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While I would very much like to publish dead-tree books, I provide all my material online, free at least as-in-beer, so more readers can benefit from it than would be the case if I charged money for it. Another reason is that most traditional publishers would require that I assign them the copyrights to my books, something that I'm loathe to do.

But a fellow Kuro5hin member named lonelyhobo said:

You tried to say crawford would be (and is) well known for "living with schizoaffective disorder," which is something so plainly ridiculous I wonder if you've received any sharp blows to the head recently. You tried to cite your own absolutely unknown works on the internet to bolster your argument. You honestly think that a little piece of shit software or writing on the internet will get you known for any length of time or in any depth?...

Let's boil it down to something very simple (and very contrary to your personal outlook too, I'm sure): PUTTING SHIT ON THE INTERNET IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Not yours or mine or crawford's. The reason I can and do post the garbage I do on the internet is that I know it's completely meaningless.

But is that what it really means for writing to be notable? I claim that it's not. For one thing, there are many, many books published every year, that even manage to earn their publishers and authors some good money, but that are in no way notable or memorable. At best they're a pleasant way to pass the time.

In my writing, I aim to make a positive difference in the lives of others, whether they are fellow software engineers or fellow mentally ill people. And I have plenty of reason to believe that I have accomplished just that, and many times over.

A little while ago someone attempted to write up a Wikipedia article about me. Of course my many troll friends from Kuro5hin jumped all over it, vandalizing it - it seems I attended "the Batman school of junk touching" - and recommending it for deletion. In the deletion discussion the case was made that I wasn't notable, because not many publications written by others could be found in which my writing was discussed.

I mostly stayed out of the debate, but I did jump in a couple times to point out how hard I work to educate the public about mental illness. I have receved literally thousands of grateful email messages as a result - but for reasons that must be obvious, I couldn't post them.

The consensus of the debaters is that, because few others have discussed my work, I must not be notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article. Considering the difference I know my essays and articles have made in the lives of others, I assert that that is just plain wrong.

While I would very much like to publish dead-tree books, I provide all my material online, free at least as-in-beer, so more readers can benefit from it than would be the case if I charged money for it. Another reason is that most traditional publishers would require that I assign them the copyrights to my books, something that I'm loathe to do.

But a fellow Kuro5hin member named lonelyhobo said:

You tried to say crawford would be (and is) well known for "living with schizoaffective disorder," which is something so plainly ridiculous I wonder if you've received any sharp blows to the head recently. You tried to cite your own absolutely unknown works on the internet to bolster your argument. You honestly think that a little piece of shit software or writing on the internet will get you known for any length of time or in any depth?...

Let's boil it down to something very simple (and very contrary to your personal outlook too, I'm sure): PUTTING SHIT ON THE INTERNET IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Not yours or mine or crawford's. The reason I can and do post the garbage I do on the internet is that I know it's completely meaningless.

But is that what it really means for writing to be notable? I claim that it's not. For one thing, there are many, many books published every year, that even manage to earn their publishers and authors some good money, but that are in no way notable or memorable. At best they're a pleasant way to pass the time.

In my writing, I aim to make a positive difference in the lives of others, whether they are fellow software engineers or fellow mentally ill people. And I have plenty of reason to believe that I have accomplished just that, and many times over.

A little while ago someone attempted to write up a Wikipedia article about me. Of course my many troll friends from Kuro5hin jumped all over it, vandalizing it - it seems I attended "the Batman school of junk touching" - and recommending it for deletion. In the deletion discussion the case was made that I wasn't notable, because not many publications written by others could be found in which my writing was discussed.

I mostly stayed out of the debate, but I did jump in a couple times to point out how hard I work to educate the public about mental illness. I have receved literally thousands of grateful email messages as a result - but for reasons that must be obvious, I couldn't post them.

The consensus of the debaters is that, because few others have discussed my work, I must not be notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article. Considering the difference I know my essays and articles have made in the lives of others, I assert that that is just plain wrong.

Click the link in my sig, download my tracks (sheet music too, if you play piano), and drop them in your shared folder. You'll really be helping me out - my hope is that by doing this, I will already be well-known when the time comes to play professionally.

Depression is actually my most prevalent symptom; I was depressed for most of my life before I was diagnosed.

I've taken quite a few different antidepressants. Paxil, which is one of the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, did nothing whatsoever for me - this despite drug company hype that the SSRIs are more effective than the older, non-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Paxil is (or at least was at the time) a patented, name-brand drug, and therefore expensive.

