Semi-gloss everything zen.

I've had good luck with using White Semi-Gloss enamel paint on all trim and built-ins.

I now contend that every surface in a basement, barring the floor, is handsomer sporting WSG, the brighter the better, as it throws lights and radiates energy in the feng shui sense.

Every filthy, ragged surface, every shelf and workbench, every old coal bin, behind the washer and dryer, every purposeless wood or pipes, all crannies, suffused with decades of spider webs, lint, debris, sawdust, grunge, mold, and oil, will magically shine after WSG.

If anybody tries this with gloss, please post pix.

Smart sewage

I see a future soon of being able to know everything about the circulation and use of water resources in the home. Automatic flushing toilet and urinals have been a success story since you no later have to touch unspeakably germ-infested flush handles in public places. 

But with the new sensing technologies. smart plumbing is on the way. Using flow detection coupled with wireless devices all water outlets in the home can be monitored for usage in real-time with web presentation, and smart septic systems will be able to capture information about the materials entering the system and have it remotely evaluated using fecal and urine analysis biotech, and track the chemical balance in the septic tank, report and respond with smart bacteria and nanobots to maintain maximum decompositional environments. 

Is this conceivably a possible porthole for invasions of privacy if somebody can hack into your pipes and download information about what you have been flushing down your toilet? Yes, perhaps what happens in the toilet should stay in the toilet - but I predict once again we will willingly give away our privacy in exchange for the benefits of being wired; we already all carry electronic bracelets called smart phones that track us 24/7 and apparently spy on our usage more than we know, according to recent news about stealth tracking apps installed without our knowledge.

Gmail Spam folder shows ads for spam recipes

Google shows me ads for the infamous meat paste when I check my Gmail spam folder.


Today I see:


Vineyard Spam Salad - Combine grapes, spam, peapods and onions in large bowl

A recipe to give one nightmares!

I criticize Obama because I want him to be himself

I've heard him say that he is not just the President of the Democrats but the President of all the people of the United States.  This is constitutionally true and admirable in some contexts, BUT....

The POTUS is not a projection of the nation, like some Joseph Campbell sacred king, but a party leader who is also the executive.

As such, he is always allowed to execute the agenda of his party, that has been the practice throughout the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Apologizing for what you believe in has never won over the other side. 

Small Business Saturday

I only started seeing TV ads for this on Saturday itself; but then I don't watch during the week, maybe I missed the earlier blitz - but they were still running ads at 8:30PM, they must think this is now the emergency shopping season, so last minute is the last word, grab the pepper spray we're going shopping!

The POTUS (luv this acronym as it resonates with potent and ancient Greek roots for Poseidon) took Sasha and Malia (mellifluous names like Michelle but definitely not like Barack) shopping at a couple independent book stores (the ultimate endangered category when the Kindle Fire is the Tickle Me Elmo of this season) and what he buy but a Wimpy Kid book for the kids and  "Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia."  which I must assume is not for the kids, although as Potusial children they may have an interest, depending on how often B.O. celebrates Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.


So I must assume The Potus wants to read "Descent into Chaos", okay everyone answer me this, why?  Maybe he respects the author and wants to see what he says?  Or it was recommended?  Who would recommend this book to the Mr. Potushead?


So, sir, what is your presentiment towards this work and what do you expect to learn?  To be more specific, do you think you are not getting all the information you need on the job?  One more thing - are you aware of the signal this may be sending and is it intentional or is this, dare I say, a gaffe?


Did Michelle ask you to get it for her? 

The clumsy give thanks

Thank you O Lord for digital cameras, the memories of accidentally exposing film are gently healing.

It takes a menacing pharaoh to build a pyramid

From the dummy's version of the Steve Jobs bio one receives from the infosphere, he seems to have been a fearsome tyrant creating greatness on the crushed bones of his minions, much like the Pharaohs and other imperial monsters of the olden world.

Now after his apotheosis, he rules over the celestial crystalline spheres, yes it's now a camphor glass Apple store.

