Boo hoo. I must return to work after 8 months on sabbatical.

I'll be teaching two digital/media classes starting next week. Learning from YouTube, again, but not so strangely. This time we'll have actual books to read! (Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Silver, ed.; Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins; Serious Leisure, Robert Stebbins; Mining the Home Movie, Ishizuka, ed.; and Common Culture, Paul Willis), and pre-determined themes to follow (using my six tours, discussed in length here). I'm building on the contributions of last year's class, using my work and my students' as original research. Artificially constrained within its pages, we learned last year what YouTube can't do and won't let its users do, the question this time around is whether we can delve more deeply into what it is and how it relates to other media practices and histories (see books above). I'll be sure to blog on the proceedings here, and do follow along as we build a semester's content on our new class YouTube page.

I've also created (with talented designer, Michael Wilson) an on-line version (or preliminary "publication") of my Media Praxis class/site: a course that studies the history and ethics of political media through the films and theoretical writings of committed mediamakers. The site and class are based upon the idea of what I've named "integrations": that media theory, practice and politics are holistically linked and can be informative across time, place, and practice. The students will be building the site's archives, but you all are invited to do so as well. It's currently a shell awaiting participation...

My students will also be building a blog for Claremont's Teen Green group (their ethical media praxis), a youth group with a variety of green projects that is sponsored by Uncommon Good. I'll provide the link to that blog as soon as we make it.

Next week's post will be from the land of the gainfully employed and usefully (I hope) laboring. Alas.

The heart of this program, though, is not the class time. It is the praxis. "Praxis," in a Latin American liberation theology context, means putting theory into action and actually working for justice, rather than theorizing. For the program, it means spending two days a week learning from different communities in the area.
The group is split up into nine different sites, and as part of orientation, we've been visiting each one as a large group before we split up and go to our own sites with our partners on Monday.
The people are amazing.

I'll be praxis-ing in Canton El Cedro, which is about 25km outside of San Salvador, up a dirt road. The community itself is very spread out, all over this mountain side. I'm at the community center, which is sponsored by the St. Vincent dePaul Society and run by the sweetest little nun I've ever seen in my life. They have a few rooms there, including two classrooms, a sewing workshop, a meeting room, a computer lab, a multi-purpose room, and a small kitchen outside of the main building. They also have a brand new garden initiative, a view of the ocean, mud everywhere, and a small playground.
Mostly, though, they have children. Everywhere.
These kids (all young, mostly under age 11) come from all over to the center to get lunch. If they have class in the afternoon, they come before school, otherwise, they come straight from school. For a lot of these kids, this will be their biggest meal, maybe their only meal of the day. The youngest kids, 4 and 5, have their preschool at the center as well. I'm so excited to be spending 15 weeks with these children. They're joyful and loud and beautiful. I'm going to lose my heart to them, I know it. I think I already have.

My favorite moment of the semester thus far happened at a different praxis site, San Ramon. They, too, have tons of children, and when we got there the 5-year-olds were having recess. The smallest boy on the playground, Francisco, walked up to me and put his hands in the air for me to pick him up. He couldn't have weighed more than 20 pounds, really. And as soon as I picked him up, he just melted into my shoulder and stayed there. I got a couple of kisses on the cheek, and he looked at me as if I were an angel. He just looked so lovestruck, with this big dopey grin slapped across his face and his eyelashes all aflutter. So happy just to be held. I wish I could have held him for longer, but soon recess was over and I had to put him down and send him on to his class.
Later at that same site, we went up the mountain to Los Nubes, a small collection of houses up the mountain where people live without running water, health care, or many visitors. We stopped briefly at the house of a woman named Mercedes. She's 79, missing most of her teeth, and due to her age, she doesn't really get out at all any more. She lives alone, with a battery-powered radio for company, and she's horribly lonely. As we were leaving, she asked us why we had to leave so soon, and to not forget her. I don't think I could forget her if I tried.

I know this semester will probably be full of moments like this, and I don't know how I'll be able to handle it. So much hunger, for food and love and justice...and all I have to give is my time and my hands. I can't fix it. I can only walk with these people for awhile, in solidarity, and learn their stories.
I pray I'm up to the challenge.

