This leather pouch joins me on all my travels. Despite popular belief, it does not hold plant remains of a questionable legality, but instead carries what tea I’m inclined to treat myself to during the current spell of vagrancy. Current contents are kukicha, green tea, and a mix of loose leaf herbal from Mountain Rose — Peppermint, Chamomile, Gotu Kola, Mugwort, Damiana, Rosemary, Rose Petals, and Stevia, if we’re naming names.
Judge rules defendant can’t be forced to divulge PGP passphrase
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can’t force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.
Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury’s subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide “any passwords” used with the Alienware laptop. “Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him,” the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. “Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop.”
Steampunk: a history that wasn’t quite. At once both Victorian and Dystopic. A world filled by brass gears, pin-stripe suits, and a steam powered Deus ex Machina.
I’ve been familiar with steampunk as both a literary spin-off of cyberpunk and as a modding community, but only recently — through SteamPunk Magazine — come into it’s aberration as a subculture.
This third issue of SteamPunk Magazine is my first. I found it to be a most delightful mixture of short-fiction, interviews, tutorials, and rants. My preferred rant was My Machine, My Comrade by a one Prof. Calamity, in which he sees steampunk as “seeking[ing] to liberate the machine from simply existing as an instrument of work, while at the same time not elevating mechanical forms above all else… Steampunk seeks to find a relationship with the world of gears, steel, and steam that allows machines to not only co-inhabit our world but to be partners in our journey.” My favorite fiction was Margaret P. Killjoy’s Yena of Angeline in “Sandstorms by Gaslight” which (very much like mine own fiction) seems to go nowhere. It has no direction, and does not leave its reader with a sense of anything being accomplished, which makes it a disappointing first read. But, again and again, I find my mind wandering back to the world that Killjoy crafted and the characters that inhabit them. Ant that, I think, is some element of praise.
A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse is a survival manual of sorts, covering basic aspects of shelter, water, and food. It should provide nothing new to the established crazy and serves as no replacement to In the Wake (or any of the works listed in the Guide’s Appendix B), though features thoughts on reclaiming urban resources that are lacking in other guides. But, like In the Wake, it is available as a free download, thus nullifying any excuse to not peruse the contents and keep it as a handy reference. I purchased it partly to support SteamPunk Magazine, but mostly for Colin Foran’s artwork, which provides a wonderful backdrop to the gritty subject of post-Civilization apocalyptic survival. Beyond comparisons to other manuals for outliving Civilization, my main criticism is that of the style of writing. Writers in the Victorian era were much more liberal than us in their use of capitalization, but there was a system. When I read those works, I feel the capitalization adds a certain emotion to the writing. Being a SteamPunk’s Guide, the author of this work (by happenstance, the same Margaret Killjoy whom I praised above) attempted to duplicate this capitalization, but failed. Whether there was or was not a system, it feels arbitrary, and detracts from the overall work. The Guide does present an attempt to emulate that era’s vocabulary, and I think does a good job of that — combining a sense of Victorian grace with modern punk and a bit of wit, for an agreeable solution of steampunk.
I’ve been inspired by the Unclutterer Flickr pool, of late. After discovering an over-due power bill buried under the liter on my desk, I decided it might be time for a cleaning.
One uncovers a number of artifacts from amidst the numerous papers. Writings of Hakim Bey, a copy of the the Canon of the Roman Catholic Mass, WPA attacks, The Laws of Manu, a not-yet-expired Montana fishing license (or “conservation license”, as they would have), crypto algorithm discussions, lockpicking guides, a zine about bikes, a song book for an Ocarina, those fake press badges I got in Bangkok, satellite photos of UPS’ local warehouse (I don’t even remember why I have those)…
It still needs work, but the space has improved, and it does a deal of good for the mind.
The weekend before last my digital camera failed miserably during an attempted balancing trick on my handlebars: it fell and busted both the lens and the mechanism that opens and closes it. Luckily, it was only a point-and-click Canon PowerShot SD450 — I’ve never been able to afford or justify a dSLR with my infantile skill. (Somebody want to buy me a Nikon D80? I’ll love you long time.) So, I replaced it with a Canon PowerShot SD1000 — basically the upgrade to my old SD450 — which arrived today.
And what image should I snap to test out the new device? Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my short time on Flickr, it’s that all the cool kids take pictures of their Moleskine journals. I thought I’d succumb to the meme and join the crowd.
