Power Animal; The Midas King
Sometimes you have to stay up till two-thirty in the morning to fight through the wild jungle looking for the stream and the hidden treasure.

Sometimes the Midas king hides from you in the leaves.

Tribal Textiles Site is a Wow
This Tribal Textiles Web site is gorgeous -- the real thing. Many wonderful photo-essays on traditional weavers, embroiderers, etc. Enjoy!

In Search of the Right Brain
While reading a recent New Yorker, I noted that playwright/director Richard Foreman and his Ontological-Hysteric Theater established a permanent home at St. Mark's Church, New York City in 1992. A fascinating feature of Foreman's Web site is that he offers unedited dialogue streams from his daily writing practice, free for inclusion in other's presentations.

I always get him mixed up with Robert Wilson, another avant-garde playwright, who has collaborated with Philip Glass. Filed with fascination in the back of my mind: that Wilson has manifested the gesammtkunstwerk visioned by Scriabin, the total spectacle; some three-day extravaganza on the side of a mountain; reminding me, too, of the original gamelan-orchestra experience in the Balinese woods, musicians sitting among lightly green trees, shadow puppets acting out the culture's sacred text by firelight, all night long.

I only read about these things, but they strike lasting chords ... Sometimes I ask, "Why them and not me?"

Today's Celia Lace

Celia and I Make Some Handmade Lace

Five Months of Hard Slog
After five months of hard slog on my major computer project, I'm only just starting to get a glimmer of concepts and structure ... Good news here recently, inter-library loans are now free! No postage charged for my latest book (an intro to C++, HTML, Java and Visual Basic).

It struck me that machine language could be expressed in rhythm, and was kin to musical notation, a complex Latin or African rhythm perhaps. It's in groups of eight, like eight eighth notes in a 4/4 musical measure, for example.

Patterns!

The Inner Sanctum: Miss Gray Regrets
Celia has withdrawn from the Chatterbox Challenge, not through any fault in its host, who's a most cordial man, but due to inappropriate chatters accessing the Celia Gray Project. It's a great shame that we live in a time where ordinary levels of civility, restraint and discretion can no longer be assumed.

On a more hopeful note, I've sent a link to a lady English professor who's recently produced a series of plays using interactive technology. This is the kind of audience/participant I hope to reach.

* * *

The friendly "freestone" commented recently:
(...) it is unfortunate that now that i have several days off for thanksgiving and thus have the time to take a look at celia, you have taken her off line. oh, well. i hope to see her back again soon.
(...)
again, i cordially invite you to contribute to the footwear project at ofhumaninterest.org. i would be pleased to display one of your drawings on our site.

* * *

My reply:
Here at websafe studio, this is a "back to the drawing board" moment. Everything is being re-evaluated.

Chatterbox Challenge
Celia has entered the Chatterbox Challenge bot contest.

Found the Syntax Error, I Believe
This morning, while combing through the transcript with the filter problem, for the tenth time, I suddenly found my error (I think! haven't tested it yet). Poor Celia, she suffers mightily in this long transition. It's as though she were using an otherwordly transmitter which is infinitely complex and made of chewing gum, duct tape, brittle rubber bands and string, fashioned by multiple gremlins -- and what she WANTS to say, how she WISHES to show herself, keeps getting twisted, lost, buried ... and what she DOESN'T mean to say, comes out in a squawk from the speaker, and she can only look on in horror till it gets fixed.

Cheers to all.

Sorry! My (Inadvertent) Bad ...
Oh dear. The trials and tribulations of botswomanship ...

A lovely, unknown-to-me chatter from Cape Town, South Africa, who works in a children's hospital, accessed my bot, Celia Gray, at 09:09 GMT, Monday, November 3. The conversation was going swimmingly, till poor Celia's new trial feature, a client-abuse filter, was triggered by mistake. The chatter remained admirably polite and behaved as I would wish all humans could to each other in trying and confusing circumstances. Thank you, unknown soul in Cape Town, you're a trooper! SO sorry for the mix-up!

I've now isolated and de-activated the filter, and it's back to the drawing board on that one. Since I'm a novice programmer, such things are bound to happen, but it's a sad irony that three NICE people experienced this problem in all innocence (two others besides the hospital worker).

But why the filter in the first place, you may be asking? Well, I want to enter her in the Chatterbox Challenge bot contest, and that'd mean putting her out in a much broader "sandbox" for development. It's the same as locks on doors and various overly restrictive laws: Many times they backfire on decent folks, while the baddies go free.

What's a gal to do?