The Cecil Hotel, LA

Recently I binged the Netflix documentary series Crime Scene The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel, it was an interesting watch, if you’re into real life oddness.

It centres around the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a 700-room hotel opened in the mid-1920’s just before the Great Depression, along with several grand hotels in the area it enjoyed a period of opulent prosperity and was aimed at the middle class traveller and business men. After World War II the area, also known as Skid Row, fell further into transience as fortunes changed, the stark increase in sex workers, drug dealing and users, along with those unable to afford rents and the increasing protocol to herd the homeless into a manageable area of the ever expanding City, increased criminal activity.

Curiously ever since the Hotel first opened it has been linked to suicides, mysteries and murders. The first documented suicide was January 22, 1927, when Percy Ormond Cook shot himself in the head while inside his hotel room after failing to reconcile with his wife and child. In 1967 “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood long-term resident, a retired telemarketer was found dead in her room, she had been raped, stabbed, beaten and her room ransacked. Her murder remains unsolved. The Press often linked the hotel to numerous serial killers. Frequently residents had died from drug overdoses or long term substance and/or alcohol abuse. There is even a Wikipedia page detailing some of them.

The documentary beds itself around the disappearance in February 2013 of young Canadian student Elisa Lam. She was an avid blogger and frequently documented her travels, fashion, life thoughts online garnering many regular followers. When away from home she called home everyday, after her parents hadn’t heard from her they called the LAPD and news started circulating about a missing person. As the Police struggled to piece together Elisa’s movements they released the elevator CCTV footage, it went viral and set in motion an interesting series of events.

An army of ‘web-sleuths’ scrutinised in meticulous details, frame by frame, the cctv sparking the beginnings of numerous conspiracy theories, many still perpetuate. Things like, why’s the time stamp jumping, the door isn’t closing, whose that shadow. Suddenly people across the globe were gathering in FaceBook groups to discuss minute anomalies, some visiting the hotel to re-enact and trace where she had been. What I found very telling as the documentary continued was how this congregation of unqualified amateurs ardently believed they could succeed where the professionals could not and that they believed every morsel of conjecture and hypothesis from a straightforward mugging gone wrong to the CIA using vanishing vaporise lasers. But there was more to come.

SPOILER ALERT :: if you don’t want to know the outcome I’d suggest ceasing here …. thank you for reading ….

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….. Okay dear reader, I hope you’re not eating or drinking while you read on.

…….

About two to three weeks after Elisa’s vanishing a few hotel guests and residents started to complain that the water had an odd odour and taste and the water then started to change colour to a sludgy brown. A maintenance worker was sent to inspect the four roof top water tanks. Sadly one of them contained the floating bloating remains of a young girl, later identified as the missing traveller.

Now the merry band of web sleuths really had something to get overly involved with. From behind their screens and keyboards they pieced together bits of facts with leaps of notions, ignored some elements and fantasised others, to quite catastrophic levels.

Attention turned to how did Elisa get onto the roof. The access door was locked and alarmed, this meant that the hotel management had to be involved, a member of night staff had to have killed her. The design of the building meant that there was a metal fire escape on the outside, a series of stairs and platforms covering all fifteen floors, including the roof, accessed from a hallway window that was not alarmed, locked or monitored in anyway. Debris on the roof showed that it was frequently used by people to smoke, drink, take drugs, have parties etc.

The nature of her discovery caused a media frenzy as a police chief was leaving the hotel trying to get through the jostling crowd of reporters he was asked a question which he hastily replied “When Officers approached the water tank the hatch was closed”. The web brigade pounced on this to mean that she must have been dumped because no-one could close the hatch from the inside, so it must be murder. The officer was correct in his statement, because when the maintenance worker noticed the hatch was open and that’s when he discovered the grizzly contents and had closed the hatch from habit as he called for help.

Searches across the internet brought up ‘evidence’ of a Mexican death metal singer called Morbid, due to his chilling lyrics, which included a reference to a girl drowning and his dark videos addressing death (one was filmed at The Cecil), along with having stayed there, meant he must have lured her to the rooftop and killed her. He was hounded, trolled, and harassed over a period of months, received death threats and villanised as a murderer by the Court of Online Public Opinion. It caused him to suffer a breakdown and such depression that he attempted suicide. The ‘evidence’ grasped by the onliners was years old and at the time of Elisa vanishing Morbid was in Mexico but even still today eight years later he still get mail labelling him a murderer.

