jonvon.net Mostly a personal blog, with some content regarding Lotus Domino http://jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/ en-us Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:20:29 -0400 the world is not worthy of ireland Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:20:29 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-world-is-not-worthy-of-ireland.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-world-is-not-worthy-of-ireland.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-world-is-not-worthy-of-ireland.htm It's Bloomsday, on which Joyceans all over the world celebrate the day in 1904 that the events of Ulysses take place on. It's named for the novel's protagonist, Leopold Bloom. Joyce chose June 16, 1904, as the setting for the novel, to commemorate the day he went on his first date with Nora Barnacle, his future wife.

The first Bloomsday celebration was in Paris 1929. For the centenary in 2004, Dublin hosted a five-month-long festival that included academic conferences, literary walking tours, exhibits, pub crawls, and also the feeding of 10,000 people — whom they did not charge — a full Irish breakfast of sausage, rashers, and Guinness, outdoors.
you can read more about this on today's Writer's Almanac (i think the link above goes there but not sure as i am too lazy to hack around the corporate filter at work which classifies the page as Streaming Internet Radio, a sin worse than p0rn around here).

at any rate what i meant to say here was, is anyone noticing a pattern here?

god bless the Irish, they teach us how to live. :-) ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/the-world-is-not-worthy-of-ireland.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-world-is-not-worthy-of-ireland.htm?opendocument&comments attack of a ´zillion wasps Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:29:42 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/attack-of-a-zillion-wasps.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/attack-of-a-zillion-wasps.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/attack-of-a-zillion-wasps.htm
i was in a band. the person who led the band had long golden hair.

we were in a huge dark round auditorium with a dome shaped roof. the stage was round, way up in the air, almost like some kind of space ship. we climbed up there on a set of stairs that ran round the edge of it.

we played some songs, but we were having an awful time. the songs weren't working, no one was really listening, even though the auditorium was filled with throngs of people. it was very dark, we could not see the audience.

i told the man with the long golden hair that he was so focused on himself that he could not lead us. he had to think about the band, think about everyone else, listen to what we were doing musically, and stop being such a prima donna.

i said, here, let's just have a central beat like this: and then on the stage the drummer started pounding out a 6/8 time signature, very primal with the third beat very heavy, a kind of fast lurching waltz, but fluid. and then i said, add a bass line to that, and the bass player, who had dark hair and dark eyes, stars twinkling in both, laid down some kind of growling line around the drums like a big black snake muscling around the body of a tree.

and then i imagined a guitar ripping out an ocean of notes all around that beat and that bass line, i could hear it, i was designing it in my head, it was like an attack of a 'zillion wasps, but there was no one to play it. i did not ascend the stage, and neither did the golden haired man. we were all waiting on the edge of a knife to see what would happen next, but then i woke up.

and as i woke up i thought of robert bly on the cover of a book i saw in minnesota where he is maybe about 40 years old or so and walking through a field of tall grass and he has a look on his face that is full of purpose and strength and happiness, the like of which you don't see on the faces of many men, and poetic words just started coming into my mind like drops of rain suddenly falling on the ground outside the house on the green grass everything suddenly going dark and wet.

he walks over the fields
bottoms of his feet brush over the tops waving heads of grass...

or some stupid shit like that...

and there was a lot else in my head that actually wasn't too bad but it's pretty well gone and then i walked into the bathroom and flexed my pecs in the mirror. 42 year old pecs, but on the inside i felt like a rhino shaking itself off by the river or something like that. i had animal eyes full of purple color, wide eyed in a quick flash, and i thought of robert bly dripping flowers everywhere he went, like that scene in my book i haven't quite written yet.

and then a few minutes later i was getting into the shower and i realized i was going to have to start writing poetry that had a political center, poetry about the sickness of war and the diseases of commercialism, and that i needed to stand up as bly did during vietnam and make my voice heard. and then i had some kind of powerful wings inside me, not the kind that take you up over your problems, but the kind that blow down to the sides and knock over houses and trees breaking ignorance into pieces like fragile, brittle chains no longer fitting on the necks of people starving for real hearts that feel and real minds that think and real feet that walk all the way to washington dc when they need to walk down there.