Führt man eine DOM-Manipulation mit einem Element aus, dass mit dem $()-Operator selektiert wurde (z.B. $('div').show()), erhält man im Internet Explorer 7 einen Runtime-Fehler, der mit null ist Null oder kein Objekt beschrieben wird. Offenbar kann das Element mit dem $()-Operator nicht geladen oder gefunden werden. Eine tiefergehende Beschreibung habe ich bisher (bei einer zugegebenermaßen nicht besonders intensiven Recherche) nicht gefunden.

Das Problem kann einfach gelöst werden, indem man statt des $()-Operators den jQuery()-Operator verwendet, der die gleiche Funktionalität besitzt. Man schreibt also jQuery('div').show().

Binding to a collection of objects really means binding to an ICollectionView implementation that wraps the underlying collection.  One property exposed by ICollectionView is Filter, of type Predicate<object>.  When a filter is applied, all controls bound to the view will display only the items that passed through the filter, or were "filtered in."  PropertyFilterGroupView is a very fancy and elaborate way to assign the Filter property of an ICollectionView.

Below is a screenshot of the demo application when it first loads up.  The control in the Expander up top is the PropertyFilterGroupView control.  The ListBox and ListView seen beneath it are bound to the ICollectionView that the PropertyFilterGroupView affects.  When the app first loads up all items in both lists are visible, as seen below:

After applying a few filters, the two lists display a subset of the original set of items.  The items still seen in the lists are the ones that satisfy all of the filters applied.  The modified UI looks like this:

In this demo app, the list of items shown in the UI is a collection of Person objects.  The Person class exposes some properties, as seen below:

Now that you know what shape the data objects have, let's see how to configure the PropertyFilterGroupView control so that it allows the user to filter a list of Person objects.  The following XAML is from the Window1.xaml file in the demo project:

Each property on the Person object that the user should be able to filter on has a PropertyFilter object added to the filter group.  PropertyFilter is a class I made which represents a filter that determines whether a certain property on an object satisfies a criterion.  The user can select the filter's criterion via a ComboBox in the PropertyFilterViewGroup control.

When you create a PropertyFilter, you must set the PropertyName and PropertyType properties to valid values.  If you do not set them, or set them to invalid values, an exception will be thrown when that filter is used.  The PropertyName property allows you to indicate which property to filter on, and PropertyType must be set to the data type of that property.  If you want the property's name to be more user-friendly, set the DisplayName property to a more readable name.

Look at the last PropertyFilter object again, which filters on the MaritalStatusID property.  That filter has two additional properties set on it: PropertyConverter and DisplayType.  The former is set to the IValueConverter used by the ListView to translate an integer to a value from the MaritalStatus enum.  The ListView uses that converter in this column:

The PropertyFilter that filters the MaritalStatusID property needs access to that value converter so that it, too, can transform the integer value into the corresponding enum value.  Without that in place, the user would not be able to filter on the text in the Marital Status column, but only the underlying numeric identifiers.

The DisplayType property is set on that PropertyFilter so that it can intelligently decide what the available filtering criteria are for that property, such as ‘Starts With' and ‘Is Less Than'.  The list of filtering criteria for, say, a numeric type is not the same as for text, which is not the same for Booleans.  To ensure that the filtering criteria makes sense for a property whose value is passed through a value converter, you must indicate what type the output value should be treated as for filtering purposes.  I chose String as the DisplayType for the MaritalStatusID filter, because enum values are easy to compare via their textual representations.

The PropertyFilterGroupView control also has its CollectionView property set.  It is bound to the inherited DataContext. To ensure that this property is able to pick up a reference to a CollectionView, I created a CollectionViewSource as the Window's DataContext.  That XAML is below:

As I mentioned before, this project is a work-in-progress.  There are some big pieces of the puzzle missing.  For example, I do not yet support filtering on properties of type DateTime.  However, with that said, I encourage you to try this component out and see what you think.  I'm open for suggestions...

Download the source code here: PropertyFiltering Source Code .  Be sure to change the file extension from .DOC to .ZIP and then decompress the file.

For example, suppose I want to animate the Height property of a Rectangle element to 200.  I could create the following XAML to accomplish that task:

When that Rectangle is loaded into the UI, it would grow in height from 10 to 200 logical pixels over the course of two seconds.  Since the DoubleAnimation applied to the Height property is using the default FillBehavior, which continues to apply the value 200 to Height after the animation finishes running, setting the element's Height in code would have no effect.  What I would need to do is remove that animation from the property, so that the value resolution mechanism built into the DP system would use my locally set value.

