amaozn.com

This weirded me out yesterday. Shopping for air conditioners, I thought I was at amazon.com. I noticed, though, that amazon did not remember me from earlier that day. Normally I stay logged in at amazon.com. That's when I noticed the URL. I was actually browsing amaozn.com, having mis-typed the URL. Amaozn.com is a copy of amazon.com, as this search result page for air conditioners shows:

http://amaozn.com/s/ref=nb_ss_?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=air+conditioner&x=0&y=0

The WHOIS info for amaozn.com looks a little fishy to me. Amazon.com proper is registered through NetworkSolutions, a typical registrar for larger corporate entities. Amaozn.com is registered through GoDaddy -- not your typical registrar for the likes of Amazon. Additionally, the DNS servers differ between the 2 domains, as does the contact information. Amaozn.com is apparently owned by Amazon Technologies of Reno, Nevada, while Amazon.com is owned by Amazon.com, Inc., in Seattle.

I doubt there is any news in my little discovery, but I am a little surprised. I would expect that Amazon would fully redirect the typo domains it owns to the genuine amazon.com address. I, for one, would not log in or attempt to make purchases through a site that looks like Amazon.com but is not Amazon.com. Additionally, if I was in the business of earning customers' trust I would not expect them to browse around mutant sites which (I assume) require new logins and account settings.

For kicks I looked up amoazn.com and found a more typical typo traffic-leech type of site.

An attempt to access the top page of amoazn.com redirected me to this blank page:

http://66.39.123.200/a5920/

and the top level URL gave me a strange "E-Greetings and more" page filled with links to content from cellularphones.com and johnsonlane.com (the johnsonlane.com content does not work since that site seems to be down).

A lookup of the IP address is in the URL reveals that it is connected to another TYPO site:

$ host 66.39.123.200
200.123.39.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer amreicangreetings.com

At this point I looked out the window and decided not to waste my day in this manner any longer.

Count, or recount?

A problem I have with this project of learning the Well Tempereed Cllavier is that I do not know anyone who cares. No one in my immediate life would have any desire to sit and listen to that stuff.

I play for my neighbors. Occasionally I turn my camera on and broadcast over one of those webcam broadcast networks. That is usually fun.

But mostly this is a solitary pursuit.

My life is haunted by screen names and chat room handles. Most of the people who pass through my life are people I will never see, and who I would not recognize if they sat right next to me.

It may be a self-fulfillilng aspect of my personality. Someone once described me as "keeping the world at a safe distance." Appropriately enough I never knew that person, nor did she know me.

At any rate, the journey through the WTC has consumed most of my past 10 days. I know of nothing else in my life that feels so satisfying as playing the fugues from those volumes. Sunday in particular, after 6 or 7 hours at the piano with that stuff, I left the apartment feeling serene. Something was passing through me, like air through the tips of my fingers.

When I start memorizing these pages is when I will start to feel free. That is when I can stop learning and starting knowing, when I can stop accumulating and start understanding.

Memorizing fugues is hard. For me, at least. I think it has to be done, though. The further I get in to this music the more apparent it becomes that I must memorize it to comprehend and suitably recount.

But there is a dilemma. There in the last word of the previous paragraph. Why am I recounting the works of others? Why am I repeating and recycling? I am a creative person, not re-creative . For whatever creative input a pianist might bring to the works of others that pianist is an interpreter, not a creator. A performer is a critic, even, if that is possible -- one who makes the work of others understandable and through whose point of view the work is known.

What I have started to see in Bach these last few months -- where he differs from other great composers -- is the lack of ego. Music of Beethoven, Chopin & Stravinsky ultimately belongs to the personality and (not to get too lofty but) the greater glory of the composer. With Bach the deeper I go the more I feel that his music exists for the greater glory of something beyond the composer, and beyond the music itself.

And it feels good. It feels good to play the stuff. It's niiiiice.

....

