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I Am Absolutely Serious When I Point Out That Just A Few Days Ago I Tried The Following New Busker's Schtick:

MAD DOCTOR MIKE

ASK ME A QUESTION

Before I go on, let me point out that I really am a Solar Astronomer. It's just that Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

So some cute young thing tools up on her Velocipede to ask:

"What would happen if the Sun went out?"

The happy news is that I got a bus ticket out of it. That would be like me asking modus how to be a CyberStalker.

Anyway, a good three solid hours after I stepped away from my own table, I pointed out to Kuro5hin's Almost But Not Quite Yet Newest Member:

"Now you too have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

The reason I am Homeless Like Me is not because I am in any way symptomatic, but because I am Swimming to Patagonia because that is The Land Where the Penguin Knows Her Name.

Yes, Really: Penguins really do know their names, just like cats and dogs do.

I figure naming all of Patagonia's penguins might - just might - be a far better use of my time than spending the rest of my days sweating the fact that the roads and streets all over the Pacific Northwest really don't run from Northwest to Southwest, or from Northeast to Southwest as all the streetsigns assert they do.

It's just that borking all your traffic signs is just what you need to also bork an armed insurrection.

Go Look At Google Maps If You Don't Believe Me.

Occupy WHAT Now?

FUCK THAT!

The President's Analyst starring The Immortal James Coburn will set you back just nine and a half bucks on DVD. C'mon, you'd spend half that much on an unprotected buttfuck from one of my many newfound friends down at the Rescue Mission.

"Would you like to watch a movie?" asked Tani, then a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"I have The President's Analyst."

"NO SHIT?!?!"

"That's my all-time favorite movie!"

"Is it because it speaks to your paranoia?"

I found myself quite puzzled, because while The President's Analyst sinks it to the Paranoia-Laden Hilt, strangeley that has never been the reason.

I know now the reason:

Coburn's Psychoanalyst character knew too much.

So do I right now.

Everybody else will as well, but only if they learn to use Search Engines the way I learned to use Search Engines.

Now that she has her PhD, while strictly speaking she is "Doctor Newell", she still prefers to be referred to as "Tani".

Tani was one of the very first people with whom I correspended regularly after publishing my first explanation of Suicide Cults shortly after the Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide in San Diego in the Spring of 1997.

The entire world recoiled in horror as it tried to contemplate how it could possibly be that more than thirty talented young web designers could be duped into eating Phenobarbital-laced Applesauce and Pudding, then washing their dessert down with hard liquor, shortly after having dropped their - l

I Am Absolutely Serious When I Point Out That Just A Few Days Ago I Tried The Following New Busker's Schtick:

MAD DOCTOR MIKE

ASK ME A QUESTION

Before I go on, let me point out that I really am a Solar Astronomer. It's just that Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

So some cute young thing tools up on her Velocipede to ask:

"What would happen if the Sun went out?"

The happy news is that I got a bus ticket out of it. That would be like me asking modus how to be a CyberStalker.

Anyway, a good three solid hours after I stepped away from my own table, I pointed out to Kuro5hin's Almost But Not Quite Yet Newest Member:

"Now you too have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

The reason I am Homeless Like Me is not because I am in any way symptomatic, but because I am Swimming to Patagonia because that is The Land Where the Penguin Knows Her Name.

Yes, Really: Penguins really do know their names, just like cats and dogs do.

I figure naming all of Patagonia's penguins might - just might - be a far better use of my time than spending the rest of my days sweating the fact that the roads and streets all over the Pacific Northwest really don't run from Northwest to Southwest, or from Northeast to Southwest as all the streetsigns assert they do.

It's just that borking all your traffic signs is just what you need to also bork an armed insurrection.

Go Look At Google Maps If You Don't Believe Me.

Occupy WHAT Now?

FUCK THAT!

The President's Analyst starring The Immortal James Coburn will set you back just nine and a half bucks on DVD. C'mon, you'd spend half that much on an unprotected buttfuck from one of my many newfound friends down at the Rescue Mission.

"Would you like to watch a movie?" asked Tani, then a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"I have The President's Analyst."

"NO SHIT?!?!"

"That's my all-time favorite movie!"

"Is it because it speaks to your paranoia?"

I found myself quite puzzled, because while The President's Analyst sinks it to the Paranoia-Laden Hilt, strangeley that has never been the reason.

I know now the reason:

Coburn's Psychoanalyst character knew too much.

So do I right now.

Everybody else will as well, but only if they learn to use Search Engines the way I learned to use Search Engines.

Now that she has her PhD, while strictly speaking she is "Doctor Newell", she still prefers to be referred to as "Tani".

Tani was one of the very first people with whom I correspended regularly after publishing my first explanation of Suicide Cults shortly after the Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide in San Diego in the Spring of 1997.

The entire world recoiled in horror as it tried to contemplate how it could possibly be that more than thirty talented young web designers could be duped into eating Phenobarbital-laced Applesauce and Pudding, then washing their dessert down with hard liquor, shortly after having dropped their - l

Granted, Heroin, Crack and Methamphetamine will do more damage faster, but far more people are hooked on Alcohol.

I myself am quite severely Mentally Ill, but for the most part I manage to do alright, for example I "Make Money Working At Home" as a Custom Software Developer, which readily enables me to take time off when I start Hallucinating.

I'd say over half of the other patients I've met in Psychiatric Inpatient Units are dependent on some manner of chemical, and that more than half of those are Alcoholics.

Do you know what "The D.T.'s" are? Delirium Tremens?

Most people think that it's Alcohol Withdrawal, but it's actually far, far more serious than that: Delirium Tremens can kill you. It will certainly fuck you up with all manner of Neurological damage.

Our nerve bundles are surrounded and protected by a lipid - or fatty - sheath made of this stuff called "Myelin". It has much the same effect on our nerves as plastic or rubber insulation has electrical wire.

But fats and oils are readily soluble in Alcohol. That's why I use Methyl Alcohol to clean my Telescope Mirrors. If you drink enough alcohol often enough and for a long enough time, the Alcohol will dissolve away and so largely destroy the Myelin Sheaths of all the nerve bundles in your entire body.