The trick to removing an animation's value from a DP is to begin a "null animation" against that property.  This is quite simple to do, as it only requires one method call:

After running those two lines of code, the Rectangle would immediately become 100 logical pixels tall.  UIElement and ContentElement both define the BeginAnimation method, so all elements in WPF have this ability built in.

I've been here writing for a year, critically, about the paltry offerings on display on YouTube. I've been trying to name and theorize my dissatisfaction, coming as I did from a commitment to community-based media and a belief in its capacities for world and self-changing. All along, I've been not only critical of YouTube's serious inabilities to deliver what I believe in, but self-critical. I've wondered: am I snob (above the offerings of real people), a gad-fly (buzzing around the giddy claims of the techno-euphorics), a bore (unwilling to enjoy the fun of it all). However, I believe that I gained some insight about my position from the very tensions exhibited between my high-end YouTube work (which I presented) and that of the low-bandwidth work of media activists who presented in Ghana.

As I watched (or listened to, or about) Modilbo Coulibaly from Cameroon, present on the community-based media projects of farmers in remote African villages, or Norbert Salty speak on battery operated radio programs, in their language, about environment, health, school, and culture for the Makushi in Guyana, my first thought was that my findings about YouTube (a set of programs, on high-end computers, through broadband, all unavailable to the people served by the projects mentioned above) were both elitist and irrelevant. The very fact of speaking, beyond their remote village, to each other and the world, through technology was, without question, a revolution that I could not ignore. And yet, as I thought it through some more, attempting to get beyond my embarrassment over my crass assumption that everyone at the conference would have seen YouTube, yet alone been able to use it with their communities, I became more firm in my convictions.

Media justice movements have always struggled for visibility. When it arrived via YouTube (for many, and yet really just for some), it became clear that this condition, in itself, although better than invisibility or voicelessness, can be neither the term, nor the actual end-goal for emancipatory media. Media justice, media empowerment, media community are a result of PROCESSES, not an effect of technology, nor an end-product contained in a piece of media. This is to say, that the radical and emancipatory nature of the projects I've mentioned above, and countless others like them around the world, occur in their making and in what is done with them.

Visibility is a neutral condition.

For visibility to have meaning, impact, or power (beyond the indisputable pleasures of self-recognition), it needs to be connected to specific social change goals and to a real community, it needs to do more than provide information or images.

In her talk on the videos that flooded YouTube during the "Safron Rebellion" in Burma (several of these were the most-viewed for days), Melissa Brough, while certain that the visibility of their protest was enhanced due to YouTube popularity, cautioned that this also resulted in extreme censorship (closing down the internet in the country), greater endangerment for vulnerable groups (violent crackdowns against protesters seen in the videos), a loss of control of the videos (where they went, in what context) as they did what everyone wants, and went viral, and a resulting, corporate-driven viewing of this visibility as reduced to spectacle, which itself raises my largest concern.

Once visible: how are you seen, what do you say, to whom, why, and with what results? To make visibility work you have to organize, educate, interact. You have to link that image to ideas, people, and actions.

Kofi Anyidoho, a renowned Ghanaian poet, gave the conference's invocation. He more succinctly explains the causality I attempt to explain above. "Mother: They have caught our voice and given it over to people of the night. Mother: There are stories waiting for voices. Mother: There are visions waiting for cloudless skies."

Meine nächste Bewerbung ist auch schon raus. Sie ging an die Staatliche Kunsthalle. Die suchen eine Fachkraft für Marketing mit Kunstinteresse, Engagement, Teamfähigkeit und sehr gute kommunikative Fähigkeiten. Die perfekte Stelle für mich oder vielleicht sollte ich lieber sagen, ich bin die ideale Besetzung für diese Stelle. Ich bin nämlich engagiert, arbeite gerne und gut in Teams, Kommunikation ist eine meiner Stärken und Kunst wollte ich sogar mal studieren.

Das ist also mein Plan B und wenn das nicht hinhaut, dann kommt Plan C zum Einsatz...

Mein neues Objektiv ist ein

SAL-1680Z DT 16-80 mm F3,5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss® Vario-Sonnar T* Zoom-Objektiv

ein schöner toller langer Name.