For some reason the last few postings I sent to this place disappeared. That is no great loss, but the only thing I can think of is that the cron pipes the script to /dev/null. But it's always done that. For as long as I've been posting to these screens from this Treo I remain almost completely ignorant about how the scripts that run it work. That is not my usual way of working, but it is just kinda the way it happened when I started doing this.

I was, coincidentally, looking Last night at other ways of doing this, and I am also looking at trading this Treo for something else. At the Samsung showroom at the Time-Warner Center the other day I saw the Samsung Broadband PDA, as well as their strange Ultra-Mobile PC platters. Those things are strange. Too big to be truly ultra mobile and too small to be much more than a novelty.

I think the future of ultra mobile PC or otherwise functional devices is in foldable screenspace. A device the size of a Treo or other cell phone/PDA should connect to a foldable LCD screen that opens up to a usable size.

....

Strange 9-11-01 Graffiti

What's the story on this weird 9-11 graffiti that I spotted a few times around midtown Manhattan?



It reminds me, indirectly, of the receipt I got from Carusos Pizza and Pasta on Fulton Street. The receipt was issued on June 7, 2007; yet the receipt carried the date 09-11-01.

You're not a pianist

At The Irish Pub on 7th Avenue and 50-something Street. A conversation with the bartender reveals that this place has always been called The Irish Pub. "Always" meaning that it might have been called something else 50 years ago, or before the current collective memory of the place.

This is the place I thought had been called The Slaughtered something. Lamb? Sheep? The Slaughtered Elephant Pub?

The bartender says people still come in asking about Mulligan's, which was an old school pub a half block away. Mulligan's has been gone for 15 years but people still come asking about it.

This place is surprisingly low key for midtown. As I walked over here I was virtually subsumed by a mass of tourists. Well dressed, all of them, it was a procession of well over 100 individuals who seemed nervous about their conspicuousness. The conspicuity of their numbers.

Snipers on their lunch break see this mass of people and think "No one will notice if I lop off just one of them."

That's when the carcasses start piling up in the streets. The mass of tourists thinks its flock has lost something, but none can define what, or who. The casualties are all from the rear of the crowd -- the ass of the mass.

I remember a friend describing Las Vegas as "all of America laid out to dry." Midtown is something similar, but I'm not sure what. America at Sunday School? America at its college graduation? I don't know, but it is not New York.

This is one of the first midtown pubs I ever entered. I never frequented pubs until 2002 or 2003, so I must have passed through here with the corporates after work, probably in 1996 or later.

One of my earliest midtown pub memories is from a place called Faces and Names, near this place. It's called Faces and Names because the bar hires an illustrator to come and draw the faces of the customers. The artist either sells the drawings to the customers or they get put on the wall of the place. The walls are covered with these illustrations, which also bear the names of the illustrated.

I was a that pub on a weekend afternoon -- probably a Sunday -- when I told the bartender that I was a classical pianist. The bartender mentioned this to the other customer at the bar -- a fat drunk woman in her mid to late 50s who could only scream where simply speaking would suffice.

I CAN TELL IF YOU'RE A PIANIST. I CAN TELL IF YOU'RE A PIANIST. I HAVE A QUESTION. ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

She was pointing at me, yelling. I wouldn't recognize it until years later but she was retarded drunk. I had never been around that sort of thing, so I just took her to be an obnoxious loudmouth, fully in control of her sense.

now, of course, I know a drunk when I see one. But that's another story.

Her question, the answer to which would determine whether or not I was really a pianist, was:

WHAT'S THE FIRST NOTE OF CHOPIN'S POLONAISE?

She didn't say which Polonaise but I assumed she meant the 6th, which is one of Chopin's most over-played piano pieces.

In answering the question I struck the counter with my hands as if I was playing the opening notes of that Polonaise.

"E-Flat," I announced. "Two E-Flat octaves."

Before I finished that second sentence she was already ripping me a new one.

YOU'RE NOT A PIANIST. YOU'RE NOT A PIANIST. THE FIRST NOTE OF CHOPIN'S POLONAISE IS F!

