Just to continue, the saga at New york City, yesterday morning a taxi driver, a 62 year-old man, was shot, dry and cool, in the face without mercy at Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, (famous because of the first film of Sylvester Stallone, "The Lords of Flatbush". It just have passed to my mind that "the world is Flat Bush") while the perpetrators, intended to rob him the couple bucks [dollars I meant] that he had made while working. I only see and hear more and more news about the escalating violence and just now Russia exploded against Georgia in an anti-NATO gesture, it seems.
It appears as if we have become highly unstable nowadays all over the place, and even more now, with that Joker syndrome, every maniac and many children in their school age and beyond, are trying to impersonate or imitate that character by acting as crazy as it was interpreted by Heath Ledger, who tragically died right after he completed his part of what would be his last film. It is one of the best pieces of acting ever produced, just compare Ledger's delivery of Joker with that of Jack Nicholson or Cesar Romero, both incredible actors who portrayed hilarious jokers, but even though as they might have been, both seem too far from achieving that mysterious halo, that darkest dark humor that seemed to be a strange magic hyperrealism conceived by Ledger's skillful utterance of his now infamous "Jokerrrzzzss" or something like that. For some reason this Joker felt a little too close to us, so that its presence is sensed by the audiences far too real and scary to just forget about it and might live with us for awhile, it is disturbing in a way. Nope, it is not, "The Joker" is not a Joke or about a Batman's movie anymore, it is about a legend and it is a piece of art, the Monalisa and the Leonardo put together in the same body and before our eyes at the same time.
It is "unreal", but this is the type of life that we are all living somehow, it is like living at the Gotham City. However, everyday I watch my plants and the beautiful colors they have and how quite they seem to be and I think what type of project or plan these plants might have concocted if they only could? The question is silly, but relevant for our days, because they depend on me for their watering, and so without myself doing it, they would not be able to survive. Therefore, by extension, all the rest of the plants in this Earth are in the same awkward position. Some time before this Web-era, plants did not have much of a problem, they were naturally equal and endowed by the privilege of being part of this planet, but now, it all depends which is the park that is taking care of them and more specifically who are their gardeners. Notwithstanding, plants remain quite, immutable and most of the time as green as they should be. In my life, I want to have their strength and patience, till I must, and in the middle of all these nonsense. I find it very difficult though to achieve just this, I might start learning Yoga and Tai Chi besides of playing guitar everyday.
We need to become more ethical with our environment too. I am not a good example though but I am striving to become a better person everyday. For once, I have secluded myself from the rest of the world and for awhile now, I have reexamined my soul, deeds, debts and acts, and I know that I still have plenty laundry to do, but somehow I have become more happy with those "sins" because I know that I did them as an individual, and so were mistakes made, by me, based upon the information that I have had at the time of my decisions, assuming good faith from everyone, with good will and intentions towards all and with ill-intention towards none. I know that many people exploited my vulnerabilities, but I am ok with it, because I chose to be an open person and not a fearful or a deceitful one. I still, and even now, prefer to be a fool than a rich man seating over other people's heads and coffins. However, I did not exploit or wanted to take advantage of anybody whatsoever. Therefore, of the things I have lost in my life, I would perhaps never recover any of them at all, nor I want them back neither. In contrast, the very few things that I have preserved until now, I want to keep them for as long as I live. This is one of things that this Joker brought to my mind and soul while I was digesting his intrinsic and hidden message. Therefore, I highly recommended to everyone an act of contriction. It might be hard to do and could end in so many misunderstandings with your family members and the rest of the people that lives around you, but it works and I believe, it is much needed to do, because we are all traumatized somehow by the tremendous impact of these last days and the every day's news. The media is like a ubiquitous hammer, hitting us in our more sensitive areas, up to the point that we could become very insensible towards our own feelings, let alone regarding other people's feelings. The most important lesson that I have learned from the unforgettable Ledger's personification of "Jokerrrzzz" or something like that, it is the remainder that the real evil could be or is within and among us. Money, work, family everything that make us, in the end it could also be the cause and excuse that could propel us or that we might use, or force to use, as a pretest for destroying other people's lives, who in turn also have families, houses, children and deserve to outreach their own dreams. They need to work and have money to survive, just like us. I think in here about the sufferings imposed to those children in Iraq, for instance.
