Hawkes Online Haven. - Hawkes' Blaaaahg

Bullet list of hobbies.

Hawke (hawke@hawkes-haven.com) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:08:25 +0000

Below is a quick bullet list of my hobbies. Some I'm doing currently, others I've not done in a long time, but hope to do again, and a few I hope to do some day (such as get pilot's license to fly a lot). ;-)

List of hobbies.

Martial Arts:

Kungfu (current though intermittent. first started in '74. been on and off over the years. now on 4th style)
Aikido (been a while, first started in '74. intermittent over the years. last class in '01)
Karate ('06)
T'ai Chi (integrated with Kungfu sometimes)
Meditation (intermittently)

Visual Arts:

Photography (intermittent. I don't know if I'm going to get the darkroom setup after all)
- Black & White / Archival (intermittently. have not done since not had dark room, have all the equipment, but need to either finish setting up darkroom or give it up with the hassle of chemistry and paper acquisition an issue now. last used around '01)
- outdoors/wildlife/landscape (intermittently)
- fashion/commercial/catalog/promotional (last did professionally in '01)
Computer Graphics (intermittent)
Computer Animation (been a while)

Music:

Composition (been a while, desperately want to take a few days and crank out a few pieces I have in my head and lay down some tracks).

Listening & Broadcasting (stopped broadcasting Summer 2007)

Performing (generally just coffee shops, choir, or broadcasts or recordings)

Guitar (play every day, but haven't performed since Fall '07)
Bass (play intermittently, also not performed since Fall '07)
Keyboard (never performed, but play intermittently)
Native American Wood Flute (play semi-regularly, not performed since Fall '07)
Harmonica (rarely performed, play occasionally, usually as part of multi-track recordings)
Drums:

Standard “rock & blues” drums (every now and then, never performed)
African Djembe Drum (intermittently, last performed Spring '07)

Vocals (intermittently, not performed since Fall '07)
Electronic/computer-generated (intermittent)
Ambient & Experimental (intermittent)

Broadcasting:

News & Commentary (stopped in Summer '07, considering podcasting again sometimes with co-host)
Technology Discussion (ditto)
Disc Jockeying (music) (stopped in Summer '07)
Interviews (stopped in Summer '07)
Live performances (self, and others) (stopped in Summer '07)

Role playing gaming:

Game Mastering (Gming) (intermittently, sometimes months in between)
Playing (about once every month or two)
Creating (rules systems, modules, adventures, maps, etc.) (intermittent)
Modifying/converting game systems (intermittent)
Creating and running gaming conventions (annually, each July, coming up on 4th year)
Most interested in Middle-earth based settings, but enjoy others

Sports & Outdoors activities:

Basketball (intermittent, not played teams since winter '06)
Hiking (whenever I can, usually the Summer, but not limited to seasons)
Camping (whenever I can, been since August '06)
Fishing (ditto)
Mountain Biking (rarely)
Boating/Sailing (been a long time, but used to do a lot, would love to do again)
Canoing (not since August '06, but bought two canoes this year, so will be doing a lot this year!).
Rock Climbing (sporadically, last did Summer '07)
Ropes/challenge courses high and low (intermittent, last did in Spring '06)
Rappelling (been a long time, but would love to do again. last done in '84 or so)
Spelunking (exploring caves) (been a long time, but love doing. Last did in '86 or so).
Swimming (seasonal, pools and rivers and lakes)
Aqua aerobics (enjoy, used to do 2-3 times a week. last did in '07).
Walking (try to do daily, usually more like 1-5 times a week)
Jogging (minimally) (been about two years since last jogged regularly)
Skateboarding (usually only to help my kids learn. yes, I have my own skateboard, and can still do 180's and 360's and a "tic tac". last did a few weeks ago).
Hacky Sack (here and there, mostly only enjoy with others, and seems no one does it anymore. ;-) ).
Volleyball (when there's a game on, love this sport, been a long time though, last played '07).
Soccer (rarely, usually just with my kids now).
White Water Rafting (been a looong time, but absolutely loved it, and plan to do more. last did serious white water at Green River Skull Rapids back in '04 or so).
Snow skiing (been a long time, and now considering getting snow boarding gear, want to teach my kids both, last skiied in '89 or so).

Travel:

Video (last performed in '91)
Audio/Voice-overs (see "broadcasting. last performed in Summer '07)

Acting: Theater (love this, totally natural for me, wish I could do more. last perfomed in '02).
Theatrical Styles:

Languages:

Spanish (3 years from '83 to '86)
Russian ('86 to '87, and in '93)
Japanese ('92 to '93)
Mandarin ('94, briefly '07, will be starting a year of classes in Fall '08)
Cantonese ('94)
Finnish ('95)
ASL (American Sign Language) ('06 to '08 and continuing)

Computer Programming (Langauges):

BASIC/QBASIC/GWBASIC/VBASIC (utility language. used from '81 through '01 on and over the years)
Pascal ('84 to '86)
C ('89, then '96, then intermittently since. last used in '04)
C++ ('96 to '00)
Assembly/Assembler ('96 to '98)
Perl (the utility language. '96 to '02, still comes up once in a great while).
PHP (blech) ('00 to '04. I hope this language dies off some day, but as long as there are sloppy programmers around..... :-( ).
Fortran (ouch!) (nothing wrong with the language, just had a rough assignment with it. last used in '97)
Java (intermittent and currently)
Python (early stages currently and intermittently)

Reading voraciously

Writting occasionally (poems, lyrics, memoirs, modules, essays, reviews, etc.).