Ironically, imipramine, whose patent expired decades ago and is available quite inexpensively, works just great for me. I think imipramine is the best thing since sliced bread.

Now, don't take this to mean that Paxil won't work for you. But psychiatric medication is very tricky; some works on some people and not on others. Really the best you and your doctor can do is try different medications until you find one that works. But you should definitely try the full range of available medicines, including the older, generic ones, and not just the name-brand patented ones.

They won't censor the Mohamed Cartoons that Muslims find offensive, but they'll go out of their way to censor a BitTorrent web site?

They support free speech when it mocks religion, but they don't support free speech when it comes to BitTorrent. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Don't give me that "they only block it because it violates copyright laws" because on The Pirate Bay there is open source materials and files in the public domain and shareware as well that are 100% legal. They are called legal torrents. Legal torrents are much more than just Linux ISOs, many music artists release open source OGG and MP3 files for free as well under an open source license. Michael David Crawford is one such musical artist that has had his works silenced by fascist laws and actions against BitTorrent sites. In fact he even lists many other music artists just like him who also share their music for free on BitTorrent and that is the real reason that recording companies are shutting down BitTorrent web sites, to silence the competition and sabotage their efforts to release free and alternative music by independent open source musical artists and force everyone to buy commercial CDs instead.

But schizoaffective disorder is a devastating illness: it's just like being manic-depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. The risperdal I took previously for my psychotic symptoms wasn't working anymore. From 2003 through 2007, I was in the emergency room five times for psychiatric reasons, culminating in an ambulance ride to the mental ward, where I stayed for three weeks.

The Zyprexa completely eliminates the paranoia and visual hallucinations I would otherwise have almost all the time. It also brought me down from the bipolar mania that led to my ambulance ride, and prevents me from getting manic anymore.

As a result of taking it, I am able to hold a steady job - and a good one - as a software engineer, to provide for my wife and to pay her University tuition.

I've heard rumours that Zyprexa might be withdrawn from the market. I really hope that doesn't happen, as I've never had a medicine work so well.

It's also important for musicians like myself, as well as to the musicians that are members of Jamendo, which distributes Creative Commons-licensed music via BitTorrent and eMule.

A struggling musian who distributes his work via HTTP can easily be bankrupted if one of his songs suddenly becomes a hit. P2P filesharing, via BitTorrent and other protocols, provides an affordable alternative.

In discussing P2P with other people, and especially with your legislators as well as your ISPs, it's important to stress the legal uses of it. Otherwise they will only see it as a source of lawbreaking and copyright infringment.

Such as downloading Linux distros and free and open source software.

Some musicians, such as Michael David Crawford release their music in free OGG format with an open source license that allows it to be spread by BitTorrent.

Not only that but Joost and Miro are video players that use P2P and BitTorrent to share videos that are also released into the public domain, open source, and free licenses.

Like I said there are 100% legal reasons for using BitTorrent and P2P filesharing networks. This will hurt the free and open source market more than it cuts down on piracy. It is like giving commercial licenses a free pass and filtering or blocking the free and open source licenses. Some people write articles and howtos via Legal Torrents to promote their web sites in a free or open source license, as well as help out the community.

In 1985, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It's like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time, and so is a very poorly understood, difficult to treat illness.

The symptoms include paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, deep depression and a profoundly manic state called mania. I was diagnosed as a result of being brought by the police to a mental hospital that is part of the Los Angeles County Central Jail. I was in a profoundly manic state, and at one point was hallucinating so hard I couldn't see where I was going when I walked.

My illness made a huge wreck of my life, but I was determined to get it back. With the help of medicine and psychotherapy, I made a career for myself as a computer programmer. I've been doing it for twenty years, and am now employed as a Principal Software Engineer, writing Mac OS X device drivers for a company that makes hardware RAID controllers.

For about ten years now, I've been working to educate the public, the mentally ill and their loved ones about mental illness. I do this by posting essays about mental illness on my website as well as at Kuro5hin.

I wasn't lucid when I wrote some of those essays, but I keep them online because they help others to understand the mentally ill.

In 1985, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It's like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time, and so is a very poorly understood, difficult to treat illness.

The symptoms include paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, deep depression and a profoundly manic state called mania. I was diagnosed as a result of being brought by the police to a mental hospital that is part of the Los Angeles County Central Jail. I was in a profoundly manic state, and at one point was hallucinating so hard I couldn't see where I was going when I walked.