and of course this is the part where i know i'm just a human being but i can't ignore it anymore and i have to make poems out of the visions i've received and i have to start doing it now. you can call the white coats but there isn't anything for them to fix. i just want to sit in a circle around a fire with the whole country and look inward to those universal flames so we can find something together that might heal us enough that we might arise from our stupor and finally know that something is wrong and we've shit on the whole world and when is it going to finally fucking end.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/attack-of-a-zillion-wasps.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/attack-of-a-zillion-wasps.htm?opendocument&comments the storm in the styrofoam cup Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:00:27 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-storm-in-the-styrofoam-cup.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-storm-in-the-styrofoam-cup.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-storm-in-the-styrofoam-cup.htm
ya know, i really think ed summed it up correctly when he said

Apple's announcements this week highlight how far they have to go to really address the enterprise.


yep. i think he's got it exactly right.

what is the best way to get someone to get really interested in your product? tell them it kicks ass, and they aren't invited to the party.

if there is one thing we know about mr. jobs, it's that he's a master at getting people interested in Apple's products. from the design to the sales pitch, he's one step ahead all the way. to me this is a bit like when gmail came out and you had to get an invitation to get in.

i get it, i really do. the iPhone is a lot closer to affordable for a lot of people, and the design just kicks all kinds of butt. there is nothing else like it. and there will be demand for it bubbling up from non-IT people. but it's not the fault of the marketplace players, IBM or anyone else, that the iPhone is just getting off the ground with enterprise support. it makes sense for Apple to support as many vendors as possible. uptake is only going to increase the more that happens. Apple will get there and so will IBM. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/the-storm-in-the-styrofoam-cup.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-storm-in-the-styrofoam-cup.htm?opendocument&comments grounded in the self Tue, 3 Jun 2008 11:24:28 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/grounded-in-the-self.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/grounded-in-the-self.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/grounded-in-the-self.htm real. anything we see or know or experience has to be viewed through the lens of the Self, or it cannot exist. this is the death of faith, and the beginning of real life.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/grounded-in-the-self.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/grounded-in-the-self.htm?opendocument&comments word attachment to pdf? Fri, 23 May 2008 12:14:44 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/word-attachment-to-pdf.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/word-attachment-to-pdf.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/word-attachment-to-pdf.htm
we've got a bunch of word files. they get turned into pdfs. the requirement is that links inside the pdfs pointing to each other resolve correctly. ultimately the pdfs live inside a notes database so the links have to point to the right place in the db.

so we instructed the customer to make the links to the other pdfs like this: /filename.pdf

if the pdf was attached as a file resource in the database, this would work, just like a link to an image or whatever.

were using Midas to put the pdfs into the file resources. but we discovered it didn't handle the larger pdfs. it seems to stop working (the version we are using anyway, which is 3.6.12) after the file gets bigger than about 100k - according to the developer who is working on it. not sure of the exact cutoff. i did send Ben an email this morning but no word yet on that. it might be we are just doing it wrong.

so we are back to the drawing board and up against a deadline. what we decided to do was edit the links in the word docs on the fly, so that they would look something like this:

/dbfilepath/pdflaunch?openpage&filename=myfile.pdf

then we'd program the page to compute the link to the document holding the pdf in question and replace the current browser window with the pdf. that way the pdf links that point at each other would work in the context of the database, and we wouldn't have to use file resources.

so what we need to do is, get into the word doc programmatically and change the links. we can figure that part out, its just some kind of vba exercise. once that is accomplished, then we need to turn that word file into a pdf, and then store it in the same document with whatever data we'll need to do the lookup from the "pdflaunch" page, so that if any other pdf links to it. it will just be a getDocumentByKey kind of thing.

the tricky part is the point at which we create the pdf. we need to be able to take the word doc we just modified and turn it into a pdf on the fly, via lotusscript if possible.

it seems like after all these years there should be something out there that does this. any ideas? we are on Notes 6.5. products that cost something are OK. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/word-attachment-to-pdf.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/word-attachment-to-pdf.htm?opendocument&comments this is what i do when twitter is down Tue, 20 May 2008 17:18:23 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/this-is-what-i-do-when-twitter-is-down.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/this-is-what-i-do-when-twitter-is-down.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/this-is-what-i-do-when-twitter-is-down.htm slide uppa snorkle fed freaky friday clamwich

smoove onna powdery cream lovin smoothy
caress a lil pooka nubble nick a knock a groovy

skibble on a nibbly eyed fathom of a vroomy
crispy cried lather of a simplified zoombie

sailin over cloudy nuther achy tom a toon say
dis is my brain at dee end a dis tuesday ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/this-is-what-i-do-when-twitter-is-down.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/this-is-what-i-do-when-twitter-is-down.htm?opendocument&comments what are you expecting from Lotus? Thu, 15 May 2008 15:26:43 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/what-are-you-expecting-from-lotus.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/what-are-you-expecting-from-lotus.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/what-are-you-expecting-from-lotus.htm his survey about the 8.5 release. but perhaps you can. if you have a long write up, at least point a trackback to your own blog. if you don't have a blog, you can submit an entire blog entry to me via email and i'll post it here, with trackback on andrew's thread. that's right, this one time only, you can guest blog on jonvon.net.