Cooking, many cultures and styles of food. If I were to become a cook/chef for a living, I would want to be a saucier (master of sauces), it is what turns a "nice" dish, into "a taste of heaven". ;-)

Scrooge '02

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:40:44 +0000

Originally posted on 2006/11/15.

Back when I was in Malad, I auditioned for a town theater role in "A Christmas Carol", and was accepted as Scrooge. I have video tape, that one of these days I need to edit together, but here's a pic from back then. I'm cowering from the ghost of Jacob Marley. ;-)

That's me as scrooge (in the white) cringing from Jacob Marley.

One interesting challenge to this performance was that, even though Marley was reasonably tall fellow, I was still a rather tall and rather well fed Scrooge (though George C. Scott's was rather considerably more well fed).
So, I would spend the entire play attempting to shrink myself (and succeeded in shrinking myself from around 6'8" (pre-injury) to 6'2" or so). At the end of each performance it would take me a while to painfully "unfold". ;-)

The whole production was a lot of fun, if I recall correctly we had 3 performances, I have always loved doing theater, and I hope in time to get chances to do some acting here in Spokane. I have three performances on video tape, that I keep intended to capture to my hard drive and then merge together into a nice single video. Some day... ;-)

RE: DMCA , RIAA, MPAA, Copyright

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:50:03 +0000

Originally posted 2006/10/26.

Some VERY interesting dialogue that was on Slashdot this week (all quotes from others, no commentary from me right now):

Commentator1: "...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."

Commentator2: "...this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed..."

Commentator3: "Here" (referring to Commentator2's statement) " is the misconception, copyright violations are not theft. Copyright ownership is not an absolute right like property ownership is. Copyright is a comprimise struck by society with artists and writers. The purpose of compulsory licensing was to modify the compromise to maintain it's fairness. The MPAA and RIAA have no absolute right to control their members' creations. Neither do their members for that matter. If the MPAA does not live up to it's side of the compromise, we the people reserve the right to renegotiate. No slippery slope, no theft. If we give in to the MPAA and RIAA or any of those extremists that say intellectual propery is the same as real property, then we are giving up our rights and heading down a slippery slope."

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine;
as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them,
like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... '
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813"

Find and copy *. from multiple directories into one directory recursively.

Hawke (hawke@hawkes-haven.com) — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:24:37 +0000

I'm getting lazy in my "old age" using GUI too much.
I am still setting up my HP (moving back over from the Dell), and I wanted to move all my various and custom fonts over.
Well, each font is stored in a separate subdirectory, and sometimes sub-sub-sub-directories.
The GUI way would be to tediously go through each directory one at a time (or run the GUi search) and then copy the files over.
But I _knew_ there was an easier way from the command line, but I couldn't remember the syntax.... Had something to do with using find...... Now if i can just _find_ what that was... ;-)

This should work for any/most/all UNIX, Linux, BSD variants. Of course, you must have working versions of "find" and "cp" installed, but that's (almost) certainly the case.

I didn't find the exact answer online, but found enough similar examples to piece together and refresh my memory.

I'm posting it up here in case I forget again (INCONCEIVABLE!), and/or maybe help others out.

(Edit: 2008-05-25)

Sheesh, I forgot to post the actual code when I first posted this blog entry. Here it is:

find . -type f -name '*.TTF' -exec cp {} ../All-Fonts/ \;

Brennan, Cello, Orchestra, Mead High School, May 20, 2008

Hawke (hawke@hawkes-haven.com) — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:26:27 +0000

I'm very tired, so please pardon the brevity of this posting.
Brennan had his final Mead Beginner Orchestra performance tonight.
He has been working hard on his cello playing, even when he was sick, making the effort to put in some good practice time.
He's obviously having a great time with it, and his (private) teacher, Nina Petersen does a great job teaching and inspiring him.
You can see from this photo what a great time he was having:

And here the concentration and focus:

They are coming along very nicely. Each group, Advanced, onwards, were very impressive, and had a fun selection.
We all especially enjoyed the mor senior groups renditions of Orange Jam and The Lord of the Rings.
Brennan was "rockin'" to the music.

On a side tangent, the lead violinist (Concert Master?) for the high school group, was Michael Mortier, the son of my voice teacher. He received numerous awards, and his violiln playing was wonderful. It was great to talk briefly with Steve (his dad) as well.
The audience actually gave a standing ovation for the final piece (which had the violin players scattered throughout the audience for a nice "surround sound" effect.

All very nicely done. Way to go Mead Orchestra!
Way to go Brennan!

G'night all.