Last night we attended two Dingus Day celebrations thanks to emily's party tip. Matthew is Polish and so he was excited to see his people en masse. Who would have ever thought that Polish people were such serious partiers? Who would have ever thought that Matthew was allergic to pussy willow. I guess its appropriate.



There were so many people out at the Hearth Stone Manor. All three banquet rooms were connected together and it was more packed than any wedding I have ever seen. At first I figured it would be all old people but it wasn't.

Aftewards we went down to some Polish club on the east side. I think it may have been a Polish Falkon club or something. A man there had a giant Polish historical collection. It was neat to see. I guess there is a museum upstairs that is open on weekdays. Unfortunately, we missed the Polish music and traditional dancing. I ended up getting really drunk because the guy at the bar was not really a bar tender. I asked for Gin and he asked me what it was, and then asked if Vodka was ok. I said sure and he gave me a glass of vodka dn acted as if it was really normal. So I drank it. Whoa, thankfully there was food - Polish sausage to be exact.

To add the recent unconfortable social moments that make me never want to go out in Buffalo. I ended up seeing some people from high school who I did not expect made it very far in life, so to play it safe, I played down my life. Then it turned out they were sucessful and I just looked like an idiot.

>>update: I just noticed there is something wrong with the inlink below. I will fix it today at some point. It works but it says the wrong journal name.

>>>update: fixed

Chai,
(e:chaibiscoot,11) That is the scariest story I have ever heard. I think I would have promptly had an aneurism and died. Not that I amscared of hjaving done something wrong. But I definately am scarred of them fucking up and confusing me for someone else. WHat a nightmare. All I have to say is the cops have often caused problems for me and my friends without just cause. Especially border guard cops. Anyways, I have yet to have one nice expereince where a cop help[ed me.

One day Terry, Matthew, and I were attacked at knifepoint by a gang of hispanics at south elmwood. It was so scary. They blockewd off the one way street with their SUVs and then proceded to attacvk us. Me and Matthew got in the car. I had two choices, run them over or get stabbed. Unfrotunately, there were about 10 of them and Terry, the idiot, was outside the car. So I figured if I ran them over they would kill him.

They ended up stabbing out our tires and terry managed to get in/. We drove on flat tires backwards down the one way into the ghetto. Then got out of the car and started running and hiding. We survived and found a friend who gave us a ride home. On the way down elmwood, we saw some police and described what happend. They were at the police donought head quarters at mobil on elmwood and Lexington.

They would not do anything. It seemed like they didn't care, were uninterested in taking a report and were truly eating donoughts. Fuck that.

Another time my crazy neighbor across the street threatened to kill the disabled woman next store because she asked him to stop beating a cat to death. He told her she was next and started calling her a fucking bitch, etc. So I called the police and they asked if anyone was stabbed or shot. I said no, and they said there was nothing they could do and that she needs to egt a restraining order. I told her we would watch out for her. She went inside.

Well I spent the night combat programming. I like to think I have a special skill that involves high productivity under distress and screaming. Its kind of like living with my parents, who always yell. I was still able to get stuff done. I think its the same ability that let me sleep during a loud rave.

I guess I can just turn stuff off. So here is the first resize image on the site. It is a screen capture from the very beginnings of the site. Anybody remember this look?

My favorite singer in the whole world is coming back to Buffalo and playing with the Butchies. I suggest all of you go. The butchies rock as well. Maybe I will have a Kimya and Butchies Radio day next week.

tuesday april 27th
mohawk place
47 east mohawk st.
buffalo, ny
8pm $8

On another note we were at pano's yesterday and some poor, seven-year old, black kid was in there begging for money and crying. Eventually the police came to pick him up and dragged him away. They said they were taking him home, a place he seemed to really protest going to. It made me feel sick to think he had to resort to that. I wonder what would have helped him.

I had a personal enlightenment regarding information organization. Everything is going to change so fast. I know that now, trust me it won't seem the same very soon. The limits of what is available to us will expand far beyond our ability to comprehend the content.

Our organization methods are the only way we will be able to harness the massive amount of power that flows through the information around us.

This is the first sideKick written journal that I have posted in a while.

Way down elmwood with a twist or two you find soundlab.

Tonight robots invaded my soundscape at soundlab. The music is really great. It all comes off of laptops. I am slightly weirded out by the fact that the entire crowd looks like computer geekish guys. I mean I am obviously down with that but its weird, like the first time when I was in Italy and people looked like me. Or like when I would go to parties in toronto decked out in dayglo fun fur and would mix with the other furry animals.

Buffalo might really be changing again.

What is Elmwoodstrip.com
Elmwoodstrip.com is a Buffalo, NY based community dataspace that brings local residents together and

allows them to "click-publish" textual data, imagery and sound. (E:strip) was developed in response to the the negative effects experienced by our local community due to the globalization of communication via the intenet and inclimant weather keeps buffalonians at home 6-7 months out of the year. The intentionally simple interface allows users with little or no web design knowledge to publish their thoughts and artwork. Elmwoodstrip.com runs off an open source MySQL database with a PHP/HTML frontend.

Who is part of this online community?
Currently there are about 45 people on the site with several journals that have recently been started and not yet publicized.

I expect to announce it publically this coming month with the distribution of flyers, banners, tee-shirts and advertisements in local venues. It will also be advertised on Plasma screens at locations around buffalo?

I would like to eventually take the heart of the network and move it to a local community intranet with wireless, cell phone, and kiosk assessibility in an effort to move it even further away from the web.

What do people talk about on the site?
People talk about anything from their experiences on the streets of Buffalo to their private lives, to issues of local and national interest. We do not have any specific guidlines for what people talk about on the site. The only restrictions are that you cannot post porn or hate speech.

