The current free ebook is located at this link:
http://haggishell.com/ridgeproject.pdf

For details about the ebook, click here.

130605. Over the past year my life has been complicated. Only a little. Surely others have had more interesting times.

The Kiralys filed Court actions to stop the book I was writing. My abuser Jim Kiraly, Vice President of Transamerica, and my dull and cowardly brother, Tom Kiraly, Vice President of Humana, lied under oath.

Ken Kiraly, the inventor of the Kindle, chimed in.

It should be called the Kendle :-) Ken is no fool, but he acted like one. It's not clear what he was thinking.

Grace Kiraly had given me permission to speak with Pastor Ron. But this meant nothing to Jim Kiraly, who was filled with rage at the thought that I might disclose family secrets to outsiders. The irony is that I had no plans to do so. I'd intended to keep the secrets.

What Jim and Tom did is known as Abuse of Process. As there were apparently discussions where actual perjury was planned in advance, I believe it is also a felony.

Jobs were lost. Most of the books I'd collected since childhood are gone. Including the remarkable set that my Grandfather Ivan and I both treasured from youth onwards. The bookshelves that held the books are no more. I may be homeless this year after years of seeing it coming.

And my right hand won't be repaired. The money needed for that went to legal bills. Twice as much as the surgeon would have asked. Gone to fight the abuser James Kiraly. The abuser who, after learning that Twisted Time was still alive, never denied what he'd done under oath.

I'd like my right hand back. But, what the heck. Who needs a right hand? God Bless the Kiralys.

I had so little left. But a wealthy abuser found it necessary to take that little away.

As part of this, my personal papers, bills, and other documents are in disarray. I'm trying to find things but it's difficult.

Today, about 16 hours ago, I found an envelope mixed with other documents. I gather that it was mailed to me seven years ago. But I apparently misplaced it and never opened it.

Would you like to see the contents of the mystery envelope? If so, I'll share it with you. There are two scans. It's a birthday card sent by my biological mother, Grace Kiraly. The woman who told me that she'd become a Christ Follower. Who inspired my interest in the subject.

Leading Jim to smash me to the ground as he'd done before.

This woman is no Christian. I understand this now. I've met the real Christians. They matter to me. Grace hid from God. To her, Christ was a child's toy shield. Something to be waved at facts. If Grace met the real Christ, she'd dissolve like Lot's wife washing away in the rain. There would be nothing left of her. In truth, nothing is already.

The occasion of the card was my birthday, seven years ago as of tomorrow, which arrives in five minutes. The card is presented below without further comment except for this:

Lies to one's self are the heart of denial. They lead to the notion that there is no reality and that there are no consequences to actions.

130604. Casey is a woman of my generation who's been through a bit. Here's a poem that she's shared with me. Posted with permission.

The Deck of My Soul

Heart's steady beating, sounding
Like a piece of dry, brittle wood
Splintering lavishly with the rhythmic
Strokes on a rusty metal washboard

That gullible soul that grew up
Like the tiny delicate bouquets
Scattered in the hard scrabble gravel
Hugging edges of a dry asphalt road

Cool rain on a sweltering day
Like angels' tears pouring down
Washing away the powdery dust of sins
Leaving earth oozing between our toes

Anonymous silver-gray storm clouds
Pearlizing the light caressing tired eyes
Searching Somewhere to lay me down to dream
As the insouciant sun discards another day

Those events of my life's storyboard
Faded and smudged from the angels' tears
Cut into memorial squares, stacked
The deck of my soul is reshuffled

130604. I've added MilkyTracker to my distro. This is a FOSS editor for MOD and XM music files. Screenshot:

Requirements are light. Standard dev tools, Jack, SDL, and a few miscellaneous libraries. There's a learning curve but the tool seems to work. Recommended.

130604. A short IRC discussion about a startup idea.

<Skittles> Why does the software market seem so over saturated
<Skittles> Everything you can think of software wise has been covered

<OldCoder> People see it as an easy way to make money
<OldCoder> Water seeks its own level
<OldCoder> Effort pours in
<OldCoder> Until all the niches are filled

<OldCoder> What example were you thinking of?
<Skittles> Trying to think of worthwhile ideas

<Skittles> First I was thinking about software that would assist using the computer itself. Really the only market I see with software is improving things that have been written before. Making something like it but better.

