dIGITAL NOISE CONTROL
jANUARY 1998
ELECTRONIC CULTURE PAGE
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The following piece of information was delivered to me via the democratic news in e-mail today, check it out. Not everyone will be interested in this, but I think that it supports my claim (below) that the President deserves credit for the good things that he has been doing.
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PRESIDENT CLINTON NOMINATED FOR 1998 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
President Clinton was nominated yesterday for the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for
his efforts to foster democracy and human rights in nations such as the
former Yugoslavia. Clinton has "done a great job" in foreign policy, said
Vidar Kleppe, deputy leader of Norway's Progress Party and a member of the
Norwegian parliament who voted for the nomination. "Throughout his
presidency he has been a guarantor and friend of peace," said members of the
Progress Party. [Wall Street Journal, 1/28/98]
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The car radio is on its way to the shop for installation, and I will soon be able to enjoy listening to music and books on cassette as I drive back and forth and all over the place. I think that driving is one of the largest things that we take for granted too. When I say I went here, or I went there, I often include to use the term "drove." I think that this is because it is more difficult to indicate the timeframe with variances of the word drive because there are only two of them.
In addition, I think that places are beginning to become less relative than the meanings of the things that we do at those places. At least the meanings are becoming more important for me. For some people (especially car stereo thieves), there is no meaning to anything. (As I am learning).
- Christopher J. Bradley January 30, 1998, 5:44 PM
I honestly didn't think that I was going to have anything to say today. Or any time before Sunday in terms of updating the page. I think now that I have numbed myself to the incidents of the past couple of days, that I can begin to write about them in a format that everyone can appreciate. As some of you might already know, I have ammended the religion section, and added the Groundhog Day segment below since Monday.
I thought that I was safe to go about my business of visiting with the people that I consider to be my friends on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I have learned that we are not safe anywhere. My automobile was burglarized while I was visiting some of them. Luckily, I hadn't left my planner in the car, or anything of a value over $100.00.
I found myself at Stereo Advantage yesterday. I had a chance to replace my stereo with a new one. With any luck it will be installed by tomorrow. The new stereo is considerably cheaper than it could be. This way if it is stolen, I will not have to be as concerned with replacing it.
I am beginning to realize though, that even if you have a $60 stereo, if you use it for a year, you turn the price of the stereo into something minute, like 5 cents a day. When I think about that and the fact that I had my last stereo for 3 years and that I really bought it on someone else's money (see the Autobiography section of this page), it really does not concern me all that much that I lost it.
In the future, I plan to be more careful of the placement of my car with respect to lighting, and I plan to replace my inside light inside the car (this may have worked as a mild deterrent to the theft).
Unfortunately, one of the things that I missed on television Tuesday night, was the State of The Union address (I fell asleep because of the effects of a long Monday). Tonight is the first night that I have actually felt comfortable sitting down in front of the television and watching it for any period of time. I saw president Clinton on Channel 50 (C-Span) talking about issues related to the US Military in foreign countries. I think that his speech was well written, and that he commands a great deal of respect. I also think that he will work to promote peace, using whatever forces are necessary. I think that one of the things he does very well is balance the strengths of both the left and the right, and that he deserves credit for the outstanding work that he has done.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 30, 1998, 2:10 AM
HAPPY
GROUNDHOG DAY
Here's a day that we should really look into up here in the Great White North. GroundHog Day. It isn't even February yet, and the excitement is already building. Will the furious hog see his shadow, or won't he? Will we be doomed to six more weeks of this horrible warm winter, or won't we? How can we know but to trust the seer of all seers, the ultimate prognostigator of pomposity, Punxatawnee Phil? It is time for you to believe in the Groundhog. You know you want to, so just go for it, click, and you will be amazed, for there is not a single soul that will be out of the loop on Monday February 2nd, except you, if you don't.
(Philosophical question: Who created the groundhog?
Philosophical answer: Some of us think that we know.)
http://www.groundhog.org
-Christopher J. Bradley January 28,1998, 10:07 PM
HAPPY
GROUNDHOG DAY
Here we go, the Sunday updates are done, for the most part. I don't think that I will have time to make any other changes to the information that appears here tonight, with the exception of what I am writing for you now. And some of that, for some of you, will be exciting. I am very excited.
Last night I had an opportunity to go to a bookstore called Borders out near the Walden Galleria mall. I went with two friends, and miraculously, a third friend showed up and found us in the Cafe' area of the bookstore. The bookstore was very large, and very busy. The only parking space that we could find was in the far back of the parking lot.
When we first got there, I took the approach that I usually take when we go to Barnes and Noble or other bookstores. I took a look at the magazine rack to see if I could find any particularly interesting magazines that might have interesting internet addresses in them.
Rather than looking at the magazines that I had already looked at this month, I decided to take a look at a new section to a magazine rack that I had not seen before at Barnes and Noble or many of the other bookstores that I have been to. There was an Art and Film magazine rack.
I scanned several different magazines and discovered one in particular that contained an article on William Gibson. The magazine was a Tokyo/New York art magazine called Big. The magazine contained a short interview with Gibson and a lot of what I would call Restriction art. There were photographs of a woman with tape on her face, and a man tied to a chair with a yellow cord - wearing a business suit. The art seemed peculiar. It was at a level that I am not used to. I didn't buy the magazine, but the Gibson interview reminded me of something that I have been looking for for almost two months.
I decided to talk to the customer service people at the store to find out whether or not they had the discontinued tape recorded version of Neuromancer by William Gibson that was released in 1994 as a ten year commemorative. I also found a copy of Idoru on cassette. I couldn't walk out of the store without buying both of them. The total cost was about forty dollars, but I plan to get my money's worth out of them. I have already made copies of both to keep in my car so that I can listen to them on the way to school.
After leaving the bookstore, we went to a pizza place called Sal's, a local pizza shop in Buffalo. It is located across from University at Buffalo's south campus (Main St.). In our opinion, Sal's pizza is one of the best New York style pizza shops in the entire city of Buffalo. We haven't found anywhere better yet. They had cool rap music playing on their stereo, and we got a chance to talk to the people that work there for a long time. We have been going to Sal's on and off since it first opened at its original location on Allen St. in 1994.
I guess that the Superbowl is officially over for this year. I am going to leave the link to the SportingNews superbowl information up on the sports page. There is really no need to change it unless the page goes dead or something. As far as a lot of hardcore sports fans are concerned, it's time to gear up for the next Super Bowl already.
I am thinking about making some structural changes to my friends and family page. There aren't that many web pages there to begin with. What I am thinking of doing is placing my main links to my Family in one file, and my links to my friends under the categories that the information on their sites represents. For example, Mikus' page, which is a politically driven page, will appear under politics rather than friends. And he will be in good company there, with his party being the only party that I support (in ideal) other than the Democratic Party. And Sean's page will be moved to a section that I will open about computers. While I am working on the changes, the Friends and Family Links will be inactive from my site.
The world is getting cooler and cooler everyday. There are certain aspects of life that I am beginning to experience that are indescribable. Things seem to be opening up. For the first time in months I will have access to a car on a regular schedule because my parents are in the process of aquiring another vehicle, a minivan. It is a used minivan, but it is a great used minivan. It has a lot of space inside, and you can hold conversations that don't feel choked off by small surroundings. I enjoyed riding in it today.
One of the secondary benefits of the minivan is that I will be able to meet with a couple of instructors that I have had to remove from my scheduling in the past week because I had to pick my mother up from her job during their regular office hours.
As I already said above, I was really excited to find the William Gibson tapes that I found. I plan to listen to the new copies all week. I am hoping to add a lot of new words into my vocabulary by repeatedly hearing them. I think that there will be long term benefits to this course of action. And I think that it will be more fun than listening to the news.
Which brings me to my final interest piece for the weekend. I think that Monica Llewinski is a National Hero. We should set her up in the Bahamas with a couple of Chippendales dudes for a few weeks and let her drink cocunut milk until she has had her fill. There is no better way to lift the country up in the eyes of the world, than to have a Heroine like Monica Llewinwski tell her "true" story of her private life, and her association with the President. It adds to the net accumulation of national Machismo. And right about now, that's one of the things that we definitely need. How else are we going to be able to justify our eventual enforcement of UN policy in IRAQ?
We will meet again, and I'm willing to lay odds, that it will be in this lifetime. Oh, and by the way, a couple of just other general odd things that we noticed were going to be "cool" this year yesterday were Speedy J, crop circles, and mutilated cattle. So get with the program, make some crop circles, and start buying hamburgers, and do a little dance, because we all know that Ally McBeale is what America is all about. (Smile, I'm only like this when I'm happy.)
-Christopher J. Bradley January 26, 1998, 1:08 AM
It is has been a few days and I have begun to wonder where to start. I should be working on this page everyday, once I get accustomed to my schedule. There are some new people on my list of friends and family, and they will start receiving update mail on the page, so I hope that the word spreads that I am doing this. As each of you builds web pages, you will start to realize what an excellent tool they are for communication.
Right now keeping up with classes and instructors looks pretty simple, but during the semester, I expect it to get rather complex. I have a lot of reading left to do and it is only the first week of class. Next week will start to get even busier I suspect.
In one of my Lit. classes, I got to look at a timeline of events occuring in America from 1500 - 1870. There was some pretty serious stuff there, from the conquests of Cortez to the Signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to French and Indian War to the War of 1812. I think that I am going to enjoy the class quite a bit. It isn't often that you have the opportunity to get involved in learning about the events that made the United States what it is today.
In my Economics class we just talked about some of the introductory terms that are going to be used regularly throughout the semester. I have made a list of some of them with definitions that I plan to try to get on-line by Sunday. My Economics instructor is into the Internet and helped me get a deal on The Wall Street Journal. I will enjoy receiving that paper regularly for the technology news. I hope it starts showing up soon.
I have a couple of other classes that I am really looking forward to getting involved in that will not be happening until Monday. The first class in each of them doesn't happen until Monday because we observed Martin Luther King Day. It would be nice if school didn't start until after Martin Luther King Day every year.
I plan to do my regular updates on Sunday. The page is starting to get very big and I have to call Wizard Communications about some file management issues (how to create sub-directories in my main web directory to hold my files). I plan to add a couple of new pieces of poetry tomorrow, along with my religious updates and my Black Operations update.
I also got an electronic mail yesterday inviting me to get involved in a Web Ring that is for non-commercial fiction. If you aren't familliar with what a Web Ring is, it is a ring of web sites that are connected circularly. There is no first and last site in the ring. You click on a button to go to the next or last site, and you are automatically transferred there. There are all kinds of Web Rings of all kinds of different types. I think that it is very nice to have received this invitation, and I hope to receive word about how to make the connections to the ring soon.
I hope that you are all still enjoying 1998. I am, even though I am a little bit stressed, and have been managing to piss some people off with some of my viewpoints. I hope that you all continue to appreciate the world that you live in, and share your ideas with your friends and associates. Maybe if we work at it, we can generate and discover some information age wisdom.
Please excuse me while I listen to some 1995 New Order, and spend the afternoon with my friends from the city. I promise, I'll be back to make more updates, and I'll continue to keep all of your interests in mind. After all, we are people, and we do have interests, and they are important.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 24, 1998, 3:14 PM
Today has been exciting. I went to my first day of classes, and met three of my instructors. They were all helpful.
