Straight from the Illustration Inbox:

Open Space Gallery in Beacon, NY has the honor of hosting one of the far and few between screenings of the inspirational film "Beautiful Losers." This film basically features all of our favorite artists such as Barry Mcgee, Margaret Kilgallen, ESPO, Geoff McFetridge, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Harmonie Korine, and many others and focuses on a culture and period of time we find very close to our heart. This film is a must see and once you see it you will leave inspired to make art.

Below are the details for the screening.

Sunday July 20th
6pm to 9pm
The Howland Cultural Center
477 Main Street
Beacon NY

Seating at the Howland is very limited ( about 80 people) so we have set up a place where you can pre purchase tickets to assure that you get a chance to see this amazing film.

Click here to pre purchase tickets

Hope to see everyone at the Howland!

Thanks to Adjunct Faculty Dan Weise for passing along this info!  Also, as a bonus, here's a trailer for the movie:

Berteau claims the results of the tests prove that Facebook is able to collect information about its members' surfing habits on affiliate sites, regardless of whether permission has been granted.

Facebook replied to CA's concerns in a letter describing the ease with which user's can opt out of having the purchasing information listed on the "mini-feed" on their profile.

"I replied explaining that I was not particularly worried about the feeds, which are only shown to friends who I have previously vetted, but that I was more concerned about the silently collected data, particularly the possibility of that data being sold to third parties," Berteau said.

Facebook has since released a statement claiming that it has no choice but to collect the data so that it can be used should the user decide to "opt-in" to the service.

This is Bullshit.  They could submit a list of users who opt-in to affiliates, and have them *only* transmit data for those users.  Which leads me to an interesting question.  Has Facebook submitted a list of users to collect data from?  (If so, their "no choice" argument is already a flat out lie on its part).  If not, do affiliate sites send data for *every* user, regardless of whether they have a Facebook account?

Facebook is saying they do not use the data.  They haven't said they will not.  But they also fail to understand that sometimes people just don't like the idea of a corporation tracking them, whether the data is erased and "never used" or not.

The area around St Agnes is quite magical. The site itself is set upon the flanks of St Agnes Beacon which is a few hundred feet above sea level and with terrific views over the surrounding heath and cliffs.

The site has minimal facilities and has NO toilet block. There is a lovely scenic beach nearby. If there is anything negative, it is the isolated location.

Open: 23 March to 1 October

St Agnes Caravan Club Site,

Beacon Drive,

St Agnes,

Cornwall,

TR5 0NU

Telephone:  (01872) 552543

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

The River Pool at Beacon is 30 inches deep with a net bottom. It can hold about 20 swimmers.

Still, when the folk singer Pete Seeger and a cluster of about 50 supporters and co-conspirators gathered by the river on Thursday to dedicate the River Pool at Beacon, a partly submerged pool in which Hudson River water flows through an intricate mesh framework, it was hard not to see both a small thing and a small miracle.

A quirky tribute to Mr. Seeger’s vision of the Hudson reborn, a minor marvel of engineering and design, a glimpse backward and forward, the pool is both a century out of date and perhaps a few steps ahead of its time.

“The thing about Pete is that he really is a visionary; he can see what’s not there,” said Alan Zollner, an I.B.M. engineer from Newburgh who was part of the nonprofit organization that created the pool. “He was able to look at a dirty river and see a clean one. He was able to visualize the Clearwater and then there really was a ship. And he was able to visualize the Hudson as a place where people will come to swim.”

And so they come, Mr. Zollner’s two daughters, ages 5 and 10, the four boys from 10 to 15 who now show up on their bicycles every day, curious moms with excited kids to what was once a garbage dump and is now a fascinating little node in a worldwide movement to make rivers like the Hudson places where people can swim once again.