<OldCoder> No
<OldCoder> There are always original ideas to be found
<OldCoder> Both approaches are good
<OldCoder> “All the good ideas are taken”
<OldCoder> There is a legend to the effect
<OldCoder> That a Patent Office Examiner said that around 1895
<OldCoder> A few new ideas have come along since then :P
<Skittles> :P

<Skittles> I have an idea for an app, that is pretty much handled by the community that uses it
<Skittles> That's where the content comes from, anyway
<OldCoder> Yes. It's called Web 2.0. Pretty standard.
<Skittles> Basically the idea is to make a mobile app for finding skate spots

<Skittles> Not just parks, but random places that people have skated
<Skittles> They can add a spot and add a comment
<Skittles> It will be marked on a map of the world
<Skittles> Then people can download, and find spots
<Skittles> Sounds useful to skaters

<OldCoder> If you can build a community it may work. But Chicken and the Egg. Will the people come before there are people?
<Skittles> I wonder if it already exists
<OldCoder> If it does, so what?
<OldCoder> It doesn't own the market
<OldCoder> Or you'd have heard of it

<Skittles> I don't know where to start with this
<OldCoder> You'd create an app and a site
<OldCoder> What is stopping you?
<Skittles> lol
<Skittles> What
<Skittles> I didn't know that!
<Skittles> :P

<Skittles> I don't know where to start with the app itself   -___-
<OldCoder> Would you use the service yourself? If so, what would it do to interest you?
<Skittles> It would help me find places locally that are fun to skate
<Skittles> If I had one, it would be pretty damn useful
<Skittles> if the people posted stuff locally

<OldCoder> Chicken and the Egg
<OldCoder> Need a community large enough to support that
<OldCoder> But no community will come
<OldCoder> Unless it is already there

<Skittles> All I have to do is find online skateboarding forums / sites and advertise
<Skittles> Then people will start using it
<Skittles> I hope
<OldCoder> This is the startuper dilemma
<OldCoder> It usually does not play out this way

<Skittles> Even after all that work, if it DID get used
<Skittles> monetizing would be impossible I think
<OldCoder> Not impossible
<OldCoder> If the community is large enough
<OldCoder> But large enough is tough

130602. A brief IRC exchange:

<Phenek> I have some cute photos already on new camera of baby
<Phenek> no snails there though
<Phenek> or department stores
<OldCoder> Very well

* OldCoder hopes the snail found a home
<Phenek> let's hope so. he was not a bad snail
<OldCoder> Indeed
<OldCoder> Lively as they go
* OldCoder offers a prayer for the snail
<Phenek> :)

Technical note: Today's posts are about two different Linux distros. BusyLinux is not my distro though I'm hosting a copy of the ISO file. I'll announce the name of my distro in due course.

130602. The Kiralys nearly destroyed one project I'd worked on for decades. Full time during some periods after 2004. My own Linux distro.

The distro was collateral damage. James Kiraly paid huge amounts of money to stop the book. He stopped the distro instead. Dead in the water for 11 months. The idea that something useful and fun might die... it did not bear thinking about.

But the distro is back. It's going to be good. And it's going to include the Kiraly Cases.

I've updated the kernel to 3.8.13 and XOrg to current git sources. glib and gtk+ are updated too. The new kernel works better than the old one with slow networks. Radeon video cards are supported now. And all the wonderful packages suggested by IRC friends are going into the mix.

This will be something new. A Linux distro that provides all the development and network tools one might need. Thousands of open-license articles, stories, illustrations, books, and songs. Integrated with anti-abuse efforts. The Kiraly Cases will be at the heart.

And it's all going to fit onto a flash stick the size of a few sticks of gum. Anybody will be able to copy the stick and so there's a chance that it will spread.

130602. Just a couple of photos of pets proceeding as pets do. Dogs like bacon and cats get into things. It is predictable. Each pet has a personality, though. Each is unique.

Animals with fur tend to make me unwell. I am allergic. And pets don't live long. You grow to love them and then they are gone. I should have had more pets during my life regardless.

Pets are more like people than some people. There are people who do not measure up to the class of mammals. In some cases, people have no more depth than reptiles.

Blue Dream, if you see this, send me a new photo of your turtle. Turtles are not as lively as dogs and cats. But they don't ask for much and they do no harm. Cruelty is not in their nature. They are not known to lie under oath. Perhaps turtles are satisfactory friends.

Technical note: Today's posts are about two different Linux distros. BusyLinux is not my distro though I'm hosting a copy of the ISO file. I'll announce the name of my distro in due course.

130602. BusyLinux is a little Linux distro assembled by a student. There's a screenshot of BusyLinux 2.1 below this post. It was fun to see a familiar weblog in the picture :-) To obtain a ZIP file containing the associated ISO and MD5 files, use this link:

busylinux-2.1.zip

The maintainer's remarks are included below.