I started reading my book for Literature class. The book is titled Growing Up Native American, and one of my instructors actually has a piece of work published in it. The piece of the book that I read today was called "The Warriors." It was about the struggle to preserve history, and the struggle to find beauty that Indians have faced throughout their lives.
This particular story brought a number of my feelings about the subject to light. I wanted to find out more about the Warrior's lives than the author presented.
There were some specific universally recognized images that were constructed in the work that I would like to ask about, for the sake of understanding how to create them for use in some of my own writing.
For all of you who are making your first visit to this page, don't forget to look at the segments on ICQ paging, V-Chat, Microsoft Netmeeting, or other items that might be of general interest to computer users that I have discussed over the past month. There is a lot of stuff on this page. It would be nice if I could Jam it all on top of the page. Read on, and enjoy.
There may be some stuff that not everyone enjoys here. I am working to improve the content of this page. Please do not stop reading because the stuff that interests you is not at the top. Click around, that's what web pages are for. I also don't expect you to read everything here in one sitting. Feel free to bookmark this page, so that you can come back at your leisure.
Valentine's Day is coming up. I am going to see if I can find some links to traditional information about Valentine's Day, since as far as everyone knows, myself included, I do not have a date yet. I have been fairly Anti-Valentine the past couple of years, although I can't exactly recall why, or if there is even a reason to put to my Anti-Valentinism. I used to view it as a strange consumer holiday I guess that seemed rather shallow. I am starting to come to realize now though that it is a holiday based on the life of a Saint and that I should at least observe that it is happening, and try to find out a little more about the history. I have been thinking of possibly creating a page that lists holidays and information about them, so that I can remember for myself when to celebrate them.
Some of the other things I did tonight involved calling a friend in Tuscon, talking to a friend who just got back from Mexico, and eating dinner with the parents. All in all, I think I have had a pretty good day.
I have had some thoughts that keep popping up in my head about certain morality issues that I have recently had to consider. Hopefully, those issues will work themselves out, and my mind will start to rest a little bit easier again.
To be honest, with some of the issues that have been raised in the past week, I would have never expected that I would have to be concerned. Perhaps I have just been overly gullible in the past.
We can look forward to a future where your author starts making specific decisions though. Hopefully, it will be a crisp clean future, that we can all walk around in happily.
Wow, with all that said, I guess I better start to get to work on the real stuff (homework).
-Christopher J. Bradley Januaary 21, 1998, 2:33 AM
Today is my first day of school. I hope that I enjoy it. Today's class is a literature class and it is with an instructor that I trust and expect to function well with. I have been telling my friends and aquaintances to take his classes because he is one of my best instructors yet. Maybe some day he will get a web page. Who knows, maybe I'll be the one to help him get it functioning. One of the other cool things about this class is that we have to work on a book that I have already read. The book is on my books list, it is called Medicine River by Thomas King.
I just made up some limited edition business cards with this web-address on them. If you are a business card collector, just ask, I'll be glad to give you one. Unfortunately a lot of people missed out on my Donald Duck business cards that I made up back when I was working for Softbank. I haven't made any in a while, and it will be fun to give these cards out.
Tonight I went for donuts and coffee. One of my friends was really cool for stopping at Mighty Taco. I had a coupon for a Super Mighty Burrito, extra hot. The Super Mighty Burrito is one of the least healthy foods on the planet, and it hurts the next day, but it tastes great. People wonder why we eat Buffalo Wings here in the Buffalo area. It's for the same reason. The Spice. And let me tell you, The Super Mighty Burrito has more spice than the Spice girls will ever have.
They had a cool deal at the place that we went for coffee. (We are going to keep it secret because of the deal.) $.25 cents a cup for a large. The deal was so great that I bought two, that should easily explain why I am up writing messages for you now, and not sleeping.
We discussed all sorts of things, from our old drinking days, to the Aliens that reside in the deep South. We also discussed creating videogame versions of ourselves with NHL98 and NBA96. I think that I might do a little bit of that tonight.
I went to see Hard Rain on Sunday night with Rich. The film was very good. I recommend it if you like to see a lot of water, and a lot of gunfighting. Forget about the fact that Christian Slater has recently gotten in trouble. I think that people were conspiring against him. He is still a great actor.
The film had some off handed comments that could have been done away with, but the comments worked to depict the characters that they presented. I think that the ending of the movie was a little bit strange, and that the plot wasn't very strong, but it was biblical in the sense that the most evil characters were done away with in the flood.
I have been rapidly been coming to the conclusion that one of my most trusted current friends has a great deal of wisdom to share when it comes to matters of conserving mental stability. He finds ways to make me laugh about things that I would never have found amusing otherwise. Especially things that can be outright disturbing.
There are darker elements to the world that we live in, and sometimes the best way to keep them from getting into your consciousness and lingering there, is to dismiss them with humor. A quote from a wise man that I read on the now defunct Topic Cafe's quote board was written in this way: For the thinking man, life is a great comedy. But for a feeling man, life is truly a tragedy.
Ever since reading the quote, I have been asking myself the questions, am I a thinking man? Or am I a feeling man? And how can I become more like the thinking man? My new trusted friend has been helping me to be more like a thinking man, and I can think of no better means to thank him for it, than to publicly complete this annecdote.
It is unfortunate that Martin Luther King Day had to be marked with this current incident of violence in Baton Rouge. I have linked to a current CNN update of the events surrounding the issue. Hopefully they will keep this link current until the end of the month. It is my opinion that the perpetrator of the crime should be found and brought to justice. There is no excuse for shooting children. Children are our future and should be protected at all costs.
I said a lot more today than I thought that I would. I hope that I can continue to express my thoughts in a compact form for you during the semester. I will be working very hard to keep my grades under control. I must score at least a B overall to maintain and improve my GPA. I hope to obtain A's in my courses.
More updates as they come, The Noise is Out. Control your little piece of it.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 20, 1998, 3:50 AM
Don't Forget, Today Is:
Martin Luther King Day.
I think that it was particularly charitable of the Seattle Times to discontinue their Martin Luther King Jr. internet exhibit on Martin Luther King Day. A good number of the Martin Luther King Links below no longer work. I have found a collection of pictures that leads to some other links that might be as effective. The collection of pictures is from LIFE magazine. Please also note that the link to Stanford's Martin Luther King Jr. library is still working.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 19, 1998, 6:43 AM
Well, this is my first official Weekly update. It didn't get completed on-schedule, I ended up spending most of Sunday sleeping or in Church. I also got a new textbook on Philosophy that I will be using to develop some of my ideas about how it works. I have not updated the Philosophy page yet. The following four entries are the actual additions that I have made to my page during my Sunday (Monday Morning) update this week.
Black Operations has been updated. The extensive poem from 1996 has been ammended with three new pieces that you have not yet seen, unless you are Mikus. I recommend viewing these works with objective eyes. I was very disturbed by some of the things that I saw working around me in society when I wrote these pieces. There is little else to say about them.
One thing to keep in mind, is that poetry is an art form that should stand on its own. Examine exactly what is on the page, and read into it no more, and no less than is actually there. There is no deeper meaning, than you can actually read. Unless you ascribe it.
Happy Martin Luther King Day. Today is Monday the 19th of January and many of us are granted time of to celebrate the life's work of the honorable and noble Martin Luther King Jr. I found another resource available from the students of Stanford University. This resource is a listing of documents produced about Martin Luther King, during and after his life. From my understanding, it is updated regularly. Don't forget to take a look at the Seattle Times version of Martin Luther King's story.
I have made a small update to my religion page, and a slight formatting change. The religion page is now left justified so that it is easier to read. The small update is this week's message from my particular faith, quickly described in title as: "You've got Charisma" by the originator. The message was too complex for me to translate into absolutely simplistic terms, so I made of it what I could. I hope that you will have the time to look at it. I have also added a couple of new denominations of faith to the bottom of the page.
This week is the week before Super Bowl XXXII. I have made some Superbowl web link updates to the Sports page. Hopefully you will have the opportunity to look at the updates before the game. I hope that Denver wins this one, but the past record of the AFC in the Superbowl does not convincingly suggest that they will be able to pull it off.
That's it for the main update. I have some phone calls to make about the directory structure of my web directory because the page is starting to get too large to easily manage. I would like to be able to create sub-directories on my UNIX account so that I can file my HTML pages in a hierarchical structure. Otherwise, I will have to start maintaining a site map, and that will take a lot of time. I hope that you have enjoyed looking at the first Weekend Update of my web page. Keep yourself reading, read anything, because there's always more where this came from.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 19, 1998, 6:22 AM
Feature: A Computer Sales Nightmare. Ever work in sales? Ever want to? Here's a mistake you'll not want to make. This is a one shot only look at the possible complications resulting from a botched retail computer sale. Check it out before the month is over, or you'll have to dig into this page as a back issue to find it.
The entire month of January 1998 is going to be saved in one large file, that will only be available on my site until the beginning of March. There is only so much that you can fit on a page before it starts taking more than two minutes to load. I am enjoying collecting the information that I have been on this page. Everyone has the ability to make a page like this using Netscape 4.04's page composer. Don't miss out on the opportunity to get ahold of it. From what I have heard, they are planning to make a new product called Javagator that will make 4.04 obsolete. Don't miss out on the fun, get Communicator 4.04 before it is too late.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 17, 1998, 2:46 PM
Top story: Martin Luther King Day is celebrated this Monday. I would like to thank our parents for reminding us that this holiday was taking place. The actual date of Martin Luther King's birthday was Thursday, January 15th, however, from what I have been informed about the holiday, it is traditionally celebrated on the Monday following his birthday. Martin Luther King was a strong leader in the fight for freedom. This link to the Seattle Times version of his life's story is the most impressive link that I have found to commemorate the occasion. I think a question that we should all be asking ourselves now, is as Americans, do we have a dream?
I met an Australian in the ICQ pager program today. I would like to share his page with you. He is just starting on the internet. He would like to put his own pictures on the internet. I have given him the address of Mikus' Geocities page (R.E.V.O.L.T.) so that he can find out how to obtain more Webspace. Here he is, take a look.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 17, 1998, 3:32 AM
I just made another addition to the page. It is a list and set of descriptions of the schools that I have been attending, or have attended in the past. I am going to augment the list with more facts as time goes on. I want to be sure of the facts before I place them on the page though. Each description has a link to the school's web site. These links are very useful to get contact information for instructors. Not all instructors are on-line, but their phone numbers change so frequently that these pages are a pretty good resource for current listings.
Just some journal Data I want to save for January : I can honestly say that making the schools update to the page was the greatest single accomplishment that I have been involved with all day. I have spent quite a lot of time today doing counterproductive things that I would rather not recount in print. Fortunately I still have roughly the same amount of money in my wallet that I did yesterday. I am looking to eliminate counterproductivities from my day to day work toward positive achievement. I may have to make some serious changes in how I go about communicating this to people, so that they will understand that I am extemely serious about my goals.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 16th, 1998, 9:35 P.M.