Als Übersetzungshilfe für Nichtfotografierer: Es ist ein Standardzoom für den Brennweitenbereich 16-80 für digitale Speigelreflexkameras mit einem kleinen Sensor, d.h. der Brennweitenbereich enspricht dem Kleinbildäquivalent von 24mm-120mm. Die Lichtstärke des Obejktivs liegt bei Blende 3,5 bis 4,5. Es ist ein Vario-Sonnar Objektiv (ist eine Bauweise aus den Anfängen des letzten Jahrhunderts) die Linsen sind ausgestattet mit einer T* Vergütung (ist toll!)

Jetzt alles klar?

Der Listenpreis liegt bei €800.-, im Netz ist es ein wenig billiger zu finden.

Als alter Minoltaner stört mich das "Sony" im Namen natürlich ein wenig, aber Minolta macht ja nichts mehr in Sachen Objektiven, da ist es schön, dass Sony das alte A-Bajonett weiterführt. Das Carl Zeiss im Namen gefällt mir dagegen recht gut, der Name bürgt an sich für Qualität. Das T* ist auch schön...

Nun aber zum Objektiv selber. Geliefert wird das CZ in einer Pappschachtel mit Gegenlichtblende, beiden Objektivdeckeln und einem schmucken Täschchen. Auf einem beiliegenden Kärtchen werde ich noch darüber informiert, dass ein Herr H. Hirano das Objektiv mit der Seriennummer xxx geprüft und für gut befunden hat.

Das erste Anbringen an die Kamera ist normal, das minoltatypische Klacken ist geblieben. Erster optischer Check: Sieht gut aus. das ein wenig retro angehauchte Design sieht edel aus, das blaue Zeiss-Zeichen macht sich auch hervorragend.

Ein Dreh am Zoomring, der Objetivtubus fährt langsam aus dem Körper ....hssss.... da gibts hübscheres. Naja... zum Posen muss das Ding also bei Brennweite 16mm benutzt werden :-)

Auch ein wenig ungewohnt: Der kleine Gnubbel, der anzeigt, wie man das Objektiv ansetzt ist nicht mehr rot wie früher, sondern sony-orange ; aber vielleicht hilft ja Nagellack :-)

Haptisch ist mein Gefühl auch eher zwiegespalten. Es ist halt Plastik, kein Metall, da verspricht der Name Zeiss mehr, als es hält -  da wünscht man sich ein wenig mehr an Wertigkeit.Versuchsweise wackel ich mal am ausgezogenen Tubus. Ja... da ist ein wenig Spiel, aber nach allem was man so im Netz darüber liest, soll das wohl so sein.

An sich soll man mit so einem Objetiv ja auch Fotos machen - also mach ich doch mal eins. Sucher ans Auge, Auslöser andrücken, der Autofokus springt an... zack... scharf. Nicht schlecht, Für eine Dynax D7 ist die AF Geschwindigkeit echt schnell. Kein Vergleich z.B. mit meinem KoMi 17-35, eher ähnlich meiner 50mm Festbrennweite.

Ein schneller sporadischer Fokussiertest erbringt auch keine gravierenden Back- oider Frontfokusprobleme, also gehts los auf die erste Photosession.

SCHÄRFE

Die ersten schnellen Bilder zeigen, das Objektiv ist knackenscharf. Wirklich der Hammer.

Dieses Bild ist bei 80mm bei Blende f9,5 gemacht worden. Ohne Stativ, Abstand zur Blume beträgt ca. 50cm, Belichtungszeit 1/30. Zum Glück wehte gerade mal kaum Wind.

Dazu geb ich jetzt mal zwei kleine Ausschnitte aus dem Bild. Die sind 100% Crops, also nicht verkleinert oder vergrößert. Das eine ist ziemlich aus der Mitte des Bildes, das andere ganz unten rechts am Bildrand.

Alle Bilder, die ich heute abend gemacht habe, egal ob Offenblende oder nicht, zeichnen sich durch diese Schärfe aus und Detailreichtum aus.

Hier nochmal zwei Crops bei Offenblende, die sind an sich sogar noch besser, weil ich da bei einer 1/250 abdrücken konnte. Eine 1/30 bei 80mm kann trotz Antishake zu lang sein, wenn da auch noch ein wenig Wind ist. Bei der Offenblende zeigt sich natrugemäß am Rand eine deutliche Verringerung der Bildqualität, das kann aber auch daran liegen, dass die Fasern da nicht mehr in der Schärfenebene lagen.