One aspect of Elisa’s life was, to some degree, suppressed until late on in the investigations and not readily available, she had been diagnosed as bi-polar and had a history of intentionally not taking the prescribed medication, which had caused her to experience strong psychotic episodes, along with hallucinations in the past. Armed with this knowledge, along with the Coroner’s report showing toxicology levels and there being no evidence of any assault or violence on her body, it was concluded that her death was accidental.

At the end, I felt sad that this young life had ended, that so many innocent people had been branded and abused because of tenuous links but mostly I was concerned, almost worried, about the mob mentality and power of online collectiveness. This ferocious hungry entity eagerly hurrying for instant information, affirmation and inconsequential action feels a little bit like Pandora’s box.

 

Behind The Screen

This blog is a little different to my usual because it is being written with the intention of adding a link elsewhere to try and explain/highlight what has happened ‘behind the screen’ to bring a web page together.

As some may know I administrate, edit and manage a web site about a particular musician and have done for many many years. It is an on-going, complex, multi-layered learning experience that gathers information into one place. I do it for my own satisfaction, to have a one-stop place that collates his work, for the fans and those interested to visit. Yes, it costs me money, but what hobby doesn’t.

Recently he was interviewed by Dom Familaro for The Sessions Artist Series published to YouTube. If you are interested in the workings of the music industry, the various musicians that back, support, perform with many A-list names, perhaps you play an instrument, these interviews are entertaining and interesting to hear so many peoples different life stories, how music became their profession and where that profession has taken them and things they’ve learnt and experienced on the way. But I digress…..

The website has a few interview transcripts and it occurred to me that even though YouTube has the ‘captions’ option (akin to on the go subtitles in language of your choice), there is still a section of the world wide audience who are missing out, so I decided to transcribe the thirty-eight minute interview and find a way it can be translated, thus broadening it’s reach. Sounds reasonably straightforward, doesn’t it. Ha!

Step 1. Using a mix of shorthand, speed writing and longhand I begin taking down the dialogue. Gone are the days when I could audio-type thanks to my depleted dexterity. So it’s listen intently, stop video, write, reread, rewind and listen again, correct script, add punctuation. Continue to listen, pause it, write it down, check it, relisten to the passage, make corrections and proceed ….. you get the idea. It took a few days, working an hour or two per day.

Step 2. Thanks to my muscle disease rendering my fingers/hands/wrists so weak the easiest way to transcribe the written word is to use dictation, no more confidently typing at between 70-75 wpm for me anymore. I create a fresh document, hit the microphone and speak clearly, deciphering my scrawl as I go. Stopping after a couple of paragraphs to read over the dictation, correct the errors, add the punctuation, capitalise names etc. Hit save and carry on. It takes a couple of days but at the end there are nine pages of crisp type, each paragraph a persons dialogue, all checked, proofed and corrected.

Step 3. Now it gets a little technical because I need to add the HTML tags that make it show on the eventual web page. Each paragraph needs a <p> at the beginning. It makes visual sense to have the interviewers dialogue in a different colour to the interviewees, so I add a font=“colornumber” to those lines. I also have to add the speakers name to each paragraph to make it easier to follow who is saying or asking what. So that’s added, all in capitals for emphasise.

Step 4. Using a specific software program I create the webpage, it’s basic style set to match the myriad of pages already there. I add the techie bit of code to embed the YouTube video, making sure it sits comfortably and is the correct size. I add the tab heading and explanation. Then in chunks I add the coded interview transcription. Crossing my fingers I hit the ‘test’ function to see what it looks like as a web page. I am reasonably pleased with the result except the colour is way way off, neon lime green, the hex code is a shade of red! Hmm……that needs investigating, it works on other pages already published.

Step 5. Thanks to an excellent web site that walks you through, teaches and shows how to grapple with HTML coding I can put together the five or six lines of instruction to add a button to bring up a menu of languages that Google will then translate the whole page. Wow! I add it at the top of the transcription coding and hit ‘test’. It’s there, and what’s more……it works! Victory! By chance it answers my query about the text colour coding, I think the issue is that versions of HTML change things, and that’s what has happened here, the code for changing the font colour is now a script command within the <p> notation, so I will need to put together the new bit of code, then copy and paste it at the beginning of each of the interviewers dialogue.