This internet applications software is absolutely beyond description. I just finished working wirh Joe, a friend of mine, to learn how to set up Microsoft Netmeeting. Netmeeting allows you to share applications that are running on your computer and the other computer you are connected to (via the internet). We were working with a Whiteboard (A new graphical medium that lets you paste graphics and stuff into it in real time), and also Word 95 with Word 97. I was using Word 95 and he was using Word 97 and they were still compatible. Somehow the session got messed up because I ended up taking control of his mouse, but I think that the whole idea of working with the Whiteboard was incredible. Next time we will know more about it because we will both read some of the documentation. We were also using ICQ to chat when the computer got too bogged down with instructions to the Whiteboard. We were also talking with Tom in ICQ. Unfortunately something we did kicked him off his system. We got him back in touch though. Like I said, I probably haven't described this very well, the entire idea of what we were doing is so new, that it is hard to understand unless you see it. They were talking about doing this in 1991 at IIT and I didn't believe that they would ever get it done. But they have, and things are going to change. Man, are they going to change.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 16th, 1998, 4:45 AM
I have just added a group of poems that I wrote in 1996 to my poetry page. The work is called Black Operations. It is about some of my experiences and understandings of things during a time when I was extremely confused about the nature of people's actions with respect to politics. I am glad to have the opportunity to go back and analyze some of my thinking now. I hope that Black Operations will not seem too complex. If you read it, please don't misunderstand any of it's content. It is not intended to describe any of my current feelings about the issues or people the I have represented. It is a collection of thoughts that I had at one time.
Tori Amos is a really incredible artist. I am listening to her right now, while I am wondering why I spent the time this afternoon driving to the Summit Park Mall to try to buy a watchband for a SWATCH at Jenss. Apparently, they don't carry bands for the SWATCHES there, they only sell new SWATCHES. I am glad to know that they care about their customers. I would write a letter to both SWATCH and Jenss if I thought it would do any good, but it won't. I tried to look up SWATCH on-line and their web service was horrible. I thought I might be able to order a watch from their catalog. Again I was wrong. I cannot see their catalog through my browser because they have no link to it on their page (Although the page says that there is a link). I called SWATCH and they said that they would call me back, maybe they will actually do that.
I have also discovered the site for Scientific American. It is an interesting magazine with a lot of current technology articles and articles about areas of science that are usually not mentioned in mainstream media. The magazine is probably a magazine that people with Ph.D's read. I only understand a little bit of what I read in it, but I like trying to.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998, 1:51 P.M.
New Notes on GQ. I had thought that the magazine would be generally in good taste, and in some senses it is. In others though it has some signifigant statements that are made that I cannot support with this site. In other words, if you want to look at the magazine, feel free to do that. I will leave the magazine on my page, but please don't expect me to be responsible for the content. The same goes for the other magazines that I added last night (to the Girl Power page). My rating for RSAC should apply only to this page, and pages that I have composed. If RSAC determines that it has the right to censor my links to generally accepted world media sources, I will begin an active campaign against them (of course you can only complain to the people that listen to complaint.).
- Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998, 9:35 AM
More updates. I have added a Girl Power page for the girls that I have in my mailing list, so that they can find links to things that they might be interested in. I am sure MP3 audio compression and ICQ paging gets some of us dudes really excited. Those things are only good for so long though. I'll bet more people check out the Girl Power page, just to see what's on it, than check out any other page.
And dudes, check out the GQ page here. You will be rather interested to know that the british version of GQ is quite a bit more oriented toward our interests than the American version of it is. Trust me. You have nothing to lose by checking out their opening page. At least not with the way they have been organizing it right now. This dude on the page named Uncle Bob rocks.
I'm going to actually let my brain fry on the television for the rest of the night. I've been doing too much of this web stuff lately. But, the most remarkable thing about the web is that eventually we're going to be talking to 1,000's of people at a time, and we won't even think that it is strange.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998
Here's to chips and salsa! (And Barnes and Noble where the whole nighttime idea started out. Incedentally, I haven't even had a chance to begin working on the ideas that I've gotten at Barnes and Noble last night.) For the first time in months, I have had guests at my house! Mike and Tom and I watched Conspiracy Theory. A strange coincidence happened, I've continued to notice them, and they haven't been altogether undisturbing. It turns out that while we were flipping channels, after already having rented the movie, Mel Gibson was actually on the Jay Leno Show.(Jay Leno's site here stinks.)
I've been writing a ton of electronic mail lately. I thought that spam was hard work, but I have been having to compile and refine and compile and refine my electronic mail usage a great deal in order to get the mail into a manageable organized system. I now file everything that I receive and everything that I send, so that I will know exactly what I've said and who I've said it to, and also who has said things to me, and what they have said. In a way it sounds simple, but it is not. I have groupings of people and organizations now that I never would have imagined having had to create. I guess these are just lessons in basic communications that I am learning.
I dashed off some letters to my uncles and my brother and sister, and set up a family mailing list, and also sent a few letters to people on my friends list. I hope I haven't sent out enough to annoy anyone. Each group of mail that I have sent out up to this point should have described a seperate update.
And to the question about Mia Angelou that I asked on my poetry page, I received this response. I will leave it anonymous, if the owner wants credit for it, I will change this segment. Here's the response :
Maya Angelou is perhaps the most overrated poet of this century...I
think it has something to do with the fact that she is an average poet
that happens to be a black woman...I am convinced that her racial and
sexual status are the main reasons why President Clinton chose her to
recite a poem at his innauguration back in 1992.........her fame has
risen considerably since then due to this unwarranted national
exposure...
I don't know whether or not to agree or disagree yet. Do any of you have any specific positions either way? I am inclined to believe what I hear, unless I hear specific challenges to it. I am not certain that the above statement is actually a criticism either. If taken in perspective, I think it is more a statement about politics than race. I personally believe that anyone of color that manages to accomplish any form of recognition by the government generally deserves it and should be encouraged to lead his or her people in a forward and not a backward direction.
I am still working on getting a Mariah Carey cake for my birthday in April. I already have one volunteer to make it. My mom. She says that she'll enjoy doing some interesting things with the design. I can't wait to see what the end result is. Unfortunately, I only have time in my schedule to write about my interest in one untalented pop artist of Mariah Carey's nature. Sorry Fiona Apple fans, you'll have to wait until after my birthday (note: I generally do not make a habit of owning pop music. I advise anyone thinking about walking into a record store to take the time to read my half written music reviews page first.).
Now that I've been working at things all night, I think that it is time I get some sleep. I have some general everyday things to take care of today, like visiting my doctor, so I will be doing that, but other than that, the only plans I really have for today are to chill out and make sure that I get Conspiracy Theory back to the video store.
Keep Culture Jamming in 1998. That's the only way that any of this connectivity stuff gets done.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 13, 1998.
Okay, its only been a couple of hours, but I have the friends and family page done now. I wrote short descriptions of my friends and famiy members that have pages on the web, and gave you information about how they relate to me. I have been having difficulty with the ICQ server for some reason tonight that I cannot exactly explain. Hopefully it will be up and running tomorrow. I am thinking about adding the America Online messenger to my browser so that I can chat with a couple of my friends from high school who are using America Online now.
I guess it's time to get something to eat. I am feeling rather hungry and I've been putting the food off so that I could update this page. I hope that you enjoy reading what I have here. And don't forget, I guess we're planning for it already, Valentine's day is coming up. Somebody bought a bag of cinnamon hearts to share with us at the party that I was at tonight.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 12, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Here we go again. I was at the short pizza/coffee party thing that I mentioned below, and we played UNO for almost an hour. Unfortunately time constraints cut the game short for Darien and I who had to travel to Buffalo to pick up our friend. During the game I managed to get my friend Sean's internet information, and I can now link his site to the page. So, check the site out.
Eventually, when I get enough friend and family pages, like my brother's page, and my sister's page. I will have a friend and family link at the top of the page, I might work on it tonight. I do want to get a chance to see Contact though, so I may not, I haven't gotten a lot of sleep in the last couple of days and I am guessing that after the film I might be tired. Anyway.
I just found something interesting, I was mistaken about the fact that Darien did'nt already have a website. He does it is here. Check it out, it's small, but it's a start. I will give him some suggestions on how to expand it and work on it. I guess he's pretty good with the technical stuff. Now, finally, I'm going over to my friend's house, and nothing is going to stop me this time.
Wow, it seems like it's been days since I made the updates to the pages that I only made just yesterday. I am going to really miss being able to do this during the school year. I just finally added a poetry page, and updated the religion page (today was sunday, why not make a habit of it). The poetry page contains my work from 1995 and 1996 right now.
Eventually as I become more inspired I will add more to it.
I rented Contact to watch it again with my parents and they are downstairs making dinner at this very moment. We might get a chance to see the film tomorrow night. I hope so, because I love the theme, it even works in a little bit with the topic on my religion page this week, We Are Not Alone.
I had planned on spending some time with some friends watching the X-Files tonight and eating leftover pizza. Unfortunately, I will only be able to spend a couple of hours because a friend of mine who went to Pittsburgh Thursday called and asked me to pick him up at the bus station in Buffalo tonight. I hate the terminal at night, but I guess that is where I am going anyway. I am glad to have a friend going with me to the station. He goes by Darien Blackhawk on the web. He's got a cool WebTv account, I'm going to try to help him set up a web page through that, but I think that it will be difficult, but then, the mountain is only there so that you can try to climb it.
Wow, I actually missed a day there or something, or my calendar did, and I doubt it's that. Somehow I made all of the updates to the page yesterday seem as though they were from the 9th. Oh well. Anyway, I just sent out a Jodie Foster search for my friend Joe, maybe we'll get some good responses like we did from Larry Kay. Joe liked Jodie Foster in Contact and said that he'd like to meet her, hey, with the web working for you, you never know.
I've been spending a lot of time connecting with people using the ICQ paging system which I have failed to mention up until now, because I have been testing it. It turns out that under Windows 95 it is highly effective, but on my friend's Windows 3.1 computer it is not working so well. There is a problem where the program hangs up saying that it is behind a firewall when the computer is connected to a general ISP. Anyway, the paging system works like this, you get your account through ICQ (free for the time being) and they give you a number. You insert the number into your account and give it to your friends, who also get accounts. They use your number to search for you in the ICQ database. Once they add you to their page list with their account, ICQ will tell them whenever you are on-line and allow you to open messaging boxes and chat windows to talk to them. The chat windows are REAL TIME, unlike AOL (check out this Yale Student's page, it rocks) and other services, and much faster. I definitely recommend this service. And hey, if you use it, and send me an e-mail, you can get in touch with me when I'm working on this web page.
I have made three new additions to the page since yesterday, they are information links to my political views, my religious practices, and my philosophical meanderings. I recommend that you take a look at all of them. They will give you a little bit more of an idea of who I am. After all, would you want to take advice, or even read information written by, someone you don't even know? I know I wouldn't, which is why I am becoming increasingly inclined to only look at textually content rich internet pages. I am not particularly interested in looking at all of the pretty pictures anymore. I am seeking, I guess you would have to call it, my version, of the truth. As I discover more of it, I'll share it with you, or do my best to relate it to you, in a manner that doesn't skew your own vision. Think forwardly people of earth, your time is now.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 11, 1998.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
This is kind of insane, I don't even know Mike and I am adding him to my page. I just met him in V-Chat and he has a content rich site, like mine, and I am working to meet people that can really put a site together. Check this stuff out : Mike's 60's page. Well, I hope you like it. I hope I do to, because I've hardly read it. I plan to tonight though.