please tell IBM Lotus what you think. i assure you, they will be reading the answers.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/what-are-you-expecting-from-lotus.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/what-are-you-expecting-from-lotus.htm?opendocument&comments all hail muto Thu, 15 May 2008 12:57:40 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/all-hail-muto.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/all-hail-muto.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/all-hail-muto.htm                                
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/all-hail-muto.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/all-hail-muto.htm?opendocument&comments tormenta eléctrica Thu, 8 May 2008 13:09:39 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/tormenta-eléctrica.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/tormenta-eléctrica.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/tormenta-eléctrica.htm Tormenta eléctrica en erupción del volcán Chaitén

i wonder if our world looked something like this as it was being formed.

via wired science.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/tormenta-eléctrica.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/tormenta-eléctrica.htm?opendocument&comments duffberts worst practices karma? Thu, 8 May 2008 09:40:57 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/duffberts-worst-practices-karma.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/duffberts-worst-practices-karma.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/duffberts-worst-practices-karma.htm issues with his application. for some reason he's man enough (or crazy enough) to admit them publicly!

i was going to log a comment over there, and when i went to the page, i got this:

duffbert-karma.gif

i dunno, but i think i'm smelling some Worst Practices karma here. ;-)

i did finally get to the page, but i'm afraid to post a comment there. i don't want to add any more problems to duffy's list today. heh. so... instead i'll just say it here:

the truth is we ALL have crappy code floating around here and there. it could happen to anyone. i've brought down servers before too. i mean crashed them. game over. crashed a few notes clients too, man i could probably write an anarchists cookbook for lotus notes if i wanted to, with the mistakes i've made over the years. my apps are pretty solid most of the time these days, but only because of my past mistakes.

hang in there brother. you'll figure it out eventually. it's probably one particular bit of nastiness, and not all the redundant (or whatever) snippets of not-exactly-ready-for-the-red-carpet code.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/duffberts-worst-practices-karma.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/duffberts-worst-practices-karma.htm?opendocument&comments bedhead 02 Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:30:23 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/bedhead-02.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/bedhead-02.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/bedhead-02.htm
bedhead02.jpg]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/bedhead-02.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/bedhead-02.htm?opendocument&comments a few weeks into Twitter Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:03:04 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/a-few-weeks-into-twitter.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/a-few-weeks-into-twitter.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/a-few-weeks-into-twitter.htm twitter:

1. twhirl

2. meeting new people

3. ppl who might be too timid to blog, might not be afraid to twitter, so i think there are some new voices popping up. maybe?

4. a big reason why blogging is cool: it's easy to blog. it's easier to twitter.

5. conversations feel very natural on twitter

6. there is an excitement about twitter right now that you can feel that is similar to what it was like when i started blogging. it's got "new car smell". at least to me, since i've only been really engaged with it in the past few weeks.

7. going back to #5, it isn't just "what am i doing right now". it really is a conversation. you don't see that until you start to follow lots of other folks. if all you are doing is broadcasting and not following, you are missing out. that said, it IS a distraction. one i definitely have to turn off for long periods of the day if i want to get anything done.

did i mention twhirl? yes, i did! you can't beat it if you are twittering from a computer.

some things about twitter seem to fly in the face of intuition. for instance, "any one 140 character string can certainly be taken out of context". this is certainly true (and i'm glad i don't have to give a flying monkey about that), because of the fact that twitter IS an ongoing conversation. whenever you follow a new voice, you are potentially wading into several conversations you didn't know anything about. and if you wanted to pull something out of context, say for the generation of FUD or whatever. twitter could be a good source for that.

twitter is one of those things where you just have to do it to get it. the model is fascinating. one of those things where you think, why didn't someone think of this years ago? even though certain things about the model seem counter intuitive, it still just makes hella sense.