My illness made a huge wreck of my life, but I was determined to get it back. With the help of medicine and psychotherapy, I made a career for myself as a computer programmer. I've been doing it for twenty years, and am now employed as a Principal Software Engineer, writing Mac OS X device drivers for a company that makes hardware RAID controllers.

For about ten years now, I've been working to educate the public, the mentally ill and their loved ones about mental illness. I do this by posting essays about mental illness on my website as well as at Kuro5hin.

I wasn't lucid when I wrote some of those essays, but I keep them online because they help others to understand the mentally ill.

To qualify for the class, the disabled students had to have just enough arm control to plug their nose, which is needed to "clear" their ears, that is, adjust the pressure inside the ear drum to the water pressure outside.

Two of us fully-abled people would buddy with the disabled divers. We'd pull them around the ocean floor.

I found it quite an eye-opening experience.

One of the students was my quadriplegic friend Foster Anderson, who was injured in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. I haven't seen him for a while, but he used to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley in a special van to work as an engineer. He can just control his arms, but not his fingers.

I understand he once appeared on the cover of a surfing magazine, riding a surfboard.

I also read in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that a study of Italian paraplegics found the unanimous opinion that becoming disabled was the best thing that ever happened to them: before their injuries, they failed to fully appreciate their lives. Afterwards they were able to live far more rich and rewarding lives, because they understood better just how precious the gift of life is.

Don't write off the disabled. They - we, rather, as I myself have a profoundly serious mental illness - are capable of far more than most of society gives us credit for.

Think of that next time you park illegally in a handicapped spot. (Foster saw someone do that at a restaurant once, and started repeatedly ramming the car with his electric wheelchair!)

Two of us fully-abled people would buddy with the disabled divers. We'd pull them around the ocean floor.

I found it quite an eye-opening experience.

One of the students was my quadriplegic friend Foster Anderson, who was injured in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. I haven't seen him for a while, but he used to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley in a special van to work as an engineer. He can just control his arms, but not his fingers.

I understand he once appeared on the cover of a surfing magazine, riding a surfboard.

I also read in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that a study of Italian paraplegics found the unanimous opinion that becoming disabled was the best thing that ever happened to them: before their injuries, they failed to fully appreciate their lives. Afterwards they were able to live far more rich and rewarding lives, because they understood better just how precious the gift of life is.

Don't write off the disabled. They - we, rather, as I myself have a profoundly serious mental illness - are capable of far more than most of society gives us credit for.

Think of that next time you park illegally in a handicapped spot. (Foster saw someone do that at a restaurant once, and started repeatedly ramming the car with his electric wheelchair!)

You can find many other such artists, and free, legal music hosting sites in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

And not just software - p2p is critical to the ability of independent musicians to distribute downloads of their music. For example, Jamendo offers Creative Commons music from thousands of artists via BitTorrent and eMule.

I'm such a musician - I offer BitTorrent downloads of my music. If (Heaven forbid!) I got slashdotted, the torrents would keep me from being bankrupted by bandwidth bills, as would be the case if I only offered HTTP downloads.

Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

My torrents are completely legal because they're posted with the permission of the copyright holder - me.

When I was using an Eastlink cable modem in Nova Scotia, Canada, the ISP blocked me from downloading my own torrents, so I wasn't able to verify that they were working!

I think everyone who offers legal torrents, especially non-profit Open Source and Free Software organizations who provide installation isos via BitTorrent, should band together to defeat the blocking of BitTorrent downloads.

Is there a way we could file a class-action lawsuit?

But I have a profoundly debilitating and poorly understood mental illness called schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. It's just like being schizophrenic and manic depressive at the same time. The symptoms including depression - sometimes suicidal depression - a profoundly euphoric state called mania, paranoia and other delusions, and visual and auditory hallucinations.

If you want to know what it's like to be paranoid, if you want to know what it's like to hallucinate, then I invite you to read my essay My Deepest Fear. It's about a shadowy and secret branch of law enforcement known as The Thought Police. They are so secret that they are visible only to the clinically insane - and to the regular beat cops who are now and then unwittingly pressed into the service of The Thought Police when it comes time for a fugitive from their lethal brand of justice - a fugitive such as myself - to turn himself in:

You see, The Thought Police aren't coming to arrest me. They never have been. They never arrest anyone. The Thought Police don't have jails and there is no arraignment because you can't get out on bail. There is no judge and there is no trial because there is no evidence to present. Not only is one not entitled to a defense attorney, there is no prosecutor either. There is no jury, no sentence, no prison, no parole.