This is radical. The web, just keeps stretching.
Tonight I watched Contact with my friends Mike (REVOLT) and Tom, It was one of the best movies I have seen all year. Jodi Foster is hot, and the excentric gazillionaire in the film is a riot. I should have paid the seven bucks to see it at the theater. More to come on Contact in the future. Wanna go for a ride?
I was happy to get a couple of letters back today. One of them was from Larry Kay, who works for a company called Toonsmiths in California. He works on commercial computer software. I started talking to him because I did a search for an old college friend of mine named Larry Kay from Illinois Institute of Technology, he was a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brother. The Larry Kay from Toonsmiths is the person that sent me the information about the consortium group that links to Biota and Nerve Garden. I am pleased that he took the time to talk to me. He also sent me a copy of his Biography, although I haven't had the time to thoroughly digest it yet. I saw one of the software products that he was involved with when I was working at Computer City.
Another couple of electronic mails were responses to inquiries that I made about distributing my music as shareware in MP3 format. One was a lawyer from England named Chris Barlas. The others were from people at an internet site caled Nordic where they do deliver music over the internet for free in some capacities. I am not sure whether or not Nordic is a good idea yet. They say that they only place music on their site after auditioning it. I don't need to have them copying it on one hand, and saying on the other that it isn't worth distributing for free. I am going to bring up the Nordic idea to Chris Barlas and see what he thinks when I get time to write him another electronic mail, or who knows, maybe he'll see it posted here.
I also got a message from a friend in Buffalo named Michelle Perkins. She took me to see Chasing Amy back in September after we met at The Topic Cafe'. We have been talking a little bit about things via electronic mail since then, when we have the time to communicate. She is very busy and is working to pursue her Doctorate degree. It is my understanding that she has just come into a nice job where they gave her a great computer to work with. (I don't know what type, I am assuming it's apple because she likes Macs). She also told me that she's found a new boyfriend, which is a good thing to hear. It isn't often that people find the chances to make things work. Michelle has a web page, but I lost the URL in an e-mail a long time ago. I'll link it up here if I can find it.
I bought a new Oasis CD last week while I was out buying school supplies. It is incredible. I read in Wired magazine that Oasis recently tried to tell fans not to use information about them on Web Pages. I do not think that they are taking the best approach to things there, but I like their new album. I bought it because I was very impressed with their last album, and I really enjoy the video for Don't Go Away. I love the scene where it is raining people with umbrellas.
Even more additions are underway. I was motivated by watching my friend Mike (REVOLT) work on his fantasy football and hockey pages, to put some of my own input on sports onto the web. I've never been a huge sports fan, but I'm starting to pay attention to a couple of teams, and I've decided to place links to information about them on my page. So, if you want to know what the sports teams are that I like, just click on the Sports button on the top of the page.
I failed to mention last night that I found another astionishing thing on the Web while surfing. It is called Nerve Garden. I am certain that if you look it up through hotwired, or yahoo that you will find it. It is a VRML project where virtual plants are being grown on virtual islands. My guess as to what all the excitement is about is that you will be able to plant your own plant on the island to represent your web data (pages, links, etc.) I viewed the pre-constructed prototype islands that they had on display on the Biota Nerve Garden page using the built in Cosmo viewer in Netscape 4.04.
I have been doing some more exploring in the world of MP3 technology tonight. I started out looking for places that MP3 files were publicly available. I ended up finding a lot of links that looked like pirated software links. There didn't seem to be any specific servers that were being used for legitimate MP3 compressed files. I found this disappointing because I wanted to upload my files as quickly as possible, so that I wouldn't miss the advantage of knowing about MP3 before a large portion of the computing world.
I ended up doing some poking around on an MIT computer sysem where some MP3 files are allegedly stored. I did not find the actual files available publicly, but I did find some Information Ethics documents that led me to contacting a british lawyer via e-mail for his opinions on my idea for sending my music out on the web as shareware. I think he will probably respond to it. I know how to write a nice business letter when I put the time into it. I have seen a couple of addresses for people in Buffalo that work in the area of data copywriting and I plan to write to them now as well.
I didn't get much done tonight in the way of filling out my music, girlfriends, jobs, or restaraunts pages but I guess that just happens when you start getting involved in working on your favorite hobby. I hope you enjoy the additions to the page. Read on, there's more to come.
-Christopher Bradley January 9, 1998
Additions, Additions, Additions. I went a little bit over the top the last couple days, and started indexing specific places, people, things, and jobs. I have now added, as you can see from the bar above, links to information about my favorite places to eat, information about my former employers, and information about my former girlfriends (which still needs a lot of editing, because there is no real way to simplify the lives of people). The restaurants list needs a lot of work because I got distracted while making it by some new advances in technology. (Which I'll talk about in a second) I am still working on updating the music page. With any good fortune, this page will look very nice by the 20th of January, which is when I start school again.
Now, on to the new technology. If you have a 200 Mhz computer or better, and 16 megs of ram, you will definitely want to check out Microsoft's new VChat avatar software. It has just recently become available. The software lets you walk around in a doom type environment and talk to people, and gesture to people with your Avatar. An Avatar is a representation of you that you can either select from a batch of standard templates, or create yourself (with a lot of work.) To create one of yourself, you need 20 different gif files of yourself that are small enough in size to be quickly downloaded and viewed. I will have a Vchat link placed on this page when I have some time to collect the information for you, right now, I'm in a rush to get this page up and get out the door. I will have more stuff up late tonight or tomorrow.
-Chris Bradley January 8,1998
You may have noticed that the books page is alphabetized. I spent a couple of minutes doing that this morning so that I could make a nice looking printable copy of it as a referrence guide to give to a couple of my most trusted "advisors." I want them to analyze my analasis of the works, and tell me how I'm doing with this whole new idea of publishing information about my influences. I definitely feel like the whole process has been inspiring. I hope that this afternoon I will remember to do some of the reading I planned on. Check out the next thing, I think it's cool, you might hate it.
Okay, so I did a little bit of surfing that I probably shouldn't have done last night and I found something strange, but very neat. Follow this link to the end and you'll be able to find out about the artist that made it. I found this by clicking around some New York digital art sites through Yahoo New York, because I wanted to put this page up there. Don't forget, I'm an artist, at least in my own mind. Anyway, check this out, and let me know what you think.
Bionic Links
Coming soon, the story of Compact Disc sales as a street vendor in New York. Also, a group of short rave stories that may eventually make their way into my book, Wizz. I am not making Wizz available on the internet because it will be too quickly copied, but these stories will set the stage for the entire novel.
I'm still working on the romance stories and the music lists, and soon, I will be working on getting the MP3 files up on international music servers. There are only so many hours in a day though, and I think that its' just about time, for a funky little eggs and ham breakfast, how about you?
-Christopher Bradley January 7, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Check This out. I woke up this morning and it was still 1998. I was relieved to discover that I am still the same dude I was yesterday, with one minor exception. Today my web page is even cooler than it was yesterday. It is now rated by RSACi so that all of the people using those slightly challenged blocker software gear things or whatever, can see my site. We got a one here for language, which is pretty bad considering that we don't have anything here that's really offensive. At least not to most of us. So anyway, we're rated. And we're going to stay that way until somebody says we don't have to be, or that we owe them money or something. (Because I'm not paying anything for somebody's stupid sticker).
Now! On to business. I am currently working on a list of bands that I've created. Each band has a short review written by me. The targets and hyperlinks aren't in yet, so you can't flip around through them yet, or at least not entirely, but you can read about my musical tastes, and get involved with making your own lists. I wouldn't mind hearing about some of your own tastes in music. And don't forget about the News Article, the books, or the autobiography.
-Christopher Bradley January 6, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Welcome to 1998! I decided that I was going to make no single specific resolution this year. This year my resolution is to "Go FOR IT!" I hope that in the same spirit of things, that you'll "Go FOR IT!" and check out the new remodeled Buffalo News article that was written about me in 1993. The title of the article is "Make it an OJ with a twist of Amino." I just found a copy of it on the Hyperreal rave site and put it here for the purposes of permanantly storing it. Here's to each and every one of you, and Here's to the future.
Even Newer! I just finished writing the reviews of my favorite books of the past six or seven years, all you have to do is click here to look at the list. It's a LONG one, so be prepared to use your eyes for some serious reading. I suggest that you get every book on my list, so that you and I can have proper conversations about life in general. Get cool read a book!
I'm also working to revise my links list, so that it doesn't take as long to load. I've been looking for a frames compatible pagemaker. If you know of any free drag and drop software other than the Frontpage 98 trial, please send me an e-mail. We're about to go global with this operation, so watch out! And don't forget about the Digital Noise Community Below, click on the Blue Button and if you have your own page, you can join us in making the world a more connected place.
New!!! I have composed a little Autobiography For You To Read. All you have to do is click here and you'll be able to check it out. Don't forget how you use your back button if you want to see what the rest of this site looks like. I've been finding the REVOLT site in the Digital Noise Community increasingly interesting. Especially the links that branch out from it. Anyway, if you check out the Autobiography, you'll get a chance to learn a little bit about the real Chris Bradley.
Incedentally, there is an interesting thing going on in the Chris Bradley world community. A Chris Bradley going to school in Indiana tracked me down over the web, and we're working to connect all of the Chris Bradleys worldwide, sort of. He has a few of them on his page, which you can see by going to Digital Noise Community. In other words, my Autobiography, is the one that you see here. I am the Chris Bradley in Niagara Falls, NY. Most likely, the first one from Niagara Falls to be have a Web Page.
Welcome Earthling. We have been awaiting your arrival for quite some time. If you are interested in books by William Gibson, or if you like electronic music, or cyberculture, this is the site for you. We have a few very cool links for you to check out. In the future we will also have a literature page and a poetry page. We would like to be able to put our electronic music on this page for you to sample but we do not have the space available for .wav format recordings. You can send us electronic mail if you would like to find out how to purchase a copy of our 1997 album for $10. It is called
Digital Noise Control - Zebra.
William Gibson's Neuromancer is a novel about a rogue artificial intelligence and it's attempt to escape human control. If you liked this book you would also probably like William Gibson's Count Zero,
Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light and Idoru. If you are a serious cult fan, check out the First Church of Wintermute on our links page.
If you like up to the minute news, you will definitely like Pointcast. Check out pointcast on our links page, then download their software. The software is only 3 megabytes and works well with
Windows 95. Pointcast allows you to pick the news that you like from the internet and have it automatically updated to your desktop and to your screensaver.
Check out our rave sites too. I am an old school rave fanatic. I am in the process of writing a book about my rave experiences. The book is titled Wizz. Techno music will always be a part of modern culture. My favorite band right now is The Future Sound of London. Their latest album is called
Dead Cities.
