I'm now in Australia. Still haven't seen any koalas, but several dead kangaroos and a dead wombat.

http://nokilli.com/rtw/

We're playing (and recording) for free at the Press Club on Sunday afternoon. Oct 10th at 3pm. It's at 21st & P St. in midtown Sacramento. Yup.

The Crest Theater show got cancelled, so you've got a reprieve if you haven't seen No Kill I play.

My Go Away party is Oct. 9th at Alex's house. Milhouse, the Bananas, the Nightmares, Lyme Regis, and the Royal Pains (from Seattle) are playing. That'll start at 5pm so hopefully the cops won't show up. email me for directions. There will be a raffle of sorts. My junk that no one in their right mind would like.

http://nokilli.com/

Okay, a review since I actually listened to it on Sept 23, 2004 while driving out to the monkey factory and back.

The cd isn't as bad as I'd thought. Still nothing worth paying for. Stovokor is metal and though they bitch about how awful they sound, it's not bad. NKI: Deep Space 9 were influenced by No FX and they're entertaining. NKI: The Next Generation is always entertaining. And NKI is a car wreck in action that I fastforwarded over. The filk bands (sci-fi folk) are pretty good if you like folk music. Warp 11 sounds like a prom party band in a Lifetime movie channel or, if you're old enough, an Afternoon Special. Fred Schneider of the B-52s has done way better work, but you really notice how gay lispy his voice is. Maybe it's because the best bars around my house are gay bars, so I'm more in-tune to that, but I doubt that. I'm guessing he lives in West Hollywood instead of Athens, and that lisp is persuasive. The Mercantile, by the way, serves the strongest drinks I've had from any bar I've been in.

The payment for the bands appears to be 5-8 copies of the promo cd, which is what No Kill I thought would happen. All of us (not just the whiney loudmouthed Dave Smith) figured that's what payment would be. Everyone in the band has/are in other bands: We've dealt with/been on major labels, toured the US and Japan, been on magazine covers, blah blah blah. Sure, that sounds made up, but it's not. Reports are trickling in from other bands who are upset about the payment of a fistful of promo cds, but hey, we told the other bands what to expect. So if you want a copy, look around and find a free one. You're not taking any money away from the bands.

Ooo-eeee, I got a copy of the soundtrack. Don't waste your money on that platter of crap. If you need it for some reason, knock your head into the wall until that desire flushes out of your mind carried out with on a refreshing raft of blood dripping out your ear like a freshly used tampon. "Crap" and "piece of crap" and "crap sandwich" comes to mind. "Crap cracker" as well. Christian karaoke is better. Trust me, I just spent Saturday in the Appalachian foothills hanging out with my hillbilly relatives.

We were out in Leatherwood Hollow (pronounced "holler") and Baptist hillbilly karaoke is a giant step above. The food there was great because I love fried green tomotoes. I'm not kidding about hillbillies by the way. If you've had the misfortune to meet me, I'm sure you noticed the "hillbilly" tattooed on my forehead right before I tried to mooch a beer from you. Which is to say, live albums have never been recorded live. That is a myth. Even great ones like Cheap Trick "Live at Budakon" wasn't recorded live. It's a studio trick. Sure, there's small parts that are recorded live -- usually audience and stage banter -- but "live" albums aren't really live. That is part of The Promotion as played by Label Suits. I'm guessing most people are thinking I'm making this up, but I'm not. If you ask, I can point you towards articles about this. Or spend 8 seconds googling for it.

This soundtrack is chock full of this mighty crap salad toasted over a burning manure pile. If you're some sort of super collector, which isn't possible in the Star Trek universe, don't bother opening the packaging. If you do, skip the live acts and listen to the folk stuff actually filk in the sci-fi world. Folk can be recorded live, although, for some odd reason, one of the bands, who's label put this soundtrack out, somehow has studio recordings when we were told no time for that. Go figure. I need a thesaurus so I can think of more crap food to list. Crap soup. Crap crepe. There's oh-so-many crappy things to say about this soundtrack. If you need to hear it, there's bitTorrents of it floating around clogging up the sewers of the internet.

If anyone wants one, email me. I've got 'em coming out my wazoo. Same with orkut invites.

At least now I have a message from pairnic, pair's domain register, saying the problem is on their end. Not that they've fixed it -- although they told me that they did. My site is still down.

