Home of Hewins

I was looking at some old cool 1960s era graphics and decided to make a couple of variations of one I saw. Just messing around.

and another one:

I need your help as I propose to launch the first social media manhunt.  Someone broke into the apartment I share with my fiancée, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn over the weekend.  They stole electronics mostly, including the laptop containing her unfinished master’s thesis and years and years of pictures.  Yes, we should have backed up this data. But we didn’t and that’s the unfortunate fact. Lesson learned. But a learned lesson doesn’t bring back thousands of photos and other data.

I came back home on Sunday night to discover that the window had been opened by the fire escape and that all of our things had been rifled through.  I rushed immediately to the hiding place where her engagement ring was hidden (she didn’t take it out of town with her) and was relived to find it where I left it. What was missing was what, apparently, one person could carry out. The burglar took a canvas tote bag of mine that had my iPod in it and packed into it the rest of the goods that were stolen: a Playstation 3, a Wii, their controllers, and my fiancee’s Mac PowerBook laptop.

They are just things, things that can be replaced. However, on the computer are things that cannot be replaced with any amount of money. These are the things we want back more than anything else. It could have been a lot worse. There were a lot of our belongings that could have been taken that weren’t. Cameras, a TV, stereo, etc. I count us fairly lucky all in all, but we should not take this lying down.

Why should you want to help? I’m not sure. Maybe you want to help us out of the goodness of your heart. Maybe you want to see if this social experiment can work. Maybe you want a reward. Maybe we stop this from happening to our neighborhood.  For whatever reason, I hope you can help.

Let’s get this message in front of anyone you know who lives in Brooklyn or the surrounding areas. The computer could have made its way to Queens or Manhattan, so let’s just get people to see this.

Here’s what we’re looking for: Apple Macintosh PowerBook G4 Aluminium with a 15″ screen and a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processor. The serial number is V73394FSNRZ It’s the September 16, 2003 version. It’s got some cosmetic damage on the outside corners, small dents and scratches. The screen has some lighter-colored splotchyness to it. There are probably around 10-15 light splotches on the screen. The power adapter was not taken but if there is one with it it probably has to be jiggled and finessed to keep the green charging light activated. The battery life is abysmal. It may be being carried in a canvas tote bag with WNYC printed on it in red. If it is on, the desktop background will have a comical picture of a woman wearing a head-scarf with various funny things floating in the sky behind her tiled on the screen.

There are so many people online that I think we have a good chance of getting this message in front of someone who has the chance of coming into contact with this computer. I believe that the thief intends to sell the computer to the first person that can be found who wants to buy it at a cut-rate. Perhaps it’s already been sold. Perhaps someone on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or some other network already has the computer in their possession. Perhaps someone online will see the computer for sale on some street corner. We have a lot of eyes and ears and typing fingers. Maybe we can retrieve this special information. If it can return a camera to its owner, maybe it can return information and photos to their owner as well.

If you have this computer and have come into ownership by any means whatsoever, I will be happy to arrange to meet you and get it back, no questions asked. Please, let your conscience get the better of you.

Please email me at hewins@gmail.com if you have any information leading to the recovery of the data on this computer or the computer itself.

Thanks, and let’s see if we can do this!

this is a screenshot from an account I created with the email address support@twitter.com

I have a few email addresses. I hacve some that I use for my everyday life, one for work, and others for things like signing up on email lists and entering contests.

One of the email addresses I use to subscribe to Jim Bramlett’s “inJesus” evangelical email list got a strange email the other day from Twitter. The subject was, “Welcoming you to Twitter!” and it began, “Hello, new Twitter-er!” This, I thought was very strange because I didn’t sign up for a Twitter account with that email address, and I looked into it. It turns out that someone had created my account and called it “PastorFurtick” with the name Steven Furtick. I immediately changed the password on the account so that nobody could access it anymore (I wish I hadn’t, more on that later). Then, naturally, I googled Steven Furtick and came up with this site. I looked for a way to contact his church and found a phone number, called it, and didn’t reach anyone. I didn’t leave a message either. I was going to ask about the twitter account while knowing that it wa not necessarily Steven who had created it.

As I was discussing this with my coworkers today, I decided to try it myself. I realized that I could complete the sign-up process and start tweeting without even verifying the email address that I used to create the account. I made an account called “securityproblem” with the email address support@twitter.com. (In the meantime, my coworker created one with my work email address.) It seemed that someone else had dome something like that becuase when I saw the home page, my new account was already following and followed by “llk4235 / Lupe King“.