The maintainer, Mr. Meow, says:

this is BusyLinux, the GNU/Linux distro I almost scrubbed 10 times, but it's finally together. in the screenshot I have a few programs running.

the program that makes all those terminals is called dvtm. screenshot shows dvtm running with a ton of programs. lot of stuff going on. programs are: tty-clock, cmatrix, links, sl, and htop.

thar

my distro has mc too. i like midnight commander. i use the terminus font on all my terminals. it's meant to be used for staring at for 8+ hours.

:p

i kinda like bash, php, html, and css. coding since i was 9. bash im beginning to like.

i get frustrated a lot. so sometimes i go all “f*ck this!” sometimes things dont work. and i loose it. tends to happen to me. but when it works. i'm fine. and i focus real hard and get things done.

my distro is a fun little toy of sorts that's meant to be used for anything really: servers, regular use, and in the future maybe for multimedia.

i should add it's based off of microcore linux. whatever the latest version is. runs kernel 3.2. good 'nuff. i've deleted some of their stuff. still trying to figure out what's not needed. their package manager sucks, been replaced with my even more suckier but less annoying one.

adding packages too. tested dropbear just now. it's a ssh server in under 200kb.

130531. Here is a new puzzle from Mr. Wizard and the latest comic about the plight of the captured king:

130531. Food; necessity, art form, social nexus, addiction. Something to think about.

I should fast more. Moderate fasts are healthy. And food sometimes makes me ill. I literally pass out. Grace Kiraly thought of this as a “choice”. It isn't, actually.

One theory I have is that surely fruits and vegetables are safe. So I have them to start the day. Today it was cherry tomatoes. Delicious.

Most regular tomatoes are bland and have been for decades. The flavor has been bred out of them. But some varieties of cherry tomatoes are worthwhile.

I shared the tomatoes in the photo below with others. One person described them as slightly sour. Food, being both analog and organic, is subjective.

I intended to eat nothing else today. But I told Katterina Koder that I'd be walking for exercise. Katterina suggested that I try a Greek diner that was on the route and I did. When I returned from the walk, I fell down and was unconscious for about 20 minutes. Not sure which item of food did it.

130531. Crazy Coder has made Shell Linux more compact. He says that the ISO file is only 36MB presently. The goal is to focus more on lightweight programs and frameworks. For a screenshot, see below.

Sita the Magician and I discussed Linux IRL today. She works with Windows but has expressed interest in Linux. Said she was concerned that it may be difficult to get up to speed. So I introduced her to Crazy Coder and Mr. Meow. If they can create distros at their ages, I said, she can learn to use it.

I added that there is no one true OS. “If you reach for a tool on this shelf, Sita, don't you pick the right tool for the job? Feel free to be both Windows and Linux.”

130531. This is an approximate transcript of a voicemail message that I left for George and Sandy Kerechanko a few minutes ago. The transcript should be reasonably accurate but is not guaranteed to be exact.

This message was left with the permission of, if I remember correctly, Lisa Marie. She and I had a brief conversation first. The conversation was pleasant and positive, as were the conversations that James Kiraly and Thomas Kiraly lied about under oath.

I hope that you're well. I'm calling to encourage you to seek meaning in Russell's life. A friend of mine, one of the Nancys I've known, lost her own son years ago. The anniversary of his death was about two weeks ago. If you review page 21 of my weblog you'll find two letters to her dated May 14. What I said in the shorter letter regarding faith applies to you too.

This story is intended for Coders.

130529. One of my laptop computers broke on Tuesday 130528. Consequently, I was offline for most of the day.

The dead machine was a problem. I knew that repairs might take days. And I wasn't sure that I could afford a replacement. But I set out on a Quest for PC.

Started at an electronics superstore. I found a new laptop on display that seemed affordable. Inserted a Flash stick holding my Linux distro into the laptop and booted Linux.

To explain a bit, my distro is my own Linux-based OS. The largest versions are reasonably useful. They include most of the development tools that a Linux Coder needs. Multimedia tools and games as well. The distro can run from a 3" mini-CD, a 5" regular CD, a DVD, flash sticks of different capacities, smartphones, cameras, and other devices.

I'm proud of the distro. I've worked on it for a decade, pieces for two decades, and it's good. The Kiralys nearly destroyed the project when they attacked last year. I couldn't work on the distro or, for that matter, do much else after that. Development largely ended for 11 months and I started to worry that the code would die with me.

But the distro is back for now. It's my hope that it will survive.

I tested the laptop for half an hour. Decided to buy it. But a sales person told me they didn't have any of that model in stock. The unit I'd been testing was for display purposes only.

