Access Data Force – Web Design & Development

the Symbol of Cutting-Edge Computing

Top image of me sitting in front of my 3 monitors for my main PCs (at home). I also have a couple kindle fires and a great Chromebook 15″ that I got refurbed for $150. I work on lots of PCs at work every day doing tech support & network admin maintenance.

It’s difficult for those of my generation — people who grew up with the beige PC box as a cultish object of desire and the symbol of cutting-edge computing — to understand just how divorced the modern world and population have become from the desktop PC. The desktop today is akin to what mainframes were in the past: an imposing, burring, gargantuan construction that you only resort to when you really need to get some heavy work done.

from an article on The Verge.

Playing with Google Fonts

Looking at different Google fonts to get some depth on the header text. Then added a star field background, a constellation image and a horoscope to round out the essay from The Basket of Tolerance by Adi Da.

Colorizing the Table of Contents from The Basket of Tolerance

Excerpt from The Table of Contents of The Basket of Tolerance

This week’s mini-project was to colorize the Table of Contents from The Basket of Tolerance. Using CSS3 gradients with 50% transparency, it was pretty simple to add gradient backgrounds to document elements. And a little code to go along with the page, since it’s being produced from the database. I’m going to have to deal with outline formatting at some point…

Programming with Crouton (Linux) on the Chromebook

Snapshot of linux (xfce) running on a Chromebook

Snapshot of linux (xfce) running on my Chromebook

I’m really enjoying working on my new (refurbed) 15″ chromebook I got from Acer for just $150. First thing I did was add the developer version of linux using the Crouton setup.

Google did an excellent job designing a very lightweight OS–and I am running a linux virtual OS with it, and it works fine for my current learning of laravel (a php framework on steroids) and web design.

Another little project: I also just loaded the latest version of linux (16.04, xfce) on an old dual-core system, and it runs using only 300 megs of ram on a base system. I put in an SSD disk to boot off, and it’s ready to run in about 5 seconds–and runs really smooth! SSDs are ideal to boot off, and then you just add an extra hard drive for additional storage.

The Seven Stages of Life (mobile friendly) Page, which started off as a Bootstrap Experiment

I’ve been working on making a bootstrap carousel… which has been morphing into a page showing off Adi Da’s Seven Stages of Life.

First I got a bootstrap carousel working with bootstrap and jquery. Good. Then I started working with headers and captions in the carousel, and was dissatified with the legibility of the text, so eventually I just decided to put text below and remove all the text from the carousel itself.

I have beautiful artwork to work from, adapting it to a mobile format–think chunks instead of big blobs. So instead of a long long landscape image with embedded text, I chunked it down to the basic image, then put the text into a flexible list with a nice css3 gradient using colors from the image. That way the page can be viewed from a smartphone (landscape, 420 pixels) all the way up to a desktop.

Cruising through The Basket of Tolerance

The Basket of Tolerance, by Adi Da, is a book with 3 bibliographies, about 16,000 items, mostly books, with CDs and videos too. I’m working on how to access it so it’s visually interesting, and not just a thick telephone book of lists. Apart from book sellers and scholars, such a book/website won’t appeal to most people. Most people are interested in a certain topics. I want to make a top level dive into wherever, and back again, but to also show the context of the stages of life, such that if a person gets curious, she can find and read more about the seven stages of life, and Adi Da.

The featured image above is a template for looking at all the items in a section of The Basket of Tolerance. This section I’ve divided into 110 stacks, which contain 3,554 items. The list of titles & authors alone, without any pictures, goes for 101 pages at 12 point text. I want something more like ~25 pages of abbreviated info, with pictures, so a person can see an area of interest, then click on that to get a wall of books/CDs/videos on a particular topic.

Rip Van Winkle Does Chi Gong

220px-Irvington_statue_of_Rip_van_Winkle — Statue of Rip van Winkle

I am Rip Van Winkle.

I’m slowly rousing to life again after a long twenty-some-years sleep. After a long-time of suffering chronic fatigue, I was finally diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea.

So I changed my diet & wear an octopus at night (cpap machine), and it’s made some real difference. But not enough. So I have keep at it like a detective figuring out why such low conductivity and how to naturally amp it up, without coffee, etc.