The River Pool, designed by a New York environmental architect named Meta Brunzema, is a wading pool 30 inches deep with a net bottom — like a trampoline — made of Dyneema twine, which is commonly used in body armor vests and rock-climbing ropes. It anchors a dynamic structure with 11 brightly colored fiberglass seats forming the perimeter that floats on the tides and responds to the gentle rhythms of the river. It is open every day but Monday from noon to 6 p.m. in Riverfront Park and has space for 20 swimmers.

It had its beginnings in Mr. Seeger’s memories of swimming at the beach at Hook Mountain near Nyack as a boy, of the Beacon public beach of the 1920s and especially of pictures that stuck in his brain of the old wooden bathing structures off Manhattan that city dwellers, particularly immigrants, used a century ago.

Swimming was far from Item 1 when he helped focus attention on the Hudson in the 1960s. But when someone sent him Ms. Brunzema’s preliminary designs in 2001, it seemed a logical next step. And after the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which had to approve the pool, asked for a small prototype rather than the original design, which was 66 feet in diameter, she eventually came up with the current model. It is entered through a metal gangway and can be taken apart and stored.

Ms. Brunzema said there were bathing structures that use river water in some European cities, though most river enterprises were more like barges with chlorinated water. And the Hudson already had a handful of swimming beaches. But she said it was a unique challenge to accommodate the river, state environmental regulations and design issues in putting together the pool, which she hoped would be a prototype for larger ones on the Hudson or elsewhere.

“It’s all about bringing people and the aquatic environment together,” she said. “For me as an architect who tries to be environmentally progressive, I felt this was a project that pushed the levels of what we call typology — it’s not really a pool, not really a boat, not really a building, not really a beach. In the future, we’ll be building hybrid structures that have more flexible boundaries with the environment.”

The cove where the pool was built, mostly covered with a green coating of water chestnuts, has exceptionally clean water, which can’t be said for every place on the Hudson. But Ms. Brunzema said it’s certainly feasible to start thinking of a larger structure off Manhattan. One issue would be cost. This small prototype, relying on reduced design costs and much volunteer labor, cost about $220,000. Ms. Brunzema put actual costs of building a similar one closer to $350,000. That’s no inconsequential sum, but it’s far less than the cost of creating and maintaining a beach or in-ground pool. And the river ecology remains complicated — water quality improving but PCBs still lurking on the bottom, which might affect people who eat tainted fish.

Supporters of the River Pool say it, like the annual swim across the Hudson that the group sponsors, is both about reclaiming the river and finding ways to dramatize its importance and potential. “I used to joke that the price of liberty is eternal publicity,” Mr. Seeger said.

And one small pool in a still problematic river is hardly the vision that Gov. George E. Pataki sketched out in his 2004 State of the State address. He called for making the Hudson suitable for swimming from its source in the Adirondacks to Manhattan and ensuring that every community along the Hudson had at least one new or upgraded access point to the river by next year — the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river.

Still, the pool’s young devotees seem happy enough with the real-time experience. Mr. Zollner’s 10-year-old daughter, Rebecca, took particular pleasure from a 2005 newspaper clipping from The New York Times that her father had kept in his files. It described the proposal as “a river project so quirky that one can’t help rooting for it.”

“You should put that in your story,” she said.

By PETER APPLEBOME

New York Times

It is an interesting read if you think that John McCain is the only candidate with something to fear from Bob Barr's campaign.

I would like to add also to this that Ralph Nader isn't out of the woods with Bob Barr.  Many people voted for Ralph Nader as a "none of the above" vote.  They did this on name recognition alone.  But at the same time as Nader was a known commodity in the race he garnished much more news than did Michael Badnarik, the previous Libertarian candidate and he gained far more media attention than Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party and David Cobb the Green Party candidate.  I believe as the Libertarians gain speed on this many of the people who still don't like the Republicrats will come our way.

And, by the way, I am not from Tulsa!