Fazit: Die Schärfe des Objektivs ist klasse!

Knipsen, Immerdrauf

Die folgenden Bilder sollen einfach mal demonstrieren, was für ein Spektrum an Einsatzmöglichkeiten das Objektiv bietet. Jetzt kommen keine tollen Bilder, nur das, was mir in einer Viertelstunde vor die Linse kam, um mal jeden Brennweitenbereich mal durchzutesten.

• 45mm, f16, 1/90
• 70mm f9,5 1/200
• 80mm f13 1/125
• 16mm f16 1/30
• Blumen fotografier ich sonst nie, aber zur Demo... 80mm f13, 1/15

Den Alltagstauglichkeitstest hat das Objektiv meines Erachtens bestanden. In Verbindung mit meinem 70-210er brauch ich nicht mehr an Obejktiven, um einen großen Brenweitenbereich abzudecken und auch so, als einziges "immer-drauf" ist da fast alles dabei! Durch die Naheinstellgrenze von 35cm kann man auch mal näher an ein Objekt ran.

Einziges Manko ist da die Lichtstärke, die um die Blende 4 liegt. Da man das Objektiv aber fast durchgängig auch mit Offenblende nutzen kann, relativiert sich das ein wenig,  Zusammen mit den Antishake der Dynax ist das durchaus praktikabel. Wenn man wirklich in extreme Lichtsituationen kommt, muss dann halt doch mal die 50mm oder die 28mm Festbrennweite ran.

Bokeh, Unschärfe

Neben der Schärfe ist die Unschärfe eines Objektivs ein weiteres wichtiges Kriterium. Hier mal zwei Bilder, die ein wie ich finde nettes Bokeh zeigen. Einmal als "hinten"-unscharf und einmal als "vorne" unscharf.

Mir gefällts!

Nachtrag: Hier noch einige Bilder, die das Bokeh bei verschiedenen Blenden zeigt.

• f16
  
• f11
• f8
• f5,6

• f4

Mit dem zweiten Teil des Praxistests geht es morgen weiter...

Who are you trying to attract?, and
Are you reformed?

Good questions, I guess.

First, Worship style...Gospel-centered.

If by worship we are talking about the time when our local assembly comes together to worship God, here's what our worship 'style' is.  We worship God through Christ by the Spirit in the reading of the Scriptures that testify of Christ, preaching the Gospel from the Scriptures, hearing the Gospel in the Scriptures, singing the Gospel in accordance with the Scriptures, showing the Gospel as commanded in the Scriptures, and fellowshipping in the Gospel around the Scriptures.  If we're talking about our music style...whatever is Biblical and easy to be sung by the WHOLE congregation.  Ancient, Old, Modern, New...so far in the first month we have sung them all...without music for the time being, hopefully with music in the future.

Second, Focus Group...the lost in our communities.

The conventional wisdom in Church-planting today seems to be identify a particular sub-section of culture and limit the growth of the Church those 'four and no more'.  I know that limiting the attenders is not the purpose, but it does end up as the natural result.  Imagine a Church tailored to meet the needs of one subset of Americans...let's say golfers.  All the illustrations in the sermon relate tothe 'golfing' lifestyle (is there a golfing lifestyle?), all the music sounds like the music being played in the clubhouse, and the Pastor wears Izod brand knickers to preach in every Sunday.  Who are you going to attract?  Golfers.  Who are you not going to attract?  Me.  Because I don't feel welcome in your Church.  I have never golfed, I have worn Izod before, it was a gift, and I don't speak the language.  Now take look at another Church.  The worship is tailored to God.  Suddenly I have something in common with everyone who attends there.  We're all not God.  But we all need Him.  This is where I can hang my hat.  I have no doubt that we won't attract all of Loudon County, but we have a bigger pool to draw from than the Golfer Church does.

Finally, Are you reformed?...No.

