On Writing

I never considered myself to be a jealous person. I like what I have and what I am and have always been glad of what you have and are. But there's a gift I deeply envy: the gift of put into words what I think and feel.

Writing is the most valuable gift of all. I wish I could write and concieve worlds, people, places, life stories, friendship and romances.











But then I thought "I have a blog! I could do that."
Where are the ideas now?

#iranelection Cyberwar Guide for Beginners

Get involved! Don't ignore and don't be conniving.

The post bellow was posted at: http://reinikainen.co.uk and it's very usefull if you want to help Iran protesters in a good way, whatever your war is.

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.
5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.
6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.
7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.

Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.

Blue Skies

I'm a proud daughter of the blue skies. My father served in the Air Force all his life, we lived in a military base for almost 15 years, I worked on an international airport for another 13 years & my sister used to be a flight attendant. What I mean is, airplanes come natural in my life.

I guess it's not necessary to say I was never afraid of flying and never understood people that were. But then on October, 1996 a plane crashed downtown and after that I just grew concerned. That happened again on July, 2007. There was another one, on Sept. 2006 but it crashed in the middle of nowhere.

After that first crash, everytime I'm onboard I get tense.

Now there was yet another crash but in the middle of the Atlantic. To think that all those souls had lives and plans...

Do you twitt?

Do you twitt? If not, you should.

A 140 characters miniblog is way more than "stepping on the verge of a precipice, shouting nonsense and hoping anyone could hear you". It's a direct line between you and the world and it can be seriously fun. You can reach almost everybody, including the US President.

Like our gorgeous boy ZQ says, I had a blast at it yesterday. Thanks, @NathalieCaron!

FEIST

Weekends were always time to have fun, to go out with my kid, movies, pizza, stuff like that. Now they're shorter and I'm tired, cross and sleepy all the time.
What is different? Time to think about it.
I really am concious now that I've been bitter (?), cross, bad humoured, angry, FEIST but I've always thought that something must've happened and I was reacting to that but now I've been told otherwise.
Yes, "I've been told" otherwise. A guy, German guy, I knew when I was 18 told me I was already like this when we met.

This is going nowhere but I promise I'm thinking hard about this and I'll come up with something.

HAPPY TOWEL DAY!

The Greatness Of Towels is found in Chapter 3 of Doug Adams' work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

Doug Adams died on May 11, 2001. On May 14 of that year, one of his fans, D. Clyde Williamson, posted a tribute to Mr. Adams including a proposal that a date two weeks after his passing should be observed as Towel Day.

May 25th continues to be observed annually as Towel Day as an ongoing tribute to Douglas Adams.

NERD PRIDE! Let's hit the streets!

About @beforethedoor

I'm being followed by @beforethedoor on Twitter and feel the need to say why: the account was mine and I set it to follow me.

Before The Door (www.beforethedoor.com) is a production company founded by Corey Moosa, Neal Dodson and Zachary Quinto, Carnegie Mellon buddies, in the business of movie making and culture shaking. I'm not related in any way whatsoever to that production company or their partners aside from being a huge fan of ZQ's work (and his eyebrows, of course).

Last April I checked to see if they were already on Twitter. Once they weren't yet, I openned the account @beforethedoor and kept it quiet, without updates, without "movement".

Last Thursday I checked the e-mail account where I registered @beforethedoor to and found out I was suddenly being followed by many. One of them was ZQ's account. Right away I sent him a DM explaining @beforethedoor was his at his request and I'd directly send the password when he asked for it. Five minutes later I got a DM from him (YAY!!!!) being very polite.

Obviously I send the password imediately and I guess the guys didn't have the heart to stop following me and that's why I'm still on their list.

I wasn't going to tell anybody (brag) about receiving DM from ZQ but suddenly people are following me just because @beforethedoor is too and I don't want anybody to be misled about it. Just keeping it real.

They're nice, polite and generous guys, really, and I wish them and their business all success in this Galaxy.

Advice

A not-quite-friend once said to me "don't come back to a place you once were happy". At first I didn't understand what the saying meant and it took me some time, actually several months till I could grab its meaning.

Another fact is that all the social media allowed me - well, allowed everybody - to search and eventually find people that once in the past had a part in my life.

Regardless of quantum physics, time is a line that runs in only one direction for a reason: things and people of one's past should remain there. I met some people from my past and "going back to a place I once was happy" has been disappointing and spoiled the good memories I had and now my present and my past both suck.

So here's my piece of advice for all humankind: cherish your memories, your past, but leave it be. Don't ever go back to a place you were once happy.


PS: pic is just an eye candy.

Sonnet CXXXII - WS

Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of Heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even
Doth half that glory to the sober west
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning soth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul thy complexion lack.




Eu amo os olhos teus e eles, como apiedados,
sabendo a quanta dor teu desdém me condena,
de espesso luto sempre e em lágrimas banhados
se compungem perante essa terrível fena.
E, certo, nem o Sol, em matutina hora,
fazendo resplandecer a face do oriente,
nem a estrela que o acaso, ao escurecer, decora,
podem nunca irradiar graça tão surpreendente,
como a que os olhos teu dão, chorando, à tua face.
Oh! Deixa que em tua alma, então, o pranto influa,
se o pranto, assim, te faz mais belo; que te engrace
todo o ser o sentir que em teus olhos atua.
Então eu jurarei só haver beleza triste,
ou que, sem tua feição, beleza não existe.