She then commenced to sing the main theme from Chopin's 6th Polonaise. That main theme does indeed start on F-natural, but it's not "the first note" of the Polonaise.

She sang and sang and sang the Chopin Polonaise in the stupid, spittled way that drunk people sing. I would not recognize her for what she was -- an all-day daytime drunk -- until years later. Until then I could only be a bit irritated at her accusing me of not being a pianist.

Holding court

Sitting in the kitchen. Underwear, grey t-shirt, white socks. The table holds this writing contraption, two stacks of paper, and a NEW YORK NEW YORK coffee mug that sprung a leak years ago. It finds use now as a paperweight for one of those stacks of paper.

This table also holds, ridiculously, a 2.62 oz. thing of McCormick' Hot Shot Black and Red Pepper.

I do not sit at this table as much as I imagined I would when I set it up in here. It shakes a bit under even the slightest activity, which makes writing onto those papers a , slipping, skidding adventure.

This is, of course, the table at which my family and I played board games and card games. As such the memories of this table are not altogether pleasing, but I guess my memory is selective at times.

I am laying low these days. These are the first days in months that I have not gone out to some place for some level of human contact. The other night was ridiculous. I went to one place, as soon as I walked in people were buying me drinks, buying me drinks, buying me drinks. I wasn't laying attention to how many I had, but I felt OK when I left that place and went to another. It was the same thing at that place. For some reason anywhere I went people were buying me drinks, buying me drinks.

It was a suicidal quantity of booze. I spent the next day feeling like a toxic sponge, with no let-up in the misery from waking up at 11am to going back to sleep 12-13 hours later.

There are, it turns out, a lot of productive things I can do in that condition. Mainly I play piano. Somehow that part of the brain gets a pass and functions just fine. I practiced from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier for much of the day.

I removed the Hot Shot thing of pepper to a less conspicuous place. The table, those blank pages, those things are my mental desert for the night's wanderings.

I got the expected mail from my mother today. I was amused to see that she used two 37¢ stamps to mail a small letter. Those stamps, of that denomination, must be several years old by now, since the standard postage rate went up to 42¢ very recently.

I had a strange encounter with a postal delivery guy a few weeks ago. I went to a corner mailbox intending to drop some envelopes in. A delivery guy was at the box, taking mail from it and placing it into his bag for delivery.

Somehow I could tell from the look in his face that, as he saw me coming, that he waas happy to see me. He welcomed this opportunuity to interact with a postal customer,and to demonstrate his expertise.

Without asking he took the enveloppes from my hand. One of them, rather heavy, had I-don't- know-how-many stamps on it. He looked at it and weighed it. He weighed in the trustworthy, scientific manner of holding it up in the air. Holding the envelope he calculated the postage liability, assessing the job I did preparing this envelope for delivery, and preparing his evaluation of how delivery-ready this package was.

It passed. He approved. The same thing happened with another similarly sized envelope. Several seconds of weighing the thing, studying it, checking for openings or tears. Then, congratulatory glances my way as he approved this envelope for delivery.

Success.

Then came the third envelope. The smallest of the three, it contained a three page document. Three pieces of paper, plus the envelope. Doing my own calculations I estimated that a single Forever Stamp would be sufficient for such a standard size letter.

The delivery guy disagreed. He looked at me and frowned, saying "ooooooh, this needs more postage. I can't take this." I expressed some disbelief, though I found his charade charming enough that I did not want to intrude on his opportunity to hold court. I sensed he seldom had this opportunity to give customers feedback, and I further sensed that he craved this interaction. I gathered that he was fed up with the half-ass job his customers do of sealing envelopes poorly, not applying enough postage, leaving the Plus-4 numbers off the zip codes, and other sins of the postal life.

He insisted that 41¢ was insufficient postage for a three page letter. An elderly man looked at me and said "What can you do?" I think he added "He's the boss."

I ended up paying 82¢ to mail a three page letter. I went home, found another stamp, and placed it on the envelope. I thought about putting 10 or 12 stamps on this envelope, to show this delivery guy how seriously I took his scoldings. I imagined that the act of overpaying for delivery of my letter might appease the failings of his many other customers who irked him so.