I hope I never become so comfortable with myself as to say that I'm reformed.  I hope I am always reforming.  For many being reforemd centers around five doctrines and I hold those doctrines near and dear to my heart as any regualr reader of this blog knows.  But those five doctrines do not a reformation make.  They are a good start, but they are not an end in themselves.  Orthdoxy leads to doxology which affects our orthopraxy.  In English that means that right doctrine leads us to worship God in the right way.  There are many practices in Southern Baptist Churches that stand in need of reformation.  Many churches neglect the public reading of Scripture.  Many sing songs that are simply not Biblical.  Many pull professions out of their youth under high pressure, just like the Muslim in the video from the last post.  Many do not preach thier text.  Many do not practice Church Discipline.  I could go on, but you get the point.  But the biggest point in this is that I do not believe even myself to be completely perfect, therefore as I study God's Word I must be reforming myself and my practices by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Any questions?

Wer kennt das nicht ?
Du sitzt bei unerträglicher Hitze in einem  Öffentlichen Verkehrsmittel (mal abgesehn davon das dich einige Achseln anlachen und mit ihrem geruch betören) bist gestresst von der arbeit und willst einfach nur eine Dusche und ein Aspirin. Da steigen"nette" Menschen (meist in der Sippe) mit ihren maximal aufgedrehten Handys ein,  meist techno-, chart- oder Ausländische Musik. Wenn man sich schon durch seine Musik definieren muss dann kann man das auch dezenter machen.
Wie es scheint müssen die hochgeschätzem Politiker nicht mit den öffentlichen Verkehrsmittel fahren sonst hätten wir unter umständen ein "Handy-musik-verbot"
Da eure Musik sowieso auf Charts und Trends beruht ist eure Musik sowieso überal zu hören also verschont die armen Menschen.

--Thomas Merton

"To be a Buddhist
You must not be a Buddhist"

--Buddha

When we search endlessly for something, a label often we never find. As you say, the "work" is there
and carries on being there regardless.

Labels are Labels.... it is too easy to follow vain pride and proclaim I am this, and thus I am not that.
.....

"Religion is club, hence the beatings
Spirituality is a path, hence the journey"

--Sis. Artemisias

What is Sister Artemisias saying?

It is too easy to fit a round peg in a round hole. Some people approach their spiritual/religious journey that way. They run out, buy books, nice hats with fluffy bits on and a picture of a pink moose. Once the books are read, the nice fluffy hat can be worn; we can devote decades to saying mantra to the pink moose....

What have we achieved?

We have achieved a nice devotion to a path, a religion, a mantra, a pink moose.

...

The alternative is to be dynamic. To change...to BE...
To literally follow a journey, to GROW, to develop..to become
sure we can have a devotion to a path or a pink moose mantra along the way
but we need to not join clubs....we need to be on a journey. So once you have painted a wall with a brush you can learn to use a roller. it is too easy to get stuck saying magic words to pink moose and thinking that's where its at....

...

So dont be afraid to feel you arent part of a club...
as in my opinion, that is a good thing...

I identify with the Holy Grail personally, as I grew up in the shadow of Glastonbury, England...
However... as some say, I think LOVE is the only true universal religion....
Of course discerning what love IS...is another story....

"I gained nothing from supreme enlightenment
It is for that very reason it is called supreme enlightenment."

--Buddha

]]> http://grilledsteeze.wordpress.com/?p=207 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:57:42 +0000 grilledsteeze http://grilledsteeze.wordpress.com/?p=207 So I've been TRYING to stay up on Seattle, and I'm telling you they have one of the best underground scenes anywhere. Hands down. So when my man Taybot shot me over his brand new mixtape, I was dying to check it out.

For those who haven't heard, check out his dope freestyle for KEXP right HERE.

This tape really epitomizes the classic mixtape. With only 3 of the songs longer than 3 minutes, there are a lot of filler type tracks that Taybot uses to showcase his different lyrical styles. There are a few skits, and even a few features. It was produced by Phil + Numberman, who I'm not familiar with, but I'm sure they are out in Sea town somewhere. They lay down an interesting selection of beats, some of them drawing a Sabzi like feel, and even one that just reminds me of a older 90s west coast shit. Most of the songs share a jazzy kind of thing, which I'll be honest gets a little old after awhile. Taybot rides the beats like he's been doin' it since he was born. One of my issues with the tape is the mixing. I feel like they beats are too loud and that they sort of drown out the rhymes at some points. Despite that, from a pair of producers I've never heard of, they lay down an interesting soundscape for Taybot to showcase his diverse rapping styles. Lyrically, he seems to draw from just about everyone in the game to some degree. On the song 'Too Gutter', he basically pays homage to all the rappers that he has drawn upon. This guy definitely has talent, I would love to see him with a little better mixing (nothing against Phil + Numberman, there are for sure some constant head nodders on this tape), and a bunch of the tracks get sort of convoluted about halfway through with random horns and stuff that just drown out the rhymes. Some things just sound out of place, there's some M.O.P. kinds thing going on track 5 that I'm not down with (even though the rhymes are fucking crazy on that), and the vocals on the last track are not really my thing. The track with Scribes is just straight FIRE. But enough of the negative shit, just listen! I put up 5 of the best joints on the tape for you to listen to, and if you like it, please please PLEASE support this guy and actually buy a tape. More information is on his website (here) and his myspace (here).