For reasons I don't fully understand, this doesn't seem to cause a noticeable problem until the Drinker is denied his Liquor. I don't think it's that they're just too drunk to notice. It just has to be something more complex than that.

My father was an Officer in the United States Navy. One day he explained to me all about Delirium Tremens, by telling me about an Enlisted Man aboard one of his ships that had been thrown in the Brig for being Drunk on Duty.

My father said that for days on end, you could hear that Poor Fucker screaming in agony all over the entire ship.

-- Mike the Teetotaler

Granted, Heroin, Crack and Methamphetamine will do more damage faster, but far more people are hooked on Alcohol.

I myself am quite severely Mentally Ill, but for the most part I manage to do alright, for example I "Make Money Working At Home" as a Custom Software Developer, which readily enables me to take time off when I start Hallucinating.

I'd say over half of the other patients I've met in Psychiatric Inpatient Units are dependent on some manner of chemical, and that more than half of those are Alcoholics.

Do you know what "The D.T.'s" are? Delirium Tremens?

Most people think that it's Alcohol Withdrawal, but it's actually far, far more serious than that: Delirium Tremens can kill you. It will certainly fuck you up with all manner of Neurological damage.

Our nerve bundles are surrounded and protected by a lipid - or fatty - sheath made of this stuff called "Myelin". It has much the same effect on our nerves as plastic or rubber insulation has electrical wire.

But fats and oils are readily soluble in Alcohol. That's why I use Methyl Alcohol to clean my Telescope Mirrors. If you drink enough alcohol often enough and for a long enough time, the Alcohol will dissolve away and so largely destroy the Myelin Sheaths of all the nerve bundles in your entire body.

For reasons I don't fully understand, this doesn't seem to cause a noticeable problem until the Drinker is denied his Liquor. I don't think it's that they're just too drunk to notice. It just has to be something more complex than that.

My father was an Officer in the United States Navy. One day he explained to me all about Delirium Tremens, by telling me about an Enlisted Man aboard one of his ships that had been thrown in the Brig for being Drunk on Duty.

My father said that for days on end, you could hear that Poor Fucker screaming in agony all over the entire ship.

-- Mike the Teetotaler

Granted, Heroin, Crack and Methamphetamine will do more damage faster, but far more people are hooked on Alcohol.

I myself am quite severely Mentally Ill, but for the most part I manage to do alright, for example I "Make Money Working At Home" as a Custom Software Developer, which readily enables me to take time off when I start Hallucinating.

I'd say over half of the other patients I've met in Psychiatric Inpatient Units are dependent on some manner of chemical, and that more than half of those are Alcoholics.

Do you know what "The D.T.'s" are? Delirium Tremens?

Most people think that it's Alcohol Withdrawal, but it's actually far, far more serious than that: Delirium Tremens can kill you. It will certainly fuck you up with all manner of Neurological damage.

Our nerve bundles are surrounded and protected by a lipid - or fatty - sheath made of this stuff called "Myelin". It has much the same effect on our nerves as plastic or rubber insulation has electrical wire.

But fats and oils are readily soluble in Alcohol. That's why I use Methyl Alcohol to clean my Telescope Mirrors. If you drink enough alcohol often enough and for a long enough time, the Alcohol will dissolve away and so largely destroy the Myelin Sheaths of all the nerve bundles in your entire body.

For reasons I don't fully understand, this doesn't seem to cause a noticeable problem until the Drinker is denied his Liquor. I don't think it's that they're just too drunk to notice. It just has to be something more complex than that.

My father was an Officer in the United States Navy. One day he explained to me all about Delirium Tremens, by telling me about an Enlisted Man aboard one of his ships that had been thrown in the Brig for being Drunk on Duty.

My father said that for days on end, you could hear that Poor Fucker screaming in agony all over the entire ship.

-- Mike the Teetotaler

• libmdc: Mike Crawford's C++ Memory Management and Testing Library (Boost v1.0)
• Warp Life for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (Affero GPLv3) - Coming Real Soon Now
• Manic Depressive Geeks
• Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Is There a Cause for Which You Would Give Your Life?
• My Deepest Fear
• Why I'm Proud to to be a Dirty GNU Hippy - Got me banned when I posted it to Webmasterworld

And your point is?

"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

Good Day.

Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

• libmdc: Mike Crawford's C++ Memory Management and Testing Library (Boost v1.0)
• Warp Life for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (Affero GPLv3) - Coming Real Soon Now
• Manic Depressive Geeks
• Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
• Is There a Cause for Which You Would Give Your Life?
• My Deepest Fear
• Why I'm Proud to to be a Dirty GNU Hippy - Got me banned when I posted it to Webmasterworld

And your point is?

"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

Good Day.

Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

My piano album at http://www.geometricvisions.com/music/

It has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license as well as the scores to two of the songs if they play themselves.

I don't just play one on the Internet.

Graduate school at UC Santa Cruz didn't work out as a result of my mental illness, but the people at the Physics department there made it clear they wanted me back after I recovered from getting profoundly paranoid over the fact that North Korea was caught building a nuclear reactor during my second quarter of my first year. A-Bombs aren't really that hard to build; while it takes a lot of cash and a big industrial plant, some US Government committee, in its infinite wisdom, declassified most of the Manhattan Project secrets in 1965. The only still-classified secret is the Plutonium Implosion Bomb's initiator. Spending too much time thinking about World War III and trying to warn the world about it put me in the Dominican Mental Health Unit twice that Spring.

While I never made a career of it, I have some papers in the Astrophysical Journal and Physics Review Letters B. I wrote my UCSC undergraduate thesis on a US Energy Department grant at the Spin Muon Collaboration's facility on the French side of CERN during the Summer of '93. Most UCSC students have to stay on campus to research their thesis, but my advisor Clem Heusch said I had unusual potential.

Clem was looking for Non-Conservation of Lepton Number by using the SMC's Muon beam and highly magnetized Liquid Helium target to look for a Muon going in, scattering off a nucleon (or, more precisely, one of the quarks that make up a neutron or proton), then leaving the interaction having been changed into an Electron or Positron. This would be a violation of one of the most fundamental Laws of Physics, but for reasons I was never really able to grasp, it is speculated that just this might occur naturally in the Universe. If so, it could contribute to the explanation of Dark Matter and other unexplainable phenomena.

