Ocean Pictures

Ken's List: Web TV & Video

2010-03-27T15:27:00.002-03:00

So, you have hooked up your TV to a computer (Apple or Microsoft)? and now you want to watch something on it, full screen in stereo. Good luck.

You will need a media player like Real Player

If you download torrents using utorrent you may need an additional codec like xvid

Or you could just watch it online from sites like:

TheComedyNetwork.ca where you can see The Daily Show, SouthPark, and many others full screen on demand.

Death by Distraction

2010-01-02T10:51:00.002-04:00

Air safety takes a lot of our attention and money and time, while the real killing machine sits in your driveway. Your car is many, many times more likely to get in an accident. While we take our eyes off the road and obsess about air safety, drivers are busy texting, talking and eating.

River Chameleon

2009-07-22T17:03:00.009-03:00

Sunken log apertures pattern the tan on a speckled trout
Body temperature of the river, cold blooded eye, stout

Twitching lures launch flashes out through to the air
Gulp snap lashes of water stream rainbow flair

Flashes of lightning, moonlight, the pattern of a leaf

Your story, your place, written dark and light
in brackish tattoos from the aqua camera obscura

Skin covers other stories told in pink and white.
Homes, roams, divine unseen never told tales within bones?

Cross Over, Cross Back

2009-07-10T19:32:00.001-03:00

Nikola Tesla could have hooked us up without hookups.
Look up.

Bing Virus?

2009-06-02T18:45:00.003-03:00

Internet Explorer now seems to default to a web page called Bing, which may be a new search engine from MS. Seems like the page is hijacked, which it is really, but by Windows. Not a virus.

Your Sisters Pickles

2009-04-03T19:21:00.002-03:00

I met you, reminded me of my cousin
Same name as my mother
Both trying to speak french
Finding out I already knew you
Had your sisters pickles in my fridge
She's friends with my parents
Who gave them to me
Cucumbers from my dad's garden
The kid's love them
So familiar, like everyone on this island

Lone Star Light

2009-03-13T17:16:00.004-03:00

Early night lone star
shining far too bright!
No others yet appear
no moon, just one light

From the east, home
rolling away from city
Is this star chrome?
satellite Galileo JOP?

An airplane landing light?
By triangulation too high,
not from such a height
A UFO if you move, might?

Twenty minutes later joined
by shallow points of vermillion
which faintly point bouyant
sailors bows right, familiar

Your power now where my pen is
I know your name is Venus

Second Language

2009-02-22T09:57:00.007-04:00

You say what I want, where it is, how many
I can count in you, but not on you, yet
Speaking by numbers, how much is a penny
Expressed in worn phrases and fret

I always knew how to say yes, never no
A few words, a dirty phrase
My brain is familiar, at least so-so
My heart is unsure, slightly phased

You're easier to learn in your own world
How does one really enter there
Especially your R's, slightly curled
Saying I love you, versus fingers in hair

I'll let in those past sharing roots with my words
Might utter strange insights, be slightly misread
Uncommon animals with strange different furs
Tread lightly where stomping is needed instead

From the page, by the eye, you're more easily fixed
Beginning to unravel, beginning to rhyme
My heart softens, relents, reflexed
I spell you out slowly, tracing your line

Le Langue Deuzieme

Tu dis qoia je veu, ou c'est, combien
Tu est comptable, mais pas bien sur, encore
Le Parlence par les chiffres, c'est combien, ein pfenny
Mes sentiments en les cliches, les dents clenche

J'ai sais deja a dir oui et non
Quel'qe mots, le phrase sale
Mon cerveau connait bien, a moin ci-ca
Ma coeur avec doubte, doucement derange

Toi est comprenable plus dans ton monde de toi
Mais, comment c'est on entre la
Especialement tes r's, un peu boucleie
A dir j't'aime contra une carresse a cheveau

J permisai entre que partage les racines de mes mots
Peut etre les vu d'erangier, etre mal comprende
L'animal rare avec marveilleaux peltiers
Allez silentement ou les forte marche est a propos

Sur la page, par l'oeille, tu est plus facilement entrappe
Commence a debruiler, commence a fais la rhyme
Mon coeur fondais, relentez, reflaicher
J' m'eppeler t'lentement, suivez ton ligne.

