With my time atomised and divided, the Log becomes the neglect of this new period. Much to write about. A number of dot points and expansions to follow.

EC Strategy

My Amazon parcel arrived yesterday. In fact it arrived the day before but the new apartment holds parcels and closes at 5pm sharp. Very 1950s.

The two items of note in the Amazon parcel were Doug Rushkoff's Exit Strategy and Tales of Terror: The EC Companion.

I had purchased Exit Strategy for my mother a few Christmas' ago. Some background on this - I was one of the early draft readers of the book back in 2000. Doug passed on the original text in a digital format which I squirreled away somewhere. I remember there was some crazy monkey scientist in the book loosely based on Doug's perceptions of me at the time and I wanted to get the book for some introverted reflection.

Although I haven't written about it regularly through the Log, I have noted on rare occasions that I don't read fiction. I physically can't read fiction. I start reading and soon enough my mind clouds and my stomach turns. Try as I might I can't read fiction.

It annoys me.

The last fiction I read cover to cover (so to speak) was Doug's early draft for Exit Strategy.

So I looked at the book, newly arrived and I read the first page. I felt physically ill.

I tried to flip pages to find the monkey scientist. My mood didn't change.

The book has gone on the shelf. When I find the text file of the original draft, I will text search through and find the passages about the monkey scientist. Hopefully that will point me to the right part of the book.

In contrast, the EC Companion is easy reading. Others talking about the same experiences as William Gaines seem to use exactly the same words to describe the period. More audio recordings are needed in the world. I reflect on the Crunch History of Computing project. Sadly neglected.

Monkey Books Internationale

I have been sending copies of the Original Manuals all over the world. My 8-5 + other part time jobs have guaranteed that I can send these books out without feeling guilty. Noble Ape tshirts, too, have been doing the rounds. But at this time, the manual seems the most important thing to get into people's hands.

To make up for the two year delay in the Duet with Reagan project, I have sent Butta Beats an original manual. I sent it via Mike Lai (aka WeFunk's DJ Static) who has been dropping me daily correspondence following WeFunk in Switzerland Volume III which went very well.

Mike gave an account of Nomadic Massive's equipment purchasing drive. I promised to add a favourable link to their new CD available for sale online;

http://www.nomadicmassive.ca/music.html

My favourite Nomadic section of the site is still;

http://www.nomadicmassive.ca/video.html

I like the ending in particular with Mike walking in through the snow. Whilst on the topic of Montreal flavour, I checked out Narcy's site recently;

http://www.iraqisthebomb.com/

It features a good MP3 of the all-time-fav Euphrates track Commodore 64.

Cognitive Traffic Cops

The next major code change for the Noble Ape Simulation relates to an idea I am calling Brain Traffic Control. This relates to both scalar and vector brain processing existing in the same simulation and chosen purely on the brain states. Groups of the same brain states - vector - and different ones - scalar. For some background on this;

http://www.nobleape.com/docs/on_apple.html

More soon.

Good afternoon.

So much to write about. So little time.

Duet With Butta

First I want to include a track I worked on with WeFunk Radio/Nomadic Massive's Butta Beats;

http://www.barbalet.com/music/DuetWithReagan.mp3

It has been two years since the track was recorded. I put the project down in part because of Reagan's death. I found the track a little eerie at the time. Now, I just feel immensely sorry that I didn't continue to develop the Butta track. Butta has gone on to bigger and better things but I could have volunteered more beats and more collaborative work.

The greatest apology I can offer is sending Butta a copy of the Original Manuals together with a burned CD of the track.

Moving On...

With the candle burning;

http://mail.nobleape.com/pipermail/developer_nobleape.com/2006-April/000261.html

Michele and I are moving a little closer to the 8-5, it will mean very little transit time versus about an hour and a half currently. From our move to the US from the UK, we had a number of possessions which we don't have currently. Our life traveling light is amounting to about 1/3 of the stuff we shipped to the US. Whilst there is some bulky furniture that we have picked up, our possessions have reduced.

I sold a lot of stuff in eBay through the end of last year. We have thrown a bit of stuff away too.

Reading Old Text

I was reading my old text from January 2003 on my interest in toy soldiers;

http://www.barbalet.net/dig/toy-soldiers/toy-soldiers-1.html

It's funny reading my old writing a new. I don't remember writing this text and it makes me think, what kind of person would a reader think I was/am. Obsessive miniature collecting nerd? No more the case, perhaps.

I produce a lot of text in a year. A little less now with the candle burning, but still a lot of text. I finally got signed up to Google Analytics and I am waiting to get more detailed information on both nobleape.com and the Log. There is a lot of impressive graphics but I am still waiting for substance.

SiteMap is the same. I remember talking to Bruce Damer in February he asked about the productive information of SiteMap. I said it provided more detailed information about Google searches. But it doesn't really provide much more information. Honestly I wasn't too impressed with SiteMap. It provided no actual information about how sites should be sufficiently optimised for actual information finds. Actual information finds refer to real information finds. Not people looking for ape audio file compression for example.

Cramer Again...

Through the candle burning period, I have been able to catch (on average) about half of Cramer each evening for the past week. I need to start buying fantasy stocks, I think. I'm not convinced by the analysis Cramer offers but the idea of growth being the only qualifier in the increase of stock price doesn't ring true with my experiences with Apple. Apple made huge stock jumps on multi-colour computers... which rolls into my next topic...

Windows Macs

I should have written six months ago that I predicted Apple would drop Mac OS. I avoided writing about it, in part because my relationship with Apple felt a little shaky particularly after the extended INTEL narrative. If I had written about it when I wanted to, then perhaps I could reflectively chuckle at the announcement of BootCamp. Apple has reduced its Mac OS X engineers progressively and they aren't recruiting to fill the missing numbers. This only means one thing.

iPods and Windows Apple machines.

Now Apple employee and Noble Ape shirt wearer, Rick Altherr is on the Noble Ape developer mailing list, I have to be relatively tactful.

EC Comics

Having maintained the Comics Journal interview of William Gaines in issue #81 circa 1982 - very interesting interview which I have been playing since 2002 - I decided to buy a book on EC. The story of creating value in content and persistence. I am a huge fan of Mad magazine of the 1960s. My friend Doug Rushkoff has translated writing to comics. Looking through my writing, I'm not interested in seeing images from text. This has been the narrative with the Noble Ape Simulation, until the True3D sub-project perhaps.

Good night.