It's causing me problems. At first it was an inconvenience, but now it's costing me money. Sponsors aren't so interested when my site isn't working. Speaking of sponsors, Pirelli tires is floating me my first set of tires, and there might be more after those. Ducati International isn't interested, but Ducati Australia might help out.

I got my Psion 5mx in the mail. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it, but so far it's been nice. It runs 30-40 hours from AA batteries, and has Opera. There's even a linux version if I get super geeky. I've never had use for a PDA, but now that I need one, this is nice. It's got a mini-keyboard, so it's more like a tiny laptop than a PDA.

I quit the monkey job at the end of September, so no more monkey stories after that. Although, once I quit, untold stories might be posted.

Luckily, thanks to pair.com being slack-jawed yokels, my server is down. I transferred my domain to them and god almighty is pair sucking out loud.

Two or three domains registered through them and none of them are working. And they won't answer my questions as to why. They told me to change my nameservers to what they're already set to. Emails sent to my domains bounces too. Aargh!

I sent a question to urgent@pair.com and support@pair.com and no answers. Hell, it's only been 12 hours since I notified them.

I need the nokilli domain to work, as I'm trying to get sponsors for my ride, and the sponsors can't look at my test site.

I need to find a good server host. servercentral really sucked, so I moved to pair. They tried to bill me for someone else's domain and when I said it wasn't mine, they said they'd just let it expire. So I notified the owner of the domain. Then they let my domain expire last week, so I moved it to pair. Argh!

I've had my sites hosted by pair for a coupla-three years, no problem, but the domain names weren't hosted by them. That's when the problems started.

I just need to be able to run movable type. Who's good?

Checking my server logs, I found this referral:

http://vegassexparty.com/cgi-bin/nph-sss.cgi?9164474528

Dang kids. I only know of one person who reads this journal. Should I screw with this or just blow it off?

Today, I cleaned out cages that monkeys died in.

People have been asking me this week, "Hey, wasn't that your watch when the monkeys died?". Sort of, but not really. The dead monkeys weren't kept at the main monkey lab, but at an off-site location that I don't visit. The Man knew they didn't have temp alarms in those rooms but just blew it off. It's a state run operation after all, and we've seen the fine job UC does with the Los Alamos Lab. The monkeys that didn't get croaked (25 or so) have been moved back to the main monkey lab. That's under my watchful eye on Friday & Saturday nights. The other days, I just hose monkey shit.

What I heard at the monkey lab today was, the thermostat broke and the room overheated croaking 6 monkeys. One was later euthanized bringing it up to 7 dead monkeys. They are, or at least did, check to see if it was an "aggressive action". The Man's words are quoted in that sentence. That's what I heard.

Then I went to back to work cleaning out the dead monkey cages. Nothing to see, just empty cages. They were hosed out at the death site, but I doubt there was any gore. Heat stroke isn't gory, is it? I saw the single survivor in the monkey hospital today. It seemed fine, but I'm not a vet and I don't play one on teevee.

And no, the death room wasn't checked Friday by one of the guys who lost the monkey in March 2003. The joke (at the monkey lab as well as elsewhere) was, hey if he killed 7 monkeys he'll get 7 promotions. That needs an explanation:

There were 2 guys working in the room where the monkey disappeared in 2003. One guy got a promotion, and the other guy allegedly brought a gun into work with a list of names of co-workers he was mad at. It's a state job, so he was given 30 days administrative leave. Probably paid, but I'm cynical.

They bump up security (hi mom!), WITHOUT telling security why they were looking for him. It's not important to know your looking for a guy with a gun, after all. Security is thankfully unarmed. I know my way around firearms, but the other guy? I have good stories about that, but that'll have to wait until I consult a lawyer.

So back to the story -- while that guy is on admin leave, he gets arrested in Wyoming, with drugs and the gun. Which has filed off serial numbers. Oh, and he's in a rental car that shouldn't have left California. Wyoming prison. And he's black -- which in a state that crucified a gay guy for being gay -- can't be good. At least that's how the story works at the monkey lab.

So 7 dead monkeys. There's the stateworker slacker attitude of hosting monkeys in an unfit room, but it seems like something that would've happened anywhere. Are they checking the alarms in the other rooms? Not that I know of. If they croak some more monkeys, everyone will be happy.

I quit in one month. I like monkeys.

Oh yeah, so I had 2 moderations rated unfair taking me to 73%. Dango. That's what I get for modding some spell checker troll as a troll.

