Douglas Rice Winslow III

Advocate for the disabled

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.: UPDATES :.

Why are e-books such a broken field? Big computer companies have stopped paying you.

January 4, 2023 at 11 A.M. Eastern Time

I'm still recovering my daily routine after some recent health setbacks. Obviously the sedentary life of an author includes a lot of laziness and computer use, unless you're living in one of those Richie Rich states like New York or California. So, given that diabetes is a recent diagnosis in my life, you can provably (probably) expect me diverting effort and time towards more smart and short writeups on the Facebook web site. I will make those available here when I have enough time to do so. As for my authorship, let me outline why I've kept writing off the public docket lately.

In September 2018, I found that a software update from Apple emptied the e-book download caches on my iPhone and iPad. Since I keep my e-book purchases downloaded onto my device, not on the server, I found that one of the books I purchased was rigged at Apple to not re-download. Ever since that incident, including the misfortunes of calling into Apple's technical support hotline for answers, and a job application that seems to have ultimately canceled the iPod line, it made me divert my expression and acquisition strategy to one of "necessarily openable", or, on the author side: I really need to make sure that what I put into my personal expression system comes back out of it. Right?

Ending my dependency on digital purchases wasn't an easy thing to do at the time, and as Google was made aware of the troubles I expressed with the Apple system, their later discontinuation of everyone's paid Google Play Music libraries so that only YouTube would benefit proved to me that the DRM system that sued me in 1999 failed. The pirates beat the field by running YouTube on-the-clock as administrators, and the company was complacent revaluing everything of interest to "evaluation versus devaluation". (I need to point out here that these two companies have been pirating my off-the-clock time by staging software problems to me to report. The Apple error is one of the earliest attempts I'd noted of this, and it's why I suspended their platform.)

It's my opinion that you should be able to buy my first book today, but I won't release it yet because I'm not as confident in paper or digital delivery as I once was. It does exist in finished form. But I see it as the reverse situation of the Apple and Google trials that put me into support-and-report hell until I stopped giving their user interface accurate information.

There is a very vociferous debate in authorship communities today about rights management while copyright itself as a protection mechanism hasn't evolved (necessarily, maybe) in what seems like an leveled 'excerpt-is-enough' playing field, where there used to be many interesting ways for us as prototypers to work in the favor of the reader.

I am confident in you as a reader if you are. I had been placing previews of my writings on the microblog system Twitter, of which I was a paid customer, but since it hasn't delivered on its networking promise, being more like some only-Hollywood-wins vertical integration stack with no answers from the moneymakers to users' questions, I've decided to return to authoring on my internet web site while Twitter decides how to keep itself in operation.

Please understand that while these technical difficulties place me now into the fifth year of this title being on my shelf, I'm instead going to prioritize looking for work to support my life situation. You should consider the collections that you deem vital to your life, as well as the dependencies that lead them to being where you expect them when you need them.

While I don't expose my methods of contemplation, it does require that I use my immense and complicated time-shifted library of what I've been through in life, as well as a very large effort to work through my disability of autism to perform the task that I do in authorship. It's no 44 billion dollar boondoggle factory of lethargy like Twitter was, but to me it's just as lively and hope-filled. It's never unimportant.


BitTorrent metafile verifier

September 11, 2022 at 11 P.M. Eastern Time

Ever been stuck in a BitTorrent session that would never end? Of course not..

If you want to know how the BitTorrent metafile format worked, you can find any number of tutorials online. I'm glad I saved my metafiles, because after writing this tool I was reminded that there are a few BitTorrent sessions that did not complete.

There are easier ways to write this, I'm sure. Plans include a boundary check that allows for patching the BitTorrent session files with known good data. I will probably revisit my Famicom Disk System filesystem reader tool before I work on adding that.

  • chktorrent.php.gz (PHP script, gzip, 7.7 kilobytes decompressed)
  • chktorrent20220911.png (PNG screen grab, 128.4 kilobytes)


    • Linux Laptop Battery Meter

    September 6, 2022 at 6 P.M. Eastern Time

    I've been working on a command-line battery meter for my laptop for the past few days, since the one built into Debian's GNOME desktop is so inaccessible and inaccurate. Github was down earlier, so I decided to just release this code here on my web site.

    I just added some nutritional information to this while writing this post, because, of course, some people want to know their own run-time in relation to the computer's run-time. Obviously we don't eat batteries..

  • batter.php.gz (PHP script, gzip, 5.0 kilobytes decompressed)
  • batter20220906.png (PNG screen grab, 43.1 kilobytes)


    • No more internet canaries in bully coal mines

    April 6, 2022 at 3 P.M. Eastern Time

    If there were an advance warning system in man's life to stop most of our typical troubles before they started, would you believe the Internet is the culmination of technology's modern answer to this?

    Ever since "the network" was put into our lives, the question has been "why would I want it?" That later matured into the question "why would I need it?" That was likely true of people who thought they needed a question and answer session to justify how life went. Therefore, from that, we could assume that, eventually, the "corporate balance sheet" defined the need into these people's lives for a want of a question and answer on the topic of whether or not we needed a network around us to supplement (reiterate and increment upon) or divert (branch and carry, and return into) the typical human family existence.

    As with most innovations that plan to add a duration to your day with a convenient solution for the minutes spent learning how to use it, the new network (Internet) overlapped and followed the old network (roads). The information superhighway is what they wanted to call Internet to make it more politically-obtainable and friendly. Oops. Understand, perhaps, the politican's eternal necessity for what we know today as Bitcoin, or cryptocurrency (useful memes, slogans, comments, catchphrases), but keep in mind that only a certain subset of politically knowledgable performers will point out this attractive branding-compliant floating roadsign to you.

    That having been said, there is a controversy today about the usage of paid services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Apple by unwitting participants who are not being afforded earning potential after placing their intellectual property (family artifacts such as photographs and videos, blog postings, etc.) near their person while they are in round-trip transit status on said networks.

    Modern roadways of Internet or regular construction are subject to architectural failures which lead to government problems such as the response to Coronavirus (COVID-19). Architecture, due to its complexity and value, is cryptocurrency. Art expression with no real advantage to the end-user than to get itself funded (such as the H.U.D. resources map) seems to be the gauntlet that government puts in the life of the autistic when we are searching for an easy answer to a life crisis. The new trend of replacing traditional informative World-Wide-Web pages with dumbed down mobile-friendly button-press factories also shows that a counterintelligent move has happened to anger the American population.

    There is fierce criticism of the Internet as it exists today. The failure of politician response has led us to a massive death toll in our community and elsewhere because there were not adequate communications that smart social distancing is more successful at fighting Coronavirus than more decades-old proprietary cryptocurrency with a payout of a question mark with no proven response protocol.