One is not set free when one has paid one's debt to society because no one ever survives paying it. The currency with which The Thought Police collect society's money is denominated in human lives.

But when one has been caught by The Thought Police, one does have a choice: there is the gallows, the chair, the firing squad. One can even ask for a certain kind of mercy known as lethal injection.

It's long been out of fashion, but a long time ago, in France, The Thought Police also offered the guillotine. I understand it's still available upon request.

I never, ever once thought they were coming to arrest me. No:

I knew they were coming to kill me.

I explain in my piece that arrests by The Thought Police are better known as "officer-assisted suicides", and that at one time I was within days of turning myself in to them. It was only out of love for my wife that I sought legal advice from a special sort of attorney. These attorneys can't see The Thought Police themselves, but they are aware of their existence and can dispense valuable legal advice.

The first such attorney I saw was a psychiatrist in a hospital emergency room.

But all it takes is ten milligrams of Zyprexa to put any fears of The Thought Police out of my mind. While I'm still a fugitive from justice, Zyprexa enables me to pass as a law-abiding citizen.

Zyprexa works by manipulating the concentrations of various neurotransmitter chemicals in the neural synapses of my brain, notably dopamine. Excessive dopamine is the immediate cause of paranoia and hallucinations.

Antipsychotic drugs have been on the market for decades, but the older ones worked poorly and had debilitating side effects, such as the seizure I once experienced from Haldol. The "atypical" antipsychotics such as the Zyprexa I take, work much better.

The first such atypical antipsychotic, clozapine, was licensed only in the late '80's. The first one I took, Risperdal, was licensed in late '93. These drugs have enabled millions of schizophrenics and schizoaffectives to get out of the hospital, to get back t

Most music schools require an entrance audition, which is best done live. However, if one is unable to travel to the audition, one can submit a video. The Dalhousie University music school (in Halifax, Nova Scotia) says on its website that such audition videos must show one's hands. I guess they don't want someone else to play your audition, eh?

My plan, being a prospective composer, is to also present my audition judges with hardcopies of my piano scores. There are a couple scores on my website, but I'm working on new ones which will be much more advanced than what's there now.

In Canada, the Royal Conservatory of Music publishes music score books of varying degrees of difficulty, and periodically conducts exams throughout the country. When one has learned some songs from the Grade One book, then one can take the Grade One exam and, having passed, move on to the Grade Two book.

The entrance auditions for Canadian music schools are based on the RCM exams; Dalhousie requires one to play Grade Nine material. While I have come a long way since I composed the recordings on my website (they're from 1994), I'm still a long ways from Grade Nine. But I'm very determined.

Most music schools require an entrance audition, which is best done live. However, if one is unable to travel to the audition, one can submit a video. The Dalhousie University music school (in Halifax, Nova Scotia) says on its website that such audition videos must show one's hands. I guess they don't want someone else to play your audition, eh?

My plan, being a prospective composer, is to also present my audition judges with hardcopies of my piano scores. There are a couple scores on my website, but I'm working on new ones which will be much more advanced than what's there now.

In Canada, the Royal Conservatory of Music publishes music score books of varying degrees of difficulty, and periodically conducts exams throughout the country. When one has learned some songs from the Grade One book, then one can take the Grade One exam and, having passed, move on to the Grade Two book.

The entrance auditions for Canadian music schools are based on the RCM exams; Dalhousie requires one to play Grade Nine material. While I have come a long way since I composed the recordings on my website (they're from 1994), I'm still a long ways from Grade Nine. But I'm very determined.

Here are some resources for you:

• Creative Commons Search
• Jamendo - CC music distributed via BitTorrent and eMule
• My own piano music - you could really help me out if you shared it on the Internet
• The Mutopia Project - CC and public domain sheet music

http://www.geometricvisions.com/

Static page design at its... er.. finest?

Your music page fails the XHTML W3C check though it says its XHTML compliant.

And how is one to make money on the Internet? Rather than being paid by the word or royalties from book sales, one can earn money through advertising - Google AdSense, affiliate ads and so on.

I have earned as much as five thousand dollars per month from Google AdSense on my articles. Quite a few people in the Webmasterworld AdSense forum report earning ten thousand per month or more.