So I tweeted. I tweeted more and tweeted @biz, the founder (nothing in reply yet). A screenshot of the first few tweets is what is above. Check out the twitter account page here. I have tested logging out and back in to this account, and that works, no problem.

Looking around for other people talking about it, google turned up the Twitter support page on “My account is compromised…” but it doesn’t really address the issue at hand. This is more about something strange happening to an existing account. I need to know about creating new accounts. I didn’t really find anything useful after googling “sign up for twitter with someone else’s email address”. Mostly, people were concerned with Twitter “impoersonators” but this was not related to the email address issue.

If you know anything about this issue, please comment here or tweet @hewins.

I popped the disc I found into my iMac at home. It’s an anti-Scientology DVD. I haven’t watched much of it yet though, but that’s the fact, jack.

This is a photo of the back of the DVD.

There are a handful of words in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road that I didn’t (or should I say didnt) know. And I suspected that some of them are made up by McCarthy. So, I searched a few ways for these words: in definr, dictionary.com, google, and wikipedia.

“He descended into a gryke in the stone…” (p11)

It’s an obscure geological term.

Found through google: reverso

gryke: n  a variant spelling of  →  grike

grike: n a solution fissure, a vertical crack about 0.5 m wide formed by the dissolving of limestone by water, that divides an exposed limestone surface into sections or clints

“Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white.” (p18)

 This one is pretty darn obscure, as well.

definr:

pipeclay (http://definr.com/pipeclay)

n : fine white clay used in making tobacco pipes and pottery and
in whitening leather [syn: terra alba]

dictionary.com:

Pipeclay
Pipe”clay`\, v. t. 1. To whiten or clean with pipe clay, as a soldier’s accouterments.

2. To clear off; as, to pipeclay accounts. [Slang, Eng.]

“China in a breakfront, cups hanging from their hooks.” (p21)

Apparently this really is a piece of furniture.

dictionary.com:

break⋅front
–adjective
1.     (of a cabinet, bookcase, etc.) having a central section extending forward from those at either side.
–noun
2.     a cabinet or the like having such a front.
Origin:
1925–30; break + front

“…squatted and laved up the dark water.” (p38 plus p122, p147)

So, McCarthy decided to use the “obsolete” use of this word a bunch of times:

dictionary.com:

lave
verb, laved, lav⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1.     to wash; bathe.
2.     (of a river, sea, etc.) to flow along, against, or past; wash.
3.     Obsolete. to ladle; pour or dip with a ladle.
–verb (used without object)
4.     Archaic. to bathe.
Origin:
bef. 900; ME laven, partly < OF laver < L lavāre to wash; partly repr. OE lafian to pour water on, wash, itself perh. < L lavāre

wikipedia returned the entry for “washing” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laved)

“…the river was choked with great windrows of black limbs…”; “Piled in a windrow in one corner of the roomwas a great heap of clothing.” (p44, p107)

I guess this one works. It’s a stretch but that doesnt bother me. It’s called poetic license, isnt it?

dictionary.com:

wind⋅row
–noun
1.     a row or line of hay raked together to dry before being raked into heaps.
2.     any similar row, as of sheaves of grain, made for the purpose of drying.
3.     a row of dry leaves, dust, etc., swept together by the wind.
–verb (used with object)
4.     to arrange in a windrow.
Origin:
1515–25; wind 1 + row 1

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I made one. You should try.

 http://fontpark.morisawa.co.jp/permalink?id=ob2xjqhzm9g9sjd

I’ve gotten back on the bicycle-riding-to-work thing this week and I feel good about it. However, on my way home last night I got a flat tire on my Surly and had no way to repair it. Funny thing is, I contemplated bringing a n extra tube and the tools when I left in the morning, then I thought, “nah.” So I rode over something sharp on 59th between Park and Madison and was left to have to throw the bike in the back of a minivan cab and go to Scott R’s birthday party that way. Today I rode the other bike in (it’s always good to have a backup) and here I am now.

I learned you can cancel your Friendster account today, and I did just that.

Everyone with a computer is apparently required to blog at some point and my blogging days start now. I’ll probably use this for photos more than anything else but I may rant about honking cars or litter or other things that really get to me. Maybe I’ll talk about the things that get to me in a good way. We’ll see. Until then, bye.