It was ludicrous, but I suppose most of us are prone to foisting our expertise onto others when the setting seems to call for it.

It reminded me of the insane round of questioning I got from one of the clerks at the Rockefeller Center station. Someone addressed a certified letter to me in a way that put my father's name first on the envelope. I was listed as Trustee of his estate, but the estate was listed first, leaving my name on the second line of the address. The clerk implied that I could go to jail for this, then asked me, among other things, "Where's your father now?" I responded "Who cares where is, he's dead." She considered that an insufficient reply, then she barked out other random questions, meaningless to the situation, and obvious grasps for authority.

The questions suddenly stopped. She either realized she was wrong and let me have the letter, or she honestly believed she had just spared me criminal charges.

I read that Elvis, toward the end of his life, was in the studio recording virtually 24 hours a day. Why? Because it was the only place in his life where he felt he had any control.

I these these postal clerks were in that frame, seeking control over something -- anything -- in their lives.

This table shakes even as I type onto this little thing. I try to type lightly enough to prevent the shaking. Rattling.

Gone

i like making legitimate use of a new http status code. a few months ago i discovered 503, which proved useful in telling greedy searchbots that they were overloading my site with their bot traffic and could you please try again later.

this week i used 410.

last year i set up sorabji weather for myself. along with a dict server and a web-based universal whois lookup the weather station is just one of those silly thing i've always wanted to do.

i thought i would be clever and connect the weather station to my payphone project, and to my mailbox locator. it made sense, as a search for outdoor objects like mailboxes or phones might benefit or at least be pleasantly complemented from knowing what the weather was like.

connecting weather to the mailbox site proved no problem. landing on my page for a mailbox at 1259 Sixth Avenue at 50th Street shows the current weather and offers links to New York Weather and weather 10019. this set-up is generally reliable because the quality of the database is generally GOOD.

the links from the payphone numbers, however, were another story. the quality of that database is, on its surface, very very poor. however its use was not intended for detailed screening, and precise accuracy was never assumed. collected from numerous sources, including law enforcement, telephone companies, and individuals, the collection is more of a guide than an authoratative resource.

i knew, of course, when i published the entire database of about 750,000 payphone numbers that it was filled with mis-spellings and other seemingly ridiculous errors.

nevertheless, having had success with linking the mailbox locations i thought i'd try the same with the payphones, for whatever value it might bring if and when it worked.

the problem was apparent almost immediately, as my error logs showed all kinds of crazy stuff related to the weather site. the pages tried to pull in weather snapshots for mis-spelled cities like New Yirk, NY, New Yor, NY, and Washingto, DC among thousands of others. searchbots followed these links like anything else, landing on a FRIENDLY http status 200 page telling you that new yor was not found.

the problem was with the status 200 header. searchbots gobbled up these garbage pages like anything else, polluting their indexes with useless typo pages. well, they are not totally useless, but they don't belong in search indexes. i checked to see how many pages from my weather site were indexed and there were thousands. problem was, most of them were nothing pages like Washingto or WSHNGTN. Abbreviated spellings like these were perfectly acceptable in their original context but not too useful for my particular weather site.

i could build my own weather suite. it's not that hard. but i bought a third party app instead. it's proven a bit sour in its way, but it's all good i suppose.

anyway, to purge the search indexes of these garbage pages i still send up the error page asking if you spelled something wrong, but now i send it with http status 410 headers, which are supposed to tell the search engines to remove these pages immediately. i like the wording of it, too: GONE! as in, WHOOSH!

i am interested to see if that works, and how long it takes. i never intended to litter the indexes this way, but i should have seen it coming.

fascinating, no?

no?

wapedia.mobi carrying ads

am i the only one to have noticed that the mobile version of wikipedia is showing ads from taptu.mobi and maybe other places? it's been this way for months. i didn't think wikipedia did advertising.

check wapedia.mobi/en/Johann_Sebastian_Bach for evidence.