Sigma Complex

I spent Friday evening ordering geeky T-shirts from J!NX and ThinkGeek.com while being mocked on IM by female friends, who, while claiming they had social lives, where actually in front of their computer screens, much like I was.

Two T-shirts arrived from J!NX today. Fruit of their loom:

A year or two ago, I got an external Seagate disk drive. After giving it a day or so to settle in, my friend asked me if I was having fun with it: “are you gamboling in the gigaswathes:)?” she asked. The metaphor was apt.

There is a topography to our experience of the Internet, and indeed myriad landscapes to traverse, the deeper we delve into the technology. Gamboling might have been a rather frisky way of describing what I was doing with/to/in my hard drive, but I was, at the very least, skipping and humming along. Directory structures (’folders’) are paths that have to be walked, programmatically as well as through mouseclicks: we navigate. There are planes and edges to data, information, and the Internet. There is a front-line, and the front-line is in a line of code. The topography of information—and of the Internet—is being written in real-time. I was gamboling in the gigaswathes.

The metaphor of landscape to describe the experience of creating and of using networked information captures a defining feature of the Internet, which is the fact that its topography—the structure of its links; what links to what—takes on semantic significance, and therefore ideological implication. A group of links has an ulterior motive. If you liken a garden to a website, then the rosebushes, or the koi pond, or the Japanese bridge, or any other arrangement of elements—their design, form and function would mean something, and point somewhere.

Grouping links—creating a web page, or web site—requires certain technological shenanigans, and until recently this presented a barrier to the creation of web pages by ‘lay people’. The forum, and then the blog, were breakthroughs that allowed anyone anywhere to group links and provide multimedia commentary, thus collecting and presenting a point of view, and, in a post-Althusserian world, therefore an ideology. This kind of self-publishing is crucial to freedom on the Internet.

There was a train of thought here. It will pull into the station in part two, I hope.

The city of brotherly love finally opened its arms and embraced me, a few days ago. After harboring me—a New York refugee—on ambivalent terms for almost five years, Philadelphia held my head in her hands and punched it a few times.

I was mugged by three kids on July 3rd, 2007, around 9pm, on Farragut St, just south of the 46th/Market Street stop. I think it may have been on Farragut and Ludlow, but I am not sure. The 46th Street subway stop on the Market-Frankford line was closed that evening, and I decided to walk down to the 40th Street stop. I turned into a side street—I think it was Ludlow—with the new Nine Inch Nails blasting on the headphones. Out of nowhere, somebody struck me on the left side of my face. My glasses were knocked off.

I was disoriented, and to ensure that I stayed that way, a few more punches were landed. I managed to stay on my feet, and started to talk to the two boys—they can’t have been more than 16.
—Guys, guys, relax, take it easy.

Another punch. They were directed mainly at the face. A third kid joined the other two entrepreneurs, and was bobbing and angling, looking for ingress. What do you want?, I asked stupidly.
—Gimme everything you got.

The third kid found an opening, and split my lip. He was about 14.
—Relax, relax. I have $40.

I don’t know why I kept telling them to relax. I must not have taken them very seriously. Or I thought I might talk my way out of the situation.

I reached into my pocket. They took a step back. I pulled out a $20 bill, and handed it to the chief entrepreneur. As soon as he took the bill, I broke through their ranks (the three of them ranged about me, and I had my back to the bushes from whence the first fellow had surprised me). I ran. I had sneakers on, having just played tennis. I also had my freak on. I ran towards the light, which, contrary to what the books and movies will have you believe, was sodium yellow (and on Farragut). The boys followed me for about two paces, then stopped. I like to think it was my fleetness of foot that discouraged them, but it was probably the light. Besides, they got $20 for their trouble. As I was running, a car turned onto the boys’ street, and I waved and yelled Turn. Around. The car backed away.

After ten to fifteen minutes of stumbling around, I found myself at the 40th/Market subway stop, and went into a fast food store. By some strange coincidence, the two women who had been in the car that I waved away were there, and recognized me (I did not recognize them). They asked me what happened, and I told them. The store owner gave me free lemonade. I got into the subway, iced my face, and went home, where I got more ice, then took some photographs of my face.