1. Most of the people in trouble are not New Home Buyers - they are people just like you who needed a new roof etc and refinanced
2. When people get into trouble, they freeze - feel ashamed and many miss the very short window of time when they could get help
3. When enough people in your neighborhood lose their homes, you are sunk too

This one blog by a woman trying to get herself out of trouble offers the other key angle. Many of us are so busy that we do not pay enough attention to our finances. We also tend to think that banks and financial organizations would never do anything that was not wise - so in our busy lives we take their trust for granted

My point? That many see the "story" of the mortgage crisis as one of good and evil. The sinners have brought this upon them and they have to learn their lesson. Worse many who are themselves in trouble believe this too and can be too ashamed to seek help in time.

How do you see the crisis? How does it affect you?

At the base of the hill Mat looked back at the fire and contemplated going back. He shook his head and turned back to the footpath leading away from the hill top.

The fire would serve as booth a warning and a beacon to others out on the Moore.

The group he had split from two days ago,would understand the warning, that the walking dead were here.

They would also know that it was a beacon, a beacon that the dead would want to visit, the perfect opportunity to eradicate more of the dead, or a place to avoid like the plague. Either way Mat did not care, his task was done.

New Comic
At the Community Page stuff has been updated again. There is some new Fan Art, a new coloring page (if you didn't knw already) and a new comic! Click the image below to read it.

~Jellyboard

P.S. I will start on the Newspaper post.....now!

Also, the new sports catalog is coming out on the 27th.

I posted the mission walkthrough today!!

In other news I will not be Bigmokey2 anymore. I will be my rare penguin Mr Pie42. The only reason I'm changing penguins is because (as you know) Bigmokey2's name changed. And because more of my friends that are nice are one his buddy list.

Mr Pie42
That's all until next post!

~edited by skydays147~

Jeder Chairman, der das schöne Hobby Flugsimulation am PC auch nur halbwegs ernsthaft betreibt, sollte mal einen oder auch gerne zwei Blicke in das Visual Aids Handbook werfen.

Aus dem Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Chapter 1 Aeronautical Ground Lighting

General 1

Civil Aerodromes 1

Government (Military) Aerodromes 1

Colour and Intensity of Lights 1

Aerodrome Beacon 2

Approach Lighting 2

Supplementary Approach Lighting 4

Precision Approach Path Indicator (PAPI) 4

Runway Lighting 5

Taxiway Lighting 9

Chapter 2 Surface Markings

General 1

Paved Surface Markings 1

Chapter 3 Signs

General 1

Mandatory Signs 1

Information Signs 4

Chapter 4 Visual Docking Guidance Systems

General 1

Azimuth Guidance for Nose-in Stands (AGNIS) 1

Aircraft Positioning and Information System (APIS/APIS++) 3

Safegate Safedock

Hier gehts es zum DOWNLOAD!

Enjoy!

Sorry this is late, I didn't get on Club Penguin or go to other blogs yesterday. Here is the tutorial for the new mission 8

Also, Rockhopper is on the horizon! I can't get a picture, but check it out at the telescope at the Beacon.

Sorry this is late, I didn't get on Club Penguin or go to other blogs yesterday. Click here for the tutorial for Mission 8, "Mysterious Tremors" (I'm having trouble embedding it).Also, Rockhopper is on the horizon! I can't get a picture, but check it out at the telescope at the Beacon.

Rockhopper is on his way to Club Penguin Island! I wonder what he's bringing and if he likes he's repaired ship.

-Waddlguin

When one talks about trying to hide audio one often thinks of hiding speakers in products like rock or tree trunk speakers (left). However this year there was a lot of products that allowed one to embed audio in walls where it would be impossible to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. One really neat technology was from Holosonics. Their product allows one to embed a holophonic speaker that directs sound into a a tight beam. Their AS-16 and AS-24 Audio Spotlight Panels are unique to the marketplace. The technology means that only when you are in the beam can you actually hear the sound. It's great for replacing ceiling tiles almost side-by-side to create a different acoustic environment under each tile.

Below is a YouTube Video that explains the Audio Spotlight technology;

Below is an American TV report that shows how this technology is being used in advertising;

Stealth Acoustics was showing their three-way, full-range loudspeaker system that becomes completely invisible after installation. The loudspeaker has a rigid frame and the technology includes a paintable active diaphragm face.