At one time it was my ambition to be a dead-tree author, but no more. I'm happier publishing on the web. Read, for example, my essays on mental illness and recovery.

She describes a symptom called "hypergraphia", which is commonly found in temporal lobe epilepsy as well as bipolar mania. It is an uncontrollable urge to write.

Hypergraphic people, in fact creative people of all sorts report being visited by "The Muse", and often have the subjective experience that their creations are not of their own doing, rather, they are channelling for The Muse.

I was hypergraphic for several years. Not continously, but episodically: when I'd get the urge to write a new essay or article, I would drop everything, quite without regard to common sense, for example I would abandon paying work for clients until I had published whatever I was inspired to write on my website, or at community sites like Kuro5hin.

This all stopped when I was hospitalized for mania about a year ago, and put on the antipsychotic Zyprexa. While I'm a lot better off than I used to be, in that I don't experience symptoms of mental illness anymore, I seem to find it impossible to write at much length about anything.

If you play piano, there's sheet music available for two of my songs, with the rest coming sometime soon.

It's all completely legal to share, as it has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. You can create derivative works such as remixes, and even sell my work or perform it in front of a paying crowd, but you must share alike - that is, give your derivative works the same license.

Why am I doing this? I am studying both piano and music theory with the aim of going back to school someday to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies.

I'll be in my fifties by the time I graduate - I can't afford to spend years building up a fan base. So when your local symphony orchestra plays my work, I want there to already be a loyal fan base in your city.

Thanks for your help!

But at the time all I could do to distribute my music was to manually duplicate cassette tapes. I just gave a few to friends and family. CD burners were still horrendously expensive, as were CD-R blanks.

When I got my own website, I offered some free downloads in Sun's old .AU format. I think it's 8-bit, so it didn't sound that good, and the downloads were quite large. But MP3 and psychoacoustic compression was still a ways off.

The copyright on my music said "All rights reserved" at first, and I specifically forbid sharing my songs over the Internet, but instead requested that those who wanted to share my music direct others to my website.

But I had always been a big fan of Richard Stallman and Free Software, and I knew that the right thing to do would be to copyleft my music.

I'm not signed with any record label, not even an indie one. I'm completely on my own. But my music gets downloaded by hundreds of people each month, with the downloads growing over time.

By learning to play by ear, I didn't learn to read sheet music. But for several years now I've been taking piano lessons and learning to read music, with the aim that when I can pass the entrance audition, I will enroll in music school to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday.

The Internet is, frankly, a miracle to me as it is enabling people throughout the world to get to know me and my music. When the time comes that I play professionally - or hopefully, symphony orchestras play myy compositions - I expect that there will already be a base of fans who will buy tickets to my performances.

Please download, share and enjoy:

• Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft

The lot of it is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license. There are various formats as well as sheet music in PDF and Lilypond (source code) format. (I would be honored if any of you learned to play my music.)

I've been playing at Open Mics for a couple years now. I recently moved to Silicon Valley, and often visit Santa Cruz on the weekends. If you'd like to hear me live, check my live performance schedule. (It presently says I'm in Vancouver, but I'll update that in the next day or so.)

I'm also planning to buy an amp so I can play my keyboard on the street. When I do, I'm going to have a sign hanging off of it advertising "Free Music Downloads", and will have a box of my free music download handbills.

Last weekend I spent four hours walking up and down Santa Cruz' Pacific Garden Mall passing out the handbills. I got many reactions - most people think it's too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, but most who accept the handbill are quite delighted.

You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

But at the time all I could do to distribute my music was to manually duplicate cassette tapes. I just gave a few to friends and family. CD burners were still horrendously expensive, as were CD-R blanks.

When I got my own website, I offered some free downloads in Sun's old .AU format. I think it's 8-bit, so it didn't sound that good, and the downloads were quite large. But MP3 and psychoacoustic compression was still a ways off.

The copyright on my music said "All rights reserved" at first, and I specifically forbid sharing my songs over the Internet, but instead requested that those who wanted to share my music direct others to my website.

But I had always been a big fan of Richard Stallman and Free Software, and I knew that the right thing to do would be to copyleft my music.

I'm not signed with any record label, not even an indie one. I'm completely on my own. But my music gets downloaded by hundreds of people each month, with the downloads growing over time.

By learning to play by ear, I didn't learn to read sheet music. But for several years now I've been taking piano lessons and learning to read music, with the aim that when I can pass the entrance audition, I will enroll in music school to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday.

