Kurt Pires

Lists and Points of Interest

• My custom hyper-linked copy of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (S.652).
• Acupressure -- especially Jin Shin Do (learned at the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, CA)
• Acupressure Institute in Berkeley
• Metronome Ballroom in San Francisco
• Nearby places to relax:
  • Harbin Hot Springs near Middletown (Lake County)
  • Kiva Retreat House in Santa Cruz
• The Personal Ad I never submitted.
• Dave Barry's story about Roger and Elaine
• A lot more to come...

Recommended Less Well-Known Movies and TV Series

• Diva -- coolest character ever!
• The Last Seduction -- evilest character ever!
• Priscilla: Queen of the Desert -- you have to see it to understand it
• Ju Dou -- a tragedy set in feudal China
• To Live -- historical China through the eyes of its middle class
• Grand Canyon -- a statement of our troubled times
• Swimming to Cambodia -- Spalding Gray's experiences making The Killing Fields
• The Producers -- early Mel Brooks at his best
• Better Off Dead -- Savage Steve Holland's teenage nightmares come to life!
• The Snapper -- A social drama set in Dublin by the author of The Commitments
• Eddie and the Cruisers -- A nostalgic look through the tragic history of this fictional band
• The Wizard of Speed and Time -- Mike Jittlov's meta special effect movie
• She's the One -- Edward Burns's movie after The Brothers McMullen
• Head Above Water -- Harvey Keitel & Cameron Diaz in a laugh-out-loud dark comedy
• Dark Star -- John Carpenter's and Dan O'Bannon's final project at UCLA film school
• The Night Before -- A movie with Keanu Reeves told in flashbacks quite well.
• The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave -- Claymation Greats by Nick Park
• "Red Dwarf" -- Very Well Written British SciFi Comedy
  • Red Dwarf OnLine (Offical Home Site)
  • Core Man's Red Dwarf Reference Guide
  • Red Dwarf Info at www.nez.com
  • Red Dwarf FTP Archive at UBC
    • Talkie Toaster Script
• "Blake's 7" -- British SciFi Drama
• "UFO" Home Page -- British SciFi Drama

Music

• Pink Floyd (both with and without Roger Waters)
  • Wish You Were Here
  • Dark Side of the Moon
  • Meddle
  • The London Philharmonic Orchestra does Pink Floyd in:
    Us And Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd
• Suzanne Vega
  • Luka
  • Tom's Diner
  • Small Blue Thing
• The Tommy Castro Band -- a SF Bay Blues Band -- Since they've gone national, I rarely get to listen to them and unfortunately their live shows are 10 times better than their recordings. Don't miss them if you can hear them live.
• The Fatt-Back Bluesman -- I heard Brother Yusef play at Blues on the Bay on Treasure Island for Labor Day in 1998. His acoustical one-man show was excellent! He's based in LA and so the only time I get to hear him is on the tape I bought that day, but if you're in LA and like Blues, I recommend checking his schedule on his web page and catching a show.

Random Facts

• Internet User since 1983: Use to telnet to MIT from UC Berkeley
• UC Berkeley EECS Cad Group System Administrator from February 1984 until September 1988.
  The CAD Group had the largest computer budget of any group I knew on the campus. This meant I got a lot of experience with all the new toys as they became available. Those were the days...
• UC Berkeley Organizations & Clubs (between 1982 and 1990):
  • Second Chairman/Director of the Experimental Computing Facility (XCF)
  • Chairman of the Undergraduate Computing Facility (UCF)
  • Secretary and President of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA)
  • SUPERB Member and organizer of a two-screen all-night sci-fi film festival:
    We showed 6 or 8 movies back-to-back in each of Wheeler and Dwinelle. People could buy an all-night pass or individual tickets. It was a success, but it required so much effort and risk that the SUPERB director decided not to do it again -- can't blame him.

Old Projects Still On-line

• XMAP -- A Fast X11-based Street Map Display Program
  • XMAP 0.1 Original XCF Binary Release
  • XMAP 0.1 with Jeff Hollingsworth's modifications
  • XMAP 1.0 -- Unavailable
• Internet Worm of 2 November 1988 (a.k.a. Internet Virus of November 1988)
  • A Tour of the Worm by Donn Seeley (Also in PostScript)
  • The following paper about contains some inaccuracies (esp. with respect to what was happening at Berkeley), but it is still informative: With Microscope and Tweezers: An Analysis of the Internet Virus of November 1988