An mp3 player that runs with CF Type 1 cards & AA batteries. Plus a ton of CF type 1 cards. Kicking around the idea of a small camcorder but might just use the movie part on my Canon A70 instead. Hopefully I can move movies to cds to mail back to friends in Sacramento. I'd like to do a short documentary of asking random people, "What do you think of the USA?"

I've been looking for the Psion, and found a great site that sells them: Psion Flexi. And there's even a Linux version for them if I want to be super geeky.

With the Psion 5mx, I can check email, download web sites (thanks to Opera and RSS) and save text as .txt files to upload to my travel journal. They run off AA batteries (long life with them too) and save to a CF Type 1 card.

If anyone buys one from the Psion Flexi site, please tell Paul you heard of his site from Dave Smith.

myspace -> myspace -at- nokilli -com-

orkut -> gorn -at- nokilli -com-

friendster -> gorn -at- nokilli -com-

virtualtourist -> http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/m/7c41e/

epilepsy foundation -> http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/ecommunities/heroes/index.cfm?user_id=476

Alrighty then, in the fine Trekkies 2 tradition of last minute warnings, the Sacramento premiere of Trekkies 2 (and a celebration of Shawn's very first DUI) will be held Sunday, July 11th. BBQ at 7:30. The movie starts promptly at 9:30pm. Bring your own food, beer, cigars, rigelian brandy and heroin.

As the Trekkies 2 marketing people won't let it play in Sacramento, we reversed some photon waves uhh... that's too Next Generation. I meant, we time Shatnered to the future and uh... basically we pirated it and we're showing it at a home made drive-in (which means, no room for cars in the backyard so bring a lawnchair or suffer the ground, mateys). The 8x8 foot classic screening of Sci-Fi nerds strutting their geekiness to the Avogadro's degree (6.02 x10 to the 23rd, dude).

The official dvd release of the movie is Aug. 31st, and they demanded a soundtrack for some unknown reason so that should be out around then too. As if being trapped in the room with No Kill I playing wasn't bad enough but you still need to drive the roaches out of your apartment.

email for directions because it just seems more illegitimate that way. gornzilla (atty thingy) gmail (dotty thingy) com

Archbishopfully,

--Gorn

I'm dumping toys and records and vintage motorcycle parts on ebay. Someone buy them please.

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/gornzilla

This is a long email I got from another guy traveling the world. Only he's doing it on a bicycle. If anyone has any suggestions to what he says, email me or leave a comment.

A lot of his suggestions were part of my original idea -> AA pda, roll-up keyboard -> time to work on journal and answer email during "down" time instead of paying at an internet cafe for web access. I've got less than 4 months to figure this out. Are there any AA digital cameras that have a setting to record pictures "for web use"?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi chimpo13
Just picked up your Slashdot submission about transferring pictures to CD - too late to put in a reply there, so I'll email one. It caught me because I face the same problem, I'm also going round the world, on a pushbike though (bah, engines are for wimps), and I thought you might like some advice from the field.

Basically, like some of the submissions suggested, I wouldn't bother with a specialist device to transfer pictures to CD. Such a gadget would be inherantly fragile, and travelling on a pushbike or motorbike is hell on electronics and anything with delicate moving parts - heat, humidity, vibrations, sand and dust will quickly kill anything not heavily padded and sealed. Also, when packing space is at a premium you don't want to be carrying around something like this, with all it's extra padding for protection, which you will only rarely use, if ever.

My advice, just take more digital film and a couple of USB adapters for them, and a win98 driver and Photoshop or whatever thumbnail software you use on a CD, backed up to a second CD. You will find cyber cafes in the most unlikely places, with usually one or two with USB. If you have a techie background that helps to get in with the guys that run the places, and I've always found them willing to help me load up drivers etc. when I explain my problem. If you don't find a cybercaf then even in the most underdeveloped areas you'll find NGO's, Peace Corps, embassies, foreign businesses etc. with computers. In western Africa it's been at most a few weeks between being able to upload text and a few pictures and perhaps a month or two between major cities with decent speed internet, CD burners and a DHL office. And that's on a pushbike. In your case look at your route, find the longest distance between capital cities, estimate how many pictures you'll take in that time and how many flash cards you'll need, triple that number and you'll be fine.

A couple of other bits of unasked for advice.
Stick to one kind of flash storage, and prefer CF to the others - they're cheaper per MB, you can get them in huge capacities, more robust, and (important for us Slashdotters) no DRM. My digital video, PDA and mp3 player all use CF and I haven't had a card fail on me yet.