The Internet is, frankly, a miracle to me as it is enabling people throughout the world to get to know me and my music. When the time comes that I play professionally - or hopefully, symphony orchestras play myy compositions - I expect that there will already be a base of fans who will buy tickets to my performances.

Please download, share and enjoy:

• Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft

The lot of it is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license. There are various formats as well as sheet music in PDF and Lilypond (source code) format. (I would be honored if any of you learned to play my music.)

I've been playing at Open Mics for a couple years now. I recently moved to Silicon Valley, and often visit Santa Cruz on the weekends. If you'd like to hear me live, check my live performance schedule. (It presently says I'm in Vancouver, but I'll update that in the next day or so.)

I'm also planning to buy an amp so I can play my keyboard on the street. When I do, I'm going to have a sign hanging off of it advertising "Free Music Downloads", and will have a box of my free music download handbills.

Last weekend I spent four hours walking up and down Santa Cruz' Pacific Garden Mall passing out the handbills. I got many reactions - most people think it's too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, but most who accept the handbill are quite delighted.

You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.

This lead to my belief that copyright should be strictly limited (in the piece I link to in the grandparent, I conclude that the original term of fourteen years would be best), and further the decision to place my music under Creative Commons.

Unfortunately, the academic world I grew up believing in no longer really exists; Universities patent their professors' inventions, and University researches do contract work for private industry under non-disclosure. It's a damn shame.

A while back I was taking a fairly high dose of the antipsychotic Risperdal, and it was giving me symptoms of tardive dyskinesia, a form of brain damage which causes repetitive motions. In my case it was involuntary mouth movements, as if I was chewing gum, but at its worst it can put you in a wheelchair.

My doctor wanted me to be the first at the mental health clinic to try Risperdal Consta. Rather than tablets taken each day, R.C. is injected once every two weeks.

How does this work? A two-week dose would normally be an overdose. But the risperidone in Risperdal Consta is encapsulated in nano-spheres that gradually dissolve in the blood, releasing the medicine. There are different grades of the capsules, so some dissolve the first day, some the next and so on.

His main reason for asking me to try it is that it requires a much lower effective dose, I think because conventional Risperdal is partially digested, diminishing its potency so you need a higher dose.

I balked at it when he told me it would cost a thousand dollars a month or so, but he said that the clinic had a fund to pay for its patients' medicine - this was in The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan.

The main reason Consta was developed though was for medication compliance. Many of those who take Risperdal suffer so much from their illnesses that they either don't remember to take it, or their paranoia leads them to believe their medicine is poison.

Because the Consta only needs to be injected every two weeks, once the injection is given, you can be sure that the patient is medicated for the two weeks.

I told my doctor that to use it on me would be an awful waste of taxpayer money, and that the Consta instead should be used on someone for whom it would keep them out of the hospital, that is, someone who on conventional Risperdal would be non-compliant.

(I have sinced switched to Zyprexa, which is more effective for me than Risperdal, so a lower dose works. I don't have the T.D. symptoms anymore.)

see Paul Vixie or to cite a less well-known example, and one that even more directly profits from his non-anonymity: Michael Crawford

and I am google hit #6 for Luke Crawford

I expect it's like that in most states.

In many states, those judged mentally incompetent lose the right to vote. How that's considered constitutional is completely beyond me.

Whe you check into a psychiatric hospital in California (I've been in several) they give you a little yellow booklet that explains your rights under the LPS act. Curiously, though they can take away from you the right to manage your own affairs, you retain the right to wear your own clothes.

C'mon, link whoring at slashdot isn't spamming. Everybody does it. It's even respectable.

My plan is to place a new kuro5hin text ad each day this month, and over the next couple weeks to get all my articles into Bonita's new XHTML/CSS design. I'm working on The Valley is a Harsh Mistress as I write this.

If I can somehow manage to draw more revenue from my website than I spend from advertising, I'll be reinvesting the proceeds back into promoting GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks, and later, once I get my first book review posted, Recommended Reading.

It's all part of my secret plan to get out of programming altogether and go to music school.

Care to download my MP3s?

Those recordings are ten years old though. I've come a long way since then. It's just a matter of getting the money for the equipment, and the time, to record my latest work, but I expect there will be new music there by the end of summer.

C'mon, link whoring at slashdot isn't spamming. Everybody does it. It's even respectable.