Autobiography Favorie Books
noisecontrol@wzrd.com
jANUARY 1998
ELECTRONIC CULTURE PAGE
[Autobiography] [Books] [Community] [Digital Noise Control] [Electronic Mail]
[Employment] [Food & Drink] [Friends & Family] [Girl Power] [Links] [Music] [News Article] [Philosophy] [Poetry] [Politics] [Religion] [Romance] [Schools] [Sports]
The following piece of information was delivered to me via the democratic news in e-mail today, check it out. Not everyone will be interested in this, but I think that it supports my claim (below) that the President deserves credit for the good things that he has been doing.
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PRESIDENT CLINTON NOMINATED FOR 1998 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
President Clinton was nominated yesterday for the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for
his efforts to foster democracy and human rights in nations such as the
former Yugoslavia. Clinton has "done a great job" in foreign policy, said
Vidar Kleppe, deputy leader of Norway's Progress Party and a member of the
Norwegian parliament who voted for the nomination. "Throughout his
presidency he has been a guarantor and friend of peace," said members of the
Progress Party. [Wall Street Journal, 1/28/98]
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The car radio is on its way to the shop for installation, and I will soon be able to enjoy listening to music and books on cassette as I drive back and forth and all over the place. I think that driving is one of the largest things that we take for granted too. When I say I went here, or I went there, I often include to use the term "drove." I think that this is because it is more difficult to indicate the timeframe with variances of the word drive because there are only two of them.
In addition, I think that places are beginning to become less relative than the meanings of the things that we do at those places. At least the meanings are becoming more important for me. For some people (especially car stereo thieves), there is no meaning to anything. (As I am learning).
- Christopher J. Bradley January 30, 1998, 5:44 PM
I honestly didn't think that I was going to have anything to say today. Or any time before Sunday in terms of updating the page. I think now that I have numbed myself to the incidents of the past couple of days, that I can begin to write about them in a format that everyone can appreciate. As some of you might already know, I have ammended the religion section, and added the Groundhog Day segment below since Monday.
I thought that I was safe to go about my business of visiting with the people that I consider to be my friends on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I have learned that we are not safe anywhere. My automobile was burglarized while I was visiting some of them. Luckily, I hadn't left my planner in the car, or anything of a value over $100.00.
I found myself at Stereo Advantage yesterday. I had a chance to replace my stereo with a new one. With any luck it will be installed by tomorrow. The new stereo is considerably cheaper than it could be. This way if it is stolen, I will not have to be as concerned with replacing it.
I am beginning to realize though, that even if you have a $60 stereo, if you use it for a year, you turn the price of the stereo into something minute, like 5 cents a day. When I think about that and the fact that I had my last stereo for 3 years and that I really bought it on someone else's money (see the Autobiography section of this page), it really does not concern me all that much that I lost it.
In the future, I plan to be more careful of the placement of my car with respect to lighting, and I plan to replace my inside light inside the car (this may have worked as a mild deterrent to the theft).
Unfortunately, one of the things that I missed on television Tuesday night, was the State of The Union address (I fell asleep because of the effects of a long Monday). Tonight is the first night that I have actually felt comfortable sitting down in front of the television and watching it for any period of time. I saw president Clinton on Channel 50 (C-Span) talking about issues related to the US Military in foreign countries. I think that his speech was well written, and that he commands a great deal of respect. I also think that he will work to promote peace, using whatever forces are necessary. I think that one of the things he does very well is balance the strengths of both the left and the right, and that he deserves credit for the outstanding work that he has done.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 30, 1998, 2:10 AM
HAPPY
GROUNDHOG DAY
Here's a day that we should really look into up here in the Great White North. GroundHog Day. It isn't even February yet, and the excitement is already building. Will the furious hog see his shadow, or won't he? Will we be doomed to six more weeks of this horrible warm winter, or won't we? How can we know but to trust the seer of all seers, the ultimate prognostigator of pomposity, Punxatawnee Phil? It is time for you to believe in the Groundhog. You know you want to, so just go for it, click, and you will be amazed, for there is not a single soul that will be out of the loop on Monday February 2nd, except you, if you don't.
(Philosophical question: Who created the groundhog?
Philosophical answer: Some of us think that we know.)
http://www.groundhog.org
-Christopher J. Bradley January 28,1998, 10:07 PM
HAPPY
GROUNDHOG DAY
Here we go, the Sunday updates are done, for the most part. I don't think that I will have time to make any other changes to the information that appears here tonight, with the exception of what I am writing for you now. And some of that, for some of you, will be exciting. I am very excited.
Last night I had an opportunity to go to a bookstore called Borders out near the Walden Galleria mall. I went with two friends, and miraculously, a third friend showed up and found us in the Cafe' area of the bookstore. The bookstore was very large, and very busy. The only parking space that we could find was in the far back of the parking lot.
When we first got there, I took the approach that I usually take when we go to Barnes and Noble or other bookstores. I took a look at the magazine rack to see if I could find any particularly interesting magazines that might have interesting internet addresses in them.
Rather than looking at the magazines that I had already looked at this month, I decided to take a look at a new section to a magazine rack that I had not seen before at Barnes and Noble or many of the other bookstores that I have been to. There was an Art and Film magazine rack.
I scanned several different magazines and discovered one in particular that contained an article on William Gibson. The magazine was a Tokyo/New York art magazine called Big. The magazine contained a short interview with Gibson and a lot of what I would call Restriction art. There were photographs of a woman with tape on her face, and a man tied to a chair with a yellow cord - wearing a business suit. The art seemed peculiar. It was at a level that I am not used to. I didn't buy the magazine, but the Gibson interview reminded me of something that I have been looking for for almost two months.
I decided to talk to the customer service people at the store to find out whether or not they had the discontinued tape recorded version of Neuromancer by William Gibson that was released in 1994 as a ten year commemorative. I also found a copy of Idoru on cassette. I couldn't walk out of the store without buying both of them. The total cost was about forty dollars, but I plan to get my money's worth out of them. I have already made copies of both to keep in my car so that I can listen to them on the way to school.
After leaving the bookstore, we went to a pizza place called Sal's, a local pizza shop in Buffalo. It is located across from University at Buffalo's south campus (Main St.). In our opinion, Sal's pizza is one of the best New York style pizza shops in the entire city of Buffalo. We haven't found anywhere better yet. They had cool rap music playing on their stereo, and we got a chance to talk to the people that work there for a long time. We have been going to Sal's on and off since it first opened at its original location on Allen St. in 1994.
I guess that the Superbowl is officially over for this year. I am going to leave the link to the SportingNews superbowl information up on the sports page. There is really no need to change it unless the page goes dead or something. As far as a lot of hardcore sports fans are concerned, it's time to gear up for the next Super Bowl already.
I am thinking about making some structural changes to my friends and family page. There aren't that many web pages there to begin with. What I am thinking of doing is placing my main links to my Family in one file, and my links to my friends under the categories that the information on their sites represents. For example, Mikus' page, which is a politically driven page, will appear under politics rather than friends. And he will be in good company there, with his party being the only party that I support (in ideal) other than the Democratic Party. And Sean's page will be moved to a section that I will open about computers. While I am working on the changes, the Friends and Family Links will be inactive from my site.
The world is getting cooler and cooler everyday. There are certain aspects of life that I am beginning to experience that are indescribable. Things seem to be opening up. For the first time in months I will have access to a car on a regular schedule because my parents are in the process of aquiring another vehicle, a minivan. It is a used minivan, but it is a great used minivan. It has a lot of space inside, and you can hold conversations that don't feel choked off by small surroundings. I enjoyed riding in it today.
One of the secondary benefits of the minivan is that I will be able to meet with a couple of instructors that I have had to remove from my scheduling in the past week because I had to pick my mother up from her job during their regular office hours.
As I already said above, I was really excited to find the William Gibson tapes that I found. I plan to listen to the new copies all week. I am hoping to add a lot of new words into my vocabulary by repeatedly hearing them. I think that there will be long term benefits to this course of action. And I think that it will be more fun than listening to the news.
Which brings me to my final interest piece for the weekend. I think that Monica Llewinski is a National Hero. We should set her up in the Bahamas with a couple of Chippendales dudes for a few weeks and let her drink cocunut milk until she has had her fill. There is no better way to lift the country up in the eyes of the world, than to have a Heroine like Monica Llewinwski tell her "true" story of her private life, and her association with the President. It adds to the net accumulation of national Machismo. And right about now, that's one of the things that we definitely need. How else are we going to be able to justify our eventual enforcement of UN policy in IRAQ?
We will meet again, and I'm willing to lay odds, that it will be in this lifetime. Oh, and by the way, a couple of just other general odd things that we noticed were going to be "cool" this year yesterday were Speedy J, crop circles, and mutilated cattle. So get with the program, make some crop circles, and start buying hamburgers, and do a little dance, because we all know that Ally McBeale is what America is all about. (Smile, I'm only like this when I'm happy.)
-Christopher J. Bradley January 26, 1998, 1:08 AM
It is has been a few days and I have begun to wonder where to start. I should be working on this page everyday, once I get accustomed to my schedule. There are some new people on my list of friends and family, and they will start receiving update mail on the page, so I hope that the word spreads that I am doing this. As each of you builds web pages, you will start to realize what an excellent tool they are for communication.
Right now keeping up with classes and instructors looks pretty simple, but during the semester, I expect it to get rather complex. I have a lot of reading left to do and it is only the first week of class. Next week will start to get even busier I suspect.
In one of my Lit. classes, I got to look at a timeline of events occuring in America from 1500 - 1870. There was some pretty serious stuff there, from the conquests of Cortez to the Signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to French and Indian War to the War of 1812. I think that I am going to enjoy the class quite a bit. It isn't often that you have the opportunity to get involved in learning about the events that made the United States what it is today.
In my Economics class we just talked about some of the introductory terms that are going to be used regularly throughout the semester. I have made a list of some of them with definitions that I plan to try to get on-line by Sunday. My Economics instructor is into the Internet and helped me get a deal on The Wall Street Journal. I will enjoy receiving that paper regularly for the technology news. I hope it starts showing up soon.
I have a couple of other classes that I am really looking forward to getting involved in that will not be happening until Monday. The first class in each of them doesn't happen until Monday because we observed Martin Luther King Day. It would be nice if school didn't start until after Martin Luther King Day every year.
I plan to do my regular updates on Sunday. The page is starting to get very big and I have to call Wizard Communications about some file management issues (how to create sub-directories in my main web directory to hold my files). I plan to add a couple of new pieces of poetry tomorrow, along with my religious updates and my Black Operations update.
I also got an electronic mail yesterday inviting me to get involved in a Web Ring that is for non-commercial fiction. If you aren't familliar with what a Web Ring is, it is a ring of web sites that are connected circularly. There is no first and last site in the ring. You click on a button to go to the next or last site, and you are automatically transferred there. There are all kinds of Web Rings of all kinds of different types. I think that it is very nice to have received this invitation, and I hope to receive word about how to make the connections to the ring soon.
I hope that you are all still enjoying 1998. I am, even though I am a little bit stressed, and have been managing to piss some people off with some of my viewpoints. I hope that you all continue to appreciate the world that you live in, and share your ideas with your friends and associates. Maybe if we work at it, we can generate and discover some information age wisdom.