I spent the 4th of July, 2007, in bed for the most part, pondering violence and masculinity and whether or not I should go to the police. I still have not decided on the police, but I heard today that another friend ‘nearly’ got mugged near Baltimore Avenue. I will have to talk to that friend, and eventually decide on whether or not to go to the police. (Apparently he did go to the police, and they drove him around asking if he recognized anyone).

Best case scenario, the police patrols around 46th and Market increase in visibility (if they exist at all), and muggers wise up. Worst case scenario, the police catch the kids, and throw them into juvie, and they become statistics, and another family or two (or three) perpetuates the vicious cycle of urban violence. Most likely scenario: nothing happens. I suppose the onus is on me to go to the police. Instead, I write blog pieces and post them into the cybervacuum.

I am healing nicely, two days after the mugging. And I have nice new glasses.

West Philadelphia:

Northeast Philadelphia:

Photos taken with a 1.3MP Samsung Blackjack.

The Skype team recently released a 1.4 Beta for Linux. I downloaded and installed the Ubuntu .deb, but when I tried to install and run it, got the following error:

algebraist@orogeny:$ sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i skype-1.4.0.74.deb
dpkg - warning, overriding problem because --force enabled:
 package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
(Reading database ... 191043 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace skype 1.3.0.53-1 (using skype-1.4.0.74.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement skype ...
Setting up skype (1.4.0.74-1) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/skype.conf ...
algebraist@orogeny:$ skype
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libQtDBus.so.4: cannot open shared
object file: No such file or directory

After looking around, I found an excellent solution: getlibs. It’s a shell script for Debian-based distros that finds and installs shared dependencies for 32-bit binaries running on 64-bit systems. I downloaded and installed the script, and for the new Skype binary, I did the following:

algebraist@orogeny:$ getlibs /usr/bin/skype
Matched library libQtDBus.so.4 to /feisty/libs/libqt4-core
Matched library libQtGui.so.4 to /feisty/libs/libqt4-gui
Matched library libQtNetwork.so.4 to /feisty/libs/libqt4-core
Matched library libQtCore.so.4 to /feisty/libs/libqt4-core
Matched library libsigc-2.0.so.0 to /feisty/libs/libsigc++-2.0-0c2a
The following i386 libraries will be installed:
libQtAssistantClient.so.4 libQtAssistantClient.so.4.2
libQtAssistantClient.so.4.2.3 libQtCore.so.4 libQtCore.so.4.2
libQtCore.so.4.2.3 libQtDBus.so.4 libQtDBus.so.4.2
libQtDBus.so.4.2.3 libQtDesignerComponents.so.4
libQtDesignerComponents.so.4.2 libQtDesignerComponents.so.4.2.3
libQtDesigner.so.4 libQtDesigner.so.4.2 libQtDesigner.so.4.2.3
libQtGui.so.4 libQtGui.so.4.2 libQtGui.so.4.2.3 libQtNetwork.so.4
libQtNetwork.so.4.2 libQtNetwork.so.4.2.3 libQtOpenGL.so.4
libQtOpenGL.so.4.2 libQtOpenGL.so.4.2.3 libQtSvg.so.4
libQtSvg.so.4.2 libQtSvg.so.4.2.3 libQtTest.so.4 libQtTest.so.4.2
libQtTest.so.4.2.3 libQtXml.so.4 libQtXml.so.4.2 libQtXml.so.4.2.3
libsigc-2.0.so.0 libsigc-2.0.so.0.0.0 qt4
Continue? (y/n)
y
Libraries have been installed.
algebraist@orogeny:$ skype
skype: error while loading shared libraries: libdbus-1.so.3: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory
algebraist@orogeny:$ getlibs /usr/bin/skype
Matched library libdbus-1.so.3 to /feisty/libs/libdbus-1-3
The following i386 libraries will be installed:
libdbus-1.so.3 libdbus-1.so.3.2.0
Continue? (y/n)
y
Libraries have been installed.
algebraist@orogeny:$ skype

It runs. (Sound, however, is a separate issue. Skype has started to offer some help on sound for Linux users, here.)

getlibs could be a boon for 64-bit Linuxers. Good job ‘Cappy’, and thanks for the script!