"There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts..."

my communication "model" is surprised. i haven't been surprised by anything since i got my head around the blogosphere.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/a-few-weeks-into-twitter.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/a-few-weeks-into-twitter.htm?opendocument&comments you are extraordinary Tue, 8 Apr 2008 13:13:41 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/you-are-extraordinary.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/you-are-extraordinary.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/you-are-extraordinary.htm
maybe you are the person with the secret super power you've never owned up to. you never admitted it to yourself, because being "extraordinary" would seem somehow, haughty or presumptive. "who do i think i am?" you might have asked yourself. or "what would they think?"

maybe you've been buried under the hum drum, lost in the avalanche of rush hour traffic and mortgage payments. crushed under piles of laundry and stacks of bowls and dishes. adrift in a sea of term papers.

there are a lot of ways to become an amnesiac.

no more of that. now is the moment when you realize you can no longer hide from what you are.

your super power might be what you are the most ashamed of. it may have caused you endless grief. it might be the thing you'd never dare let out of that closet. the one with the five locks on it, and ten layers of paint, and the silent alarm. you may have to go at it with a pick axe, for days or months or years, to get it open, depending on how deeply it is buried underneath your defenses.

you've only been hiding from yourself.

so... get that closet door open. peer into the depths of your gift. put your face to its face. gaze into its eyes, learn the contours of its cheeks, watch the way it breathes.

start asking the dumb questions, the "how do i get started?" kinds of questions. the world is open and wide and longs for you to take your place in it.

everyone together now, out loud: today is the day i admit i am extraordinary.]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/you-are-extraordinary.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/you-are-extraordinary.htm?opendocument&comments to twitter or not to twitter Thu, 3 Apr 2008 10:01:50 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter.htm
twits.gif

and then Ed goes and posts Not Twittering in Manchester.

uhuh. riiiight.

geeks! LOL!!

and yes, of COURSE i'm jealous... ;-)

update: ok i see the dates now. still, pretty funny. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter.htm?opendocument&comments Web of Deception, Chapter Six - The Goddess, the Corpse, and the Cats Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:07:31 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-goddess-the-corpse-and-the-cats.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-goddess-the-corpse-and-the-cats.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-goddess-the-corpse-and-the-cats.htm NOTE: This is a continuation of the "Web Of Deception" round-robin story. If you're late to the party, please start with Chapter 1 on Ben's site and go from there. You can also follow the RSS feed hosted at http://www.andthentheboilerburst.com/WebOfDeception.rss.



A huge boar came running out of the forest, his hooves thundering over the ground. He snorted, flattening the grass around him with his steaming breath, and then tossed his long, razor sharp tusks high into the air.

He glowered wild-eyed at Callie and JC and charged across the field, his fur jutting up from his back in thick tufts like unkempt, gigantic thorns.

"Hold still," said JC. "If you run, we're both done for."

But the boar was not what astonished Callie. It was the woman who rode him.

The woman sat lightly on the boar, completely unperturbed by his violence. Her long, epigamic blonde hair was wrapped in braids, hanging down past her waist, touching the boar's sides. She wore an ornate jeweled necklace, a cape made of feathers, and that was all.

The woman's skin radiated a subtle golden light. She was vibrantly alive, smiling knowingly and joyfully at the trees, the grass, the flowers, the birds, the sky, and, well, everything.

Callie was as comfortable in her body as any woman she'd ever known. But the way this woman carried herself made Callie blush.

The boar crossed the field, running at full speed, and stopped just short of Callie. The woman riding him smiled brightly as they all stood face to face.

Callie held her ground and remained silent as the boar blew hot steam in her general direction. She thought, "I... I think... I'll let the cat do the talking."

"Queen Freya, how may I be of service?" asked JC. Callie noted the sarcasm in his voice, but she wasn't sure if it was because he was still stuck to her shoulder, or because he'd been tricked into pulling Freya's carriage, and wasn't pleased about it. "Probably both," she thought.

"JC, where have you been?" asked Freya. "We've missed you at Sessrumnir."

"Surely my queen, you are aware, I have been here, in this little town, on urgent business of the Vanir."

Freya surveyed him coolly from her perch on the boar.

"You know, Freya. Project Amulet."

"Ah. And, JC, how exactly did you become involved in that?"

"I've the sharpest claws known to catdom, or so they tell me, my Queen."

Callie couldn't help staring at Freya. In fact, her whole body reacted to her in some strange way. She couldn't tell if she was aroused, or coming down with a cold, or beginning a psychotic break. "Possibly all three," she thought. What was this? Then it hit her.