The Worst Translation

You're from where I look, or is it that much
You're countered, corn not sweet at the core
It speaks by the numbers, asks much, one penfy
More feelings on the keys, the tooth locks

I've known of then at dear yes is no
Is it of the bits, the line on salt
Me on servo can eat well, on my see saw
My heart abeat double, dew on the range

You east understood more dance your mind from you
A little to be these views of outranger, to be badly with taken
The animal rare with marvellous hunters
Quietly goes out where strong steps are right

By the paper, with looking, you east more facing in to rap
Come and see noise, come and see make the ryhme
My core fond is, slowly, reflecting
I me spell you slowly, swing by your lines

Kenny's Got a Hard Drive

2009-02-19T17:37:00.002-04:00

Once I cracked the spinning, dimpled little bastard so hard they murmered over their tee
Nice hit, ummmmmmmmmh, nice lie.
The birdie within reach, a figure of speech
Another souvenir found at track DAF1 sector 4 comma 3

Bite baby, byte! into terrains so large, bitbuckets of balls by the yard!
Millions of acres of text, a thousand pictures, ten videos, a shout from the bard.

Magnetic landscape so granular, three specks describe how tall you are.
One for color on a scale of octets, in an aspect ratio of whatever one hundred gets

My hard drive is oh so vast, accurate, disaster proof and fast.
Defragmented, FAT, and sanity passed

It's true I have a huge dictionary, and the Gutenburg Press
I've so much space they are all uncompressed.

I search my drive, for it's well indexed
Sometimes I search 'the' just to seek the hits

I must confess, I have some cluttered digits
They stood for settings, preferences and widgits
And file extensions I dare not mention

Then there was that bad block, a few years back
For a moment I thought I dumped my stack

It's actually my 41st device, all one joined mass.
Some reboot advice saved my ass.

I'm back up now, static.

I can has cheezeburger?

2009-02-14T10:02:00.002-04:00

iTunes says it is for US customers only, so I can't have I can has cheeseburger on my iPod.

Poe'm

2009-02-14T09:46:00.002-04:00

Edgar'd tell a story
He'd write a poem
Creep up on fate
Sneak up and Poe'm

He was a verbal tea
Taken black with a twist
His words mystery
Like dooms list

In the Red

2009-02-13T21:30:00.001-04:00

In the red
Dung fed potato bed
Green iced cliffs
Dusty wind stiffs

In the blue
Faded word tattoo
Cape boat slips
White cap clips

In the green
Lime rickey gleam
Tangley sticks
Blossom picks

Good Lord Duffy

2009-02-13T19:51:00.008-04:00

Gormanesque...

Absentee senator we are your squatters
You hold the title, we hunt the otters
You flap your tongue
We kiss your bum

Harper's lieutenant, you hold the pennant
Offend the locals without being repentant

Your humour is rough, chewy and tough
Pack your bag! but you travel so light.
Your never around, we don't see you enough
Are you afraid you might not get a bite?

If you ever fly to PEI, between courses at Toronto's restaurants
Our salt cod dinners will leave you thinner
To look in the eye of the ghost of a lie (your old haunts)
Your elected by a real winner.

Fat greasy Duffy your dirty & stuffy, a bagman for the Tory's
Your salty tongue from that higher rung tips our dories.
We want you out by the shortest route, but how do you rustle a bluff
Your not even here, you fat stout queer, you store bought piece of fluff.

Bailout

2009-02-07T14:18:00.007-04:00

Women and children who are board members off the Titanic
What no takers, don't panic,
The captain of a lifeboat, which leaks tea leeward on the drift
who knew icebergs held up New Amsterdam's market street?

The captain, convincing bastard, a cowboy boot full of gasoline saves him.

The captain's bailed out.
If the masses steal bread they'll build the jail out.