    If you want to succeed at political cryptocurrency posturing, buy a digital watch that helps you keep track of both the time and the date. There is no secret number, and the computer will be very happy to help you understand that from 0 to 9. There are no special number codes that I know of, but some people like to keep track of their friends' birthdays or anniversaries. I like to keep things on a simple "is it Saturday yet?" track. Either you understand the ages-old art project known as the clock and calendar, or someone else understands it for you. If you don't care, then you're a different kind of bird, perhaps. Compare your new computer's seemingly infinite success to your family's success and maybe have a nice day with your valuable investment in looking professional.

    If anyone in autism wants a tip, here it is: I don't often recommend technology to people. You've already got a better timing sense than YouTube does, as do most people who have disabilities, so consider whether or not you want to have and use a wristwatch. Timekeeping is a simple way to understand some of the hard constraints imposed on the "busy" world. The clock and calendar on the wristwatch clues you into the fact that something is changing for somebody, whoever it is, wherever they are, so you can think of it as an invisible balance with a difference that most elements of life are standardized to respect somehow, unlike anything on that multi-trillion dollar Internet. Don't let the watch or anything on the Internet bully you. Your needs as a person outrank the corporation's schedule. So, obviously, don't spend too much: that's key.

    If you need to set the time and date of your watch, be sure to do it at a safe distance from others. Just as a sidenote, this laptop clocked itself at 2188.80 BogoMIPS using the Linux kernel version 5.10.109. Nerd. In other news, I'm probably going to delay rewriting my homepage for a while until I can find a way to show you reliable timing of a few things. Clock drift seems to be something that is unavoidable in anything but the most expensive overengineered or overnetworked clocks, however, I suspect it's nothing for the clock enthusiast community to worry about just yet as long as the clock keeps good time.


    What, me worry?

    February 21, 2022 at 4 P.M. Eastern Time

    First of all, just an update about my health. The rumors of my hospitalization were true. In November and December, I was recovering from an awful health problem. I'd been outside for about seventy days, and when lymph nodes swelled up and diabetic symptoms started to get worse, I decided that the biopsy recommended by a doctor would be a useful thing to consider.

    If you're curious about what happens to you during this type of experience, understand that your role as the patient in a biopsy usually involves remaining very still in the operating room and not moving around much. The affected area is provided temporary numbness via anesthesia, and a biopsy needle with several segments is used to remove lymph node fluid from your body. This could take up to an hour in certain cases, but in my case it lasted about a half-hour. Note: there is typically a clock in an operating room.

    So, the results came back from the laboratory to my doctor in about a week, and the doctor's opinion was that the biopsy result was unremarkable. That's doctor language that says the biopsy showed no sign of cancer.

    Another year, another reason to be a Baltimore Orioles fan.

    Anyway, I've been in a men's shelter recovering from the Maryland State Government's lack of response helping me gain housing assistance during the aforementioned incident. This contact crisis is in line with what happened a year ago when Coronavirus fears closed down all the local government housing authorities. Although there are options in employment, things such as that do take a toll on the body, so I'll endeavor to update this again when convenient.

       


    Busy after that governor's airport problem

    December 2, 2021 at 9 P.M. Eastern Time



    Title: "Douglas Winslow - That Baltimore Project.mp4"
    Run time: 9 minutes, 12 seconds
    Broadcast date: April 28, 2019 (Censored by Google YouTube)


    Crock-a-dial done Douglas, or, What happened to Governor Hogan?

    November 20, 2021 at 2 P.M. Eastern Time

    I've been spending my time in Baltimore County for the past 2.5 months trying to prove there is a problem in the security net that is supposed to keep homelessness away from people who have handicaps and disabilities. I am trying to use my Social Security income to prove that there is a management crisis in how local government approaches solving problems for people who have autism.

    After the coronavirus pandemic hit, social services in the State of Maryland and elsewhere underwent a drastic shift:

    As temperatures drop below freezing in this area, the message from the answerless part of the government of the United States of America still seems to be "spend, or wait for us to force you into a situation of spending more". Housing, a human right that will surely be free worldwide at some point in the near or distant future, is something that most take for granted in an expensive-to-understand computerized country such as this.

    In my experience, trying to call Governor Hogan's office since January of 2021 to seek housing help has only resulted in more confusion and no stable housing situation. My only advice right now is to start training your family's current or future governor. If not, then at least call your local politician and make sure you can get an answer.

    Given their popular visibility on the network we are forced to tolerate, the famous politicians that ran for election and won their office have not sufficiently addressed the concerns about confusing non-standard response protocols during a disaster. This doesn't seem to be smart or safe.

    I am attempting to limit myself to jobs that do not require HireVue or a video interview to gain employment. I have concerns about how the ever-expanding computer burden that is placed upon job-seekers is causing disencouragement of the popular incentive to work. If a handshake was good enough for Grandpa, and a paper employment form was good enough for Dad, why are we forcing Junior to get sidetracked into time-sharing with apps and playing social media video games at the same time they're trying to navigate companies' unique hiring websites?

    I mentioned I was looking for some simple paid local employment to support my financial goals of earning beyond S.S.I. income so I can get an apartment or house. As of this post, one employer did not hire, two other employers have expressed interest in an interview, and another employer is awaiting more information. This started with exiting from a motel stay 67 days ago on September 13, 2021. Please be aware that the process of breaking from a seemingly no-gain productivity cycle, one of many different cycles encountered in the past, is sometimes confusing for autistic people who are not being provided sufficient opportunities in structure or schedule.

    Also: To Congressman Kweisi Mfume, thank you for your response e-mail earlier this week to a concern I sent to your office about differing and confusing coronavirus testing situations that I encountered in Baltimore City.


    There you go again: Nintendo 3DS

    September 5, 2021 at 8 P.M. Eastern Time

    It's taken me a while to return to posting. This is Labor Day weekend, and I thought I'd get back into the routine of working: something I haven't been able to do for a while because of physical health and living situation crises.

    Aside from not doing much work for the past year, I was also not playing 3DS games. Because of Maryland M.T.A. rides breaking half of the screens I use to be productive, I need to afford a screen replacement for the 3DS, my Nexus 5, my Raspberry Pi, and my iPhone.

    Now that I found a pretty good diet and repeatable (lack of) exercise routine to avoid a heart attack, the next step is to try to gain some light employment here in the area so I'm not without a place to stay.

    Along with posting an updated website theme, I thought I'd post another video production to my web site as I begin to consolidate my internet presences and prepare to write software for a more formal blog server.

    What would you do if you and your friends went big time into backing colon three as being the next big emoticon, only to find it integrated into the naming and marketing campaign of a mass-market video game machine a few years later? Between that and the emoji cartel taking over the world with proprietary emoticons, it's taken me about a decade to get to the point of researching this branding mystery. At least it's something to do. (Note: if foreign text distracts you, remember my lesson about the obfuscator. Seems it's a actually a diffuser.)

    A hillside as seen from the window of a Shinkansen train southwest-bound for Kyoto in 2007.   A bus ride upon a Japanese bridge in 2007.