Please excuse me while I listen to some 1995 New Order, and spend the afternoon with my friends from the city. I promise, I'll be back to make more updates, and I'll continue to keep all of your interests in mind. After all, we are people, and we do have interests, and they are important.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 24, 1998, 3:14 PM
Today has been exciting. I went to my first day of classes, and met three of my instructors. They were all helpful.
I started reading my book for Literature class. The book is titled Growing Up Native American, and one of my instructors actually has a piece of work published in it. The piece of the book that I read today was called "The Warriors." It was about the struggle to preserve history, and the struggle to find beauty that Indians have faced throughout their lives.
This particular story brought a number of my feelings about the subject to light. I wanted to find out more about the Warrior's lives than the author presented.
There were some specific universally recognized images that were constructed in the work that I would like to ask about, for the sake of understanding how to create them for use in some of my own writing.
For all of you who are making your first visit to this page, don't forget to look at the segments on ICQ paging, V-Chat, Microsoft Netmeeting, or other items that might be of general interest to computer users that I have discussed over the past month. There is a lot of stuff on this page. It would be nice if I could Jam it all on top of the page. Read on, and enjoy.
There may be some stuff that not everyone enjoys here. I am working to improve the content of this page. Please do not stop reading because the stuff that interests you is not at the top. Click around, that's what web pages are for. I also don't expect you to read everything here in one sitting. Feel free to bookmark this page, so that you can come back at your leisure.
Valentine's Day is coming up. I am going to see if I can find some links to traditional information about Valentine's Day, since as far as everyone knows, myself included, I do not have a date yet. I have been fairly Anti-Valentine the past couple of years, although I can't exactly recall why, or if there is even a reason to put to my Anti-Valentinism. I used to view it as a strange consumer holiday I guess that seemed rather shallow. I am starting to come to realize now though that it is a holiday based on the life of a Saint and that I should at least observe that it is happening, and try to find out a little more about the history. I have been thinking of possibly creating a page that lists holidays and information about them, so that I can remember for myself when to celebrate them.
Some of the other things I did tonight involved calling a friend in Tuscon, talking to a friend who just got back from Mexico, and eating dinner with the parents. All in all, I think I have had a pretty good day.
I have had some thoughts that keep popping up in my head about certain morality issues that I have recently had to consider. Hopefully, those issues will work themselves out, and my mind will start to rest a little bit easier again.
To be honest, with some of the issues that have been raised in the past week, I would have never expected that I would have to be concerned. Perhaps I have just been overly gullible in the past.
We can look forward to a future where your author starts making specific decisions though. Hopefully, it will be a crisp clean future, that we can all walk around in happily.
Wow, with all that said, I guess I better start to get to work on the real stuff (homework).
-Christopher J. Bradley Januaary 21, 1998, 2:33 AM
Today is my first day of school. I hope that I enjoy it. Today's class is a literature class and it is with an instructor that I trust and expect to function well with. I have been telling my friends and aquaintances to take his classes because he is one of my best instructors yet. Maybe some day he will get a web page. Who knows, maybe I'll be the one to help him get it functioning. One of the other cool things about this class is that we have to work on a book that I have already read. The book is on my books list, it is called Medicine River by Thomas King.
I just made up some limited edition business cards with this web-address on them. If you are a business card collector, just ask, I'll be glad to give you one. Unfortunately a lot of people missed out on my Donald Duck business cards that I made up back when I was working for Softbank. I haven't made any in a while, and it will be fun to give these cards out.
Tonight I went for donuts and coffee. One of my friends was really cool for stopping at Mighty Taco. I had a coupon for a Super Mighty Burrito, extra hot. The Super Mighty Burrito is one of the least healthy foods on the planet, and it hurts the next day, but it tastes great. People wonder why we eat Buffalo Wings here in the Buffalo area. It's for the same reason. The Spice. And let me tell you, The Super Mighty Burrito has more spice than the Spice girls will ever have.
They had a cool deal at the place that we went for coffee. (We are going to keep it secret because of the deal.) $.25 cents a cup for a large. The deal was so great that I bought two, that should easily explain why I am up writing messages for you now, and not sleeping.
We discussed all sorts of things, from our old drinking days, to the Aliens that reside in the deep South. We also discussed creating videogame versions of ourselves with NHL98 and NBA96. I think that I might do a little bit of that tonight.
I went to see Hard Rain on Sunday night with Rich. The film was very good. I recommend it if you like to see a lot of water, and a lot of gunfighting. Forget about the fact that Christian Slater has recently gotten in trouble. I think that people were conspiring against him. He is still a great actor.
The film had some off handed comments that could have been done away with, but the comments worked to depict the characters that they presented. I think that the ending of the movie was a little bit strange, and that the plot wasn't very strong, but it was biblical in the sense that the most evil characters were done away with in the flood.
I have been rapidly been coming to the conclusion that one of my most trusted current friends has a great deal of wisdom to share when it comes to matters of conserving mental stability. He finds ways to make me laugh about things that I would never have found amusing otherwise. Especially things that can be outright disturbing.
There are darker elements to the world that we live in, and sometimes the best way to keep them from getting into your consciousness and lingering there, is to dismiss them with humor. A quote from a wise man that I read on the now defunct Topic Cafe's quote board was written in this way: For the thinking man, life is a great comedy. But for a feeling man, life is truly a tragedy.
Ever since reading the quote, I have been asking myself the questions, am I a thinking man? Or am I a feeling man? And how can I become more like the thinking man? My new trusted friend has been helping me to be more like a thinking man, and I can think of no better means to thank him for it, than to publicly complete this annecdote.
It is unfortunate that Martin Luther King Day had to be marked with this current incident of violence in Baton Rouge. I have linked to a current CNN update of the events surrounding the issue. Hopefully they will keep this link current until the end of the month. It is my opinion that the perpetrator of the crime should be found and brought to justice. There is no excuse for shooting children. Children are our future and should be protected at all costs.
I said a lot more today than I thought that I would. I hope that I can continue to express my thoughts in a compact form for you during the semester. I will be working very hard to keep my grades under control. I must score at least a B overall to maintain and improve my GPA. I hope to obtain A's in my courses.
More updates as they come, The Noise is Out. Control your little piece of it.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 20, 1998, 3:50 AM
Don't Forget, Today Is:
Martin Luther King Day.
I think that it was particularly charitable of the Seattle Times to discontinue their Martin Luther King Jr. internet exhibit on Martin Luther King Day. A good number of the Martin Luther King Links below no longer work. I have found a collection of pictures that leads to some other links that might be as effective. The collection of pictures is from LIFE magazine. Please also note that the link to Stanford's Martin Luther King Jr. library is still working.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 19, 1998, 6:43 AM
Well, this is my first official Weekly update. It didn't get completed on-schedule, I ended up spending most of Sunday sleeping or in Church. I also got a new textbook on Philosophy that I will be using to develop some of my ideas about how it works. I have not updated the Philosophy page yet. The following four entries are the actual additions that I have made to my page during my Sunday (Monday Morning) update this week.
Black Operations has been updated. The extensive poem from 1996 has been ammended with three new pieces that you have not yet seen, unless you are Mikus. I recommend viewing these works with objective eyes. I was very disturbed by some of the things that I saw working around me in society when I wrote these pieces. There is little else to say about them.
One thing to keep in mind, is that poetry is an art form that should stand on its own. Examine exactly what is on the page, and read into it no more, and no less than is actually there. There is no deeper meaning, than you can actually read. Unless you ascribe it.
Happy Martin Luther King Day. Today is Monday the 19th of January and many of us are granted time of to celebrate the life's work of the honorable and noble Martin Luther King Jr. I found another resource available from the students of Stanford University. This resource is a listing of documents produced about Martin Luther King, during and after his life. From my understanding, it is updated regularly. Don't forget to take a look at the Seattle Times version of Martin Luther King's story.
I have made a small update to my religion page, and a slight formatting change. The religion page is now left justified so that it is easier to read. The small update is this week's message from my particular faith, quickly described in title as: "You've got Charisma" by the originator. The message was too complex for me to translate into absolutely simplistic terms, so I made of it what I could. I hope that you will have the time to look at it. I have also added a couple of new denominations of faith to the bottom of the page.
This week is the week before Super Bowl XXXII. I have made some Superbowl web link updates to the Sports page. Hopefully you will have the opportunity to look at the updates before the game. I hope that Denver wins this one, but the past record of the AFC in the Superbowl does not convincingly suggest that they will be able to pull it off.
That's it for the main update. I have some phone calls to make about the directory structure of my web directory because the page is starting to get too large to easily manage. I would like to be able to create sub-directories on my UNIX account so that I can file my HTML pages in a hierarchical structure. Otherwise, I will have to start maintaining a site map, and that will take a lot of time. I hope that you have enjoyed looking at the first Weekend Update of my web page. Keep yourself reading, read anything, because there's always more where this came from.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 19, 1998, 6:22 AM
Feature: A Computer Sales Nightmare. Ever work in sales? Ever want to? Here's a mistake you'll not want to make. This is a one shot only look at the possible complications resulting from a botched retail computer sale. Check it out before the month is over, or you'll have to dig into this page as a back issue to find it.
The entire month of January 1998 is going to be saved in one large file, that will only be available on my site until the beginning of March. There is only so much that you can fit on a page before it starts taking more than two minutes to load. I am enjoying collecting the information that I have been on this page. Everyone has the ability to make a page like this using Netscape 4.04's page composer. Don't miss out on the opportunity to get ahold of it. From what I have heard, they are planning to make a new product called Javagator that will make 4.04 obsolete. Don't miss out on the fun, get Communicator 4.04 before it is too late.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 17, 1998, 2:46 PM
Top story: Martin Luther King Day is celebrated this Monday. I would like to thank our parents for reminding us that this holiday was taking place. The actual date of Martin Luther King's birthday was Thursday, January 15th, however, from what I have been informed about the holiday, it is traditionally celebrated on the Monday following his birthday. Martin Luther King was a strong leader in the fight for freedom. This link to the Seattle Times version of his life's story is the most impressive link that I have found to commemorate the occasion. I think a question that we should all be asking ourselves now, is as Americans, do we have a dream?
I met an Australian in the ICQ pager program today. I would like to share his page with you. He is just starting on the internet. He would like to put his own pictures on the internet. I have given him the address of Mikus' Geocities page (R.E.V.O.L.T.) so that he can find out how to obtain more Webspace. Here he is, take a look.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 17, 1998, 3:32 AM
I just made another addition to the page. It is a list and set of descriptions of the schools that I have been attending, or have attended in the past. I am going to augment the list with more facts as time goes on. I want to be sure of the facts before I place them on the page though. Each description has a link to the school's web site. These links are very useful to get contact information for instructors. Not all instructors are on-line, but their phone numbers change so frequently that these pages are a pretty good resource for current listings.
Just some journal Data I want to save for January : I can honestly say that making the schools update to the page was the greatest single accomplishment that I have been involved with all day. I have spent quite a lot of time today doing counterproductive things that I would rather not recount in print. Fortunately I still have roughly the same amount of money in my wallet that I did yesterday. I am looking to eliminate counterproductivities from my day to day work toward positive achievement. I may have to make some serious changes in how I go about communicating this to people, so that they will understand that I am extemely serious about my goals.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 16th, 1998, 9:35 P.M.