Below is a video on Stealth Acoustics' Invisible Speakers;

Below is a competitors promotional video on their invisible speakers;

Below is a competitors video on how invisible speakers are installed;

Automated Live Audio Capture

One area that’s growing in our work is the ability to capture live sound with limited manpower. We saw a few technologies at InfoComm08 that assists us in this area. Sabine’s series of Phantom Mic Rider microphones combines both DSP processing and an Infra Red detector that provides gated technology to turn microphone on and off as people approach the microphone. Depending on the series purchased the distance at which the microphone becomes active can be adjusted as can the amount of digital signal processing.

FullSound from the Conference Technology Group was another technology that impressed us. It's a fully engineered system that employs embedded ceiling microphones, and can even work with speaker support systems in the room. It works in small conference rooms and can scale out to full sized classrooms. It can even follow peoples voices around the room as they change locations.
Headset Microphones

We've been thinking about implementing headset microphones for some of our audio work in the department. The problem is with these kind of microphones is that the high end versions are expensive ($500.00), can break easily and in some cases are actually fine pieces of jewellery or instruments depending on how one wants to classify them. We came across a series of these headset microphones at Galaxy Audio that are more affordable than some of the higher end models that we've been looking at.

Speciality Microphones

Earthworks Audio showed two specialty microphones that caught my attention. Earthworks PianoMic system. It has been designed to fit inside a grand piano. It's part of Earthworks High Definition Microphone series which is explained at this link.

The video below demonstrates the microphone in action;

The other series of mics that looked really good was their Earthworks Flex Series microphones. Earthworks claims a patented pick-up pattern allows an orator to move up to 90 degrees off-axis and still be heard with intelligibility and sound quality. This is a real advantage for church, civic and corporate podium speech applications. The Flex Mics smooth off-axis response will provide more gain before feedback. The flexible neck has been designed for the adjustment of microphones positioning with no handling noise.

Handheld Recorders

In wandering around the floor at InfoComm08 we came across Samson’s Handy H4 and Handy H2 handheld recorders along with SONY’s PCM-D50 handheld unit. All these have been in the market for some time. New this year was Roland’s R-09HR handheld recorder. The R-09HR is a professional, high-definition recorder that records 24bit/96kHz fidelity.

Below is the promotional video on the R-09HR recorder;

Below is a "lunch and learn" video on the R-09HR recorder that I found on YouTube;

Below is a more detailed operational video on the R-09HR recorder that I also found on YouTube;

Below is a video on the various handheld recorders that are currently on the market;

While not a handheld Roland’s R-44 appears to be a great machine to replace most desktop recording devices. The Edirol R-44 is designed for professional capturing up to 4 channels of uncompressed audio with selectable bit depths (16-bit or 24-bit) and sampling frequencies of 44.1kHz/48kHz/88.2kHz/96kHz. For recording media the R-44 employs SD cards or large capacity SDHC cards while employing no moving parts to record audio.

Gilderfluke & Co. showed a unique series of products. Their Sd-10 is a complete stereo audio repeater. It can be used anywhere you need a solid state, high quality audio system that will play for years. The Sd-10 can be dropped right into an audio system in place of a CD player. Their product line also includes an amplifier that will operate with the Sd-10 and a combo unit that includes both the player and amplifier.

Speaker Systems

Anchor Audio's Beacon Sound System

A number of manufacturers were displaying products using Array speakers as their base technology. Anchor Audio was showing their Beacon® Sound System line array tower can be opened and operational in less than a minute.

The training video below explains how quickly the Beacon can be deployed;

This video below --from NAB 2008-- quickly shows many of the features of the Beacon system from Anchor Audio's booth. (Please note the demo starts approx. 2 minutes into the video.)

