SokSa Lair: Hobbies

My first video clip

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:26:09 GMT

Animoto is an awesome site and they did one hell of a job with the "random effects" technique. Here's the first video I have created there with the pictures I've taken today in Union Square.

Enjoy!

http://www.soksa.com/thread.aspx?sku=178

10.06.2007.WalkingBoCoCa

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:50:34 GMT

Click here to see the rest of the pictures I shot today.

09.30.2007.WalkingManhattan

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:28:47 GMT

Click here to see the rest of the pictures I shot today.

09.29.2007.Walking.BoCoCa

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:06:05 GMT

Click here to see the rest of the pictures I shot today.

The Origins of Roger Wilco

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:28:59 GMT

Incidentally according to the “Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins” by William and Mary Morris(Harper Collins, New York, 1977, 1988). ROGER -- "in the meaning of 'Yes, O.K., I understand you -- is voice code for the letter R. It is part of the 'Able, Baker, Charlie' code known and used by all radiophone operators in the services in the 40's - 50's.

From the earliest days of wireless communication, the Morse code letter R (dit-dah-dit) has been used to indicate 'O.K. -- understood.' So 'Roger' was the logical voice-phone equivalent." Also from “I Hear America Talking” by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).“Roger! A code word used by pilots to mean ‘your message received and understood’ in response to radio communications; later it came into general use to mean ‘all right, OK.’ Roger was the radio communications morse code word for the letter R, which in this case represented the word ‘received.’ ‘Roger Wilco’ was the reply to ‘Roger’ from the original transmitter of the radio message, meaning ‘I have received your message that you have received my message and am signing off.” Wilco implies "I will comply"

Then of course there is the "Roger Beep" (Di-Dah-Dit) which legend has it was innovated by the Space Missions as a quick way to "Roger it" No source for this "but have it on good authority - by a guy who was there" hi hi. From the DX Reflector Ok, I have heard and seen a half dozen explanations, now here is one from one who has "Been there- Done That". "Roger" in both military and government communications definitely came out of the old cw days (and yes I did send/receive cw messages at the beginning of my career). The "R" was sent as a confirmation of receipt of a message,or a portion of a message. "R" was used, not "QSL". In voice communications , it thus became "Roger".

Even in front-line operations such as by forward observers (I did that too). We used Roger and Negative You had to be completely confident in what you were sending or receiving after all, it could , and often was, life or death as to what got thru the communications lines. I cringe almost every time I hear any military movie communications. WILCO means: I will comply with your orders. OVER means I have finished my transmissions and turn the channel over to you to transmit. CLEAR means I am finished with this communication and am standing by on the channel. OUT means I have completed transmission and am completely finished and closing this station or switching to another channel. So you can see why I cringe with "Roger Wilco Over, Clear and Out" WHAT DID HE SAY????

Navy Pilots say the use of Roger Wilco is frowned on, use one or the other as applicable.

In addition to "R" Roger, early CW use for "correct" was Morse "C", this carried over to the phone circuits as "Charlie". This is still used by Morse ops and can still be heard on some military voice circuits as in "That's Charlie" or "That's a Charlie readback". Usually following a readback of a message and meaning 'that is correct'. One will also see the occasional reference to FOXTROT messages as in the "DO NOT ANSWER" also encountered on military circuits. This is also from the CW "F" meaning 'do not answer'.

http://www.ac6v.com/73.htm#roger

Brooklyn Night Sky

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:33:34 GMT

Brooklyn Night Sky
A Nikon D50 + Cheap Tripod Miracle.
I have to buy a remote thingy for this machine immediately. This scene is actually pitch black, it's 11:00pm; look at the colors, look at the light (click on the image to see the bigger, meaner version ).

I love this camera!

Shikantaza

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 15:00:46 GMT

In Zen they have a practice which they call shikantaza. And of course, even to call it a practice is already misleading, because it actually means "doing nothing." The literal translation of it is "just sitting."

What does it mean? One way of approaching it is to realize that in everything else we do there is some kind of goal or activity. We meditate in order to become enlightened, or we go to work in order to make money, or we go out with friends to have fun. It pervades everything.

It can be very subtle, too. We may be meditating and just watching our breath or just repeating a mantra or even just witnessing our thought-stream, and yet there is still this smidgen of activity that will "get us somewhere." We'll accomplish something. We'll build an empire, or raise the children, or get the house built, or get past these legal problems or whatever it is.

The very definition of the "I," the self, the decider, the somebody who's living a personal life, is that there is some activity, some manipulation somewhere to accomplish something. And everything we do, no matter how subtle, reinforces this concept that we exist separately.

That's where shikantaza comes in. In shikantaza we just sit down and rest in pure awareness. There's no technique whatever to support us, to keep the game going. No deliberate watching of the breath, no doing the mantra, not even investigating the koan or deliberately witnessing the mind. Just pure awareness, nothing else.

The most subtle goal of all that the self sets up is to become awakened or enlightened. Yet the very act of doing anything at all to become enlightened sets up a subtle duality which reinforces the self. I am here and enlightenment is over there. I am on this shore and I need to get to the "other shore" somehow, the one where I'll be self-realized, awakened, liberated.

Yet beings who become liberated say very strange things, such as "Every being is already enlightened." The Buddha himself said that. Whatever could he have meant? After all, as we engage in our everyday world with its pressures and responsibilities and disappointments and so on, we certainly don't feel enlightened.

But perhaps to feel any separation at all between awakening and this very life that we're living now is to set up the very duality that makes us feel that awakening is on some other shore somewhere.

What the Buddha and others were pointing to is that the other shore is this shore, this very one that we're on, this very life that we're living, indeed this very minute, this very second, with all of its ups and downs and successes and failures, this very moment-life is the awakened life.

We are already awakened, this very moment, always and forever. The ungraspable mystery is that who we actually are is the ungraspable mystery. It is living life in us and as us, and it is always inherently liberated because that is its essential nature.

Shikantaza captures this, because it has no goal, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve or accomplish, no activity of any kind, not even the slightest technique to support it. There are literally no instructions. Or to put it another way, the instruction is to "just sit."

In that "just sitting," we become aware of awareness itself, which needs no support anywhere, no technique of any kind to be itself—not even "just sitting," which the mind can try to make into a technique to get somewhere.

In pure awareness there is no idea of the "I," no concept of the personal doer, the separate decider-self who's always trying to get somewhere in the next minute or the next year. There's just awareness itself, manifesting as this ordinary moment, this ordinary life. There is no separation between that shore and this shore; that's just another duality set up by the mind, just one more goal.

This very life is the other shore. The ungraspable mystery as it lives through you and me—as you and me—is always enlightened and completely free, even as it rushes to catch the train or becomes disheartened at a loss.

In this very moment, this very breath, we can see it, feel it, become aware that there's nowhere to go even as movement continues. Since the ungraspable is already everywhere, where does it need to go? Since it's already everything, what does it need to accomplish? And yet the dance continues.

This cannot be understood through the mind, through ideas and grasping onto intellectual concepts. Yet your heart can become aware of it in this very instant. Indeed, it already has.

—jim sloman, 5/21/01 for May 21

http://www.mayyoubehappy.com/thisverin.html