My plan is to place a new kuro5hin text ad each day this month, and over the next couple weeks to get all my articles into Bonita's new XHTML/CSS design. I'm working on The Valley is a Harsh Mistress as I write this.

If I can somehow manage to draw more revenue from my website than I spend from advertising, I'll be reinvesting the proceeds back into promoting GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks, and later, once I get my first book review posted, Recommended Reading.

It's all part of my secret plan to get out of programming altogether and go to music school.

Care to download my MP3s?

Those recordings are ten years old though. I've come a long way since then. It's just a matter of getting the money for the equipment, and the time, to record my latest work, but I expect there will be new music there by the end of summer.

You could tell early on he was going to go far. He had a microcomputer he had soldered together himself from components, and ran a prolog interpreter on. It was the first I ever saw prolog.

Funny little anecdote, I decided to try out photography after dropping out of Caltech, so Bruce lent me Michael's very expensive Canon A-1 SLR camera. It would accurately meter a thirty second exposure at night.

The photos on this page of my article Living with Schizoaffective Disorder were taken with Michael Tiemann's camera.

I've lost touch with them over the years though.

You could tell early on he was going to go far. He had a microcomputer he had soldered together himself from components, and ran a prolog interpreter on. It was the first I ever saw prolog.

Funny little anecdote, I decided to try out photography after dropping out of Caltech, so Bruce lent me Michael's very expensive Canon A-1 SLR camera. It would accurately meter a thirty second exposure at night.

The photos on this page of my article Living with Schizoaffective Disorder were taken with Michael Tiemann's camera.

I've lost touch with them over the years though.

• How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
• Buy at Amazon
• Buy at Powells

The first thing Lakein says to do is to write down your goals. First your goals for your entire life, then your goals for the next five years, and then what your goals would be if you knew you only had six months to live.

Then he explains how to prioritize the activities and tasks you spend time on each day based on how they advance you towards these goals. Any activities that don't advance you to your own goals for your own life are to be considered low priority, and unless you have a lot of spare time, not performed at all.

Now for the reason your boss doesn't want you to read this time management book: Lakein seems pretty businesslike throughout most of the book, but in discussing how activities should advance one's goals, he comes right out and explicitly says that if your job isn't helping you to achieve your goals, then you should quit it and get a better one.

Works for me. I'm still working as a software consultant, but that's just a means to an end. A goal I'm working towards, presently by spending two hours a day practicing on my piano, is to quit working altogether and to go back to school to major in musical composition. I want to be a composer someday.

Well, I am already am, I guess. Here are some MP3s of my playing my own piano compositions:

• Geometric Visions

I also have more to say about Lakein's book in my k5 diary: Time Management.

• How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
• Buy at Amazon
• Buy at Powells

The first thing Lakein says to do is to write down your goals. First your goals for your entire life, then your goals for the next five years, and then what your goals would be if you knew you only had six months to live.

Then he explains how to prioritize the activities and tasks you spend time on each day based on how they advance you towards these goals. Any activities that don't advance you to your own goals for your own life are to be considered low priority, and unless you have a lot of spare time, not performed at all.

Now for the reason your boss doesn't want you to read this time management book: Lakein seems pretty businesslike throughout most of the book, but in discussing how activities should advance one's goals, he comes right out and explicitly says that if your job isn't helping you to achieve your goals, then you should quit it and get a better one.

Works for me. I'm still working as a software consultant, but that's just a means to an end. A goal I'm working towards, presently by spending two hours a day practicing on my piano, is to quit working altogether and to go back to school to major in musical composition. I want to be a composer someday.

Well, I am already am, I guess. Here are some MP3s of my playing my own piano compositions:

• Geometric Visions

I also have more to say about Lakein's book in my k5 diary: Time Management.

• I Have So Many Questions About Music

I have always loved music. I have almost always made music. But I have never felt I understood music. Music has always been a mystery to me. Even more so are the people who compose it. As a child I thought composers must possess some special magic that could not be taught but that one could only possess from birth.

I want to compose music. I have already composed some, just simple pieces but I am proud of what I have done. I feel I can go no farther unless I have answers to my questions. Maybe you cannot give me an answer. But maybe you can help me ask better questions, or tell me where to go to find the answer I seek.

I've stopped making promises about when I will submit it to k5's moderation, as I'm really getting into writing it, and have lots of room left before I exceed Scoop's 64kb anti-crapflooding article submission limit.

Thanks for your help!