    Title: "drwiii-nintendo3ds.mp4"
    Run time: 5 minutes, 59 seconds
    Production dates: 2007, 2011, 2021
    Broadcast date: September 5, 2021


    Book's a brewin' (no it's not, but here's some pages from it)

    September 5, 2021 at 7 P.M. Eastern Time



    some sample pages from
    Douglas Winslow's
    "Not Betting on Baseball and Winning"
    one of the best books ever made recently
    release date estimate: 2022 or later


    What a sweat: Surviving Maryland Housing

    August 28, 2021 at 11 A.M. Eastern Time

    In helping people with autistic disability, it is my goal to document the chain of failings that has been 'holding me underwater' for the past five years, so to speak.

    I am still writing a recap of my experiences during a homeless crisis that the State of Maryland experienced in 2018 and 2019. If you can think of a bird getting knocked out of the sky while flying, you can understand how important it is for me to communicate this. The autistic are not here as your playtoy.

  • Matt Knauer - Mr. Knauer rented his house to someone who was not happy with me being quiet due to being busy looking for work. This led to neglect and problems with pre-existing mold in Mr. Knauer's basement causing chills and diabetic conditions. Financial insecurity is not what anyone wants to deal with, so with a pending eviction action from Mr. Knauer's house, I went to look for employment at B.W.I. Airport.

  • Maryland M.T.A. Police - During my homelessness experience, I applied for and was granted and mailed an M.T.A. riders' disability I.D. card. It was mailed to the Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh's Office of Homeless Services. M.T.A. Police caught me riding the Light Rail to get food with a valid I.D. card on file. My position still remains that the police do not have the right to assault someone for taking a picture of them.

  • Deion Caison - Mr. Caison was the owner and operator of the "Everybody Cares Assisted Living Facility #1", in operation in 2018 and 2019. During my stay at 662 Cokesbury Avenue in this Maryland Department of Health licensed assisted living facility, I was bitten by insects, starved, bullied, and also neglected. Medical staff showed up less than 2% of the entirety of what was expected during my stay. I had to go outside and exercise every day to escape toxic air conditions in the house. I filed complaints, and the State did not follow through to resolve my complaints. In 2021, my health has recovered substantially and my heart no longer feels to be in danger.

  • Arame Richardson - Ms. Richardson operated an Airbnb house for rent in Halethorpe, Maryland. As I continued to fine-tune my diet and exercise, Ms. Richardson attempted to sell me a liquid diet. I refused. She staged a health incident with her pet dog, feeding it raw chicken, and I called the Baltimore County Police when she tried to have me leave before the end of my lease. Airbnb's response was to re-enable their community support hotline and then to raise rental rates and place people out of housing. (These are A/B tests that are not humane and not appreciated in app design. Airbnb has a monopoly on rental visibility in some areas.)

  • Binh Nguyen - Mr. Nguyen suddenly closed his Airbnb house during an eviction moratorium. There were three rooms rented, and one of the non-Airbnb customers was not paying him and was causing trouble for me with audio and visual 'mind games'. In what was the coldest shock to my system that I can ever recall, in January 2021, before the end of my rental term, Mr. Nguyen turned off the heat, then the water, then the BGE electric meter was removed. BGE did not respond to my phone call requesting them to send a technician. The Baltimore City Police Department was called. My rent was paid in full every month.

    • Timeline of events
  • December 18, 2018: Mr. Winslow went to several local hospitals attempting to get treatment for chest pains and symptoms of stroke.
  • Christmastime 2018: Entry of Mr. Winslow into B.W.I. Airport for employment purposes. One of his goals was to reach his grandmother.
  • January 24, 2019: After waiting for employment decisions from several employers, Mr. Winslow attempted to get funded with a development demonstration.
  • February 18, 2019: On Presidents' Day, Mr. Winslow was written a citation for using B.W.I. Airport as a hotel/motel.
  • March 5, 2019: Departure of Mr. Winslow from a transitional care facility arriving into Deion Caison's Maryland health facility.
  • May 9, 2019: Chapel Valley Realty again attempts to hold Mr. Winslow to a yearly lease that their computer auto-renewed while Mr. Winslow was hospitalized. This was a closed case that is now reopened as Maryland Case Number "D-08-CV-19-015144".
  • May 7, 2020: Departure of Mr. Winslow from Deion Caison's facility for arrival into Airbnb's rental system.
  • June 8, 2020 until September 8, 2020: Mr. Winslow used Airbnb to stay at Arame Richardson's facility.
  • September 8, 2020 until January 29, 2021: Mr. Winslow used Airbnb to stay at Binh Nguyen's facility.
  • January 28, 2021 until February 26, 2021: Mr. Winslow used Airbnb to stay in Charles Village. (Douglas' grandmother passed away during this stay.)
  • February 25, 2021 until July 13, 2021: Mr. Winslow used a hostel in Charles Village near Johns Hopkins University.
  • July 13, 2021 until July 30, 2021: Mr. Winslow attempted to move his upcoming transit-focused startup company into a 24 hour co-working space.
  • August 28, 2021: This update is posted to Mr. Winslow's website.
    •



    This is not the dog mentioned above; it is a popular meme photograph called 'Doge', however it reminds me of the Baltimore Orioles logo.


    There are video games. There are also names.

    August 26, 2021 at 3 P.M. Eastern Time

    I am finding some pieces of the tri-force. Learning isn't easy so I went to do a collage.

    I am also noting the presence of the 1986 'Douglas Rice Winslow III' Nintendo Metroid Password, placed after my mother's 1984 death following open heart surgery. It appears to work on all Western releases of that title. I had no knowledge of that password's existence or validity until I found it within the past year when I just filled in my name and started filling in the remaining blank. The lowercase letter at the end of the password seems to note the fact that I was nonverbal around the time of that game's release.


    Calling out the English of the Calendar

    August 20, 2021 at 4 P.M. Eastern Time

    Have you ever wondered why the word "calendar" is so necessary to describe in the English language what the calendar is?

    The word seems to have a monopoly on the thing. Ugh. Did you find the morally bankrupt stimulation phrases 'see a lender' and 'call lender' hidden in the word "calendar"?

    'Harumph, better check the calendar.'
    'Where is my calendar?'
    'Oh yeah, gotta schedule that appointment on your calendar.'
    'Hey, that calendar can come back from where it went to, is what I said, buddy.'

    Some people allow their clock and calendar to run their life. Likewise, people of the cellular era often allow proprietary clocking to ruin their lives with grief and misfortune. For example, have you ever received a push notification or an e-mail from a bill collector that's meant to make you feel, however happy you are at the moment, like you're now "on-call" to the company? It's like it (the logo) is there to remind you of why you should be sad.

    Believe it or not, unwanted notifications comprise most of the unhappiness in a phone user's life these days. Telemarketers didn't stop calling you because you bought a cellphone, they just stand in line at Apple and Google waiting to make your life miserable. You used to keep the office stuff at the office, or on the desk in the den.. right?

