Lee.org

Please note that I changed it so that if you want to subscribe to comments while you are leaving your own comment, you have to check the check-box.

(this should reduce the number of bounces I get from fictitious people like WinFreeViagra@yahoo.net.

I bought 2 tickets to Burning Man this morning.

This is what I agreed to:

I agree to read and abide by all guidelines listed in the 2007 Survival Guide, and to the terms on the back of the 2007 ticket, which appear below:
YOU VOLUNTARILY ASSUME THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH BY ATTENDING AND RELEASE BURNING MAN FROM ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THIS RISK.
You must bring enough food, water, shelter and first aid to survive one week in a harsh desert environment. Commercial vending is prohibited, as are firearms, fireworks, rockets and other explosives. You agree to read and abide by ALL rules in the Survival Guide and follow federal, state and local laws. This is a LEAVE NO TRACE, pack it in, pack it OUT event. You are asked to contribute 2 hours of playa clean up in addition to your own camp. Art cars, art installations, theme camps and performances are not owned or operated by Burning Man and you assume all risk of injury arising from their operation. You appoint Burning Man as your representative to protect your intellectual property or privacy rights, recognizing that Burning Man has no obligation to take action. All vehicles including trucks, trailers and RVs entering and exiting Burning Man are subject to search by Gate staff. Tickets are nonrefundable even if the event is terminated early or canceled due to harsh weather, acts of nature, governmental regulation or conditions beyond Burning Man’s control. This ticket is a revocable license that may be revoked by Burning Man for any reason. Use other than personal use of images from Burning Man, or of drawings or representations of the Burning Man sculpture on a book cover or in any advertisement, or of the phrase ‘Burning Man’ in the title of any publication or in any advertisement, is prohibited without prior written consent of Burning Man. Burning Man is not liable for acts of God, or actions taken by government agencies. Children under 18 years of age can attend the event only accompanied by a parent or guardian, and any person bringing a child to the event agrees for the child to the contractual terms on this ticket. YOUR USE OF THIS TICKET CONFIRMS YOUR AGREEMENT TO THESE TERMS.

I have been starting a business with my girlfriend, Charlotte. We are tentatively calling it Safe and Secure. It is an earthquake preparedness business where we go to people’s homes and institutions and ready them for the kinds of earthquakes that we inevitably have here in northern California. It’s turning out to be quite interesting and fun. We are becoming experts in the field. :-)

In my personal/art life, I have been working on several projects getting ready for Burning Man. One is called Swarm. You can take a peek here: http://www.orbswarm.com/. I am also helping to rework the Serpent Mother… that is the giant snake that we worked on last year. You saw pictures of that, yes? Take a peek: http://lee.org/blog/2006/10/03/serpent-links/

At Burning Man 2006, Nate Smith created an art piece called 2BLEVE. BLEVE is short for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion”. It was an astonishing 15 seconds. I saw it from about 1/4′ mile away.

Here’s an excerpt of an email from my friend David pointing to pictures and videos related to it.

2BLEVE. BLEVE is an acronym for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion”.
See wikipedia. Also see the BLEVE account in the 1973 section of this.
some interesting quotes: “…two acre fireball…” and “…one thousand feet in diameter…”.

Below are some links that Nate found of the stuff we worked on.

Nightshade’s photos

http://www.theblight.net/gallery/
http://www.theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6256.html

http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6208.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6209.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6242.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6245.html

boom
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6256.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6257.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6258.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6259.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6260.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6537.html

Best still sequence yet.
http://homepage.mac.com/red0x/bm06/

2BLEVE video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vYE7B1_PU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm5VB7JaJWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdKYGMaHNqY

really good video.
http://www.fearlesspookie.com/videos/2BLEVE.avi

Fire vortex video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rX4dESXWmQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaX_Hm5Dl5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtDqRX4duvE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txq-tHOMxAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkVExGq9U-8

local version:

local version:

local version:

local version:

local version:

What we did this morning:

1 woke up
2 lazed
3 enjoyed the feel of the sheets on our skin
4 lazed in that eyes half-open perfectly comfy manner
5 mmmmmmmm
6 talked about what we might have for breakfast
7 snuggled
7b felt at one with… something
8 lazed
9 snuggled
10 started making the scones
11 started making the bacon
12 fresh orange juice, REALLY fresh, like nectar
13 started the fluffly scrambled eggs
14 steaming chocolate mocha!
15 everything steaming on the table at the same moment (except the orange juice of course)
16 yum bliss

Phew, we’ve had a busy day! Where’s my pillow? And it’s only 1:30pm!

If you use the Safari web browser and wouldn’t mind giving me a little hand with something, could you email me? I’m trying to figure out what’s up with a problem on my site.

Charlotte and I rushed to Fort Funston to catch the sunset. We both needed the rays. Unfortunately, we missed the sun by 5 minutes. But there were a bunch of folks with fancy camera gear. I kept overhearing them talking about something moving really fast and such. Charlotte finally asked what they were doing. They were looking at Comet McNaught!

It was discovered just last year and it’s orbit isn’t known precicely, though it is extremely eccentric. It won’t be back for hundreds, thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years. NASA site on it’s orbit

I’ve only ever seen a glimpse of another comet, and that was on a hazy night. With my own eyes, I could make out the comet, streaking along just 15 million miles from the sun. And through binoculars, it looked “just like they do in the movies” :-)

So it’s a good thing we showed up when we did!

We’re going to go out just after sunset Sunday night to try and catch it. But it might already be gone.

Last night Charlotte and I went to Poetry & Pizza: Murray Silvestein & David Shaddock. Charlotte immediately noticed Murray Silvestein as the author of the important A Pattern Language. The readings were quite a lot of fun. I found David Shaddock’s readings to be tremendous! Afterward, we spoke with him for a few minutes and he gave us a copy of his “Dreams are another set of muscles”. I’m looking forward to reading it!

It was hel at Escape from NY Pizza downtown. The pizza was excellent. :-)

Afterwords, Charlotte was a bit tired and I was energized so I made my way to a meeting about the Serpent Mother proposal. Worked on it (having a lot of lively and fun discussion :-) til 2am.

The Flaming Lotus Girls are taking the Hand of God to Australia. No, I’m not going :-(. But a groovy Flaming Lotus Girls Blog was created around it :-). Take a look.

(note: I disabled the plugin. See the comments for more info)

To try and keep the 100+ comment spams per day out of my life (and even my ‘moderated’ pile), I’ve installed Math Comment Spam Protection. I’ve tried several “makes you add two numbers” plugins and this one seems to work best with what I have. If it makes posting comments too terrible, please tell me…. in a comment… or…. whatever.