The observation of neutrinos traveling faster than light is exciting and unexpected, but not THAT unexpected. Clem's Muon-to-Neutrino search was part of the whole Physics community's effort to revise the Standard Model. The Standard Model is all of the Laws of Physics put together, with the exception of General Relativity - Einstein's gravitational theory. We don't include Gravity because gravity is such a weak force that we cannot collect enough experimental data for the theorists to produce a Quantum Theory of Gravity.

It has been widely agreed for decades that the Standard Model is quite wrong, but only recently are we beginning to identify just how it is wrong. The observation of Neutrino oscillations at CERN a few years ago by blasting an intense beam of them through a bunch of heavily shielded photographic film, then right down the main street of neighboring St. Genis, France was the first experimental proof that the Standard Model really is incorrect. Collecting more measurements of more oscillations will give the theorists some of the experimental data they need to revise the Model.

Neutrinos were originally thought not to oscillate, but some theorist predicted that if they had non-zero mass, they would oscillate as well. What is really exciing about this latest find is not just that C isn't quite the Speed Limit of the Whole Universe, but that massive objects are exceeding lightspeed!

As to why I posted this comment in reply to the above limerick...

Young Lady Bright's Relativistic Limerick has been my very favorite of all limericks ever since I found it in Clifton Fadiman's The Mathematical Magpie at the Moscow, Idaho public library when I was in sixth grade. The fact that I spent so much time reading that book had a lot to do with my physics degee and my career as a software engineer. It was published in the 1950s, but it was still in print last time I checked several years ago. One of my proudest possessions is my own hardback copy that I found in a used bookstore. There was a card inserted in it that indicated it was meant for a book reviewer, so my partic

I am intimately familiar with the interaction of light with matter as a result of having been an avid Amateur Telescope Maker and Amateur Astronomer since the tender age of twelve.

This led to my acceptance to study Astronomy at Caltech in the Fall of 1982, where I was privileged to attend a non-credit class called "Physics X" that was taught by The Immortal Richard Feynman. You could ask him any question you wanted - it didn't have to be about Physics even - but the ensuing discussion had to be purely conceptual. Questions that would require Feynmen to work out equations on the chalkboard were not permitted.

One afternoon I pointed out to him that the phenomenon that light slows down as it passes through a medium just had to be wrong. When one examines any medium at a subatomic scale, it is mostly empty vacuum with some rare particles that have all been either proven or are suspected to be geometric points. (While Protons and Neutrons have a non-zero diameter, they are each composed of three quarks, which themselves are thought to be point particles.)

"Surely," I pointed out to Feynman, "When light passes through all this vacuous space inside a piece of glass, it always travels at precisely C! How could Snell's Law" - which yields the angle of refraction when light passes through the surface of a medium - "possibly be correct!"

I knew damn well that Snell's Law was correct, as Snell himself experimentally demonstrated the law hundreds of years ago. While he did not measure what the Speed of Light had to do with refraction, we have been able to measure light's speed for over a century.

Feynman replied that when light passes through matter, the charged particles in that matter oscillate in sympathy with the oscillations of the light's electomagnetic field. But because they are all in a bound state, and because accellerating charged particles causes them to emit light of their own, thereby carrying away energy and so dampening their sympathetic oscillation, the movements of the charged particles in matter is not quite in phase with the waves in the light passing through the medium.

Feynman concluded, "The light emitted by the charge particles in matter interferes with the light passing through the medium" - that is, wave peaks add to wave peaks, and so with troughs, while peaks and troughs together cancel each other - "so that the resulting combination of light waves only appears to move slower than C."

Thus the Photons are always moving at a constant velocity of C, but all the Photons in the medium interact so that passing a Photon through the medium will result in the exit Photon being delayed from the timing you would expect from when the entrance Photon entered the front surface. They key to understanding all this is that the entrance and exit Photons are NOT THE SAME PHOTON!

Feynman discusses this in a really lucid way, with rigorous mathematics, in Volume II of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Volume II covers Electricity and Magnetism, Volume I covers Classical Mechanics - Newton's Laws of Motion and such - while the third volume does Quantum Mechanics. The set of three is expensive but are easy to read, even if you don't know much Calculus, and would be a good investment for any Slashdotter.

I was mortally embarrased to realize years later that I had asked Feynman a really basic, purely conceptual question whose completely rigorous answer led to him sharing the 1965 Nobel Prize with Tomanaga of Japan! Their Quantum Electrodynamics describes the interaction of light with electric charge with complete precision.

Feynman's formulation uses a conceptual drawing called a Feynman Diagram as a calculational and explanatory device. I don't know how Tomanaga formulated his Quantum Electrodynamics, but my understanding as that at first no one could understand why the two theories seemed quite different but always yielded the same numerical results. Some time later Freeman Dyson - Esth

A symptom called "Flat Affect:" makes it nearly impossible to express emotion in any normal kind of way. It's not that I don't experience emotion - I very definitely do - but I am unable to show my feelings outwardly. My expression is always wooden, a poker face. It makes it very, very difficult to connect with other people, especially the opposite sex.

My most prevalent schizoaffective symptom is depression which is often profound and can be suicidal. I also experience a profoundly euphoric state called mania. One might think that it's not so bad because it is actually a very happy, joyful feeling, it is actually the worst of the schizoaffective symptoms because when I am manic, I am utterly and completely out of touch with reality. I am like a bull in a china shop. When I am manic, it is a matter for the police - lots and lots and lots of police.

But all of this pales in comparison with my Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. One reason is that I understood from the very beginning that my schizoaffective disorder was bad and just why it was bad, so I was able to work from the very beginning to overcome it. But I had been in psytherapeutic and psychiatric treatment for twenty-four years before I was finally able to understand just how destructive my OCPD had been, not just to me, but to everyone that I cared about.