The new nano is too small.

Our personal microbes

Now it is all over that a human body plays host to a trillion or so microbes; the plurality are workers in the gut and digestive tract; recently it has become widely known that differently mixed multitudes colonize skin areas,  the armpit populations contains both different tribes and close-cousins of the elbow and wrist citizenries; the number of microbes in a human may be 10 times the number of human cells.

Trees also have distinctive entourages, fungii, insects and microbes, the term used is 'symbiotic community'.

It took a good billion years or two or three to build up this kind of natural organization, that is a very long time, and it went slow, evolution got bored and came up with crazy designs, freaks of nature like hummingbirds, humans and humpbacks, one of which now can manipulate genetics and do in a generation what once took ages or was impossible.  Maybe they can customize personal microbes, surely for a price; to make your skin glow and your smell attract, the demand will come from the same people who now botox and niptuck.

Teach the unemployed Ruby, Python and Javascript

Everyone wants jobs, jobs, jobs, but the ones available require newer skills, but nowadays we have simple  freely-available scripting languages that run well on today's computers and delivery a lot of functionality for relatively little time and effort.  How long would it take an unemployed 55 year old factory worker to learn Python?  I say no more than a few weeks before he can make things happen and gain confidence.  Then he has at least one relevant skill, since his old job flowed down the wage waterfalls to the ocean of overseas low-cost labor.

They should be teaching Ruby in elementary school.

Request For Proposal: Perpetual holiday lights

Programmable holiday lights, aka Chirstmas lights but each year including more and more Halloween lights, even Valentine's Day lights, so using LED methods, wireless controls, and the kind of programming already abundant in ad tech, scoreboards, and games, created a programmable string of lights.

The Perpetual Holiday Lights, hereafter referred to as PHL, must including APIs for at the least Java, but there will be much extra credit for also shipping API's for Python, Android, Objective-C, and providing apps for use in phones and tablets.

Dynamic aspects:  PHL should be have active display capabilities for the strings as such but also as collections of individuals programmable color nodes with HD flexibility.  In addition to retro blinking, syncopated blinking, and blinking racing along a string, effects should include complex patterns and algorithms, wireless synchronization with music, responsiveness to noises and voices, tactile contact, CO2 sensitivity (i.e., breath on it, it reacts), a reflection mode, temperature and humidity sensitivity, and vibrate mode.  The exact application of each feature must be accessible to the user.  Each string must contain a control unit with a secure connection to the user's iphone /android / tablet / blackberry / computer etc. controller app.

PHL should come with standard package of holiday presets:
Christmas:  The usual, but also synch with any audible Xmas music
Halloween:  Usual orange, white, black, with bloody red accents
Thanksgiving:  Fall colors. brown/red/orange/yellow, with cranberry red accents
Valentines Day:  Red, white, pink,
Hannukah: Blue and white, with gold trim
Kwaanza: Red, green,yellow, black
July 4th:  Redwhiteandblue, but also an approximation of the splendor of fireworks, bright flashes
Easter:  Pastels, I'm afraid.  Sigh.
New Year's Eve: Countdown to midnight in colors, vertical strings in Times Square crystal
Game day:  One's team colors (not only for game day of course)
Boston Pro Sports Mix:  Red-white, green-white, black-gold, silver-blue-white.
Ramadan & St. Patrick's Day:  Green-white.
Cinco de Mayo & Columbus Day: Red, white and green.

The PHL strings should not only be each programmable, but also be able to act as one, aware of and synched with any other PHL registered on the system within range of encrypted communications.
They should connect not through the old electric plug, but through a many-to-many interface of micro USB or something smaller with each other and the wall charger plug.

Provide updates as seamlessly as iTunes.

Plenty of people will spend silly money to obtain them even at steep prices, I reckon even $100 for a standard size tree string, but possibly stupid amounts for house-slathering rolls of 2500 active light nodes.

Ship out the manufacturing to the usual suspects, run some late night TV ads, and set up on online store for selling custom light shows.