Will this program / kid have special powers? Yes.

Picture:

+--------------+-------------------------------------------
|The Real Real   |Matrix with human minds and machine minds
|World with      |(people, agents)
|machine and    |-------------------|  |--------------------
|human minds   |Zion with human minds and machine minds
|                       |(rebels, squiddies)
+--------------+--------------------------------------------

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Trinity and neo’s kid happens in the zion segment.

The gap between the two simulations shows access points between the two (i.e. the unplug sequence, smith overwriting Bane).

Much like Hegellian argument (ironically, Hegel did have a very interesting story about how the slave becomes the master) , the Matrix was antithesis (humans rebel), Reloaded was re-assertion of thesis (human are our slaves), and Revolutions will be the synthesis (‘we need one another’).

I finished off my notebook cover. It came out pretty well (i think). Here are the pics [pic1, pic2]. I now notice that Levenger is selling a solution that looks slicker than mine (for 80 dollars, geniuine leather). Nonetheless my solution cost half as much, literally.

My Mac still hasn’t shipped yet.

This MiMail virus outbreak is occurring during my oncall period and is making it very hard for me to work. About every time I get working on something I get distracted.

The weather has definitely turned cold here in SF. It was windy and dark and cold when I got home today - just how I like it! I had to bustle through the parking lot at Potrero Center to get my dry cleaning and buy some foodstuffs at Safeway.

I made it through my first day of low carb quite well. For lunch i had chicken breast with tobasco and broccoli (good carbs!), for dinner I had eggs and canadian bacon. I also drank 88oz of water - which may also have contributed to my work-time distraction as i had to keep going to the bathroom.

Biology!

Just think, next week at this time I’ll be in New Mexico. It will not be romantic cold there. There is a book I saw at Barnes & Noble about San Francisco (not surprising, the B&N is at Fisherman’s Wharf) call “The Dark Gray city of Love”. Did I already write that? I don’t care, it’s a good sentiment. Maybe that’s why Romantics love the city by the Golden Gate.

Dedman said:

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From: Jim Dedman
Date: Sun Nov 2, 2003  12:22:50  PM US/Pacific
To: "Steven G. Harms"

"Well, in Art I got a minus. I guess even then I was
too postmodern or something like it to really be able
to do art, but I was even then, and still am,
excellent at dissecting Art's meaning. That's probably
part of the reason I live in SF."

Wow, from Beaumont, I heard you patting yourself on
the back for your hipster trendiness!

Pain does not exist in this dojo!

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Dedman is funny.