Simply being crazy is not so bad. There are many ways to cope, many ways to get by. What really is bad is to be crazy, yet completely unaware of it, Thus it was with me and my Obsessive Compulsive Personality.

I would be very grateful if you would read this short essay, it is just five pages or so:

• A Special Kind of Crazy

Kuro5hin's undermyne said of me:

You, sir are a special kind of crazy. They may even name a type of crazy after you. People will no longer be called "odd" when they are batshit, self destructive crazy. They will be called "ogg".

I am grateful for all of your kind understanding.

It's not like my music is some kind of weapon.

You'd think that following the rules would just be a matter of looking up which countries are embargoed, but it's not that simple. In many cases it's not the country that's embargoed, it's specific individuals or organizations - in the case of Iran, it's the Revolutionary Guard, among others.

I'm pretty sure there's a procedure by which I could get a license, and I would be happy to go to all the trouble and expense that would be required. What I'm not looking forward to though is if and when I do get the required licenses, having to explain to the clerk at my post office that I have the permission of the Feral Gummint to mail my music to Persia.

Many of us Nerds are already Cool. I majored in Computer Science but minored in Physics and Engineering, then in Information Systems and minored in Supervision Management, and then I went for Business Management and minored in e-Commerce and Computer Science. I've taken a wide variety of college courses from many colleges. Mostly I can do computers and business as I ran two small businesses in the past. After the Dotcom bubble burst many of us programmers learned a second or third career skill in order to survive.

You'll have an easier time getting current comp sci graduates to go back for business, art, law, science, etc than you can get non-comp sci majors to go back for comp sci. Computer science and programming is not for everyone. We've already had the market flooded with comp sci graduates that barely know what they are doing after the Dotcom busts as the high programmer salaries got many copycats but very few that are talented enough to be competent.

One of my friends Michael, he had a physics degree but he learned programming on the side, and worked at Apple debugging Macintosh System 7.5.X and after Apple laid him off he has worked for many different companies and even started up his own business. He is one of those 'Cool' Nerds but he struggles to find work due to his schizoaffective disorder that he suffers from.

Now me I have schizoaffective disorder and I did great at art and music when I was in school, but I had to hide those talents as employers didn't like me having them and I had to take them off my resume to get hired. I owned an Amiga 1000 and Deluxe Paint II and I used to paint stuff and use Music Construction Set to design music. But I don't have the software these days to do that anymore, although I could find FOSS music and art programs if I looked hard enough. But I used to design web sites and created my own art as well. Many who create web sites and program them already have art and music skills but we hide them.

I think I can better serve the FOSS community via writing, doing business and legal software and documents and templates and trying to meet the needs of small businesses like I used to run. But I can do art and music with the right software if I wanted to and become a 'Cool' Nerd.

Many of us Nerds are already Cool. I majored in Computer Science but minored in Physics and Engineering, then in Information Systems and minored in Supervision Management, and then I went for Business Management and minored in e-Commerce and Computer Science. I've taken a wide variety of college courses from many colleges. Mostly I can do computers and business as I ran two small businesses in the past. After the Dotcom bubble burst many of us programmers learned a second or third career skill in order to survive.

You'll have an easier time getting current comp sci graduates to go back for business, art, law, science, etc than you can get non-comp sci majors to go back for comp sci. Computer science and programming is not for everyone. We've already had the market flooded with comp sci graduates that barely know what they are doing after the Dotcom busts as the high programmer salaries got many copycats but very few that are talented enough to be competent.

One of my friends Michael, he had a physics degree but he learned programming on the side, and worked at Apple debugging Macintosh System 7.5.X and after Apple laid him off he has worked for many different companies and even started up his own business. He is one of those 'Cool' Nerds but he struggles to find work due to his schizoaffective disorder that he suffers from.

Now me I have schizoaffective disorder and I did great at art and music when I was in school, but I had to hide those talents as employers didn't like me having them and I had to take them off my resume to get hired. I owned an Amiga 1000 and Deluxe Paint II and I used to paint stuff and use Music Construction Set to design music. But I don't have the software these days to do that anymore, although I could find FOSS music and art programs if I looked hard enough. But I used to design web sites and created my own art as well. Many who create web sites and program them already have art and music skills but we hide them.

I think I can better serve the FOSS community via writing, doing business and legal software and documents and templates and trying to meet the needs of small businesses like I used to run. But I can do art and music with the right software if I wanted to and become a 'Cool' Nerd.

Because they own the rights to the songs, the songs aren't based on a commercial song, and have a different pattern than RIAA songs and also lack a DRM copyprotection scheme.

Legal Torrents

Torrent sites that serve only legal torrents

Michael David Crawford Music unlike any commercial music at all.

Links to tens of thousands of legal free music downloads listed by Michael David Crawford.

See for yourself, some music was meant to be free.

• My Resume

For example, I was once able to give Microsoft the exact byte offset in Word's binary where their bug lay, that would cause a very rare, difficult to reproduce system crash - this was way before Mac OS X, so application faults would hang the whole machine.

I have Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder. Because it's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time, it is one of the very worst mental illnesses that one can have.

It is very rare, poorly understood and notoriously difficult to treat. My symptoms include depression, which has been suicidal at times - I've attempted in a serious way twice - a profoundly euphoric state called mania, auditory hallucinations and, in my case, visual hallucinations that coordinate with a profound paranoia that leads me to believe that a shadowy, secret law enforcement agency I call The Thought Police are coming, not to arrest me, but to kill me.

I call them The Thought Police because they are The Police Inside My Head. You see, I know very well that they're not real. Unfortunately, just knowing that one is paranoid doesn't make the paranoia go away. When I look directly at my attackers, I can see that they're not there, but when I turn away I can feel their presence again.

But Wait, There's More!

There are Five Axes of psychiatric diagnosis. That is, one's Madness is a point in a sort of five-dimensional vector space.

Schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia and manic depression are all biochemical axis diseases; they are caused by screwed up brain chemistry. They are thought to be genetic, although there is some evidence that schizophrenia can be caused by infectious disease when one is either in the womb or very young.