Sample Topics
gender*
kerry
environment
animal*
cancer
pano*
politic*
jesus*
beer*

Future Plans
Local Political Debate - I would like to create a system for reporting on local political and environmental issues. This system would be used to allow people with littl ebackground on these topics to easily see what each candidate/law was about and whom it affected.

Customer based Restaurant and Venue Revue - I would like to incorporate more features for rating and describing local venues, restaurants, policians, and music without resorting to advertisments.

Sound Database - I would like to write for a grant for a hundred or so voice recorders that could be lent out in a library system. The results would be electronically compiled into a database where people could search by date and location to hear what elmwood sounded during a specific timespace.

Electronic Newspaper - I would liek to develop a electronic newspaper that automatically sleects relevant information from journals each week to compile an electronic newspaper which can be read via cellphones, on the site, or via email subscription. This will be especially important once there are many users and you cannot search each journal everyday.

A 3D chat room - in anime/film noir style based on the elmwood community. I have not decided on the exact method yet, but people will be able to access the 3D chat as an avatar or simply from a textual interface through some other hardware.

Cell phones - More cell phone functions to allow people without computers to use the site.

Basic Spell Check - This is deifnately going to be in a future update as soon as I get a chance.

Funding
(E:strip) is currently funded by the paul, matthew , and terry foundation for the electronc betterment of buffalo neighborhoods foundation of north america. What we need to take this to the next level? About $5000 in investment captial to buy advertising, a faster server connection at our house, and to start developing the beginnnings of the wireless system, and a real Flash Communication Server License.

How does it work
(E:strip) works off a MySQL database with a PHP frontend. When the user types a journal it is sent to the database server fo
r storage. The
re
a

re no static pages. When you view the journals, the PHP code sends a message to the MySQL database to get the information requested, either by username, search, date, etc.

The Flash (e:chat) is based on the Macromedia Flash communictaion server. The (e:radio) is based on the Shoutcast server system. Both run off of our home server, the future home of the entire site once we have enough money for a faster, higher bandwidth connection.

The two posts below this are in response to this situation I am having in tempreal. I just wanted to post them here for historical reference, so that I can rememeber what it was like after I erase the tempreal journal at the end of the semester.

This is being posted here to remind me how much I hated this experience at UB.

---

The course was designed to see what students could do in a 3D virtual community with no governmental or leadership structures in place. People had also been asking for a way to interract with their models and this course was developed in response.

We hoped to see how students would personally, socially and artistically develop in 3D space if given the tools and left on their own. This does not mean abandoned. Jesse and I were 100% available to meet, online or offline, with any student who needed help modeling, scripting, and writing. As a matter of fact, I often posted it to my journal, asking if people wanted to learn more about how I was making the scripts I wrote and was available for a huge portion of the semester almost 24/7 via IM.

I think that you are beginning to attack me on a personal level and I do not appreciate that. I take great personal offense to many of the comments on your latest journal entry.

When I said that it was healthy to discuss the matter publically, I was hoping you were talking about more constructive criticism in terms of how we could get other students involved. Most importantly, I was hoping other students would have input of their own. I hope you can re-read your journal and ask yourself what is really necessary to explain your position. Especially comment such as:


Your Comment"Should the members of the class lose respect for you or your abilities by bearing witness to this discussion, both they and you will have been harmed by it. "
Response - I am not being paid, this is really voluntary. The credit I am getting for this course is mostly for the database and cataloging method that runs the tempreal site. I am not sure what it is for Jesse as the last I knew the school has no money to fund the course. What exactly are you suggesting here?

Your Comment"What disturbs me though is that you want me not only to come up with the ideas but also to impliment them."
Response - That was defined in the syllabus.

Your CommentPlease don't take this as an insult (that is absolutely not my intent) but if you truly feel that providing the inspiration to empower people is not your job, why are you a teacher? That is what teaching is. It's not about increasing people's knowledge of things. It's about bettering their knowledge of themselves and helping them become more complete individuals.
Response - I never said that providing the inspiration to empower people was not my job. You are putting words in my mouth, and doing a poor job of assuming you understoodd what I meant.

I have now taught 11 classes in the last three years, excluding the TAing I did before that. During that time I have been a very inspirational and influencial teacher to my students many of whom have come back to personally thank me. My students this semester at Canisius are also inspired by my teaching, I can tell this because I see the way they act in the classroom and the massive improvements in their coursework work and attitude from the first day to this week. I can also tell because they email me all the time, stop by for office hours, eat lunch with me, and generally spent time outside of class in the lab when I am around - always willing and eager to learn and work with me. Besides the fact that I have had nearly perfect student reviews during my stay at Canisius.

Honestly, I feel in this particular course the students have been super unavailable and either very incapable of or unwilling to complete the course work. I cannot teach people that are completely absent and are uninterested in particpating in a course. You also cannot force people to learn.

I don't think you understand how much J
esse and I have tried to contact some of thes
e
pe

ople. We wrote them emails, we called their homes, we left messages on their cell phones, we sent them IM's, we sent them inworld messages. It is impossible to be inspirational to someone who is completly absent. How can you reach out to a student that is never there? I can honestly say that the time I spent trying to get them organized and figure out what to do about it took away from your learning experience. I appologize for that. We spent more time trying to figure out what to do about the absent people than what to do with the 2 present ones. At the same time the course was really about developing your own world.

At this extremely late point in the semester, many of the students have still not handed in the assignments. We have talked about implementing a final project to give people one last chance. Do you guys have any feelings about this?