Author: Chris Barrus

Public Service Announcement to all Urban Explorers

If you take pictures and write about your activities, prepare to get arrested:

It was a Web site filled with dark images of abandoned homes, factories and buildings throughout New Jersey.

The site displays photographs showing buildings, walls and cars with the date and time the pictures were taken and describing the locations in detail.

But police say the designer of the now-defunct site, www.abandonedandbeyond.com, also was breaking the law.

Fairfield police arrested 25-year-old Robert Pless of Wayne on Tuesday and charged him with burglary and criminal trespassing after the owners of a vacant factory in Fairfield discovered someone had broken into their building and posted pictures of its interior on the Internet.

Speaking as someone who can be classified as an “urban explorer”, I have conflicting feelings about this. The charges are ridiculous, especially the burglary charge because:

Police were unable to offer a motive for the break-ins, since it did not appear that items were stolen from the sites.

However there’s a related issue bouncing around the UE (urban explorer) community on the pros and cons of making this information public to begin with. Why? People can’t be trusted to be responsible. For instance, the old fire truck at the long-abandoned Flushing Airport which sat relatively untouched for fifty years until it appeared in Forgotten New York in 2001. Three years later, the poor truck is stripped to the bone.

Similar deterioration has occurred out in the western ghost towns. Old ghost town and mining camp guides from the 60s spoke of extensive ruins and “movie set quality” sites that by the time I got there in the mid-80s where nothing more than charred remains and ATC tire tracks. What to do? I’m not sure… I don’t trust people to do the right thing, and I certainly do not trust Authority, who’s response will either be prosecution or a realization that such sites are a commodity. I suppose the only thing to do in the near-term is to retreat back to obscurity. And be sure to password-protect those web sites.

On the other hand, I firmly believe that this is an abomination:

An exciting new Discovery Channel series to air in 2004 is casting for the following:

1) An adventurous, dynamic, structural engineer –interest in urban exploration & archeology is a plus.
2) A hip, buff female rock climber/extreme athlete
3) A dynamic, young caver
4) A quirky cutting-edge electronics whiz

All should be telegenic, engaging, with unique and memorable personalities, interested in trying their hand at urban exploration. WeÂ’re looking for people with the desire and charisma to become national TV celebrities.

This series will explore the culture of urban exploration – going into abandoned structures, tunnels, bridges, towers – the hidden zones in our cities where mere mortals fear to tread – or at least have no idea that they exist. We are assembling an “A-Team,” 2-3 unforgettable individuals with particular areas of expertise who will set out on various exotic urban adventures. At each stop they will meet members of the local urban exploration community, who will help them along their way.

Can there be at least ONE geek hobby left alone without being co-opted into trash? It was bad enough seeing robot combat degenerate into the hideous sub-WWF “Battlebots”, and this just sends me into adrenal frenzy. For Cthulhu’s sake… please don’t cooperate with these assholes.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball or the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

Or else the CPRR, sorry, the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum will literally beat you senseless with their twenty pound terms-of-service agreement.

I dare anyone to post an inline image from their site.

Geeks to The Rest Of You: “Drop dead!”

I make my living as a network admin/tech support manager and this article in the New York Times is completely on the money.

Many of the computationally confused say they suffer from genuine intimidation and even panic over how to handle the mysterious machines they have come to rely on for so much of daily life. Virus writers, spammers and scammers, they say, are the ones who should be held accountable for the chaos they cause.

But as the same people equip themselves with fancy computers and take advantage of the Internet for things like shopping and banking, critics say that their perpetual state of confusion has begun to get tiresome. And while the Internet’s traditional villains remain elusive, those inadvertently helping them tend to be friends and neighbors.

…..

And some, tired of being treated like free help lines, are beginning to rebel. They are telling friends, relatives and random acquaintances to figure it out on their own.

More to the point, I think it’s simple common courtesy. It’s not acceptable to approach a doctor or a lawyer outside of their office for free advice and I see no reason why IT folks shouldn’t be treated the same way. Otherwise I’ll be happy to help… at a price.

Meanwhile, this person strikes a blow again gender stereotyping:

But his girlfriend, Miriam Tauber, 24, makes no apologies for her lack of computer knowledge. To her, computers are like “moody people” who behave illogically. If people like Mr. Rubenstein expect her to understand them, she suggests, perhaps they should learn to speak in a language she can understand, rather than ridiculous acronyms and suffixes.

“There are these MP3’s and PDF’s and a million other things that you don’t even know what they are,” Ms. Tauber said. “I don’t feel like I need to figure out computers, because my instinct is there’s just no way.”

Then may I suggest that you don’t use a computer ever.

Luminous Squid

It’s been a couple weeks since the last squid story, therefore:

A squid that shines like a torch could lead to a new generation of optical tools. Scientists have been studying the Hawaiian bobtail squid which aims a beam down from its belly as a searchlight when looking for food. It also helps protect the squid from predators by reducing its tell-tale shadow on the ocean floor. The creature’s light-producing organ is powered by glowing bacteria. But the beam is produced by stacks of reflecting plates which surround the it.

Pizza bucket

I don’t wish for a lot of things, but I will make an exception here. I sincerely wish that in the next couple years it is discovered that low-carb diets cause a wide-range of health problems. Low-carb zealots have hell to pay for unleashing this food atrocity upon the earth.

And in Escondido, Calif., John Pontrelli, owner of Pit Stop Pasta, offers what may be a traditionalist’s worst nightmare: “pizza in a bucket.” It has all the pizza toppings placed in a crock or, for takeout customers, a metal can.

While it’s not a big item, he said, some people have asked for it, and “Our motto here is: you want to say no to people as little as possible.”