Biochemical axis illnesses are generally incurable, but their symptoms can often be relieved with medication. I know very well what would happen to me should I ever weary of my life on the run and decide to turn myself in to The Thought Police - and so I am very diligent at taking my daily dose of the powerful, expensive, mind-altering drug which gives me the comfort of staying a step - but just a step - ahead of Them.

There is also a neurotic axis. Neuroses are purely psychological in origin and are usually caused by some kind of unresolved trauma, usually experienced as a child such as sexual abuse, but it can arise in adults too, as with the war veteran's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Ironically, many neurosis originate as adaptive strategies, that enable the neurotic to survive their terrible ordeal. Thus the soldier who learns to dive for cover at every sharp sound survives the war, but is unable to return to civilian life after returning home - because he still feels the need to dive for that safety.

The little girl who survives her pedophile by imagining his advances to be courtship by a handsome prince my not find her Castle in the Sky such a wonderful place to live when she grows up, gets married and has children of her own.

The neurotic axis illnesses can all be cured, and through "talk therapy" alone, without the use of any drugs - in fact, using drugs to relieve one's symptoms can actually relieve one of the need to ever get better.

Unfortunately, the cure generally takes many years and is collossally expensive. In my case I estimate that I paid just one therapist sixty thousand dollars for thirteen years of weekly psychotherapy sessions.

I am not abusing disability, in fact I was forced on it when my doctors ordered me not to work anymore. After I tried to commit suicide I was forced into a hospital and forced on disability, as schizoaffective disorder is generally misunderstood by the public and the paxil I was on caused suicidal thoughts followed by the third job I lost for being "sick" on the job and fired for being sick. I felt that suffering from schzioaffective disorder was a character flaw of mine that didn't really give me a point of living any more, much less working for managers who don't understand what schizoaffective disorder is, and that suffering from it was not my fault or a choice I made to be that way.

If I had my choice I wouldn't be suffering from schizoaffective disorder and be on disability, but it is not what I want, it is what society wants. They don't want schizoaffective disorder sufferers like me working a job like programming code, they want us locked up in state mental hospitals worse than federal prison instead.

Most of us with schziaffective disorder end up on disability, one of us, refused to go on disability and wrote Living with Schizoaffective disorder instead, as a way to explain it to normal people. People who don't hear voices or see hallucinations, who don't get depressed and lose sleep or lose the ability to focus or concentrate, for people who can function properly at the work place, even a negative workplace full of stress and people who don't understand than even mentally ill people have civil rights and human rights.

The misunderstanding of schizoaffective disorder, and the general psychophobia the public has against us, forced me into disability, I didn't choose it, it was chosen for me, because I am sick.

But for many years the biggest mirror was the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Mountain near San Diego. Nowadays there are several monolithic 8-metre mirrors, and the two 10-meter Keck telescopes atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii; they are composed of carefully aligned hexagonal subsections.

Why the big disparity?

With a lens, you have to grind and polish both sides, and what's worse, a single lens won't do because all glass refracts different colors differently, giving rise to chromatic aberration. A minimum of two lenses is required, for four surfaces to fabricate.

For both lenses and mirrors, the tolerance of the surface is a small fraction of a wavelength of light across the whole surface. But for lenses, all the surfaces must also be very accurately parallel.

But really the worst problem is that with a lens, the light goes through the thickness of the glass. The glass must therefore be very uniform and free of internal stresses that could alter the index of refraction in different places.

Such glass is very difficult to make; no doubt these lenses are only possible because of recent advances in optical glass manufacture.

That's not a problem for mirrors; observatory telescopes use "first-surface" mirrors, which are aluminized on the front, so the light doesn't go through the glass. Mirror glass therefore doesn't need such careful tolerances.

But my guess is that they are using lenses because they have a much wider field of view; it's quite easy to make a lens with a sixty degree field of view, but with a mirror the field of view is typically a fraction of a degree. With small amateur scopes, the maximum field is about a degree, twice that of the full moon.

That seems clear from the photo, because of the steep curvature of the glass; wide-angle lenses usually have very strong curves.

And yes, I know what I'm talking about - I'm an avid amateur telescope maker, and at one time was a Caltech astronomy student. I've published in the Astrophysical Journal, and have done observing runs at the Palomar 60 and 200 inch telescopes.

I know I am not alone. Michael Crawford is one such person I communicated with over the Internet like you are. He informed me of the Thought Police that where after him and I know they were after me as well. But he wrote Living with Schizoaffective Disorder that helped me out. He warns us of atomic bombs in the nuclear global war that is coming up in the future.

I wrote the AI web bot Warbot 1Alpha based on my holy grail project of 1995, the only thing that comes close to it is Trane's subbot but my bot is written in C and Python and Trane's uses Ruby. Still neither one can pass the Turning test. But some people confuse it for a real person anyway. I tested it out on the IWETHEY forums from EzBoard and Zope way long ago, and people there accused it of being me as it came from the same IP address. It can parse out HTML and XML code and piece together words into posts to ape human conversations and try to pass as a real human, I also tested it out on Slashdot in 2004 and only recently reactivate it after rewriting parts of it due to corruption. It can create new accounts if there is no image verification, and it went wild on IWETHEY, and I got accused of creating those accounts, etc. But anyway, I am thinking of phasing it out as all it does is create confusion and hardly anyone understands how it works except for me and a few other people.

BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.

While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.

And you think the record companies want that?

Jamendo uses it to distribute Creative Commons-licensed music, all of it with the explicit permission of its copyright holders.

BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.

While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.

But a hit song can bankrupt struggling musicians if they just supply regular HTTP downloads; p2p enables mass distribution at a very low cost.

It's very important to get the message through to lawmakers and the public that filesharing, while it can be abused, is inherently perfectly legitimate, and should be kept both legal and technically possible.

My album Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft is minimalist instrumental piano, all my own original compositions.

There are direct HTTP downloads in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, and torrents in a variety of format, including FLAC - the Free Lossless Audio Codec.

Also, you may request a free CD. It comes with an attractive 4-page case insert, as well as a nice full-color label printed on the CD itself.