Education is just one part of the equation, but learning to live with less is at the other side. Education has become the means and not the end, that is a big problem. We are so dependent of the futile, it seems; for instance, we have just paid 400 million dollars to watch a caricature, Batman. However, and surprisingly we did it right this time, perhaps the "word of mouth" (by the way, the make-up was excellent too) played its part in it. However, the acting was so marvelously done that it feels as if Heath were giving us the best lecture for our times. So terribly wrong and much more because unknowingly to him, it was his last lecture. It is all too ironic, a piece of art, a portrait that reveals the inner anxieties of our ages, perhaps. Well, let us watch it while we can. I pledge to leave this video in here, since is just an eternal piece of the Heath's acting. The movie has already earned a fair amount of money, and this "cut" will make no difference whatsoever, for and in the lives of the producers or actors as well; besides everybody knows who made the film and they would be credited at the Oscar's ceremony, next year, we are all expecting for that moment already, perhaps we want some closure, especially about Heath Ledger's tragedy. Anyway, readers let us watch this video, if they leave it as is. I think, in that they should because it is just fair. Here is the "Jokerrrrzzss" or something like that. (I am working to contact Time Warners to ask them for their permission, but in the mean time I am thanking them very much indeed for allowing me to share this works of art with our readers, thanks.)
Nevertheless, far from being a comic, the scenario is not a joke anymore or a simple "jokerrrzzz's" stanza. It seems to be, again, the portraiture of our reality, the landscape showing the darkest places of our human maladies through the expressions and behaviors of this fictional hyper villain. At least, it is an accurate graph of what our "civilization" has probably become to be, I am too afraid about the truth of this last statements; as I hope that by the same token I am making a big mistake over the state of our cultural current affairs. In the end, Heath Ledger would mysteriously die by combating an apparent depression and right after he so well incarnated that personality. It makes me think even more "so serious" about what he felt while he was enacting that monster, because at the movie, he was the mere Joker, a stamp of madness; and thereafter, I barely imagine how someone like him could deal or survive with the effects, impacts, and struggles of performing the evil with such a sublime and incomparable level of perfection. Well, the answer was instantaneous, he just could not handle it at all. It reminds me of a Peruvian sculptor that died terrified from just watching his own creation, which it is made out of wood and should be located, still up to this date, at same place inside the Cathedral of Lima in Peru. Moreover, Heath was able to recreate or translate for us the many meta-memes, here is the metasemantic analysis of our world that he was able to capture with his histrionic efforts; again his acting is a piece of the finest art possible, it is a new benchmark, he has raised the bar, "you have changed things forever" from now on and for every actor, it is going to be very hard to do something like Ledger had done to us. He knew how to use the "Jokerrrzzss" to uncover those places where nobody of us would go, He was a "Dante" and certainly we felt the hell out of his performance, even more problematic we never doubt of his existence, he was real. Every sound, gesture, corner and in every frame by frame "shot", Heath Ledger was just great, perfect.
Such as these are sometimes my quick and dirty musings and impressions. I use them, as a way to "bath" my brain cells, with some serotonins and neurotransmitters, just before I need to deliver my outputs of the sorts or when I am about to "dump" my attention into those daily errands of life. It did not take me too long, I wonder if it finally did; but now and anyway, I feel a little energized to continue up to the end or until my end. Now I am glad, almost release, but not up to the extent in which I am completely convinced or relax about that the "Jokerrrzzss" after all is just as a bad joke, or a nightmare, for which I have paid to watch and enjoy, and so I could forget it at ease thereafter, because it is really not what is going on; perhaps and after all, Heath Ledger was finally able to draw the closer "Spoof of Our Own". ◙JMK◙ @ 2008.
Let me parse your message, since I always assume good faith from people and of course I do it with you, especially because I have a sense of spiritual intelligence behind your actions, and out of my believe in communication and education, I going to be a little granular with you in here, why? Because you have shown me respect with some of your feedback and I want to honor you as a colleague.
"I was rather impressed with what you did."
Thank you, as you might have seen I combined very fairly all of our contributions, as our interpretations, I was looking to balance up the gaps within each part, I did left some typos or minor mistakes though but due to my left eye that it was closing somehow on me, and it did not allow me to read well. It took me some hours of work and patience to put that together and I thrill that you have wrote me this line. Therefore, you make my day with this line "C."
"I am interested to know where you got some of those statistical slides from..."