    How did corporate manage to get a company pager in your hands, able to beep and buzz and prod you at any hour of the day or night, with you being the one paying for cellular or wi-fi access to the network that takes your job somewhere else unless you play along as Pavlov's dogs?

    As someone who remained on the P.C. and didn't switch to a mobile device, it's a very important struggle to note. The computer does know how to obey the user if it's set up correctly, but newer systems produced by Microsoft and Apple are sliding away from running on the user's comfort standard. (Note: Google has not yet produced a system, and they have never had a user comfort standard for their services.)

    Because most operating system companies are moving to a graphics and gaming system style of experience, I'm going to take a look back and let you know how the earlier generation was brought up on maze imprinting.



    World #16 of Super Mario Brothers has a curious maze that encourages players to plan for success on the lowest path.
    If the player chooses the middle or top path, they encounter more obstacles and an endless loop that allows retrying the maze.

    In the presence of a calendar, however, the puzzle encourages spenders in contextual evaluation to save money until the end of the month:

    Orioles Baseball schedule looks like Super Mario maze

     

    Other combined mechanics of gameplay, while seemingly random, prime players for affecting upcoming events.
    There are many two-block apparatus in this game that invite speculation about weekends.
    (Search for the sky vine to find a paid three-day-weekend, if you're lucky.)



    Someone is enjoying their Sunday.


    The Path of Plight: A decision-making meme

    May 6, 2021 at 12 P.M. Eastern Time

    Choosing a path in life isn't easy, so it's helpful to have a conceptual framework of understanding of some of the easiest choices one has to make.

    If you're a fan of Star Trek and/or The Legend of Zelda, you might enjoy this post. In 1982, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was shipped to theaters in North America and elsewhere. In 1986, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda on diskette in Japan. You may have noticed the 'tri-force' item shown in Zelda used as signage iconography earlier in Star Trek II.

    We had a V.H.S. tape player in the early 1980s, and I watched Star Trek II intently as a child, trying to understand the plot and any of the character's expressions the best I could. (Note: My video presentation linked in this post may give away the ending of this movie. This motion picture does require parental guidance.)

    In the modern era, I've spent a few years doing a deep analysis of a curious old videotape of the rare 1990s Nintendo satellite system version of Zelda that someone uploaded to YouTube in 2014. In the user's playthrough, there was a game design mystery which had baffled me. Near the conclusion of the broadcast, there was a puzzle chime that sounded on the game's F.M. audio program. It was not indicative of the user's progress, however the user reacted and persisted as if the software had indicated a solved puzzle. (My autism sense started tingling is not what I'd say.)

    For reference, the Nintendo Satellaview setup had a data channel, as well as an F.M. audio channel. The SNES (Super Famicom) game machine overlapped the F.M. audio with the mostly-silent game program. The player's progress could not affect the F.M. audio channel, and the software was synchronized to keep pace with the F.M. audio channel using a known start time and successive timestamp cues.

    When faced with the power of creation, would you choose war or peace?
    Here's a three-year-old work in progress: The Path of Plight.


    Navigating more of the Maryland Maze: Affordable Housing

    February 11, 2021 at 11 A.M. Eastern Time

    Just a quick update. Because of a sudden move at the end of January, I'm again trying to find an affordable living arrangement. Governor Larry Hogan signed an order preventing evictions during the Coronavirus pandemic, yet this did not stop my landlord from turning off heating, water, and electricity at the house I was renting a room at. Airbnb found in my favor and partially processed a refund.

    To provide some background: I was billed out of my family's home in Baltimore City starting in 2016-2017. After moving and then renting in the county, I was left without options when the home became abusive and a Baltimore County court officer wouldn't let me with my diabetic supplies and water into my eviction hearing.

    As that Baltimore County courthouse was inaccessible, I went homeless with my belongings into B.W.I. Airport near Christmas of 2018. Following more than one month of being a customer of that airport, I was improperly charged on February 18, 2019 (Presidents' Day) with "using BWI Airport in lieu of a hotel/motel", and I was issued a notice to appear in Anne Arundel County court. I asked for and received a public defender so I could defend my point-of-view, however the State of Maryland defense lost this case because their attorney did not appear and the trial did not happen. The state court record hides this result behind a suspicious-sounding Latin term "nolle prosequi", which amounts to "prosecution failed".

    (Note: I was provided with an option to expunge my record of the B.W.I. case and I declined the request. After the incident, it is my note that subsequent one-hour visits over the course of the next year showed much less homeless people. It may indicate that problems are being solved around the autistic while not directly benefitting those with autism who find the problems. I do not have access to whatever MdTA's police statistics would be. Disclaimer: I was a job applicant at some of B.W.I. Airport's employers during the period of homelessness stated, and I have a clean record.)

    I was placed into the State of Maryland's assisted living housing, and the provider did not staff medical professionals to help with health troubles I was experiencing. I had to wait about a year there after applying for disability benefits, until approval for Social Security in May of 2020 empowered me to manage my own housing situation as I always have done.

    Now that I am attempting to get housing via the State and the City, it is disheartening to see how the Maryland State and Baltimore City governments are still, today, in 2021, failing to address the problems facing those facing homelessness. Coronavirus protocol is no excuse for Housing Authorities to close. As for my experience with H.U.D. under superstar surgeon Ben Carson, it was a disgraceful maze of bureaucracy, acronyms, phone numbers, dead-end calls, and web links. (At what point does it count as additional mental trauma?)

    My position on this problem has been clear since the beginning. I should not need to earn a degree from Johns Hopkins to find affordable housing with my disability, and the U.S. Government has no right to deepen a medical crisis by underserving its citizens to the point that they are overburdened into dependence. Those with autism such as myself should not be used as chess pieces on a calendar of broken promises. After two weeks of trying to get rent subsidized housing with over 40 telephone calls and pages of non-responsive or confusing referral service phone numbers provided to me, I cannot afford all of these dead-ends.

    Douglas visiting B.W.I. Airport while homeless in early 2019 Douglas Winslow's employment applications to the State of Maryland from 2013-2020 Douglas in September 2019 next to a 'Wings for Autism' sign near a BWI security office Maryland M.T.A. Light Rail tracks leading northbound from BWI Airport to Baltimore City Maryland.gov Web Site Operator and Governor Lawrence Hogan


    Keeping media stimulus in line if you have autism, from a professional media critic

    January 21, 2021 at 4 A.M. Eastern Time

    Having the title of media savant (not servant) does not give me much special privileges in life, but people should not need to get a degree from a college or even claim a title to understand how multimedia affects them. People who have autism have individual reputations of being open while being analytical, so we deserve the privilege of understanding why audio and visual media is sometimes a scary thing to experience.