The case insert includes my short essay Why Free Music? as well as the history of my Baldwin Howard piano, which my grandfather bought in the 1940s from a door-to-door piano salesman.

You can also download the sheet music for two of my songs from my site, with the others to follow hopefully soon. US Letter and A4 PDFs are provided, as well as Lilypond source code and MIDI files generated from the scores - you could use the MIDI in a sequencing program like RoseGarden or GarageBand to remix your own versions - I invite you to do so, provided you ShareAlike!

Finally, while this CD is burned, I'm composing new material for a new CD that I hope to release in the spring. That will be glass-master pressed, and again they will be given away free.

And yes, I'm absolutely serious that I'd like my free CD offer to be Slashdotted!

My album Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft is minimalist instrumental piano, all my own original compositions.

There are direct HTTP downloads in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, and torrents in a variety of format, including FLAC - the Free Lossless Audio Codec.

Also, you may request a free CD. It comes with an attractive 4-page case insert, as well as a nice full-color label printed on the CD itself.

The case insert includes my short essay Why Free Music? as well as the history of my Baldwin Howard piano, which my grandfather bought in the 1940s from a door-to-door piano salesman.

You can also download the sheet music for two of my songs from my site, with the others to follow hopefully soon. US Letter and A4 PDFs are provided, as well as Lilypond source code and MIDI files generated from the scores - you could use the MIDI in a sequencing program like RoseGarden or GarageBand to remix your own versions - I invite you to do so, provided you ShareAlike!

Finally, while this CD is burned, I'm composing new material for a new CD that I hope to release in the spring. That will be glass-master pressed, and again they will be given away free.

And yes, I'm absolutely serious that I'd like my free CD offer to be Slashdotted!

My album Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft is minimalist instrumental piano, all my own original compositions.

There are direct HTTP downloads in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, and torrents in a variety of format, including FLAC - the Free Lossless Audio Codec.

Also, you may request a free CD. It comes with an attractive 4-page case insert, as well as a nice full-color label printed on the CD itself.

The case insert includes my short essay Why Free Music? as well as the history of my Baldwin Howard piano, which my grandfather bought in the 1940s from a door-to-door piano salesman.

You can also download the sheet music for two of my songs from my site, with the others to follow hopefully soon. US Letter and A4 PDFs are provided, as well as Lilypond source code and MIDI files generated from the scores - you could use the MIDI in a sequencing program like RoseGarden or GarageBand to remix your own versions - I invite you to do so, provided you ShareAlike!

Finally, while this CD is burned, I'm composing new material for a new CD that I hope to release in the spring. That will be glass-master pressed, and again they will be given away free.

And yes, I'm absolutely serious that I'd like my free CD offer to be Slashdotted!

My album Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft is minimalist instrumental piano, all my own original compositions.

There are direct HTTP downloads in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, and torrents in a variety of format, including FLAC - the Free Lossless Audio Codec.

Also, you may request a free CD. It comes with an attractive 4-page case insert, as well as a nice full-color label printed on the CD itself.

The case insert includes my short essay Why Free Music? as well as the history of my Baldwin Howard piano, which my grandfather bought in the 1940s from a door-to-door piano salesman.

You can also download the sheet music for two of my songs from my site, with the others to follow hopefully soon. US Letter and A4 PDFs are provided, as well as Lilypond source code and MIDI files generated from the scores - you could use the MIDI in a sequencing program like RoseGarden or GarageBand to remix your own versions - I invite you to do so, provided you ShareAlike!

Finally, while this CD is burned, I'm composing new material for a new CD that I hope to release in the spring. That will be glass-master pressed, and again they will be given away free.

And yes, I'm absolutely serious that I'd like my free CD offer to be Slashdotted!

Getting sick led to me making a complete wreck of my life. I lost many friends, screwed up my education and my planned career as a scientist, lost what had been a good reputation.

For many years I tried to keep my illness a secret, but it was a terrible burden to bear. I finally went public with it in 1997, by writing a page about my manic depressive aspect. Click the link and you'll see that it got slashdotted.

But I had a much harder time facing or admitting to the schizophrenic aspect. I finally went public with that in 2003, in my essay Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I also published it at Kuro5hin, where each of its three installments was featured on the front page.

It's not real obvious to most readers, but I avoided saying much about my own experience in the section on paranoia. Again it was very hard to face it. But again I finally went public with it in 2006 in My Deepest Fear.

You'll understand why I had a hard time facing it if you read the essay. I was getting ready for an ambulance ride to the nuthouse when I wrote that, but, if you'll pardon my shameless self-promotion, I think it's one of the most vivid accounts of paranoia ever written.

I've written a lot of stuff having to do with mental illness, both my own and that of others. I finally compiled an index to it all. I printed hardcopies of most of it, and the stack of paper was over an inch thick!

Someday I plan to publish a dead-tree book about it. What's holding me back is finding the words to explain what I've learned from it all. I want to help others avoid it, to help others who suffer to get better, and to help their loved ones and caregivers to understand it.

One lesson I have learned though, is that the worst of the stigma against mental illness is the stigma that we mentally ill have against ourselves. Our shame for being sick is the main thing that keeps us sick. It's a disease, and not our choice. It's not something to be ashamed of.

As I write this, I've been employed steadily as a software engineer for over twenty years. For eight of those years I was self-employed as a software consultant. My title at my current job is Principal Software Engineer. I've achieved this success despite all the chaos that all those symptoms put me through.

I point this out because I sometimes get the impression that those who treat the mentally ill don't expect us to ever get better. Yes, it's difficult, and progress is painfully slow - but it is quite possible for anyone to overcome the worst madness and lead a happy, fulfilling life.

Getting sick led to me making a complete wreck of my life. I lost many friends, screwed up my education and my planned career as a scientist, lost what had been a good reputation.

For many years I tried to keep my illness a secret, but it was a terrible burden to bear. I finally went public with it in 1997, by writing a page about my manic depressive aspect. Click the link and you'll see that it got slashdotted.

But I had a much harder time facing or admitting to the schizophrenic aspect. I finally went public with that in 2003, in my essay Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I also published it at Kuro5hin, where each of its three installments was featured on the front page.