PHA - Pragmatic High Performance Array Speakers

We came across Pragmatic designs small, portable and wireless PA system in a briefcase. It uses a small PHA-4 array speaker that contains 4 high performance, full range drivers that has a well-defined dispersion pattern with no hot spots. When mounted vertically, the speakers offer a uniform sound field 360 degrees around the speaker.

Firewire Interconnectivity for Makie Onyx Mixer

The Onyx FireWire Card for an Makie’s Onyx mixer series is a user-installable 24-bit/96kHz card transforms the Onyx 1220, 1620 and 1640 mixers into digital audio interfaces capable of sending up to 18 channels of audio to a Mac or PC without the need for additional converter boxes or hardware.

The Onyx FireWire card contains two 6-pin FireWire connectors that each supply all 16 channels plus the L/R mix. With the dual connectors the Onyx mixer can be placed anywhere within a chain of FireWire-equipped devices. It’s possible to daisy-chain two 16-channel Onyx mixers via FireWire and send up to 32 mic signals right to your laptop.

Other Audio Links

QDP Invisible Motorized Speakers - http://qpdspeakers.com

This marital spat wasn't about another woman, the husband not picking up his dirty socks (something Barack Obama is apparently guilty of), or the wife going on a secret shopping spree. "If you ever bring my car back on empty after borrowing it, don't bother to come home," she yelled. "I don't have enough money to fill it up and I've got to go to work."

Has it come to this?

Groffoto has another take on this subject. Here's the link: http://groffoto.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/rv-for-free/

Don't let my husband see that photo. We'll be living in that RV before you know it!

But when Mr. Fusco, a professional kayak instructor and the founder of New York City’s Mayor’s Cup kayak race, moved here three years ago, he was struck by residents’ disconnection from the Hudson River, the western border of this city of 16,000.

“I was on the river often and lots of young people were playing around — playing basketball and doing lots of things — and I never saw people on the river,” he said.

Figuring residents would flock to the Hudson if they learned about it, Mr. Fusco, 41, approached the Beacon school district with a plan; he would promote the river by introducing high school students to kayaking in the school pool.

“You think of Beacon and you think of it as a city school, not as a river school,” said Jean Lain, the district’s assistant superintendent for instruction and personnel. “People were just kind of startled by the idea. I mean, can you imagine kayaking in a pool?”

But the idea meshed with the school’s desire to expose students to lifetime activities. It also fit with this former industrial city’s river-centered, environmental/recreational push, which includes creation of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, construction of floating pools for swimming in the Hudson, and Scenic Hudson’s development of a riverfront park and adjoining 160-room “green” hotel on the 25-acre Long Dock Beacon site.

This winter, five days of kayaking were incorporated into the physical education program of Beacon High’s 400 juniors and seniors. The ultimate reward, though, was a springtime Hudson paddle for 34 students, most of them seniors. Seventeen kayaked seven miles south from Long Dock to Little Stony Point on May 28 and 17 more the next day.

“Some kids live here all their lives and have never been down to Long Dock, let alone the river, and it’s such a beautiful place,” Kim Atwell, a physical education teacher, said.

“It’s like it’s right there, so you kind of take it for granted,” Lana Lagomarsini, editor of the school’s newspaper, The Bulldog Chronicle, said of the river.

Ms. Lagomarsini, an 18-year-old senior, kayaked whitecapped water driven by 25-mile-per-hour gusts on May 28. “It was challenging, but it was fun to push myself,” she said.

Because of the trip, Dominick DiFilippo, 17, a senior who had never been on the water, said he wanted to get a rowboat for catch-and-release fishing.

The trip demonstrated the water’s accessibility, said Sasha Freeman, 17, a senior. “People don’t realize the beauty of the Hudson Valley,” she said. “I would never have taken the initiative to have gone canoeing or kayaking on my own.”

The paddle included a stop at Bannerman’s (or Pollepel) Island, whose main building, a skeletal-looking castle, once housed much of the arsenal of the arms dealer Francis Bannerman in the early 1900s. (Public access to the island is restricted.) Student interest was stirred by stories from their guide, Wes Gottlock, about the island’s prostitution and bootlegging before the arsenal was built and of a 1920 building explosion heard 75 miles away.