    My background in self-help spans 35 years. I lost a parent early in life, and I became more shy and nonverbal. As I proceeded to shut out the ability of the psychiatry industry to negatively affect me at age 7, I started to allow real life to show me what it considered to be more important. I advocate for the disabled as a function of my existence, and there are many disabilities, often unnoticed or unacknowledged, that affect people.

    I am working up to my first public speaking appearances in media and elsewhere, so I have some time to be productive writing something other than a book. Here is some advice I have if you find yourself in a similar situation versus media stimulus as I described in my other post today.

    Pointers for navigating a media maze:

    (Hint: Please read the bold text first. The rest is details. Or, you don't have to read this. You can, though.)

    I'll talk more about this presentation later. It's convinced me to re-design my website, so I'll try to make sure this post is available if that ever happens. If you have any comments or questions, you can try to e-mail me via the link provided at the bottom of this web page if you want to.


    Dawn of the Video Meme, or, Surprised by 'The Simpsons'

    January 20, 2021 at 8 P.M. Eastern Time

    I do not know of any contacts of mine working for the media industry or the entertainment industry. If you have heard from anyone who says they represent me or have special access to me, please know that I am the person you deal with, not them. Nobody else has the right to speak for me in any kind of business deal. I have never authorized anyone to gain funding for me. I have not agreed to pursue any crowdfunding. I have not licensed my name or likeness. I have been open to private talks to explore opportunities in media since 2018 if well-placed professionals in that field want to approach me. That's what I can say pending further advice from my attorney.

    I'm updating this to let you know I'm still waiting to publish my first book, where I introduce it with some talk about how forty years of watching television and movies led to my ability to use media's effects upon me to solve everyday problems. I am a traditionally nonverbal autistic man who has many memorable minutes, hours, days, months, and years of experience in media and social situations, dating back to the 1980s.

    To prepare for my book's release in 2018, I branched out into producing my first short-form entertainment series, which I have titled "Video Memes". If you are familiar with my work as a user and then moderation volunteer of the popular 4chan BBS, you'll understand why my smart yet simple form still works. The final entry in this first series was something that I was trying to get underway to release on Thanksgiving 2020, but it actually got delayed until Christmas. In the coming weeks and months, I may be posting more of these that I put up on Twitter, because they just don't have an encoding quality standard that I'm happy with.

    If you don't know who John Swartzwelder is, he's an author and writer for The Simpsons who reportedly has a knack for having things burst into flames or blow up on-screen for no discernable reason. I took interest when they were trying to put him up as the SCTVish alternative that outflanked the mere Groundlings-based SNL, or whatever the bullshit story was to pump up the Simpsons DVD of the year. I don't have a cool-sounding John Nash math phrase for this, but "the Swartzwelder difference" seems to be that if Hollywood put it up as a puncher point or a cliche in a movie, it got torn down into a Johnny joke that made viewers laugh.

    I watched some of WKRP in syndication re-runs in the early 1990s. It just didn't seem interesting since I'd already been to radio station DC-101 to see Doug Tracht's Greaseman morning show live. (You won't find a radio station named WKRP if you go to Cincinnati; it is a radio callsign abbreviation that evaluates in shorthand to 'Work Reputation'.)

    Technically I got into the advertising industry earlier in life than John, but that's just because I didn't like having to put up with most of it.




    Title: "WKRP topples John Swartzwelder"
    Run time: 2 minutes, 20 seconds
    Production start date: November 23, 2020
    Broadcast date: December 23, 2020 on Twitter Video

    Wow.. what a find!

    Television is a wasteland today. Stupid and somewhere is outranking serious and smart. It's got to be smarter. Come on, guys. I shouldn't have to reel this stuff in. I've got to blow the whistle and throw an Oriole Bird flag on this, and I'm not aspiring to be Farrah Fawcett in the 1983 NBC 'Be There' promo..

    I hit on the "WKRP in Cincinnati" reference above using my old 2018 IRC chat log notes. Today, I went to start watching broadcasts of The Simpsons again after a 25 year hiatus, and I found that just about a week after I made my screener on November 23rd, Fox aired a Simpsons episode on November 29th titled "The Road to Cincinnati" (S32E8). What a letdown.

    That episode even has a character named 'Principal Duggans'. Other episode titles from Fox's Simpsons lineup: "Three Dreams Denied" (S32E7), "Sorry Not Sorry" (S32E9).. I didn't have the episode list. Not joking. Today I found the season 32 episode list on-line. Since season 9 and the movie in 2007, I'd been completely away from reading about or watching The Simpsons aside from the few loose ends below, because the reviews were so bad and I didn't want to invest in low quality capacity. Time out. I'm gonna have to add this one to the creepy coincedence file. There will be another post today about how to avoid stimulus runs if you are the target of something in media.

    What I know: I consider myself well versed, having viewed every episode of The Simpsons seasons 1 through 7, with only a few episodes viewed in seasons 8 and 9. Outside of this, I have viewed S13E6, S17E11, and also later last year S20E7. Also there is a Smithers-themed episode that I remember viewing. I'll look for it.

    I purchased the 'rumored Coronavirus episode' S5E11 from Google Play late last year and it had a mis-encoded aspect ratio, so I got a refund and stayed with the DVD version. (Note: A joke that is circulating is that at 5m:19s into episode S5E11, the high-tech security system creates a cloud of something when Bart threw a rock at it. The red-and-yellow-colored house then ran away to get away from it. Hmm..)

    At any rate, I can only recommend season 1 of The Simpsons at this point. I do have to say that it had a more respected storytelling style when I got interested in it at age 11 because it had a Game Boy commercial attached to it.

    This needs to be said: Big media should not be smashing references to harm people. We get to do this to media; media doesn't get to do this to us. I already know a portion of my 2018 promotional output made it into Fox or Disney: the two companies merged after I tied them in a reference in an internal video meme. Aside from that observation, I hope somebody at Comcast or elsewhere isn't spying on my internet connection, since that action is illegal. * See what a simple stupid reference smash leads to? Chase those guys out of a meeting for a day or two; that's how long your 5-10 minute productivity hit affects us in autism. I'll throw a tree full of corrector references around the stupid side of this to get you guys out of the industry.

    Media doesn't get to stay silent and hold people under while cross-linking a bunch of titles and names at random and blowing out all the industry opportunities to bankrupt people at the bottom. Some in the experimental side of the entertainment industry have been getting away with doing 'Non-Invasive Neurosurgery' on people that way for years. It adds up. Think of that if you dare. It's always been salvageable for me, but for Christ's sake, please think of a proverbial earthquake scale needle or something and stop the stupid shit before I start writing to the FCC and corporate sponsors.

    I'm in this to make sure you have something from me to like. My book has been completed since August 2020. It's ready. It's a primary source of income for me if I want to publish it, and I have to think of me in 1989. Your industry is pushing a net-negative balance into an impressionable life if you people can't write fair. You picked commercial entertainment. The fans' side is better because we get to make fun of you and we get to play the name-brand Tetris games we paid for.