This internet applications software is absolutely beyond description. I just finished working wirh Joe, a friend of mine, to learn how to set up Microsoft Netmeeting. Netmeeting allows you to share applications that are running on your computer and the other computer you are connected to (via the internet). We were working with a Whiteboard (A new graphical medium that lets you paste graphics and stuff into it in real time), and also Word 95 with Word 97. I was using Word 95 and he was using Word 97 and they were still compatible. Somehow the session got messed up because I ended up taking control of his mouse, but I think that the whole idea of working with the Whiteboard was incredible. Next time we will know more about it because we will both read some of the documentation. We were also using ICQ to chat when the computer got too bogged down with instructions to the Whiteboard. We were also talking with Tom in ICQ. Unfortunately something we did kicked him off his system. We got him back in touch though. Like I said, I probably haven't described this very well, the entire idea of what we were doing is so new, that it is hard to understand unless you see it. They were talking about doing this in 1991 at IIT and I didn't believe that they would ever get it done. But they have, and things are going to change. Man, are they going to change.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 16th, 1998, 4:45 AM
I have just added a group of poems that I wrote in 1996 to my poetry page. The work is called Black Operations. It is about some of my experiences and understandings of things during a time when I was extremely confused about the nature of people's actions with respect to politics. I am glad to have the opportunity to go back and analyze some of my thinking now. I hope that Black Operations will not seem too complex. If you read it, please don't misunderstand any of it's content. It is not intended to describe any of my current feelings about the issues or people the I have represented. It is a collection of thoughts that I had at one time.
Tori Amos is a really incredible artist. I am listening to her right now, while I am wondering why I spent the time this afternoon driving to the Summit Park Mall to try to buy a watchband for a SWATCH at Jenss. Apparently, they don't carry bands for the SWATCHES there, they only sell new SWATCHES. I am glad to know that they care about their customers. I would write a letter to both SWATCH and Jenss if I thought it would do any good, but it won't. I tried to look up SWATCH on-line and their web service was horrible. I thought I might be able to order a watch from their catalog. Again I was wrong. I cannot see their catalog through my browser because they have no link to it on their page (Although the page says that there is a link). I called SWATCH and they said that they would call me back, maybe they will actually do that.
I have also discovered the site for Scientific American. It is an interesting magazine with a lot of current technology articles and articles about areas of science that are usually not mentioned in mainstream media. The magazine is probably a magazine that people with Ph.D's read. I only understand a little bit of what I read in it, but I like trying to.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998, 1:51 P.M.
New Notes on GQ. I had thought that the magazine would be generally in good taste, and in some senses it is. In others though it has some signifigant statements that are made that I cannot support with this site. In other words, if you want to look at the magazine, feel free to do that. I will leave the magazine on my page, but please don't expect me to be responsible for the content. The same goes for the other magazines that I added last night (to the Girl Power page). My rating for RSAC should apply only to this page, and pages that I have composed. If RSAC determines that it has the right to censor my links to generally accepted world media sources, I will begin an active campaign against them (of course you can only complain to the people that listen to complaint.).
- Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998, 9:35 AM
More updates. I have added a Girl Power page for the girls that I have in my mailing list, so that they can find links to things that they might be interested in. I am sure MP3 audio compression and ICQ paging gets some of us dudes really excited. Those things are only good for so long though. I'll bet more people check out the Girl Power page, just to see what's on it, than check out any other page.
And dudes, check out the GQ page here. You will be rather interested to know that the british version of GQ is quite a bit more oriented toward our interests than the American version of it is. Trust me. You have nothing to lose by checking out their opening page. At least not with the way they have been organizing it right now. This dude on the page named Uncle Bob rocks.
I'm going to actually let my brain fry on the television for the rest of the night. I've been doing too much of this web stuff lately. But, the most remarkable thing about the web is that eventually we're going to be talking to 1,000's of people at a time, and we won't even think that it is strange.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 14, 1998
Here's to chips and salsa! (And Barnes and Noble where the whole nighttime idea started out. Incedentally, I haven't even had a chance to begin working on the ideas that I've gotten at Barnes and Noble last night.) For the first time in months, I have had guests at my house! Mike and Tom and I watched Conspiracy Theory. A strange coincidence happened, I've continued to notice them, and they haven't been altogether undisturbing. It turns out that while we were flipping channels, after already having rented the movie, Mel Gibson was actually on the Jay Leno Show.(Jay Leno's site here stinks.)
I've been writing a ton of electronic mail lately. I thought that spam was hard work, but I have been having to compile and refine and compile and refine my electronic mail usage a great deal in order to get the mail into a manageable organized system. I now file everything that I receive and everything that I send, so that I will know exactly what I've said and who I've said it to, and also who has said things to me, and what they have said. In a way it sounds simple, but it is not. I have groupings of people and organizations now that I never would have imagined having had to create. I guess these are just lessons in basic communications that I am learning.
I dashed off some letters to my uncles and my brother and sister, and set up a family mailing list, and also sent a few letters to people on my friends list. I hope I haven't sent out enough to annoy anyone. Each group of mail that I have sent out up to this point should have described a seperate update.
And to the question about Mia Angelou that I asked on my poetry page, I received this response. I will leave it anonymous, if the owner wants credit for it, I will change this segment. Here's the response :
Maya Angelou is perhaps the most overrated poet of this century...I
think it has something to do with the fact that she is an average poet
that happens to be a black woman...I am convinced that her racial and
sexual status are the main reasons why President Clinton chose her to
recite a poem at his innauguration back in 1992.........her fame has
risen considerably since then due to this unwarranted national
exposure...
I don't know whether or not to agree or disagree yet. Do any of you have any specific positions either way? I am inclined to believe what I hear, unless I hear specific challenges to it. I am not certain that the above statement is actually a criticism either. If taken in perspective, I think it is more a statement about politics than race. I personally believe that anyone of color that manages to accomplish any form of recognition by the government generally deserves it and should be encouraged to lead his or her people in a forward and not a backward direction.
I am still working on getting a Mariah Carey cake for my birthday in April. I already have one volunteer to make it. My mom. She says that she'll enjoy doing some interesting things with the design. I can't wait to see what the end result is. Unfortunately, I only have time in my schedule to write about my interest in one untalented pop artist of Mariah Carey's nature. Sorry Fiona Apple fans, you'll have to wait until after my birthday (note: I generally do not make a habit of owning pop music. I advise anyone thinking about walking into a record store to take the time to read my half written music reviews page first.).
Now that I've been working at things all night, I think that it is time I get some sleep. I have some general everyday things to take care of today, like visiting my doctor, so I will be doing that, but other than that, the only plans I really have for today are to chill out and make sure that I get Conspiracy Theory back to the video store.
Keep Culture Jamming in 1998. That's the only way that any of this connectivity stuff gets done.
- Christopher J. Bradley January 13, 1998.
Okay, its only been a couple of hours, but I have the friends and family page done now. I wrote short descriptions of my friends and famiy members that have pages on the web, and gave you information about how they relate to me. I have been having difficulty with the ICQ server for some reason tonight that I cannot exactly explain. Hopefully it will be up and running tomorrow. I am thinking about adding the America Online messenger to my browser so that I can chat with a couple of my friends from high school who are using America Online now.
I guess it's time to get something to eat. I am feeling rather hungry and I've been putting the food off so that I could update this page. I hope that you enjoy reading what I have here. And don't forget, I guess we're planning for it already, Valentine's day is coming up. Somebody bought a bag of cinnamon hearts to share with us at the party that I was at tonight.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 12, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Here we go again. I was at the short pizza/coffee party thing that I mentioned below, and we played UNO for almost an hour. Unfortunately time constraints cut the game short for Darien and I who had to travel to Buffalo to pick up our friend. During the game I managed to get my friend Sean's internet information, and I can now link his site to the page. So, check the site out.
Eventually, when I get enough friend and family pages, like my brother's page, and my sister's page. I will have a friend and family link at the top of the page, I might work on it tonight. I do want to get a chance to see Contact though, so I may not, I haven't gotten a lot of sleep in the last couple of days and I am guessing that after the film I might be tired. Anyway.
I just found something interesting, I was mistaken about the fact that Darien did'nt already have a website. He does it is here. Check it out, it's small, but it's a start. I will give him some suggestions on how to expand it and work on it. I guess he's pretty good with the technical stuff. Now, finally, I'm going over to my friend's house, and nothing is going to stop me this time.
Wow, it seems like it's been days since I made the updates to the pages that I only made just yesterday. I am going to really miss being able to do this during the school year. I just finally added a poetry page, and updated the religion page (today was sunday, why not make a habit of it). The poetry page contains my work from 1995 and 1996 right now.
Eventually as I become more inspired I will add more to it.
I rented Contact to watch it again with my parents and they are downstairs making dinner at this very moment. We might get a chance to see the film tomorrow night. I hope so, because I love the theme, it even works in a little bit with the topic on my religion page this week, We Are Not Alone.
I had planned on spending some time with some friends watching the X-Files tonight and eating leftover pizza. Unfortunately, I will only be able to spend a couple of hours because a friend of mine who went to Pittsburgh Thursday called and asked me to pick him up at the bus station in Buffalo tonight. I hate the terminal at night, but I guess that is where I am going anyway. I am glad to have a friend going with me to the station. He goes by Darien Blackhawk on the web. He's got a cool WebTv account, I'm going to try to help him set up a web page through that, but I think that it will be difficult, but then, the mountain is only there so that you can try to climb it.
Wow, I actually missed a day there or something, or my calendar did, and I doubt it's that. Somehow I made all of the updates to the page yesterday seem as though they were from the 9th. Oh well. Anyway, I just sent out a Jodie Foster search for my friend Joe, maybe we'll get some good responses like we did from Larry Kay. Joe liked Jodie Foster in Contact and said that he'd like to meet her, hey, with the web working for you, you never know.
I've been spending a lot of time connecting with people using the ICQ paging system which I have failed to mention up until now, because I have been testing it. It turns out that under Windows 95 it is highly effective, but on my friend's Windows 3.1 computer it is not working so well. There is a problem where the program hangs up saying that it is behind a firewall when the computer is connected to a general ISP. Anyway, the paging system works like this, you get your account through ICQ (free for the time being) and they give you a number. You insert the number into your account and give it to your friends, who also get accounts. They use your number to search for you in the ICQ database. Once they add you to their page list with their account, ICQ will tell them whenever you are on-line and allow you to open messaging boxes and chat windows to talk to them. The chat windows are REAL TIME, unlike AOL (check out this Yale Student's page, it rocks) and other services, and much faster. I definitely recommend this service. And hey, if you use it, and send me an e-mail, you can get in touch with me when I'm working on this web page.
I have made three new additions to the page since yesterday, they are information links to my political views, my religious practices, and my philosophical meanderings. I recommend that you take a look at all of them. They will give you a little bit more of an idea of who I am. After all, would you want to take advice, or even read information written by, someone you don't even know? I know I wouldn't, which is why I am becoming increasingly inclined to only look at textually content rich internet pages. I am not particularly interested in looking at all of the pretty pictures anymore. I am seeking, I guess you would have to call it, my version, of the truth. As I discover more of it, I'll share it with you, or do my best to relate it to you, in a manner that doesn't skew your own vision. Think forwardly people of earth, your time is now.