Will try & bother doctor so I can look at the stats the cpap makes. (I’ve looked at a file, and can reader the header, but the data is binary encoded, so I will push to get the format.) So far he hasn’t been willing to give the data to me, although somehow the fact of me having a cpap has (via my providers no doubt) gotten into the hands of internet advertisers, not thru me, so now surfing shows cpap machines in the adverts. Kind of amusing how it’s easier to see my stuff on the internet than it is to get it from my provider.

Rip meditates & does Da Chi Gong

So pranayama & Chi Gong then. & Guru meditation.

Radical Healing

The Basic Principle Of General Health and Well-being In The Only-By-Me Revealed and Given “Radical” Reality-Way Of The Heart, and The Basic Principle Of “Radical” Healing… Is Communion With The Prior Perfection… In Which the bodily human being is arising…

by Adi Da, from Right Life Is Free Participation In Unlimited Radiance.

Why I don’t promote Apple Tech Products

Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone

ipad-repair

I have a friend who’s in the hardware repair business who fights companies like HP & Agilsys about the same things. The hardware companies would rather you buy a new board for >$1,000 than repair a switch on it that costs a dollar. (The company wouldn’t help so my friend bought a switch and fixed it himself for about $1.00 in parts.)

I also have a kind of love/hate relationship to Apple. I love their design ethos and work to make tech comprehensible to humans, but hate their pricing strategy (I’m too poor for it and use a kindle fire rather than an ipad.) I’m also into open-source and don’t like walled gardens.

From Slashdot.org: It’s no secret that Apple makes a ton of money by charging ‘astronomical’ fee for replacing and fixing display and other components of iPhone and iPad (as well as Mac line). For instance, the company charges $599 for replacing the display on the iPad Pro tablet. Which sounds insane when you realize that you can almost certainly purchase a new iPad Pro under $700. And this is what most people do. A Huffington Post article notes that this behavior has contributed significantly in “generating heaps of e-waste.” Citing many advocates, the publication claims that Apple has “opposed legislation that could help curb it.” From the report: The Huffington Post spoke with politicians in two states who support such legislation, and confirmed through government filings that Apple has lobbied on the issue. Four states — Minnesota, Nebraska, Massachusetts and New York — have considered adopting “right to repair” amendments, which would update existing laws regarding the sale of electronic equipment. Amending these laws would make it easier to fix your devices and would help reduce “e-waste,” a catch-all term for any electronic detritus. The New York State Senate and Assembly could approve one of these amendments next week. This would help unofficial repair shops get the information they need to fix your iPad, ideally driving down repair costs and encouraging you to squeeze more life out of your old devices — thus cutting down on the e-waste generated by our voracious appetites for new gadgets. Apple asserts that it helps recycle millions of pounds of electronics equipment every year. But it won’t support right to repair amendments.One would ask what is preventing a user from getting their device repaired by unofficial service person? In addition to the security implication, you also run a risk of getting your device bricked by Apple. To recall, the iPhone maker was found bricking the handsets that had been repaired by third-party vendors earlier this year.

The Diurnal Fuse

Nevertheless… it must be Said that, now that this sunset-time of night-games is upon all, the Diurnal Fuse yet Crackles overnight, and will Make an inevitable Dawning. And, in the meantime, much can be Said and Done to bring the nightwalkers to Rest, and to Awaken them Early–to Feel toward the inevitable Morning, and to watch for The Flying Horse of Dawn That Lights the Single eye and heart, and Restores the Divine Kingdom within, and (if only there is Compassionate Love) without (as well).

An extract from the essay “My All-Completing and
All-Unifying Word” from The Basket of Tolerance, forthcoming, by the World-Friend, Adi Da.

The “Diurnal Fuse” reminds me of a Dylan Thomas poem that goes:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.

My Canvas

Where to begin? I need to organize my thoughts, my pictures, my PCs, my everything. Guess I’ll start with a wiki and some kanban.

The logo (above, centered on the canvas) is a rendering of Machapuchare, one of the highest peaks of the Himalaya in Nepal. Adi Da (“Bubba Free John” at the time) signified that this is a logo for “The Great Tradition” of Mankind’s wisdom-inheritance. The peak is also featured on one of his books, The Enlightenment of the Whole Body.