    DVD DeCSS and how we solved the Twitter censorship problem

    January 19, 2021 at 5 A.M. Eastern Time

    The Digital Versatile Disc, known in some popular forms as DVD-Video, is a high-capacity data storage system that can hold gigabytes of multimedia, including text and HTML. Do you remember stores full of DVD movies? Many people do.

    In 1999, DVD C.C.A., the entity that provided the encryption system for the aforementioned DVD-Video standard, sued a bunch of named internet users (including myself) and they also sued a long list of anonymous 'John Doe' users. We were providing network mirrors, or redundant distributed copies, of a source code decoder for DVD-Video discs that a developer had created known as DeCSS. His software enabled DVD movies to be played on Linux computers. Before this, if you wanted to view a DVD movie on your PC, you needed to purchase Microsoft Windows and DVD Player software to view the movies on these discs, even if you already paid for and installed a DVD-ROM reader.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, then under the direction of John Perry Barlow, provided free legal defense for us because, at that time, many of us were just starting work in technology or education. (I was then 21 years old. I'm typing this now at age 42. Barlow passed away aged 70 a few years ago, so given that I started learning internet activism at age 17, I'm looking forward to a future full of old code and data to support.)

    As I reload more of my old website information that was censored by the passage of time and surely all of those other unnamed yet politicized forces in life, I'd like to present to you a look at my old DeCSS web page at the link below. Keep in mind that other than some re-linking and titling to fit this web server, the linked page has not been changed from its final revision while the trial was in progress. I consider this a belated victory in Hollywood vs. Winslow:

    Not to interrupt, if you're busy reading, but it seems that the problem of censorship vs. centralization doesn't have an easy answer if everyone is trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. After the profoundly offensive "Twitter vs. Government" censorship problems, followed by all of the usual microservice-as-a-microservice services again popping up for investors to bet micromoney on, I do need to note that this is an age-old problem.

    If I could just convince you to hold on for quite a while..

    (Disclosure: Mr. Zuckerberg, myself, and many others were on a 2010 donation list supporting a decentralized open source social networking system named Diaspora. I also supported Eben Moglen's FreedomBox Foundation in 2011. It helps to support software and services with real money. Whoever's running Twitter probably won't learn this before they decentralize into the post-Valenti-industry's bankruptcy-fueled paradise.)

    Please understand that I've been holding firm and steady on my technology stances for the past 25+ years to make sure you can eat. We did push this internet thing up for a reason; it's not theft. Another piracy-behind-an-icon startup such as Google isn't going to solve things, whoever the new Mark is going to be this time.


    An observation about color serif

    June 5, 2019

    I haven't updated you on my development tasks in a while, so I thought I'd show you some very old alpha screenshots of apps running on my system. You may know that I suspended development a while back, so here's what's old.

    Recently, many have been talking about a new 'dark mode' added into the Apple iOS at their developer conference a few days ago, so I'll show you a screenshot of an organizational method I call 'color serif'. The initial version of the "dayplan" app used this, and it was first checked in on 6/29/2018. (The reader app with its markup parser was a separate codebase which was only rendering monochrome at that time, so I had an excuse to try innovative freeform layout models with the day planner.)

    I will not go into further details of color serif other than to say that other elements of the 'reminders' service exhibited by Apple in their iOS 13 demo appear to be infringing.

    From the many duties of a developer, there is one to start with: to know when to use restraint instead of abundance in adding important design elements. But if your creation looks and acts like everything else on the market, it's not very fun or original. I hope you understand why this is taking so long, and why I am waiting to decide whether or not to rewrite what was demonstrated in private situations to very few others under non-disclosure guidelines.

    Every version of my code is still under a proprietary license for specifically this reason; it has not yet been released because I need to make it more enjoyable. This is not without a financial burden.

     


    Apple intellectual property infringement

    iOS 13 will be the first upgrade not compatible with my iPhone, and I can't afford a newer one. While you decide whether or not I am a better practicioner of color usage in operating system design than the oil slick graphics company, please enjoy not playing Tic-Tac-Toe.


    Opinion: Apple Computers Corporation vs. Steve Jobs

    May 24, 2019

    Google News showed me a quote from Tim Cook yesterday, which I will link the story of for your convenience.

    Here is a link to the full story. A lot of people link things like this and don't realize that links should be set to use the specific words which refer to what the link is. (If you have had to watch someone try to cycle through links using a verbal screen reader, then you will know why.)

    The quote was shown as a full news story, and it said "We don't build monuments to trolls, and we're not going to start now".

    Studying the Apple Company as I have, I know that many of its moves can be seen as "troll-ish". My iPhone battery was broken for months while Apple mismanaged every painful store visit that I made. Calendar appointments were sent to my email which linked to concierge which threw a 404 error while I was standing next to a store employee who said that I should try another device. It still did it, and he said I should reload it later. Stores would be full of potential customers with the worst queueing strategy for support appointments imaginable, and no discernable place to stand. It was to the point that after investing health and money in traveling to Apple needlessly, I challenged the manager on how his store was run, and his representative forcibly attempted to remove my iPhone when I stopped to make a picture. (Note: I will not post the blank photographs. I was within my rights to punch the guard as self-defense, which I have not done yet. I called the store for clarification when I got home and nobody answered.)

    Steve Jobs couldn't have turned a second-tier 8-bit computer maker into a wildcard-tier first-rate GUI hardware maker without the operational advantages of trolling. (Google: Please ask your AI news program to use this as the scare quote.)

    What I try to practice in the few marketing things which I have done is something I call "micro-trolling". Think of a certain punctuation mark labeled on a block. This is yours to fill in. What do you want to happen when someone comes in contact with the block? Hint: You know this if you've played a certain video game that was released a year after the Mac. (Disclaimer: I'm not old enough to make Channel 13 jokes yet.)

    I went to the Apple Corporation today to get some exercise, and to deliver a video which I started before the Cook quote. I made it on my Ubuntu Linux computer, which is a ThinkPad. In years past, I had the ability to use my MacBook Pro. My Mac's battery ran dry long ago, and I can't afford a replacement. Sound familiar?

    If you remember the history of the Macintosh (before it got unbranded as mac), you'll know that Apple of the 1980s was an exceptionally high-quality literature distributor. Steve, or someone there, produced a beautiful brochure which showed a hand-drawn painting of the internals of the Mac. That brochure showed me that the Apple company was an international concern. Print literature from no other company showed me a computer in the context of people I'd never met from places I'd never been possibly using it, and it had the same logo as the Apple IIe computers locked behind a door with a pane of glass in my grade school. I didn't give a crap about the System Software, I liked the productivity output shown.

    Made in California, the Mac had different design aesthetics than the Commodore the Maryland half of our family owned. A local distributor in a mall let me point-and-click while Dad walked away and surely pretended to care about whatever else the store had on display. I don't remember which mall, but the store with the Mac was on the right hand side as we walked past. (It was not a very popular computer at that time.) Do you remember this Mac? Please let me know; I can draw what the store looked like. This mall also had a kids' quiz show, and our team came in second place, but her and I each got our choice of some really cool wristwatches.