The most brutal mistake for this presentation was to use MS-Project, I think; why? It is a cage difficult to get out of it. I have version 2003 and the graphics exporting and PERT analysis packages that offers are just not very helpful. Of course, the software has some things that are powerful, and helpful, but you need to battle with it. For instance, the ability to "extrapolate" quickly from the Gantt views to any other table, like the resources graph and matrix, or the PERT pessimistic table or resource use table. These things facilitates a great deal the allocation and determination of resources for tasks but once everything is Dandy and flashy inside one's Project file, it is not when it comes the time to show the world your work. Point in case, I expended a fruitful amount of hours to get the delicate information that I input in the WBS and GBS of this project in MS-project but if was not that smooth to export it to PowerPoint. I could have done it altogether in Excel, in which I can graph and calculated almost every thing, form the most ridiculous degrees of sigma or STDDEVs to the most demanding Riemann or Lévesque integration or other "areas under or over the curve" with it.
Therefore for statistics, I would say Excel but not for cartography though or mind mapping. Sometimes, I use Mathematica from Wolfram or Maple Software from a Canadian group, to do the calculations, when the models or simulations are arduous and intensive and require more powerful software functionality. Lately, I have been working out of my own interest, in a group collaborating in notions of graph theory, trees, connectivity, distance in graphs, Eulerian, Hamiltonian and planar graphs, and graph colorings. One of the results of it is the Gvedit or Graphvis, also it is the output of the AT&T labs’ credit. This program uses a DOT language to create the most complex graphs. The curious thing is that because this language utilizes the extension name .dot for saving its files, they open in MS-Word, and you can edit these files with that but it is better of use Emacs, vi or just notepad instead, It is terribly easy to grasp for making complex critical path graphs with it. Find it at http://www.graphviz.org/ for free and under the Common Public License. Hope you like it and give me your feedback about it.
In this particular case, I used MS-project, I detailed all the information out of my experience and research as I used some of your information as well at the input stage, as I was getting cranky with MS-Project I used many other programs, including Excel. Remember I used data and I manipulated that data from scratch just to make sure. For example, you budget was 13,000,000 or more in part because you figure out, that each workstation will cost around $1,7000.00 or so and then you calculate licenses for each user. I accepted the Exchange server, licenses part as in one slide I inputted your information as is in one slide’s note. However, the analysis and closer inspection with MS-Project and other tools showed other things as well that end with other results and I am sure with a little more time, we could change many things. Therefore, for the statistics I could use the formulas of Excel, or evenly calculated by hand as needed. So this is how I extracted the statistical slides, by figuring out the Phases or milestones and then typing and analyzing the whole WBS in MS-Project, followed by inputting many weights at the entry widget of the PERT analysis also I used Excel, for the PERT's Time Estimate or TE formula.
"Do you possess some type of software that creates that based upon the info you received from us?"[This question is loaded. I t is identified as the metasemantic root of the whole message, for such is the proto-intentional engine behind this question. This is to collapse many interpretations of the metasemantic world. (This is just for the author who is currently studying memetic worlds as metasemantic communications) as he engages with others, the reader please never mind]
Now, in terms of the graphics, all I made from the scratch myself except from one of two that were very generic and inconsequential because, they were from one of the public domain archives and illustrated some or other point. Most of the Graphs that I made are based on the combination of others or out of my research, some are entirely mine. In any case, I strive to give credit to all the sources that provides me with inspiration, knowledge base or ideas. I do this by releasing most of my educational work under Creative Commons Share Alike version 3.0, and under the GFDL too sometimes. The reason, why I do this with my documentation and with my graphics, is that some people have published some of my work, making money in the interim, but without even given credit. For example in one of the slides is depicted a complete workflow, I did that form scratch with one of my software tools based on the figure of Richman's book; and so he and his book, figure and page, it is clearly cited in that slide. I am very protective of people intellectual, private and freedom rights, I believe that these rights typify our western culture and societies.
Exactly, what it has made ad hoc for this project? I made the theme of the presentation. How? Just with PowerPoint. Other graphic and the statistical information were made with a combination of tools.