1. New Dawn
2. What It's All About: DOWNLOAD HERE
3. Dynamite
4. Get This Money
5. Jingle
6. Ride Wit Me Interlude
7. My Pain, Your Pain
8. The Fresco Feat. Praxis: DOWNLOAD HERE
9. Hold Tight
10. Caught in a Scam Part 1
11. Drunken Interlude
12. We Stay Fly Feat. Scribes: DOWNLOAD HERE (best track on the mixtape in my opinion)
13. Constant Heat: DOWNLOAD HERE
14. Caught in a Scam Part II
15. Fire Starter Interlude
16. Get Em Up
17. Never Be Done
18. Shit is Hotter Interlude
19. Keep Ya Head Noddin
20. Too Gutter
21. Small Town Vibe: DOWNLOAD HERE
22. Another Chance Feat. Sheldon Botler

For all you out in Seattle, be sure to check out the release party on August 16th:

Look at these pinkos.

Praxis.  Putting values into action.  Andy bikes.  Yes.  Action.  Values into Action.

After much experimentation, prodding, and poking (and some help from Dr. WPF) I've found a great way to put CheckBox controls into TreeViewItems.  There are some subtle and irritating issues that I needed to figure out and work around, particularly related to keyboard navigation.  However, the deed is done and now you can read all about it here:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/TreeViewWithCheckBoxes.aspx

At the end of the article, I point out a bug in the CheckBox control that is specific to the Aero theme.  :-\

It was terrific to get out of the office today. I linked up with the Austrailian officer from the "Badlands" post, and we went to go tear some stuff up and nearly electrocute ourselves proving that Ohm's Law really is a law. We laughed, we cried, we bit our tongues, and we wasted some serious time and taxpayer dollars. In all a productive day - just not as much as we'd hoped. But tomorrow we'll try again.

Days like this make me want to write a book. Ever since I joined the Army I wanted to write a book with all the silly stories that go on behind the scenes.   I've planned on titling it "The Best Army in the World" with a tiny subtitle, "What in the world is the worst one like??". Seriously, somedays the best laid plans of mice and men go nowhere.

Anyway, I gave Katy a heads up about the day of playtime and couldn't tell her much of anything. She said hilariously, "Thanks for telling me all about your day. I feel like I was right there with you". She's a trooper.

So tomorrow is another day of experimenting and trying to get to zero somehow, some way. When I was training for my job, we did a study on a company called Ideo Inc. They re-engineer products and produce new innovative ones to solve customer problems. Their motto is "Fail often to succeed sooner". Pretty cool motto, except when playing with explosives or electricity :)

Thanks for all the supportive comments, emails, and prayers. They are making a difference. I was upset that after July became the best month since the year the war started the headlines read, "Afghanistan Deadlier than Iraq in July". I am coming to loathe the media. No matter what, it seems like they want to spin good news into tragedy and Joe the Infantryman gets real tired of hearing it. So thanks for seeing through that junk and supporting us faithfully.

Good night all!

Der Ursprung des Kinesiotapings liegt in Japan.

Ziele / Wirkungen des Tapes sind:

• Schmerzreduktion
• Verbesserung der Muskelfunktion
• Verbesserung der Gelenkfunktion
• Optimierung der Lymphzirkulation

Kinesiotaping beeinflusst verschiedene Strukturen und ist daher vielseitig einsetzbar! Es beeinflusst zum Beispiel die Hautsensoren, Schmerzrezeptoren, Muskelansätze und Muskeln, Bänder, Kapseln, kleinste Gefäße, Meridiane und Akupunkturpunkte, Narbengewebe sowie auch das viscerale System (Organsystem).