    Overcoming my 'Reginald Barclay' fears after Mom died is what gave me the courage to ask Dad to let me enter the show. With recent happenings, I wanted to provide some backstory before I show you my video message to Apple. As a Baltimore City high school dropout who had to fight through grades 9 and up to earn his GED in 2002, which had a creative writing segment about a trip he wanted to take to Japan, it was not academic. I earned the good things in life.

    If you want to find some of Apple's monuments to trolls, look on the iTunes Store, where they sell music and movies which make you think instead of not think. I'm busy walking the long hallway of the original Macintosh, discovering what surprises Steve's people hid in, what to me, is functionally akin to Martin Scorsese's famous long tracking 'GoodFellas' scene at the Copacabana. I don't wear Burberry Prada, yet..

    I consider myself a professional video editor, and I remember when Linux couldn't even open a PDF file. At or near the debut of Mac OS X in 2000, Steve Jobs told developers that it would be "very Linux-like, very much so". The macs at the Apple Store today could not open my Windows-formatted USB flash drive so I could verify the video in OS X, so I synced it to iPhone with my Linux laptop. I decided not to AirPlay it in the store from there.

    What would Steve do? (Pay me and I'll tell you which Steve. Disclaimer: That's humor to some, humour to others, and humoreske to Baltimore Orioles logo fans. Anyone with a pulse can joke about the Orioles logo. I wear the anime Oriole to remind people how to pose when something silly happens.)

    Polling is the question mark. Trolling is the exclamation point that causes it; you'll find that only if you purchase the 1991 video game system upgrade. That's a lot of things in life. I think of the term iOS as 'I owe Steve'. What else do you think I should do if Apple won't answer my job applications from the past few years? Hmmm.. or.. Let me think.

    | Chicago | Monaco | Geneva | Los Angeles | New York | San Francisco | Toronto | Venice
       |\

    Nice pivot, Excel. Surely with the addition of Comic Sans the days of Lotus 1-2-3 are numbered. (Tim probably watches PBS and not Wayne's World.)


    I found an old Linux writeup

    May 9, 2019

    "Linux is only free if your time has no value." - Jamie Zawinski

    A long time ago, before the internet broke the print publication business, people used to buy or subscribe to magazines which were delivered to their home or work mailbox.

    Magazines and software were two different types of publishing. Whereas a print magazine can write a patch to a previous issue in their next issue, software developers had to issue an errata bulletin while preparing for the next release, which was usually sold at an upgrade price, if you were lucky.

    I hadn't made the connection when I relayed this PC Magazine article to friends and visitors via my web page in 1997, but the emergence of Linux as a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows was a critical moment in computing history that many overlook or don't understand. Many things are possible with the open architecture that Linux provides, but the same things are possible with closed architectures given the proper dynamics.

    Free things are necessary for the functioning of society, however, there is no motive in a money driven society if everything is free. Computer people know this as bootstrapping. Nothing happens without memory, and a CPU can't operate without a program counter and special memory called registers. If you know the history of computing, disk space is an optional premium that we happen to have a lot of, but the invisible tollbooths are always cause for concern.

    Because modern Linux is 'proprietary to freedom', you need months or years of learning and training to start doing the basic tasks to modify the system; this used to take hours or days. It's not a Wrath of Khan flashback; I've been using this term for the past decade. If you are a Linux developer, I hope you see how the increasing number of standards that underpin today's Linux-based systems are not sustainable moving forward. What led Google to make Linux proprietary in this way by creating the complex Android system? Proponents of 'make it faster, better, cheaper' usually find they can do two out of three at most. I ask you to think of the state of computing today within the constraint of this observation. (Have you tried to obtain the dependencies to attempt to start to understand how to compile AOSP lately?)

    There is a buzzword I use with myself to verify that I'm doing the correct thing, and it's that I attempt to practice "aspirational computing". If you remember a harshly misinterpreted quote from SCE's Ken Kutaragi explaining the unexpected USD$599 launch burden of his PlayStation 3 system, what you may notice is that there is always room in a market for a premium product that people will strive to earn, even if it's in a dollar store. There is very little room for compromise when a customer who has something on the line thinks they haven't or aren't getting their best deal. (If you're rich, look in a dollar store some time. If you're poor, look at the rich person in your dollar store and hand them the $1 calculator. Note that currency is published for a reason.)

    If you aspire towards more complexity, then maybe you are happy with the irreparable status of many systems upon which we are asked to depend. If what you're depending on isn't working for you, work for yourself to earn your upgrade. That's what the Linux spirit used to be. If you're into GNU, capitalism, or whatever, what you'll find is that what works for you usually works for others; this is a compatibility thing. Because HCI is what excites people, consider it from that perspective. Don't aspire for infinite (free) simplicity, just aim for affirming every 'yes' in your assessment. Be cumulative, but know your place. Linux is an ecosystem, not an operating system.

    Yes, I'm overweight and tall, and I won't try and explain yin and yang, but I will note that it is the most convenient and efficient elements of a design that bring me the most joy, and they are usually found in the smallest details. If you can find how to subscribe to PC Magazine today, please let me know. MS-DOS starts itself and Windows 3.1 in 1 second, so some might say I have some work to do.


    I changed my internet domain name

    May 5, 2019

    I'm not homeless anymore, so here's a chance for you to update your bookmarks. If you have one of my business cards, let's meet and I can scribble a hotfix for you.

    Also, it's Cinco de Mayo today. I'm sure this is relevant for whatever reason, but I want an explanation of why generic mayonnaise tastes better than the expensive stuff.

    Good for you if you enjoy the tangy zip of Miracle Whip.


    More about my new software development

    December 2, 2018

    Do you remember when computers were a joy to use? A new system is being made, and I want you to know my progress.

    More information for developers will be written as the system's services evolve. As of this writing, this is a very usable and interconnected software development platform which I am using for various tasks.

    The user interface is being made to ensure that developers aren't the only ones who will enjoy this platform.


    How to create audiovisual dubs using FFmpeg

    October 22, 2018

    Handling multimedia with a computer has never been as easy as it should be, but some easy-to-use software can help.

    If you don't think of Linux as something that can make you laugh, maybe this can help.


    My re-designs of some popular logos

    September 30, 2018

    We live in a time where communications used to be easy. Now we have a bunch of smartphones and computers to help us to communicate.

    Here are some simply deep branding re-designs, is what they'd want to hear at that place with the stupid logo.


    How to simulate a virtual Raspberry Pi

    August 24, 2018

    Follow this easy tutorial to get Raspbian running in a virtual machine on your computer within minutes.

    I'll also show you how to compile the Linux kernel.

    This is a skill many Linux users acquired in the 1990s as a necessity.