Congress spitballs masticated green linen from the basement
into a ball so big it won't fit through the posts.
Doing this time what they should have done more of the last time
which was different

Back then they could piss and fuck with pilsner not pills.
Back then they were Pro State champions. Small p pro.

The green surge may flicker the bulb, but the filament is gone
This Week in Washington with Snuffle-up-agus and the Fonz!

Manhattan packs for a two days walk
They decided rebuilding skyscrapers will create jobs.

Walled in, relax

2009-02-07T11:43:00.006-04:00

You climb all the stairs, in your Mac, up to the clouds,
on the edge of fields no one plows.
Perched above salty, misty waters on the cliff, at hand a pack,
your voice aroused.

To strike it down, with lusty hacks in solitude inside your shack.

Plywood bends in gusty winds, yielding slightly to your ends
Shelters ink from bleeding stains.
This germination from without, springs forth from doubt
A force that drives daemons remains.

A shack, a post, a base can hold a man in one place
or liberate him in his own space.
A fortress against distraction, it may result in legal action
for grinding axes or unpaid taxes.

Eaves left open for birds to light in next to Walden
or over ice where smelts are hauled in
through a hole in the floor, with a spear you gather more
as noses poke in your door to overhear the score.

Summer's odd mosquito bites, winter's frost hangs tiny spikes
inside the wall, scratching mice
Thumping wings of a pheasant, fathers echos from Mount Pleasant
Growing mould in gables crescent.

Whatever season, whatever reason
simple retreat or high treason
The heavy weight on your back can
be set down inside your shack.

On a clear day you can see as far as PEI

2009-01-31T11:36:00.018-04:00

Alistair MacLeod can be heard in this NPR interview. Recently while watching an NFB documentary, I was struck by his writing shack. It is perched on the edge of land & sea. Walking to the shack, carrying tools, is an old habit of fishermen, gardeners, or this writer. The seasons on the cliff and the sea air permeate the mood of MacLeod's stories. Like an office cubicle exorcised of corporate control and plucked from the group, it offers independence and simplicity. A place to work.

Jack White, of The White Stripes, is a descendant of a Cape Breton family which includes Ashley MacIsaac and Natalie McMaster. His song Little Room, a short 45 second blast ends in a chant that strikes me as an exasperated ghost wailing a lament that is etched in the acid of DNA tracing back through to his Cape Breton roots.
Shacks bring to mind the Unabomber. It is as if the government foreclosed on the mythical unpaid taxes of Henry David Thoureau, seizing the shack from the imagination of escape and indicting isolation. What I mean is the shack itself as a symbol was played as crazy. At the other end of square footage, large homes had and still have a TV channel dedicated to them. The home as obsession. To the obsessed the shack had to be put down as shamefully tiny and poor.

My own obsession, as a boy, was to go off and live in the woods in a shack, pitting my wits against nature to survive; with a few modern tools (gun, radio, axe, etc.).
Radio Shack catalogues, sparked my interest in electronics. Ham radio operators had to build a shack to house their transmitters, due mainly to fire and lightning risks.

The camera obscura is a small shack with no windows - a darkened shack with reflector on the ceiling that directs light from a pinhole onto a white table surface in the shack. It is a shack sized camera.

I built a plywood shack in 2001. It is 8'x8'x8' which saved a lot of cutting as plywood comes in 8' sheets. This shack, which once stood alone at a distance of about 30' from my house, is now joined to my second shack, which was 8'x12'x8', and a third 16'x8' space. This nucleus of three shacks is where I work now, and it is joined by a porch to the house. I looked for a photo of my 8'x8' shack when it stood on it's own, but could only find one. It was a picture from inside the shack of my wife's big beautiful pregnant belly and discretion prevents me from posting it here.

My father has a smelt shack in Bedeque Bay, behind Bakin' Donuts in Summerside this year. It is his winter pastime to fish smelts. I think he likes giving them away, calling on old friends to see if they want a feed of smelts, more than fishing them. It's a very social world among the smelt shacks in and of itself, a winter community of shacks.