Whenever I have gtk-gnutella running, you'll find them on the gnutella network. They're mine to share, I'm not violating anyone's copyright.

Sometime soon I'm going to share lossless WAVs over bittorrent. I have to fix a problem with one of the tracks first.

I don't have the first clue how to get started. Thank you for enlightening me despite my not having already found the answer via google.

Something like fifty articles, essays, rants and scrawls.

The author of DrunkenBlog says of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder " It's the kind of thing that reminds you of why the web is cool."

Something like fifty articles, essays, rants and scrawls.

The author of DrunkenBlog says of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder " It's the kind of thing that reminds you of why the web is cool."

James Lipton?

Who knew we had greatness in our midst?

Edwards based her book on the results of experiments performed by Roger Sperry of Caltech. Sperry's experiments used people whose brains had been severed in the middle to treat severe epilepsy. By studying how these "split-brain" patients reacted to stimuli sent via the sense organs to one side of the brain or the other, Sperry was able to deduce that our artistic ability is centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, while our logical and verbal ability comes from the left.

Most slashdotters are heavily left-brained people. But artists are right brained people. To create artwork for your software, you have to learn to think with your right hemisphere.

Edwards says in her book that anyone who can learn to think in what she calls "R-Mode" can learn to draw. The earlier lessons in her book focus on stimulating that sort of thought while quieting the interference from the left hemisphere.

She teaches drawing with pencil and paper, but once you've completed the exercises in her book I'm sure you will have a much easier time using computer graphics applications.

The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for more than just visual art. At the same time as I learned to draw from Drawing on the Right I taught myself to play the piano. In 1994 I borrowed some recording equipment from a friend and recorded my album Geometric Visions, which you can download in MP3 format. (Ogg as soon as I get off my lazy arse and encode it.)

Edwards based her book on the results of experiments performed by Roger Sperry of Caltech. Sperry's experiments used people whose brains had been severed in the middle to treat severe epilepsy. By studying how these "split-brain" patients reacted to stimuli sent via the sense organs to one side of the brain or the other, Sperry was able to deduce that our artistic ability is centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, while our logical and verbal ability comes from the left.

Most slashdotters are heavily left-brained people. But artists are right brained people. To create artwork for your software, you have to learn to think with your right hemisphere.

Edwards says in her book that anyone who can learn to think in what she calls "R-Mode" can learn to draw. The earlier lessons in her book focus on stimulating that sort of thought while quieting the interference from the left hemisphere.

She teaches drawing with pencil and paper, but once you've completed the exercises in her book I'm sure you will have a much easier time using computer graphics applications.

The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for more than just visual art. At the same time as I learned to draw from Drawing on the Right I taught myself to play the piano. In 1994 I borrowed some recording equipment from a friend and recorded my album Geometric Visions, which you can download in MP3 format. (Ogg as soon as I get off my lazy arse and encode it.)

Unfortunately, my whole world came unraveled when I began to suffer from a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder.

It turned out to be a lot worse than it had to be because I would not seek treatment. I thought shrinks were for crazy people, and I didn't think I was crazy. Well, it turned out that by the time I got to see a shrink, I was crazy.

If you think you're mentally ill, get help from a mental health professional. Most colleges have some kind of counseling center, and often have staff psychiatrists and psychologists.

Life was pretty damn grim for a long time, but it got better because I finally got help.

I finally got my degree in physics, in 1993, after transferring to UC Santa Cruz.

This advice is particularly pertinent to college students because schizophrenia, manic depression, and schizoaffective disorder almost always strike a victim when they are a young adult. I knew a number of other people, both at Caltech and UCSC, who became quite crazy when they were students.

Unfortunately, my whole world came unraveled when I began to suffer from a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder.

It turned out to be a lot worse than it had to be because I would not seek treatment. I thought shrinks were for crazy people, and I didn't think I was crazy. Well, it turned out that by the time I got to see a shrink, I was crazy.

If you think you're mentally ill, get help from a mental health professional. Most colleges have some kind of counseling center, and often have staff psychiatrists and psychologists.

Life was pretty damn grim for a long time, but it got better because I finally got help.

I finally got my degree in physics, in 1993, after transferring to UC Santa Cruz.

This advice is particularly pertinent to college students because schizophrenia, manic depression, and schizoaffective disorder almost always strike a victim when they are a young adult. I knew a number of other people, both at Caltech and UCSC, who became quite crazy when they were students.