Joelle Price, 17, a Beacon native and a senior who had never been on the river, now wants to canoe the waterway with her father. Peter Redler, 18, another senior who is a lifelong resident, wants to become a kayak instructor.

Mr. Fusco said other districts had inquired about beginning a program like Beacon’s. But Beacon isn’t standing still.

“This is really something to build upon the next few years,” said Eric Romanino, the high school’s director of physical education and athletics. “Our main objective now is to increase the number of kids we get on the river.”

By NANCY HAGGERTY

New York Times

This is my Ice Cream that phil exploded in my hand with a footy.

I was proper gutted as it was sorting my hangover out, luckily Ste Mitchell bought me another one :)

There is this basic ideology. The paradox of the masses. Whenever at any given network the number of members become too huge, the system starts to break down. It happened with all other social networks, it happened with the internet before that, it happened with ICQ, it happened with Orkut, and it will happen with Facebook. Lets take the case of Orkut, and with a much more real life example to follow it. Orkut was great till it was reference based, and then case the day when it was opened up to everyone and then the masses came in and so did the "frandship" requests. Long story short, I deleted my account in Orkut and am hiding in Facebook till that eventual doom also arrives at the door step of Facebook.

I think this is the logical thing that is going to happen to facebook. Imagine that you are part of an elite club such as the Lion's club (if it is elite enough) or lets take the Madras Club (known for its elitism) and you were part of the elite 50 and you knew everyone who was part of the club. Most of the members in that club enjoy that lifestyle and keep it closed for the very nature that they dont want to democratize it. Lets say that they do, what is going to happen is that there will be 300+ people flowing in, soon you realize that you dont very much "belong".

In the first order of things of all creatures, the necessity to belong is a crucial one. When that starts to erode, everything starts to fall apart. In my visual imagination, its like a tower that rises and rises, till it eventually starts to crumble under its own weight and falls apart, that smaller networks start to arise out of the ashes of the parent.

All this is to state one thing. The future of social networks is one where there will be niche verticals that will get created for various things. Imagine meetups with a social networking aspect and that is what will happen. Now this is happening in some level with Ning . But the issue with Ning is two fold. One it cant get out of the domain name of Ning.com (which can be easily fixed), and the other is the fact that I need to recreate the membership everytime. What if I create a new "community" pretty much like what we do inside orkut or Facebook, but outside of the walled garden?

So the future is pretty much a case where there will be skeleton frameworks available so that one can give it the look, and theme it to what they want, all the way from Mac Cultists, to Cricket Fans to whatever one fancies, and the social linkages will be drawn out of Opensocial. Using the linkages one can easily pass on how one's friend is part of a new network and can draw out a larger easily accessible audience for each of these interest groups.

Now comes the fancy bit. Each of the these verticals will need to be monetized to be sustainable. And just as facebook has Beacon, there is a need for a Unplugged beacon which can power these networks and make these initiatives sustainable. Given that they will be such a niche target area, getting an audience of say 40,000 - 60,000 for each genre would be fairly simple and would make for a very focused approach for these marketers and advertisers. There will be new ways and means of delivering the content, message and engaging those audiences.

There is most certainly an opportunity to tap here, especially as we start to see eCommerce on the rise in emerging markets with such staggering numbers.

In the future people are going to see fewer advertisements. This should be the aim of the advertising industry - fewer ads, more relevant, more welcome. People have an instinctive resistance to advertising built up from years of exposure to incessant, irrelevant ads. Spammers are derided but they work on a similar principle as TV advertisers: get your ad in front of enough people and someone will respond. The only real game changer we have seen is Google who could sell advertisers the attention of the people who were searching on a particular keyword.