Die Anlage eines Tapes ist schnell gemacht, allerdings sollte in den meisten Fällen vorher eine physiotherapeutische Behandlung stattgefunden haben. Da das Tape dünner ist als unsere Haut, spürt man es nach einigen Minuten schon nicht mehr. Nach 30 min. ab Anlage sind auch Sport, Baden, Duschen und alle Aktivitäten des täglichen Lebens  ohne Probleme zu machen. Sie behalten die volle Beweglichkeit.

Sehr gut eignet sich das Tape begleitend zu einer Mauellen Therapie, besonders erfolgreich hat es sich in meiner Praxis bei akuten Rückenschmerzen bewährt. Weitere Krankheitsbilder, bei denen man Kinesiotaping gut einsetzen kann, sind unter anderen:

Sportverletzungen, Kopfschmerz/ Migräne, Schulterschmerzen, Karpaltunnelsyndrom, Bänderdehnungen / risse (Distorsionen), Narbenbeschwerden, Tennisellenbogen, Achillessehnenreizung, Schleudertrauma sowie bei Schwellungszuständen zur Entödematisierung (Lymphödeme).

Die Methode ist unglaublich einfach und sehr effektiv! Ich selbst habe letztes Jahr wegen akuter Rückenbeschwerden ein Kinesiotape von einer Kollegin bekommen und meine Schmerzen waren sofort um 50% besser, nach 3 Tagen sogar fast verschwunden. Auch bei anderen Patienten habe ich den Erfolg miterlebt, was mich dazu brachte selbst die Methode des Kinesiotapings zu erlernen. Seitdem wende ich es oft begleitend zu meiner Behandlung oder auch mal zwischendurch an.

_Kerstin_Schäfer_

;-)

The question to me is why? I guess the answer I came up with is age old and indeed paradoxical. When our reality becomes or sppears more and more unchangeable (or we at least impart that attitude or perspective), then often we engage in a distancing whereby our ideas become removed from the everyday reality upon which we live. Soleri while offering a venue to discuss world urgent issues in School of Thought never offers its participants a set of steps for creating a process for actually engaging in changing or affecting the issues being discussed even at some small level.

In all fairness its possible that it is not his intention to attempt to mobilize people or at least not at School of Thought. Yet my view is that all that we do should be engaged in not just contemplating ideas and theories of what the world should be but putting words into actions that lead to the realization of our ideals on an everyday basis. That is where the Latin word Praxis still has relevance in that it links education and philosophy and understanding of knowledge with the idea of a upward momentum of human evolution and development.

As Ghandi said famously "be the change you want to see in the world."

The idea is for us to contemplate ideas with the plan that they will actually lead to our enhanced ability to function in the everyday world so that what we see as the practical reality will become more optimized and in line with we consider as our ideals and aspirations of creating a better world not only for ourselves but for others as well.

So I share this remarkable story of how a woman scientist recovering from stroke used her disability to actually gain a new experience and perspective on life. Judy Tart after reading Taylor’s book,  My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey writes about a neuroanatomist who had a stroke from which it took 8 years for her to fully recover.

She was able to observe in great detail what was happening to her, moment by moment.  As she lost her verbal, cognitive, left-brain functions, she found herself in a completely altered state of consciousness - vast, peaceful, and all-knowing - which she believes to be the right brain, though it sounds very much like a description of a mystical state, and also very like what are called "near-death" experiences.

"As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent and I became detached from the memories of my life, I was comforted by an expanding sense of grace... my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe..."

Her account of how she overcame the temptation to just slip into euphoria and peace and was able to summon help and save her life is fascinating, but just as interesting, to me, is how she consciously restructured her brain during her long recovery from her stroke.  As she regained her verbal skills, she found that she began running negative circuits that had been active in her previous life.  She found she no longer wanted to live this way, and determined to give energy to positive circuits, joy and compassion and not reinforce her old negativities.  She suggests that all of us can do the same, since our brains are not fixed entities as was previously thought, but are capable of great changes throughout life.

Finally, for anyone who has a family member suffering from a stroke, she has a wonderful set of suggestions for how to work with them and understand what they may be experiencing in a very deep and compassionate way - pretty far from what we currently do in our treatment and rehabilitation of stroke victims (or any form of brain damage).

More about Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor discussing her stroke and the incredible experience she had at a stroke: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/when-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-stroke/?emc=eta1