"Oh!" she said out loud, before she could stop herself. Callie realized she had an odd and extremely powerful desire to get pregnant, as soon as possible. She started thinking about Mike.

"Yes," said the golden woman on the boar. "I get that a lot." She smiled her knowing smile. "Here. Take this."

Freya handed Callie a small bottle. It was transparent and filled with a golden liquid.

"As long as you use this on someone you love, it will never run out."

Callie took the bottle, instinctively putting it in her pocket. She was speechless. She tried to say thank you, but somehow her mouth wasn't quite working.

"You will want to get home right away," said Freya.

Callie flushed. She thought about Mike, at home, waiting for her. She thought about how he was always teasing her, putting his hands on her, lifting her into the air. She could feel him all around her.

"Mike is going to need your help."

Callie seemed to find her feet. "What do you mean?" She felt embarrassed, confused. What was it she had just been thinking?

"Why does Mike need help?"

"You need to hurry," said Freya. "Take this."

Freya stripped the cape of feathers off of her back. She slid from the back of the boar.

"Take off your sweater," said Freya.

JC leapt off and disappeared into the bushes. Callie took off the sweater. Freya walked around behind her. The blades of grass turned toward Freya as she circled Callie, soaking up Freya's radiance, visibly growing taller around Callie's ankles. Goosebumps ran up Callie's spine and down her arms and legs. She was paralyzed with excitement, unable to move. Freya gently put the feathered cape on Callie's back, spreading it over her shoulders. Callie's arms lengthened. She was growing... lighter, softer. Her feet shifted into talons. She was a bird! She lifted herself into the air, beating her wings.

Freya called out, "Home! Fly home, Callie!"

As Callie flew off, she noticed a large number of cats streaming into the field. Her hawk eyes picked them out as they moved in the grass. They were forming a circle around Freya, and they seemed to be conferring with JC, who stood next to the goddess. Callie didn't have time to think about it, she had to fly!



~




Tom Dufay was putting some boxes of baking soda on a shelf when he heard a sound in the back of the store. He walked to the rear and entered the store room. A single light bulb dimly illuminated boxes piled on wooden pallets. Shelves held crates full of medicines, gallon jugs full of chemicals, glass bottles filled with liquids of various colors and all sorts of odds and ends, much of it covered in cobwebs and dust. Tom heard a door creak shut, and shuffling footsteps dragging over the floor. He had a visitor.

"Who's there?" he called into the dim light.

There was no answer. The sound of someone sitting on a crate came from the back of the room. Tom walked toward the back door and saw an old man hunched there, sitting still. He wasn't breathing. His skin was taut and dry, pulled tightly over his bones. A thick layer of dust lay in the cracks of his skin, on his clothes, his boots, and his hair. His eyes were open, and like the rest of him, completely covered over in a thick film of dust.

A gleam came from his left hand – the glint of a wedding ring. His right hand held a tuft of braided, silky black wool, finely combed and shiny, as though oiled. It was tied together with red twine woven around tiny pieces of white bone.

"Ah. Mr. Hodges."

The corpse of Rudolph Hodges opened its mouth, lips stretching dryly over a set of broken teeth. He made a sound like the creak of an old floorboard squeaking in the middle of the night. Finally he whispered, "Betsy."

"Rudy? Is that you?"

The corpse nodded its head.

Tom sighed. "Yes, Rudy. Betsy. What about Betsy?"

"In the cave. With the rrrest," Rudolph whispered like a snake's rattle.

"That's right, Rudy. Betsy is in the cave, with the rest. I asked them to go, just as I asked you to come up out of that shallow grave," said Tom. "What else would you like to know?"

Rudolph's face turned up toward Tom, his dusty, sunken, blank eyes staring blindly at Tom's face.

"Cat got your tongue, Rudy?"

The body of Rudolph Hodges stood up and slowly turned toward the back door. Tom could hear his bones creaking and his skin crackling as he moved.

"Now Rudy, we can't have you walking around in broad daylight," said Tom. "You're going to scare someone. They don't understand that kind of thing around here."

Tom walked up to Rudy and pulled the black tuft out of his hand. His body stopped moving, and then fell backwards. Tom caught him and lowered him gently to the floor.

"Got to take care of your body, Tom. Got to be more careful. I've still got a few things for you to do. But we can't have you walking around inside it."

Tom held the black thing up to his mouth and spoke to it in a low whisper:

"Web of darkness
Void bound in blood
With bones digested
In spidery cud
Braided black web
Spun slow underground
Imbue this shade,
Death's hallowed ground
With my will unafraid
My desire unbound!"