Social networks have similar potential to Google as they are, in essence, giant marketing databases. The problem is that none of them have worked out how to use them effectively. The most notable attempt so far, faceook's Beacon, managed to create a system which for the first time actively irritated users. I'm not sure this is what Zuckerberg had in mind when he said media changes every 100 years but the outcome reminded me of Doc Brown wiring the flux capacitor wrongly and getting a load of rubbish blown in his face (or something). The bottom line is you should not be using your giant marketing database to cause highly targeted annoyance.

People don't want no advertising. Social networks have the potential to be great discovery engines and deliver ads people actually want to see, but they are currently failing.

That's the difference between the length of the day right now in New York City, vs. Los Angeles. I'm using these two cities as surrogates for Palm Springs, Calif., and Beacon, N.Y.

What do you do with 38 minutes of extra daylight? Well, if you're me, you use it to walk to Ron's Ice Cream on Fishkill Avenue and buy your first ice cream cone of the season. The rule in our house is that if my husband and I are going to Ron's, we must walk. The thinking is that we will burn up the calories we consume in the ice cream cone during the walk to and from Ron's, which is about a half-mile from our house.

I love to go out during the so-called magic hour (a term used by cinematographers, which I first learned about in the 1992 documentary Visions of Light). The magic hour is actually a few minutes before the sun goes down, not a whole hour. This period is prized by photographers because the light is diffuse and everything is bathed in a warm, golden glow. The harshness of daylight has disappeared and the sensuality of dusk is approaching.

Some people get a hopeful feeling at sunrise. Not me. I was born a few minutes before midnight, so I think I'm a night owl by design.

I made my magic hour trek to Ron's by myself because Jim is still in Palm Springs. I ate my Hershey's Peanut Butter Cup single cone on a bench where I see a Little League game in progress under the lights. No, not the Friday Night Lights, the Monday ones.

When I turned my head in the other direction, I could see the top of Mount Beacon, where patriots set fires during the Revolutionary War to signal information about British troop movements to George Washington, who was headquartered across the Hudson River in Newburgh.

What's interesting to me in this old mill town is how many people jump in their Jeep Cherokees and Ford Explorers to travel a mile or less to grab a cone at Ron's or a six-pack or lottery ticket at the corner deli. What is it going to take to get folks out of their SUVs and on their feet? Gas at $5 a gallon? $10?

There is a strange juxtaposition right now in Beacon and maybe in the U.S. On the one side, the tree huggers are apologizing for their carbon footprints and busily establishing compost piles in the backyards. On the other are those who feel that unlimited gasoline usage is their birthright. Is there an in-between in America?

To my mind, this would involve a sensible approach to conservation without finger-pointing from the Greens and temper tantrums from the gas guzzlers. It might also revive the quaint habit of walking to the store, the library, the ice cream stand. The only people who seem to walk in this town are children and senior citizens, though more bicycles seem to have arrived since I left here on Jan. 30.

Can we find a healthy place between self-flagellation for despoiling the planet and mindless consumption? I hope so.

I had an expense account that I used to buy breakfast, lunch, and dinner for indie film directors (that's my Moon in Cancer at the Midheaven, feeding the world). I dressed up and hob-nobbed with stars at film premieres and glossy afterparties five nights a week. I know, you're getting tired just listening to the hectic schedule of fun.

Given Jupiter's last bit of bounty, I was hoping for something really fabulous this year as the Great Benefic passes over my Sun for the first time in 12 years. The second of Jupiter's three conjunctions to my Sun was exact on May 30.

What did I get? A free cross-country airplane trip that was remarkably hassle-free, especially compared to my last go-around flying standby as a "nonrev" (that's airline jargon for nonrevenue passenger). That's certainly something to be thankful for.

In the month of May, I gained all the weight back that I had lost since the beginning of the year. Thanks, Jupiter! I really needed that extra padding to keep me comfy in those cramped airline seats.

Now, I still I have another pass of expansive Jupiter, later in the year, so maybe the big manna is yet to come. In the meantime, I'm back in Beacon, my working-class, crafty, diverse, tree-hugging gentrified mill town in the Hudson Valley. Sounds very Saturn in Virgo to me, maybe with the exception of the adjective "diverse."