I looked for prices in http://Pricewatch.com (I am sure you know this site) primary to make sure about the hardware. I just put some of my experience in building networks and internetworks, if you read the breakdown carefully you can find a down to the earth approach to solve the problems and with the mentality of going beyond into the scalability and Security areas of an email system. Therefore, the only thing I needed was to make sure the number of dollars since practically all the information I had it in my head but I always check and recheck. This is to say I believe in my memory but much more in my reason. Your approach was correct and in nature could work but was a little too expensive. Now, in order to manage files and information, I used different mapping tools too. I also use graphic tools mostly non-proprietary, like Graphvis. I like to code with [SVGs] Scalable Vector Graphic and XML whether using AJAX or Comet paradigms. I use sometimes Illustrator, or Photoshop, and Corel Paint with Blender and Rhino but and for video Edition I use Avis. There are plenty number of tools to develop good graphic, maps for GIS, that are essentially Open source, that I have used but you will be get tire if I continue, most people do, that is why, I am writing a book instead. Why open source? Well, you got the "bless" of the source code and you can them customize security from the kernel up, if it were an OS, for instance.
The other main thing is your hardware capabilities; I build my hardware but lately because price and quality I just buy it. Anyway, you cannot compiled nothing if you don't have the right engine, you need at least 4 gigs of RAM and double-core Quad [Whether be, AMD Xeon, or Intel Extreme] for say the least, and even though it could take you a long time to learn some sophisticated tools, like Rhino or Adobe CSPS3. That is why I prefer to use vectorized images rather than pixilated or bitmapped-rasterized pictures or graphs. However, this could take you to experience some grievances because not all browsers are created equal, they do not render equally the DOM [Document Object Model] objects the same. Firefox is "good", meaning, it is SVG compatible, as it is not the case with IE, it needs a plug-in, and this made the distribution of your image just a little sort of fuzzy and harsh for you.
In addition, If I would not have any computers I will do fine too, I still have my own hands, I studied Technical drafting and geometry descriptive since I was a 14 year-old, so I have plotted mechanical parts with my own hands all along and without any CAD software. If what we are talking were about Art, I teach myself to paint at the age of 10. Then, late on life and influence by the life of Gauguin and Van Gogh, I took formal art training in painting and sculpture not for one but for five years at the Art Students League of New York, exactly I paint oils, frescoes and pastels.
Painting from life and still life, it is marvelous, so I paint á la prima and with my hands, no with computers out of coping photographs or other's people work and without camera oscura. I paint with not other thing that my perception, perspective knowledge and skill in combining colors at once and at the spur of the moment, also I do it with passion and with the minimal regard for money. It was then as it is now, the art for the art sake. Finally, if my hands and my body, as it is somehow now, will refuse to aid me in my pursuit for beauty, I will use my mind and I will create substantial amount of images that if I would not be able to ever translate these to any media, I shall at least imagine them. I will, no matter what condition be free, because my freedom intrinsically rest in my principles and in my respect for the rights and believes of others as well.
I have dedicated my life to learning. Many things, I have learned then by myself, as most of us. I have partaken in formal academics, I attended classrooms and conferences, just to make sure I am in the right track, knowing that it is perhaps and overkill, since art and science are both learned by the determination and passion of the beholder. To understand what formally has been done and not because one could be recognized by a group, although this is good for surviving or for professional interests, all it is fine for me though.
You see there is something out there greater than men and ants, if you are truthful, really, it does not belong to our time, it transcends time boundaries and its entropic causation in which we currently live. It is like Keats' dictum "Beauty is Truth and truth is beauty", so as I don't understand many "social things" that are deeply rooted in the memes and spirits of the time in which people live, I don't mind them at all. Because, they seem to me just part of a culture and that it is very mutable in general. I am interested in the metasemantics of the things been learned or acquired, represented or understood, all images at last represent the same.
"At any rate it is exceptionally well done"
Now, this is another priceless statement for me it makes my life tremendously happy, but we, all of us, did exceptionally well for this project.
"I hope you feel better in the near future, I read some of what you and "P" spoke about regarding your health and I too am praying for your recovery."
Well, I have always to keep my difficulties to myself. I decided this time, that perhaps that was a terrible mistake and one of my main problems. Now, I am trying to share even my sufferings with others. I think I will be much better, as have always put this on my mind, but if I could not, I am doing my best to do my best in the mean time and until I could I would and must do just that.
"Take care" Take care too "C", God provides to all men of good faith the ability to empathize with their neighbors. It is the Amazing Grace; we need to experience it, and eventually all of us we will have our “Coram Deo” moment. However, no matter what is our problem we have, we always can find beauty in everything that we do, all around us, because the beauty that we shall find in everything is simply God.