It's not real obvious to most readers, but I avoided saying much about my own experience in the section on paranoia. Again it was very hard to face it. But again I finally went public with it in 2006 in My Deepest Fear.

You'll understand why I had a hard time facing it if you read the essay. I was getting ready for an ambulance ride to the nuthouse when I wrote that, but, if you'll pardon my shameless self-promotion, I think it's one of the most vivid accounts of paranoia ever written.

I've written a lot of stuff having to do with mental illness, both my own and that of others. I finally compiled an index to it all. I printed hardcopies of most of it, and the stack of paper was over an inch thick!

Someday I plan to publish a dead-tree book about it. What's holding me back is finding the words to explain what I've learned from it all. I want to help others avoid it, to help others who suffer to get better, and to help their loved ones and caregivers to understand it.

One lesson I have learned though, is that the worst of the stigma against mental illness is the stigma that we mentally ill have against ourselves. Our shame for being sick is the main thing that keeps us sick. It's a disease, and not our choice. It's not something to be ashamed of.

As I write this, I've been employed steadily as a software engineer for over twenty years. For eight of those years I was self-employed as a software consultant. My title at my current job is Principal Software Engineer. I've achieved this success despite all the chaos that all those symptoms put me through.

I point this out because I sometimes get the impression that those who treat the mentally ill don't expect us to ever get better. Yes, it's difficult, and progress is painfully slow - but it is quite possible for anyone to overcome the worst madness and lead a happy, fulfilling life.

Getting sick led to me making a complete wreck of my life. I lost many friends, screwed up my education and my planned career as a scientist, lost what had been a good reputation.

For many years I tried to keep my illness a secret, but it was a terrible burden to bear. I finally went public with it in 1997, by writing a page about my manic depressive aspect. Click the link and you'll see that it got slashdotted.

But I had a much harder time facing or admitting to the schizophrenic aspect. I finally went public with that in 2003, in my essay Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I also published it at Kuro5hin, where each of its three installments was featured on the front page.

It's not real obvious to most readers, but I avoided saying much about my own experience in the section on paranoia. Again it was very hard to face it. But again I finally went public with it in 2006 in My Deepest Fear.

You'll understand why I had a hard time facing it if you read the essay. I was getting ready for an ambulance ride to the nuthouse when I wrote that, but, if you'll pardon my shameless self-promotion, I think it's one of the most vivid accounts of paranoia ever written.

I've written a lot of stuff having to do with mental illness, both my own and that of others. I finally compiled an index to it all. I printed hardcopies of most of it, and the stack of paper was over an inch thick!

Someday I plan to publish a dead-tree book about it. What's holding me back is finding the words to explain what I've learned from it all. I want to help others avoid it, to help others who suffer to get better, and to help their loved ones and caregivers to understand it.

One lesson I have learned though, is that the worst of the stigma against mental illness is the stigma that we mentally ill have against ourselves. Our shame for being sick is the main thing that keeps us sick. It's a disease, and not our choice. It's not something to be ashamed of.

As I write this, I've been employed steadily as a software engineer for over twenty years. For eight of those years I was self-employed as a software consultant. My title at my current job is Principal Software Engineer. I've achieved this success despite all the chaos that all those symptoms put me through.

I point this out because I sometimes get the impression that those who treat the mentally ill don't expect us to ever get better. Yes, it's difficult, and progress is painfully slow - but it is quite possible for anyone to overcome the worst madness and lead a happy, fulfilling life.

I searched for my own music on Baidu, and it didn't find it. How can I submit it?

I clicked all the links on the homepage, and hovered my mouse over all the links on the result page, and couldn't find anything that looked like a submission form.

I'd love it if everyone in China were to download my compositions - they are all Creative Commons-licensed.

• Why Free Music?

I stopped playing for a while because I got real depressed shortly after recording my album. That lead to me partially forgetting how to play Sahara, and completely forgetting how to play As Yet Untitled.

But I'm working on transcribing the scores from my recordings. It's taking me a long time, but eventually I'll be providing Lilypond source for them as well.

I operate a tracker to distribute my music. It's more efficient than direct HTTP downloads, so it saves on my hosting bill.

The point really needs to be rammed home to law enforcement and elected officials that there are many perfectly legitimate, and in fact socially beneficial uses for peer-to-peer file sharing.

I take Zyprexa for my mental illness. It makes most people gain weight, because it eliminates the feeling that you've had enough to eat.

Well I've sworn off the ice cream, and am now bicycling to work and elsewhere around Silicon Valley.

I've only just started this, so I don't have measurable progress yet, but I'm very determined.

Several times I've put on a lot of weight then managed to lose it. Usually cycling is a big part of that.

• Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft

Several years ago I decided to change careers into music. I taught myself to play piano many years ago, and since making that decision I've been studying it intensively with the aim of enrolling in music school someday, where I will major in music composition. I want to write symphonies!

Of course I realize that musicians rarely earn as much as computer programmers. It's going to be a while before I can pass the entrance audition; during that time I'm continuing to work as a coder, while paying down my many debts as fast as I can. I'm pretty sure I can be debt-free by the time I start school.

I'm also developing a GPL audio application called Ogg Frog, whose website also has articles and HOWTOs on the general topic of digital music. The software isn't released yet, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I do go back to school the software will have been available long enough the website will earn enough money through advertising to provide for myself and my wife.

Musicians need to be well-known to be successful. One way I've been promoting my music is by giving away free CDs of an album I recorded in 1994. If you'd like to receive one, email your name and postal address to support@oggfrog.com

I'm absolutely serious! I've given away almost two thousand of them in person; a few weeks ago I plugged my CDs here at Slashdot and got fifty requests in just one day. I expect to finally mail them on Friday. And yes I am happy to ship internationally.

The music is instrumental piano, and is all my own original compositions.

Several years ago I decided to change careers into music. I taught myself to play piano many years ago, and since making that decision I've been studying it intensively with the aim of enrolling in music school someday, where I will major in music composition. I want to write symphonies!