Guess what? We have a library that is within walking distance to our house. Who cares if gas goes to $5 a gallon? There's nothing like summer to get me into the cool, prowling the stacks. I found a good book on Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla, the fathers of electricity, Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes.

I'm on a Tesla kick, as readers of this blog know. I got hooked after hearing astrologers at the United Astrology Conference in Denver last month talk about a breakthrough in energy that's likely to come when Uranus goes into Aries. (See "The Return of Nikola Tesla," filed under Cancer in the categories listed at the right.)

I still have a job, a car, a house, and a husband (I think I do, though he's high on Palm Springs and the 130 or so golf courses in the area), so I've got a lot to be thankful for. I was reunited with our cat Bogey today and with Freddy, our beloved handyman, a Taurus who can fix anything on this circa 1900 brick cottage.

When I called him, he came right over to mow the lawn, which had been overlooked during the four months that I was gone. My old-fashioned push mower wasn't going to topple 18 inches of grass, so I had to expand my carbon footprint a little by using a gasoline-powered model owned by a friend of Freddy's. Mea culpa, Mother Earth!

With innovative Uranus in Pisces sextiling my Jupiter, I've suddenly got a blog and a new group of new astropals in the blogosphere. That counts for a lot, I know. But sometimes it doesn't feel tangible enough for this ole Capricorn Sun.

I'm afraid the Internet is going to disappear one day, the way the Twin Towers did on Sept. 11, 2001. Apologies to my international readers who are tired of Americans whining about 9/11, but I've got a good excuse. A former employer of mine was having a conference at Windows on the World, a restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, that fateful day, and I knew some folks who didn't make it out.

In fact, I helped recruit one of the editors who died that day -- David Rivers, a currency trading expert from Dow Jones. David was a fitness nut who always dressed in tight white designer jeans, an even tighter white designer T-shirt, and white sneakers (I think these were Converse, not Calvin Klein)-- even in the middle of a New York City winter. If angel apparel comes from Marc Jacobs, David was dressed perfectly for heaven, where he most certainly is right now.

Here's a link to a 9/11 Memorial Web site with a picture and tributes to David: http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=2288 (He's wearing his trademark white outfit in the picture.)

As you can see, with Jupiter on your Sun, you start thinking about the Big Picture. With Jupiter transiting my fourth house of home and family, a new nephew of mine will be making his entrance into the world any day now. My husband's nephew is getting married later this month in Colorado and that will bring us together with lots of friends and family. Maybe Jupiter's gifts don't always come tied up in a big red bow or with an American Express Corporate Card attached.

Michael Arrington recently bemoaned the lack of ambition amongst those who would challenge Google. What I like about Arrington is that he is prepared to think big and try to see beyond what currently exists. He is not always right but he is bold. In this case I agree with him, I think we are in the infancy of search and for others to give up in the face of Google is not only bad for us but also bad for Google. Any good company should welcome competition as a chance to make them better. Watching a team trot to the title is boring and business is no different.

The challenge for Google will be what if people start searching in a completely new way? One of the reasons facebook is so highly valued is that it is essentially a huge marketing database. It is this reason that Microsoft had to take a strategic interest in facebook as they could not let another chance to develop their advertising revenues slip. I personally think that MS should think more carefully about what type of web apps are going to replace its Office suite and concentrate on those, but that is for another post.

Venturebeat has observed that Google is trying to do an end run around the MS/facebook deal by serving ads up inside widgets. The reason so much money is pouring into widgets is that they command eyeballs and eyeballs are worth money. I suspect the reason facebook is encouraging developers is so they can see if any of them start to make cash then start to tax their revenue for access to the facebook platform.

The real revolution will not come in search but in find. Searching is good if I already know exactly what I want but if I am less sure 'find' is more important and this is where facebook comes in. Beacon was a way of friends recommending things to other friends. It was a clumsy, annoying way of doing it but the central principle is there: when people don't exactly know what they want, find is more important than search.