Tom put the black thing back in Rudolph's right hand. The corpse sat up.

Slowly and carefully Tom said, "Wait until it is dark outside.  Go to the Hodges house. When you see the man inside, kill him without the woman seeing you.  Then, bring his body to the cave.  Leave the woman alone unless she sees you.  If she does see you, kill the woman and bring her body to the cave as well."

The corpse nodded once and leaned back against the storeroom wall. Tom stood up and smiled proudly and kindly, as though he'd just rescued a lost puppy or pulled a scared cat out of a tree. Tom walked out into the store and continued stocking the shelves.



~




Mike woke up and looked at his leg. The deep scratches were still there. He noticed for the first time that they were carved into his skin in a pattern, circles connecting to circles. It was actually beautiful, and more than a little creepy. The skin looked a little dry, but it was better than before. At least it didn't hurt. He felt sorry for his leg, all carved up like that, and sorrier for himself, because he owned a leg like that. Mike wondered if it would heal. Those scars looked permanent. He decided he'd try and stand up. That was when he noticed the cats. There were two or three at each window, and all of them were staring in at him.

"Oh. Shit."

The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. "Just like a cat," he thought. Something wasn't right. He went around to the kitchen. The back door was open. One of the cats was on the kitchen table.

"Little varmint," he said. He reached toward the cat to push it off the table, and then thought better of it.

"Where's that shotgun?"

He walked slowly backward, turned, and saw another cat sitting in on the floor. The cat leapt toward his chest. He saw its claws extend toward him in slow motion. He realized, he had no shirt on.

"Damn," was all he could get out. He hit the floor, landing in a cloud of yowling, clawing cats, and promptly passed out. He woke up a few minutes later. His clothes were gone, laying in thin shreds all around his naked body. He was carved from head to toe in beautifully woven, bloody circles. He was afraid to touch his face. He never knew this kind of pain could ever be. He held up his hands. He was marked everywhere he looked, his fingers, his palms, his forearms. He sat up, looked down at his manhood. Everything was intact, but the scars ran pretty close. He cried a little then, and looked at the cat sitting in between his feet. "Thanks for leaving that alone," he said.

The cat regarded him indifferently. It licked its paw, and looked for all the world like it might lay down and take a nap. "You've been given an amulet. You're going to need it. Trust me on that one."

"An amulet? You, you can talk? Yeah, of course you can talk. You and your... evil little friends... carve me up like a Halloween pumpkin, and THEN," he began to giggle, a little unsteadily, "you wanna talk about jewelry?"

He laughed a little harder, and the tears started coming again. "Oh I'm losing it all right. No way, no way this is happening. No no no no nooooo waaay." He held up his hand again, looking at it curiously. For some reason it reminded him of a red yoyo he'd had when he was a kid. He waved it down, then up, then down again. Finally he let it rest on the floor.

The cat looked at him patiently, as though he were the stupidest, sorriest human child ever conceived. "Your skin is an amulet now. It will protect you. It will protect your family. It will protect anyone you love, as long as you are touching them."

Mike stared at the cat. Clearly he'd lost his mind. No, it wasn't that, he was dreaming! That's all! Callie had gone out, and he'd fallen asleep, and soon she'd be back, and he'd wake up, and all of this will have been a bad dream. His head fell back and smacked the floor with a bloody thunk. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he was gone.



The story has been continued by Steve McDonagh, who kindly included the word triskaidekaphobia in the story (lol!). nice job steve! ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/the-goddess-the-corpse-and-the-cats.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-goddess-the-corpse-and-the-cats.htm?opendocument&comments web of deception Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:11:17 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/web-of-deception.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/web-of-deception.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/web-of-deception.htm
the story is called Web of Deception. Ben has already written the first installment, and Julian is up next. jules will pick someone from the list of authors who volunteered. as it happens i'm one of the people on the list (thanks, Ben, for the invite), and at some point i'll add a chapter right here on this blog.

fourteen people have signed up to do this! which means the story will take a little while to reach its conclusion. i can't wait to see where this goes.