Give it away, give it away now (XP)

2009-01-16T18:21:00.002-04:00

If Microsoft were generous to it's users it would liberate XP Pro. Give away the code, open source. This would wipe out the Vista stigma and open a new chapter in operating systems.
Do it.

USB Drive to MP3 Player Adaptor

2008-10-13T10:53:00.002-03:00

This $50 (24.95+Tax+Shipping) device will play MP3 files from your USB memory stick, or thumb drive, or pendrive. What do you call it? Also plays MP3's from SD cards. So you can use all your old cards like a CD or tape, plug it into the player. Make a mixed USB Stick for your girlfriend.

Mach Speed Wireless FM Modulator/MP3 Player

It plays your flash drive to an FM radio station so it plays through your car radio.

Also, it is upgradable with cheaper, bigger USB drives / SD cards are released.

Do-Not-Call List - Pander Me This

2008-10-01T09:07:00.002-03:00

The Canadian government has spent time and money to setup a registry, no not a gun registry, a do not call registry.

Everyone wants to be on that list, and will have to jump through the hoop to get on it.

Question is, why? Why don't they simply outlaw telemarketers and not bother with the list, or better yet have a Do-Call list, where Canadians who want telemarketers to call them could sign up?

This is a pathetic idea because it follows the US Do-Not-Call list years after they did it, no originality. Just blind pandering to the Telemarketing lobby.

Mark Twain: Mississippi Divines America

2008-09-08T19:25:00.003-03:00

Puddin' Head Wilson, a book by Mark Twain used the phrase 'gonna be sold down the river' used by a worried negro woman. The mighty river three years ago was the site of despair in the purging of history and people of New Orleans, a stadium at the mouth of the river became a living nightmare of poor mostly black people. Sold down the river.

Three years later, at the source of the Mississippi a stadium full of high tech Republican propaganda is full of stock owners who rally a candidate against the first black presidential candidate in history. As far upriver as they can be, cash rich Puddin' Heads.

Republicans: Homeland Security vs. Home Securities

2008-09-08T19:18:00.003-03:00

Homeland always struck me as a stupid fucking word. It was the name of US bundled bungler agencies - FEMA, FBI, all those agencies designed to protect the public. Who knew Fanny and Freddy should have been part of Homeland security? Home - poof! Gone.

Geek Log: Asterisk PBX on SuSe 10.3 Server

2008-05-24T13:39:00.003-03:00

This is my first entry on this project. I am building a PBX on a Linux SuSe server.

My hardware platform is a Dell Inspiron 531s which is an inexpensive ($379) computer that has a 250Gb drive and 1Gb RAM.

I also have a Digium Iaxy which is an Ethernet to FXS device, gives dialtone from ethernet; and I have a ZOOM 5801 VOIP device which has an FXO and and FXS port.

FXS is a phone jack with dialtone.
FXO is a jack that acts like a phone (incoming PBX port that answers, provides a voice menu, etc.)

I downloaded SuSe 10.3 DVD ISO file, which was 4.1Gb
Burned it to DVD using Roxio.

Booted my Dell to the SuSe 10.3 DVD, therby blowing away Vista Basic that was preloaded on it.

Chose basic install, but added: File Server, Remote Desktop, Development Packs for C, PHP, PERL and Java.

I am waiting for the files to copy now, as SuSe 10.3 OS is loaded onto my Dell.

Then I will intall Asterisk!

I hope to have SIP server running and get my Iaxy and Zoom boxes to dial each other.
Then to add my PSTN line...so my incoming home phone calls can be filtered by CallerID, and routed to a menu if not whitelisted.

I just don't blog like I used to

2008-05-22T23:16:00.003-03:00

It is months between posts. Things pass through my mind and I intend to post them but just am out of the habit. Spring is a good time to start over.

Where did radio.upei.ca go?

2008-04-28T18:56:00.001-03:00

The site is down today I noticed, is it gone forever?

The Spudreport

2008-03-06T16:12:00.003-04:00

The Spudreport.com has the top 3 feature working again, after being broken for a few months. The site needed some dusting off, glad I finally got around to it!
Check it out!