Of course I realize that musicians rarely earn as much as computer programmers. It's going to be a while before I can pass the entrance audition; during that time I'm continuing to work as a coder, while paying down my many debts as fast as I can. I'm pretty sure I can be debt-free by the time I start school.

I'm also developing a GPL audio application called Ogg Frog, whose website also has articles and HOWTOs on the general topic of digital music. The software isn't released yet, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I do go back to school the software will have been available long enough the website will earn enough money through advertising to provide for myself and my wife.

Musicians need to be well-known to be successful. One way I've been promoting my music is by giving away free CDs of an album I recorded in 1994. If you'd like to receive one, email your name and postal address to support@oggfrog.com

I'm absolutely serious! I've given away almost two thousand of them in person; a few weeks ago I plugged my CDs here at Slashdot and got fifty requests in just one day. I expect to finally mail them on Friday. And yes I am happy to ship internationally.

The music is instrumental piano, and is all my own original compositions.

One day he found a roll of duct tape lying around somewhere on a sub that was in for repair. It didn't appear as if anyone was using it.

However, one was not permitted to just remove stuff left lying around - someone might still be needing it.

So dad went through the proper channels, which involved filing a form in which he requested the removal of the duct tape. This had to be signed by his manager. I don't remember clearly, but maybe it had to be signed by his manager's manager.

Once the paperwork was all squared away, someone was sent in to the sub to remove the roll of duct tape - only to find that it wasn't there anymore!

Your tax dollars at work!

Email it to michael@geometricvisions.com

I hope to earn money from live performances someday, but I'm determined that my recordings will always be free.

For now, my aim is to build a base of fans who might buy tickets to my shows someday, and to study piano and music theory so that a few years from now, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition.

I want to compose symphonies someday!

BitTorrent is also critical to unsigned musicians such as myself who offer downloads of their music from their websites. P2P allows bandwidth to be contributed by one's fans, whereas direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling artist if one of their tracks becomes a sudden hit.

And yes I know there are many music hosting sites such as MySpace. But it's better for musicians to offer downloads from their own sites rather than to use a host.

I've tried posting on kuro5hin too, but there's this guy there that tries pimping his music so frequently that I don't know how I can go on living.

I have schizoaffective disorder. It's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. One of the symptoms is severe depression: I have attempted suicide twice. There were several years where I was almost continuously suicidal. It was quite a grim existence.

I also know now that depression is actually a delusional state; feeling that life is not worth living is no more real than regarding oneself as the Emperor of France. It can almost always be effectively treated, and often cured completely.

I have found many times that the antidepressants I take for it (imipramine these days) have the effect of changing the behaviour of other people, making them friendlier towards me. Strangers are more likely to strike up conversations with me when I'm medicated.

I'm not kidding! I'm absolutely serious.

I'm doing well these days, thanks to the heroic efforts of my pshrinks and the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm quite eccentric: someone at Kuro5hin said "You're mad as a cut snake, but at least you're an independent thinker".

My aim is to build brand-name recognition for my stage name - Michael David Crawford - and my album - Geometric Visions.

A problem I've got is that there's a famous British actor also named Michael Crawford. He starred in the London Phantom of the Opera, and he's been popular since the sixties. He's therefore got a lot of Google juice. My aim is to make my site rank ahead of all of his fan and theatre industry sites in a search for our name.

It's not required, but I figure that many of those who get my free CD will return the favor by linking my site from their own websites, weblogs or from message boards.

I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.

For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.

Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.

I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.

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

I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.

For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.

Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.

I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.

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

For example, many Open Source installers are available via BitTorrent. Their use of p2p is crucial to their success, because it reduces distribution costs.

P2P is also crucial to the success of struggling musicians who offer their music online for free, as a way to promote themselves. Direct HTTP downloads can lead to bankrupcy if their songs become sudden hits. I myself offer Bit Torrent downloads of my piano compositions.

(While I presently work as a software engineer, I'm studying piano with the aim of changing careers into music. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.)

In your letters to your legislators, please emphasize the legal uses of P2p.

There are both HTTP downloads and torrents. The sheet music to two of the songs is provided in PDF and Lilypond format, with the others to follow soon.

My music has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm also offering to send free CDs - autographed - to anyone anywhere in the world; just email your snail mail address to support@oggfrog.com

While I presently work as a programmer, I have been studying piano intensively for several years with the aim of one day enrolling in music school to study musical composition. I want to write symphonies!

There are both HTTP downloads and torrents. The sheet music to two of the songs is provided in PDF and Lilypond format, with the others to follow soon.

My music has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm also offering to send free CDs - autographed - to anyone anywhere in the world; just email your snail mail address to support@oggfrog.com

While I presently work as a programmer, I have been studying piano intensively for several years with the aim of one day enrolling in music school to study musical composition. I want to write symphonies!

There are both HTTP downloads and torrents. The sheet music to two of the songs is provided in PDF and Lilypond format, with the others to follow soon.

My music has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm also offering to send free CDs - autographed - to anyone anywhere in the world; just email your snail mail address to support@oggfrog.com

While I presently work as a programmer, I have been studying piano intensively for several years with the aim of one day enrolling in music school to study musical composition. I want to write symphonies!

There are both HTTP downloads and torrents. The sheet music to two of the songs is provided in PDF and Lilypond format, with the others to follow soon.

My music has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm also offering to send free CDs - autographed - to anyone anywhere in the world; just email your snail mail address to support@oggfrog.com

While I presently work as a programmer, I have been studying piano intensively for several years with the aim of one day enrolling in music school to study musical composition. I want to write symphonies!

I'll get a PHP order form up on that page Real Soon Now.

But direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling musician if their music suddenly becomes a hit. To allow mass distribution at modest expense, I offer Bit Torrent downloads of my music.

I can't really see how an ISP could filter out copyright infringement without also filtering out files that are non-infringing.

Bit Torrent distribution is also crucial to Free and Open Source software projects, whose installers are sometimes hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes in size.

In the debate about file sharing, please speak up for the legal uses of it.

And yes, I know I can host my work on free sites like MySpace, but then it would be MySpace's website and not my own that would benefit from links placed by fans. For business reasons, it's much better for a musician to have their own website if they possibly can.