for the extra curious, and for a more well rounded take on this, check out the blog posts from Rob and Jess. i love how jess is all helpful and cheerful, explaining the rules and extolling Ben's generosity, while the good cap'n O is, as usual, erroring (yeah that's the geek version) on the side of snarky. which tells you something, i think, about how the story will go. should be some interesting twists and turns ahead in the web of deception... ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/web-of-deception.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/web-of-deception.htm?opendocument&comments comment weirdness Fri, 7 Mar 2008 09:40:55 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/comment-weirdness.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/comment-weirdness.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/comment-weirdness.htm
all that to say, if you post a comment and it gets lost, you are in good company. i think i'm going to do a complete refresh of the entire database here pretty soon, possibly with a blog of my own design. not at all sure about that yet. we'll see. at the very least i need to at least move up to the latest ibm sanctioned version. i'm still running an old version of steve's pre-ibm software. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/comment-weirdness.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/comment-weirdness.htm?opendocument&comments i twitter, therefore i am Thu, 6 Mar 2008 15:54:50 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/i-twitter-therefore-i-am.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/i-twitter-therefore-i-am.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/i-twitter-therefore-i-am.htm http://twitter.com/jonvon

1. i was surprised at how many of my email contacts are not twittering.

2. i was also surprised that "jonvon" was available. claim your name before this really takes off...

3. i don't know if i'll update twitter more or less than the blog. i know, it should be more. time will tell.

something about this seems, somehow, kinda cool. i think i might enjoy this. i dunno! file under experimental. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/i-twitter-therefore-i-am.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/i-twitter-therefore-i-am.htm?opendocument&comments the path of the artisan Tue, 4 Mar 2008 10:19:59 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-path-of-the-artisan.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-path-of-the-artisan.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-path-of-the-artisan.htm        -- Rene Descartes, Discours de la Methode (from Rationality Quotes 10)

this is similar to what i do as i write code. when i started out writing lotusscript, i popped everything into the Initialize event. hey, it worked, right? it wasn't exactly maintainable, but i got through somehow.

then later i started breaking things out into functions and subs. hey, pretty cool for a guy who didn't study this in college. eventually i started writing OO constructs, and that was when things started changing. the idea of reusability became more palpable somehow.

i realized i'd been solving the same problems over and over again - badly: i got the same run time errors, pretty consistently from certain operations. for example, i must have gotten "object variable not set" about a zillion times, from not properly checking the objects when i was getting a text value. this one little function, which isn't part of an OO construct but exists in my Utils script lib, has saved me many hours of idiotic debugging:

Sub getItemText ( doc As notesdocument, itemname As String, strval As String )
       Dim item As NotesItem
       If doc Is Nothing Then
               strval = ""
               Exit Sub
       End If
       If Not doc.HasItem( itemname ) Then
               strval = ""
               Exit Sub
       End If
       Set item = doc.GetFirstItem( itemname )
       strval = item.Text
End Sub

sometimes it's the simple things, ya know?

in terms of the Descartes quote you could look at this code one of two ways - you could say, i don't have to ever write that code again, because i've solved that problem, and therefore i don't have to think about it. and so, in one sense there is no "rule" i'm actively thinking about. the point is that i don't have to solve that problem again!

but whenever i consume this code, i am in fact implicity following the rules laid out in the code itself (check to make sure that the objects exist before trying to use them), and i'm following another rule: don't keep on rewriting the same broken shite over and over again. put robust code (that doesn't break when the item, or even the document, happens to not exist) in one place. you are done. because you have bigger fish to fry.

so what happens is, i am building little stepping stones, little foundational bricks, that i can build truly complex applications on top of, without getting bogged down in structurally obfuscated complexity, and with less run time errors too.

has it ever struck you that the tools and materials in hardware stores are like little programs that people have built, that have "real world" properties and methods? screwdrivers, hammers, nuts and bolts, drywall, plywood and so on are all designed to standard specifications. everyone knows how to use those things, creatively, in a standard way. and you can take those materials and tools and build things like houses and office buildings with them! without those tools, you've got nothing to start with. you've got to invent it all from scratch.

even in an environment like Notes Designer, where so many things are already provided for you, you still have to create your own toolbox. or you have to become intimately familiar with someone else's (ext, prototype, dojo, etc). you have to discover the solutions that become the rules that you follow. because the rules allow you to create applications that are less prone to errors, are easier to maintain, and achieve understandable complexity early (i.e. achieve business goals) in the design cycle. this, it seems to me, is the path of the artisan. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/the-path-of-the-artisan.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/the-path-of-the-artisan.htm?opendocument&comments image vs story Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:16:56 -0400 http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/image-vs-story.htm jonvon http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/image-vs-story.htm?opendocument&comments http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/image-vs-story.htm duffbert reviewed count zero, a william gibson book, and, well, i just had to read it, being a gibson fan myself.