    :. TECHNOLOGY SITES .:

    Here are some links I've accumulated over the years, ever since before blogging was a thing. Feel free to enjoy, and if you have anything you'd like to see here, I'm always open to new suggestions via e-mail or otherwise. I don't always agree with whatever is on these sites, but I like checking them out.


    .,. COMPUTER ELECTRONICS COMPANIES .,.

    While computing in its most creative days used to be a very full field, many technologies have been phased out in favor of new standards, and a lot of innovative companies couldn't keep up. Here are some of the companies that survived.

    Note: I do not refer to this field as "consumer electronics", since I am unsure whether the computer or its operator is the one who is consumed. A job of a designer and a repairperson is to consider how to add longevity to what was previously regarded as a consumable.

    There are also a lot of great things I grew up with from the past. I hope you enjoy reading about some of them.


    GAME DESIGN INTERESTS

    Computing is fun, but I am also a game designer. Understand the difference between designer and developer. If you choose to pursue this as a career path as I did in 2001, you may find that a lot of things in real life have parallels with the design process. This is because video games were created without the detail that real life has, so designers had to use familiar topics for game players to understand.

    Where are the links?

    In a previous revision of this page, I asked that "if you are an aspiring game designer with knowledge of a certain popular game, I invite you to try and guess why it wouldn't be a sharp idea to link all of these titles for your convenience".

    I was referring to The Legend of Zelda, in which the game designer removed the player's sword at the beginning of the game. While designer Shigeru Miyamoto's intent was for players to communicate to solve puzzles in the game, my primary intent was so you would be intrigued to learn about the games listed as if you were to see them on a store shelf, so with enough research the people referenced would seem like you'd known about them for years. You would probably remember and communicate about them more than if you just followed some web link.

    A lot of thought went into this list. If you have any input on my selections, you can e-mail me.

    Any title with a star accompanying it denotes that it was influential in my decision to design and create games. You may ask yourself, did you skip to this section to see what the star is for? If you did or didn't, your answer will tell you what kind of player you are. If you anticipated this question, perhaps you should be writing a web page teaching game design. *

    A beautiful kind

    Recent talk has made me interested in the life of John Forbes Nash, the accomplished mathmetician who made many contributions to the field of game theory, but it is not easy to find mainstream representations of his work which are not compromised by continuous mention of surrounding concerns in his life. Seeing Nash speaking on video reminds me of Professor Falken trying to explain futility to all the Joshuas which dialed themselves into attendance.

    My father had a video cassette of the motion picture WarGames (1983), which I watched over a hundred times. I'm pretty sure I got smarter each time, perhaps due to the movie, so if you like roaring lions, creative uses of corn, arcade games which aren't as fun as Gyruss, and Dabney Coleman, then I would recommend this movie to you as well. (Note: Please follow the MPAA rating on this movie, as some may not understand what the topic represents.)

    Probability combined with logic, no matter how fancy, does not define success unless you can identify all the variables. Game theory is only theory. Game design is applied theory, yet not necessarily game theory. As I had a conversation recently about Professor Nash, I want to differentiate what I do from mathematical theory.

    However, utility versus futility should not be gauged by a simple depth calculation. So, if you have enough time to analyze video games, please try the list above. I might understand game theory some day.

    Do you know of a casual depiction of John Nash that doesn't treat his life as a game? Please let me know.

    (WarGames has a 2 hour runtime and a PG rating, and is distributed by MGM.)


    ARTISTIC INTERESTS

    Do you enjoy art?

    Most people do, however, by volume, most art is for everyone else from the perspective of the individual.

    Noteworthy Artists

  • Andy Warhol - Did you know the Commodore Amiga phone was the Campbell's Soup Can? That's a joke.
  • Susan Kare - Does your computer smile? Hers does.
  • Larry Poncho Brown - I painted with others at his studio. His father taught me print and layout design in the 90s, and he would always visit him.
  • Herb Lubalin - I learned that alternates were a thing from ITC Avant Garde, a typeface that he designed.
  • Helvetica - This isn't an artist, but it is listed here because it has a life of its own.
  • Dieter Rams - He came up with ten principles for good design. I wonder if he typed them on a keyboard where the 0 was near the 1, or if he just said them.
  • Tobias Wong - I saw this artist's works on display at SFMOMA in 2011. As I was in San Francisco for GDC, it was interesting to apply game design interpretations to what I saw.
  • Andrew Kim - When things weren't going so well in my life, I visited this designer's web site every day.

    • Interesting Musicians

    Music is an old method of entertainment. You don't need an instrument to make it, and one of the most simple instruments is a drum. Your wristwatch probably already keeps good time. Lyrics aren't music, but some artists have a statement to make by adding lyrics to their songs.

  • coda (Ken Snyder)
  • Herb Alpert
  • Keiko Matsui
  • Isao Tomita
  • Wendy Carlos
  • John Williams
  • YMCK
  • Luciano Pavarotti
  • Jean-Michel Jarre
  • Chris Geith
  • DragonForce (Herman Li)
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic
  • Bjork
  • Queen (Freddie Mercury)
  • Adam Lambert
  • No Doubt (Gwen Stefani)
  • Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor)
  • Metallica (Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich)

    • :: COMMUNITY INTERESTS ::

    Many think that they can't make a difference in the world they live in, and they're usually correct. That's why they don't try.

    Did you know the internet has a physical counterpart called "real life"? Good luck, voyager.

    Ways of life

  • Christianity - I don't label myself religious, but I consider that everyone is something, so maybe it makes sense for me to be also. I'm Roman Catholic.
  • Buddhism - It's intriguing, and understanding Zen helped me understand some missing documentation of life. Try not to over-understand this, or the people who run this by proxy (mostly the complicators) will keep trying to over-challenge you until you starve.
  • Papa John's Pizza - I worked for Papa John Schnatter's company for a while. Do you know you can start making your own pizza with pieces of bread and some ketchup? Try getting some garlic powder or whatever else you think you can also put on your other food. (Disclosure: My best friend in grade school was named Johnny. He didn't run a pizza place, but he was great at BBQ.)

    • Websites

  • United Way - This is one of the charities my father donated to. I also donated in more stable financial times.
  • Enoch Pratt Free Library - Do you know that a library card doubles as a personal bookmark? Some things aren't learned in books. (Note: This place is closed due to something that could be solved by reading the books inside.)
  • Habitat for Humanity - Everyone deserves a place to go home. This has a certain demographic requirement for home ownership.
  • Maryland Public Television - They showed a bunch of radical shows like Sesame Street, A.M. Weather, and Monty Python.
  • HopeLine by Verizon - As they are a phone company with more than a few customers, it's cool to see a telecom repurposing working equipment for a good cause.

    • E-mail Address: <winslowdoug@gmail.com>

    The newest revision of this was made on Wednesday January 4, 2023.

    Copyright © 1996-2023, Douglas Winslow. All Rights Reserved.