-Christopher J. Bradley January 11, 1998.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
This is kind of insane, I don't even know Mike and I am adding him to my page. I just met him in V-Chat and he has a content rich site, like mine, and I am working to meet people that can really put a site together. Check this stuff out : Mike's 60's page. Well, I hope you like it. I hope I do to, because I've hardly read it. I plan to tonight though.
This is radical. The web, just keeps stretching.
Tonight I watched Contact with my friends Mike (REVOLT) and Tom, It was one of the best movies I have seen all year. Jodi Foster is hot, and the excentric gazillionaire in the film is a riot. I should have paid the seven bucks to see it at the theater. More to come on Contact in the future. Wanna go for a ride?
I was happy to get a couple of letters back today. One of them was from Larry Kay, who works for a company called Toonsmiths in California. He works on commercial computer software. I started talking to him because I did a search for an old college friend of mine named Larry Kay from Illinois Institute of Technology, he was a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brother. The Larry Kay from Toonsmiths is the person that sent me the information about the consortium group that links to Biota and Nerve Garden. I am pleased that he took the time to talk to me. He also sent me a copy of his Biography, although I haven't had the time to thoroughly digest it yet. I saw one of the software products that he was involved with when I was working at Computer City.
Another couple of electronic mails were responses to inquiries that I made about distributing my music as shareware in MP3 format. One was a lawyer from England named Chris Barlas. The others were from people at an internet site caled Nordic where they do deliver music over the internet for free in some capacities. I am not sure whether or not Nordic is a good idea yet. They say that they only place music on their site after auditioning it. I don't need to have them copying it on one hand, and saying on the other that it isn't worth distributing for free. I am going to bring up the Nordic idea to Chris Barlas and see what he thinks when I get time to write him another electronic mail, or who knows, maybe he'll see it posted here.
I also got a message from a friend in Buffalo named Michelle Perkins. She took me to see Chasing Amy back in September after we met at The Topic Cafe'. We have been talking a little bit about things via electronic mail since then, when we have the time to communicate. She is very busy and is working to pursue her Doctorate degree. It is my understanding that she has just come into a nice job where they gave her a great computer to work with. (I don't know what type, I am assuming it's apple because she likes Macs). She also told me that she's found a new boyfriend, which is a good thing to hear. It isn't often that people find the chances to make things work. Michelle has a web page, but I lost the URL in an e-mail a long time ago. I'll link it up here if I can find it.
I bought a new Oasis CD last week while I was out buying school supplies. It is incredible. I read in Wired magazine that Oasis recently tried to tell fans not to use information about them on Web Pages. I do not think that they are taking the best approach to things there, but I like their new album. I bought it because I was very impressed with their last album, and I really enjoy the video for Don't Go Away. I love the scene where it is raining people with umbrellas.
Even more additions are underway. I was motivated by watching my friend Mike (REVOLT) work on his fantasy football and hockey pages, to put some of my own input on sports onto the web. I've never been a huge sports fan, but I'm starting to pay attention to a couple of teams, and I've decided to place links to information about them on my page. So, if you want to know what the sports teams are that I like, just click on the Sports button on the top of the page.
I failed to mention last night that I found another astionishing thing on the Web while surfing. It is called Nerve Garden. I am certain that if you look it up through hotwired, or yahoo that you will find it. It is a VRML project where virtual plants are being grown on virtual islands. My guess as to what all the excitement is about is that you will be able to plant your own plant on the island to represent your web data (pages, links, etc.) I viewed the pre-constructed prototype islands that they had on display on the Biota Nerve Garden page using the built in Cosmo viewer in Netscape 4.04.
I have been doing some more exploring in the world of MP3 technology tonight. I started out looking for places that MP3 files were publicly available. I ended up finding a lot of links that looked like pirated software links. There didn't seem to be any specific servers that were being used for legitimate MP3 compressed files. I found this disappointing because I wanted to upload my files as quickly as possible, so that I wouldn't miss the advantage of knowing about MP3 before a large portion of the computing world.
I ended up doing some poking around on an MIT computer sysem where some MP3 files are allegedly stored. I did not find the actual files available publicly, but I did find some Information Ethics documents that led me to contacting a british lawyer via e-mail for his opinions on my idea for sending my music out on the web as shareware. I think he will probably respond to it. I know how to write a nice business letter when I put the time into it. I have seen a couple of addresses for people in Buffalo that work in the area of data copywriting and I plan to write to them now as well.
I didn't get much done tonight in the way of filling out my music, girlfriends, jobs, or restaraunts pages but I guess that just happens when you start getting involved in working on your favorite hobby. I hope you enjoy the additions to the page. Read on, there's more to come.
-Christopher Bradley January 9, 1998
Additions, Additions, Additions. I went a little bit over the top the last couple days, and started indexing specific places, people, things, and jobs. I have now added, as you can see from the bar above, links to information about my favorite places to eat, information about my former employers, and information about my former girlfriends (which still needs a lot of editing, because there is no real way to simplify the lives of people). The restaurants list needs a lot of work because I got distracted while making it by some new advances in technology. (Which I'll talk about in a second) I am still working on updating the music page. With any good fortune, this page will look very nice by the 20th of January, which is when I start school again.
Now, on to the new technology. If you have a 200 Mhz computer or better, and 16 megs of ram, you will definitely want to check out Microsoft's new VChat avatar software. It has just recently become available. The software lets you walk around in a doom type environment and talk to people, and gesture to people with your Avatar. An Avatar is a representation of you that you can either select from a batch of standard templates, or create yourself (with a lot of work.) To create one of yourself, you need 20 different gif files of yourself that are small enough in size to be quickly downloaded and viewed. I will have a Vchat link placed on this page when I have some time to collect the information for you, right now, I'm in a rush to get this page up and get out the door. I will have more stuff up late tonight or tomorrow.
-Chris Bradley January 8,1998
You may have noticed that the books page is alphabetized. I spent a couple of minutes doing that this morning so that I could make a nice looking printable copy of it as a referrence guide to give to a couple of my most trusted "advisors." I want them to analyze my analasis of the works, and tell me how I'm doing with this whole new idea of publishing information about my influences. I definitely feel like the whole process has been inspiring. I hope that this afternoon I will remember to do some of the reading I planned on. Check out the next thing, I think it's cool, you might hate it.
Okay, so I did a little bit of surfing that I probably shouldn't have done last night and I found something strange, but very neat. Follow this link to the end and you'll be able to find out about the artist that made it. I found this by clicking around some New York digital art sites through Yahoo New York, because I wanted to put this page up there. Don't forget, I'm an artist, at least in my own mind. Anyway, check this out, and let me know what you think.
Bionic Links
Coming soon, the story of Compact Disc sales as a street vendor in New York. Also, a group of short rave stories that may eventually make their way into my book, Wizz. I am not making Wizz available on the internet because it will be too quickly copied, but these stories will set the stage for the entire novel.
I'm still working on the romance stories and the music lists, and soon, I will be working on getting the MP3 files up on international music servers. There are only so many hours in a day though, and I think that its' just about time, for a funky little eggs and ham breakfast, how about you?
-Christopher Bradley January 7, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Check This out. I woke up this morning and it was still 1998. I was relieved to discover that I am still the same dude I was yesterday, with one minor exception. Today my web page is even cooler than it was yesterday. It is now rated by RSACi so that all of the people using those slightly challenged blocker software gear things or whatever, can see my site. We got a one here for language, which is pretty bad considering that we don't have anything here that's really offensive. At least not to most of us. So anyway, we're rated. And we're going to stay that way until somebody says we don't have to be, or that we owe them money or something. (Because I'm not paying anything for somebody's stupid sticker).
Now! On to business. I am currently working on a list of bands that I've created. Each band has a short review written by me. The targets and hyperlinks aren't in yet, so you can't flip around through them yet, or at least not entirely, but you can read about my musical tastes, and get involved with making your own lists. I wouldn't mind hearing about some of your own tastes in music. And don't forget about the News Article, the books, or the autobiography.
-Christopher Bradley January 6, 1998
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Welcome to 1998! I decided that I was going to make no single specific resolution this year. This year my resolution is to "Go FOR IT!" I hope that in the same spirit of things, that you'll "Go FOR IT!" and check out the new remodeled Buffalo News article that was written about me in 1993. The title of the article is "Make it an OJ with a twist of Amino." I just found a copy of it on the Hyperreal rave site and put it here for the purposes of permanantly storing it. Here's to each and every one of you, and Here's to the future.
Even Newer! I just finished writing the reviews of my favorite books of the past six or seven years, all you have to do is click here to look at the list. It's a LONG one, so be prepared to use your eyes for some serious reading. I suggest that you get every book on my list, so that you and I can have proper conversations about life in general. Get cool read a book!
I'm also working to revise my links list, so that it doesn't take as long to load. I've been looking for a frames compatible pagemaker. If you know of any free drag and drop software other than the Frontpage 98 trial, please send me an e-mail. We're about to go global with this operation, so watch out! And don't forget about the Digital Noise Community Below, click on the Blue Button and if you have your own page, you can join us in making the world a more connected place.
New!!! I have composed a little Autobiography For You To Read. All you have to do is click here and you'll be able to check it out. Don't forget how you use your back button if you want to see what the rest of this site looks like. I've been finding the REVOLT site in the Digital Noise Community increasingly interesting. Especially the links that branch out from it. Anyway, if you check out the Autobiography, you'll get a chance to learn a little bit about the real Chris Bradley.
Incedentally, there is an interesting thing going on in the Chris Bradley world community. A Chris Bradley going to school in Indiana tracked me down over the web, and we're working to connect all of the Chris Bradleys worldwide, sort of. He has a few of them on his page, which you can see by going to Digital Noise Community. In other words, my Autobiography, is the one that you see here. I am the Chris Bradley in Niagara Falls, NY. Most likely, the first one from Niagara Falls to be have a Web Page.
Welcome Earthling. We have been awaiting your arrival for quite some time. If you are interested in books by William Gibson, or if you like electronic music, or cyberculture, this is the site for you. We have a few very cool links for you to check out. In the future we will also have a literature page and a poetry page. We would like to be able to put our electronic music on this page for you to sample but we do not have the space available for .wav format recordings. You can send us electronic mail if you would like to find out how to purchase a copy of our 1997 album for $10. It is called
Digital Noise Control - Zebra.
William Gibson's Neuromancer is a novel about a rogue artificial intelligence and it's attempt to escape human control. If you liked this book you would also probably like William Gibson's Count Zero,
Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light and Idoru. If you are a serious cult fan, check out the First Church of Wintermute on our links page.
If you like up to the minute news, you will definitely like Pointcast. Check out pointcast on our links page, then download their software. The software is only 3 megabytes and works well with
Windows 95. Pointcast allows you to pick the news that you like from the internet and have it automatically updated to your desktop and to your screensaver.
Check out our rave sites too. I am an old school rave fanatic. I am in the process of writing a book about my rave experiences. The book is titled Wizz. Techno music will always be a part of modern culture. My favorite band right now is The Future Sound of London. Their latest album is called
Dead Cities.
Autobiography Favorie Books
noisecontrol@wzrd.com
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