Tag: jacob

he’ll be back, oh yes he will

BB video: Jacob explaining his Cold Boot Encryption Attack.

I deeply appreciate Jacob. Not only is he locally famous as my mad, delicious friend who convinced Liz and I that taking our shirts off while standing in two feet of snow was a good idea, (all in the name of art, you understand), he is also now, gratifyingly, the mad genius behind NoiseBridge, an open Project Space for hackers that just opened in San Francisco’s Mission District with a focus on art, science, technology, mentoring and other fun stuff.

“We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art – with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.”

When it’s completely set up, the plan is to have a darkroom, a machine shop area, an electronics area, a programming laptop area, a relaxing reading room, a bart capsule hotel space, a library, server racks, a kitchen, and possibly a few more things, just because. At the moment they’re still meshed in the process of establishing themselves as a non-profit, but soon people will be able to make tax deductible donations. Not to say you can’t already give them money. That would be good too.

the places livejournal takes me

Seattle was beautiful, a week of people I like and trying unfamiliar intersections on for size. Compass points. The stars and sea. Music, driving, carrying the city in my head. Robin brought me down, we talked love, I stayed with Joseph, we talked sex, and I bathed in every minute of living somewhere new. The nutrition facts of being away: elevated mood 90%. I would have been content to simply stay. Mike agreed I should. Walk out the door and never, ever return.

My favourite time was sitting in the hotel hall with Adam as we asked each other ridiculous questions designed to let us know each other as fast as humanly possible before we had to make the mistake of letting the next day wake and stretch arms and happen. He effortlessly touched the place I hide my face, a perfect replica of what I need to be content with life, reminding me to keep reaching out to others. It’s all a matter of numbers. Odds. Carrying each other like islands with similar species. Eventually, something’s going to give, somebody will stay and be a little bit of everything. Chaos theory, psychographics, the aching joints of disharmony, all of it faded away in the flowering safety of spending time together. Tangled in his hair, my hands remembered how easy it can be to like somebody, what it’s like to want to have someone else around, as if I could break the sound barrier with only our names. It looked like I killed a child in his shower.

Ross drove me kindly back into Vancouver on Monday, where I was at loose ends. I had forgotten to make any plans past Return, Unpack, and Clean. I stood at my window, glaring at the bland clouds, purring black cats tied to my ankles with neglect, thinking, “the drugs just don’t work today.”

Then Jacob Appelbaum called.

Come on down, he said, this is where I am, he said, where should we go next? A week unfurling, futures whispering, why not? Yes. Please. Rescue me. So I met him to the Jupiter, (forgetting they host the worst karaoke to ever issue from human beings), then found myself in a hotel room where the last of the hackers were trying to unsuccessfully party down on a Tuesday night. Tables covered in con-badges crowded the room, pizza boxes sat semi-ignored near the balcony door, and no one seemed to remember names. It would have been sad if anyone had been more awake. Eventually I caught a ride home from a Berkeley fellow, bared my teeth at sleep, and collapsed into Thursday.

Jacob, now Jake, called again. Come out, he said, we’re at the Vancouver Aquarium. Loud music, blurred laughter. Yes, of course. Bringing Ray, knowing he wouldn’t make it too late. They handed us tickets at the door, Complimentary Drinks From Microsoft, as I was highly amused how easy it was to swagger in. People standing everywhere, a string of blaring speakers probably bothering the fish. I scouted, looking for bleach blond hair to catch my eye. Jake was in the back, standing with Julia and speaking German with another girl I’m not sure I ever met again. We floated around the building, trying to find a way in to see the lemurs, but failed and eventually found ourselves outside with the dolphins and belugas instead. For five hundred dollars, I promised, I would strip down to underwear and swim with the dolphins. Sadly, only about three-fifty was ever raised, so I stayed dry, not willing to risk pneumonia without my rent being essentally gauranteed. Oh thwarted adventure. The Baby Buddha cried.

Eventually Ray went missing, as was expected from a Thursday late night, and whosoever was left was packed into school busses and brought back to the hotel. Another party, same room, more people, better everything. Topics: Internet security, computer user anarchism. Fascinating, technical, I liked it, (it was odd), though I felt that I might flounder at any minute, left behind by the jargon of the industry. Jake invited me to Whistler in a conversation lull, and when I said yes, he and I danced in a corner of the room with Sergio, a fun Argentinian fellow with short hair except for one long, thin, braid, who I ended up staying over with.

I woke in a king sized bed to an announcement at a ten o’clock that felt like seven a.m. THIS IS NOT A TEST. EMERGENCY SERVICES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO ASSESS A POSSIBLE EMERGENCY. ALL ELEVATORS HAVE BEEN LOCKED, PLEASE USE THE STAIRS TO EVACUATE THE BUILDING. WARNING CODE ONE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. My first waking thought. “I’m not navigating 18 stories of stairs until I smell smoke. Especially,” as I opened my eyes, “it appears to be snowing outside. Ha.” Instead of pulling myself from the wide, warm blankets, I curled myself deeper into my nest of utterly first class pillow and went back to sleep, chewing a complimentary chocolate. Until the warning sounded again, then a third time, at which point I gave up, got up, and walked out, soundly forgetting my camera on the table until the moment the door clicked shut behind me.

I’m always hungry for a little more than I’ve had in life

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

—R.M. Rilke

I’m floating too fast to close my eyes. My skin is still scented with someone else, the edges of them sitting on a bed, handsome head in hands, hair tied in black wheat warrior knot. I feel like I could make music right now, if only I had percussion. Inside my fingers have been trying to dance to a melody that has everything to do with the sounds of breathing. When I woke up, it was afternoon and the outside world was white. Everything buried and I didn’t know where my body began in relation to this strange acquaintance. Snow and light. Snow and a hand creeping into mine, a sigh, and they turned in sleep, delineating the places where my body began and the universe ended. The dry earth can’t kill me because once again I have meaning.

  • Alleged pope incarnate excommunicated.

    I’m so sorry he didn’t get the part. Later I’ll call in the afternoon, try for a rain check on breakfast. Films are like that. It’s fickle. They drag you in to threaten the other players, they drag you in and blow your face up ten feet tall and thirty million theaters wide. I understand the inclination as much as I understand the way a teardrop tastes.

    Before that, in a few hours time, James and I will be calling Michel, finding somewhere for breakfast, and making our way to the Urban Photography Exhibit currently taking up advertising space all over the subway system. After, James will vanish off to be a psychology guinea pig for some group studying how different artists solve the same problem, and if I’m lucky, I’ll have a date for lunch. Late afternoon, Jacob and I are going to hit up the House of Architecture and the skating rink in the Old Quarter. (On Saturdays there’s a fireworks show above the ice). It feels nice to have days planned again, as if now I’m safe somehow because I’m strong enough again to pull a city around me like a blanket. The stars, they are holes I punched there myself merely by searching for them.

  • Romania shepherd finds 80 human fetuses in forest.

    It felt strange to be at a party where everyone knew about the Zombiewalk. I stumbled, uncertain how to discuss it before I threw language barriers to the wind with enthusiasm. I’m beginning to recognize that I tread every day on ground that other people could never take for granted. It’s taking me over slowly, like the realization that most of my friends tell their friends that I’m a writer. I was so very good at avoiding that particular phrase. Smacks too much of art and creation, holy things, and I am but a girl who walks through the forest at dusk, who leaves before the gods come out to play.