Stick to electronics - PDA's, cameras, music, GPS, torches etc. that use AA batteries. Avoid anything with lithium batteries, proprietry battery types, or anything that has to be recharghed directly. Take a fistful of high capacity NiMH AA's and a good quality multi voltage charger. The 2200 maH batteries I use last longer than Duracells, and in an emergency you can find standard AA's anywhere on the planet. I also carry a solar charger for the AA's but have never really had the need for it - it takes days to charge a pair of batteries and I've never been away from civilization long enough to exhaust them all - I can last about 2 weeks before a recharge, and that's about as long as you'll want to be without a shower anyway. The only exception to this rule is the video (no choice, and Sony are a bitch with their funny power connectors), and the GPS which uses AAA's but that also fit in the charger.

Get a PDA with a good quality keyboard that takes flash storage and that can edit plain text files. The best is the old Psion 5mx, not made any more but you can still get hold of them if you look hard enough. In areas where internet access is slow and expensive (and that's a lot of the world) it's a godsend.

The procedure is as follows:

Go to cybercafe, plug in the CF with the adapter.
Cut and paste all incoming emails into a text file on the CF
(Optionally) save any interesting looking topics on Slashdot onto CF
Leave cybercafe.

Then, in idle moments; sitting in hostels, camping in the desert, waiting for trains etc, reply to your email into another text file, update your website journal, peruse Slashdot.

Next time you're in a cybercafe, just cut and past the email replies and update your website directly off the CF, and download any new emails, Slashdot discussions etc - no thinking time involved, and with a half decent connection can all be done in half an hour.

Once every six months I'll load Mozilla onto someone's PC and download all the emails I've sent and received in that time (my ISP lets me POP3 from anywhere) - this gets burned to CD with my pictures. This clears out the account (important if there are storage limits) and since Mozilla stores emails as plaintext you have a nice portable archive of all your trip emails.that you can peruse on your PDA.

Advantages
- Saves a lot of money at cybercafes
- You can take your time and write some decent emails, rather 'Hi, I'm here, I'm fine'
- Your journal will be higher quality too. I don't know about you but I just can't use pen and paper to write down and organize my thoughts, and I type much faster than I write and I can't read my handriting anymore anyway.
- You don't have to struggle to write a personal email to a friend while worrying about the $6 an hour rate, on a slow connection that could cut off any second, on a strange foreign keyboard while some kid's playing some world war three game on full volume at the next terminal
- There's nothing quite like being able to write to someone that's stuck in cubicle hell, 'I'm right at this moment lying in a hammock wathching the sun go down on the Indian ocean, sipping a chilled pineapple juice just off the tree. So what are you doing?' If you're feeling cruel that is.
- When you're in some isolated part of the world a hundred miles from anywhere, reading and replying to emails, and reading slashdot (hey, once a geek..), helps keep you sane.
- As a bonus, most PDA's will have some kind of spreadsheet (for calculating mileages, budgets etc., contacts organizer (for all the new friends you'll make), games to while away the time etc. These are pretty much optional.
- As another minor bonus, if your PDA and camera use the same type flash you can use the PDA to organize your photos and perhaps view them (the Psion only has a monochrome screen; great for battery life, not so great for pictures)
- As a minus, some PDA's have programming capabilities - the Psion has it's own language and a Perl interpreter available, and I hear some idiots are even trying to port Linux to it. Avoid. Geekitude is something I'm trying to get away from. Hey, hold on a minute, You think it might be possible to come up with a perl scrip to thumbnail jpegs? Damn, damn damn. Like I said, once a geek....

Right, that's quite enough geek talk for now. I'm right now taking a brak in the Catholic mission in Bamako, Mali. I've just spent a couple of tough weeks crossing the border from Senegal - great going, nice scenery, lots of tiny villages along the way - the sort of places you have to talk the chef du village to give you permission to stay, incredibly friendly and hospitable people. But the track was tough, rocky and sandy, I took a few tumbles on the way, it's been very hot - 43 degrees today - and the few nights of sleeping in the bush has left me with some scary looking sting marks. I've also been nearly a year on the road, so I'm going to take my first big yearly break, going to leave Betsy (the bike) here and fly to Casablanca in a few days, then take the train to Spain, find somewhere quiet and cool, and do absolutely nothing for a month or two. Let me know how your preparations are going, feel free to ask anything. Looks like our wheels may cross sometime - I look forward to having a drink somewhere along the road.

Tom
Bamako, Mali