The sales person showed me two used laptops and offered to sell me those instead. One of them looked good. But I couldn't find any way to get into BIOS Setup.

BIOS Setup was necessary so that I could change Boot Order and boot my distro for testing. BIOS Setup was hidden on this laptop, though; it took another half hour to figure out the procedure needed to access it. Then the laptop turned out to be incompatible with my distro.

Oh, well. I traveled to Fremont, some distance away, because a PC repair shop there had used laptops for sale.

One of the used laptops at the Fremont shop had the right type of keyboard and was the right size. The store's owner offered me the machine at a reasonable price. But Ethernet, WiFi, and graphics didn't work, and there was no hard disk. I purchased the machine anyway.

The store's owner replaced the WiFi card for me. WiFi then worked. To fix Ethernet support, I traveled to a second electronics superstore and purchased an Ethernet to USB adapter. Ethernet then worked via USB.

After that, I moved the dead laptop's hard disk to the replacement system. Linux then booted from the hard disk; however, as I expected, graphics still didn't work. This was due to the fact that the laptop had a Radeon chipset and I hadn't finished adding Radeon support to my distro. I did some tweaks and compiles, and graphics then worked.

As part of this process, I was able to get the laptop's built-in Ethernet hardware to work. So, in the end, I went from zero network interfaces to three: built-in Ethernet, Ethernet via USB, and WiFi.

The replacement laptop still had quirks after that. But it worked well enough for my purposes. I'm typing on it right now.

The Kiralys called me a hacker. They didn't mean this politely.

These people suggested that I hacked Amazon, that I hacked Humana, that I hacked GMail, that I hacked their personal machines, and that I hacked God Knows what else.

The only thing that was hacked was the truth; the truth that James Kiraly, Grace Kiraly, Thomas Kiraly, and Kenneth Kiraly would prefer to see quietly buried.

So I'm sympathetic to Mr. Meow's position on the subject of hacking. You may read his letter to a news station regarding the issue below.

130529. Mr. Meow says:

Hello, recently with all the cyber attacks going around, the reporters at Channel One News have been saying the term “hacker”. What you are telling us a hacker is, isn't right.

A real hacker is someone who is good with computers, and does not affect computer systems unless they are directed to do so by the owner of the system. An example of that would be having the government have people test their security system.

Recently this misuse of the term “hacker” has been bothering me. I'm 13 years old, good with computers, etc and I classify myself as a hacker. When you mention hackers, it is usually never good at all. It makes me sound like a criminal, which is not true.

The correct term for what you are talking about would be a “cracker”, one who breaks into computer systems. These groups like Anonymous are called “black hat hackers”, which all they do is break into computer systems on purpose, usually to leak data and get private information about someone. White-hat hackers like me do not do that. We play around with computers for fun and work.

Refrain from misusing the term “hacker” in your news casts unless you mean it's a person who's a white-hat. It's wrong to call someone who's good at computers a criminal just because of that.

130526. This is a transcript of a voicemail message that I left for George and Sandy Kerechanko a few minutes ago.

Note: I've been advised by legal counsel that I may leave George and Sandy a message at this time. However, it's probably best if I transcribe what I say and post anything that I receive in response; either verbal or written.

I've learned the hard way that life is not about facts. To preserve cherished illusions, people, good people as well as bad, will lie to themselves. And to others. From this point on, everything significant is going to be documented.

This message is for George and Sandy Kerechanko. I learned about Russell's death this morning. You have my condolences. That is the primary point. I'll add that he was well-liked among his contemporaries. In this regard, he was a success.

For additional remarks, you may read the article about Russell on the front page of my weblog. I may reflect further there on the meaning of life in the coming months. And on the nature of relationships.

Russell was very young, wasn't he? 30 seemed ancient to me when I was young myself. But today is the 30th birthday of one of my students and I find myself thinking of him as just starting out.

Regardless, each of us is given a lifetime. One lifetime is all that we get. Make the most of Time. That is what I intend to do myself.

I'm going to help people. They tried to stop me and they failed.

For some things, I may use Russell as a model. He connected with people and I'm going to ask his friends how he did that. How did your son balance his demons and his angels? The important part is that he did. In the end, he was seen as human and even beloved.

And I believe he may have helped people. This is what we should all aspire to do.

130526. Blue Dream's 30th birthday is today. Happy Birthday to somebody who is officially old now.

This is only half in jest. Russell, who'd just turned 30 himself, has died. The Time that we are given in the world is part of a limited offer. It can't be replaced.

Blue Dream, make the most of Time. Decide what you wish to do and proceed.