i love gibson's stuff. unlike duffy, i've never had trouble following his story lines. but his comment: "the story-lines don't match up with the quality of the imagery", that is interesting. it is something i've worried about as i've been writing my own novel. i'm a poet at heart, but what i want to do is weave stories together.

truly great poetry is often steeped in image. i'm thinking of pablo neruda as i type this. there is a way in which a poet can write that surfaces images up from a part of the mind (which is probably located in the right hemisphere of the brain), and those images can communicate subtle truths that flower in infinite variety.

this is way to talk about metaphor, but for me there is a very real substance underneath that term.

if a poet can learn to see images and then write them out with strong fidelity, without interfering with them too much, the result can be astounding. a possibility exists in which the images can project truth straight out of the form of the image, dependent on the context the image surfaces within.

so what you end up with is an image that is quite literally a truth projector. or you could say that truth is projected through the image. that same truth could be projected through other images as well, and the contradictory poles of every truth could be projected through images that seem to be in opposition to one another.

people who think strongly in this way are not necessarily people who are thinking sequentially. an image is a pool you sort of float around in. it is not something that moves through time. time stops inside the image. there is no time inside these kinds of images, the kind that project truth. i want to say, time and space unfolds through image, even though it seems that images are a function of space and time. it's a particular way of thinking and conceiving.

story telling is more about time. people doing things to and with each other in a linear progression. the king's brother kills the king's children and serves them to the king at dinner. or whatever. those are events that happen in time, one after another. those events can, of themselves, be very powerful. i mean, that sentence i just wrote, that comes i think out of some old Greek play, that is a powerful sentence isn't it? your mind probably filled the images in for you, right? but that sentence is not image centric per se. people who think in images, who write in image heavy chunks, are not always great at making the bare bones of the plot shine through.

in gibson's case, according to duffy, the images are so dense that it is hard to see what is going on. man, i find that fascinating.

i think this style is appropriate to what gibson does, because he is talking about a near future (let's face it, it is already upon us), in which information is very dense. it is hard to see what is going on in the world around us because so much is going on, and we have access to all sorts of event driven data. gibson seems to be about the task of presenting characters who are learning to surf that stream of data and survive, and if they can, even find meaning. it is very much like he is writing about atavistic hunters who are faced with a bewildering jungle. there are so many sounds, so many things to see. how do you find your prey, how do you get home safely? how do you survive the encounter with that thing you are hunting? how do you survive brushes with other predators? now take that old struggle, which is almost unknown to us in the modern world, and immerse a normal, modern person into a jungle of data, where everything is morphing all the time, even things that are not supposed to morph, and watch what happens. that is gibson, at least to me. though it's been a while since i read him.

[as an aside: it strikes me that duffbert is himself a william gibson character. my god, how many books has this man read? how much information has his single mind parsed? i understand that he lives next to a library. i think he's become a library by now.]

this constant morphing of images can be seen in Ovid's Metamorphoses. i sent a chapter of the novel i'm working on to a man i'm proud to call a friend of mine, a guy named Eric Larsen. i'd never read Ovid, but after he read the chapter i sent him, he recommended i read Metamorphoses. so i did. or i should say, i am, i'm about in the middle of it now. every story ends with someone turning into a bird, or into a snake. every encounter a mortal has with a god ends with the mortal transforming into something, usually an animal. there are some things like that going on in my own writing, not exactly like that, but the basic thought process is there. it is a process that is image centric for sure.

so i've been struggling with how to put the story together in a way that is compelling from the standpoint of a story teller. i've got to keep my eye on the ball of that linear progression, at least within any particular chapter i'm writing. it is too easy for me to bask in that pool of images and forget to tell a story.

i'll be curious to see if people end up reacting to my stuff the way they react to gibson's. will they get lost in the images? i don't know. i feel a little like that character in Lady in the Water who only works out one side of his body all the time. as it happens, i've been doing this programming thing the past ten years or so, and i've given the left side of my brain quite a workout. it's as though i had no structure to start with, and forcing myself to think logically all these years has had an impact on me. so i'm hopeful that i will be able to include enough logical, linear structure in what i am doing that what i write will make sense, and be compelling for readers. but the place i'm most at home at is the world of image. ]]> http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dxcomments/image-vs-story.htm http://www.jonvon.net/jonvon/blog/blog.nsf/dx/image-vs-story.htm?opendocument&comments