Step 6. I confidently upload the new page to the server, add the link to the main media page so viewers can get to it and voila….well no, not quite yet, actually. I forgot the special text snaffoo, you see when you type characters like & ( ‘ ) “ and then copy/paste them into a coding page, things go a little bit odd, it turns a ‘ into ’ . So I need to go through the entire transcript and remove the gobbledygook and replace the appropriate punctuation mark.

Next time I am at my desk, I will have to go through the coding, change the font colour code and correct the ‘ (oh I hope the find and replace will help me). That a rough idea of what is involved for just one page. I intend to add the translation script to every page of the site, a mere thirty or so. Like the Forth Bridge, there is always something that needs working on to improve.

Link to the interview ….. The Sessions Artist Interview

Link to the website http://www.stcgibb.com

 

Another day/month/year/decade Another

List? Resolution? Promise? Beginning? Intention?

I’m in that eternal internal struggle, Brain versus Body. Brain gets all over excited with ideas of new interests and thoughts of changing this, sorting that, tidying the other, bouncing about like Tigger after a double espresso, Body quietly sits, sighs and waits for a break in the babbling to go “you do remember we cannot move independently anymore” and Brain’s exuberance deflates like a balloon across a room.

My list of lists is expanding, I have a couple of big projects to work on, mainly the website Photo Album complete recreation, but before I can attempt that, I need to familiarise myself with the new html editor. It is something that is going to need dedicated hours of concentration, I will have to figure out the best between pee visits to do that. I’ve been trying to get an article published on Wikipedia, they have their own brand of coding and a complete nightmare are arbitrary opinion as to whether the subject (an independent record producer) is suitably notable and the sources cited credible!

There are a few lighter ones, some of my photo frames could do with updated photos. My female spider senses tell me I’d better order some fresh printer cartridges because Mr MuckItUp Murphy is going to meddle with my best intentions.

I’m restless, swinging between short attention spam and procrastination, probably the after effects of holiday season inactivity and that sense of ‘should be doing something’.

So, here’s a few goals.

• Finish cat blanket
• Start another cat blanket
• Familiarise html creator
• Time to do another round of back ups
• Attempt a new book

Might just keep things short.

 

2019

To say that 2019 has been an absolute horrid catastrophic year would be a cavernous understatement. Never at the beginning could I have foreseen the end, nor the hell in between.

I usually feel odd at the end of any given year. Many see it as a fresh page, the new beginning, the marker to strive forward. I just see it as another day, no different to the 31st, 17th or 4th. However, I’m not ready to let go of 2019, I don’t want to let go of what’s been lost. 2020 will be the first year without my Big Sis, and I am way far being ready for that. 2020 will be a year of more forced change and adapt as I try and find somewhere new to live and all the fraught difficulties that brings.

BFF and I are already planning some fun, hopefully when she visits we will over night in the city and revisit some old haunts and enjoy some reminiscent foods. I’ll still be crocheting blankets when the strive strikes. There are online projects to get stuck in to and ongoing business to fit in. I should get back to nightly reading.

Still, it will be what it will be and hopefully we are all still here by the end of it.

 

Tick-Tick-Boom

Right, let’s get comfy in the head’s office for a progress report ….. hmmmm

• Complete three cat blankets ✅
• Complete photo organising project ✅
• Mac back up ✅
• Add sailing blog to my website ❌
• Add photo album to website ❗️
• Send letter and photos to Aunt ✅
• Finish current book and review ✅
• Sort, weed, tidy desk and draws ✅

❗️Due to the delights of the latest Mac update, the website photo gallery is going to have to be a complete do over. Starting from scratch with eighteen years worth of accumulated archive that needs cataloguing again. That’s a three to four month job.

❌ I coulda, maybe shoulda, but just didn’t.

I might have got slightly over eager with the cat blankets but that’s another blog for another day. It felt good to get things finished and sorted but as always there are other things sneaking in to disrupt a goal. I’m trying to complete some new articles on behalf of a friend on Wikipedia, it is tedious in the extreme, the coding, citation and external references are complicated to complete, copyright free images keep getting deleted by a bot for no given reason. The articles in draft form have to be checked and approved which could take up to five months.

As for the next to-do list. Hmmm, well, let me think about that.

 

February

It began so positively, but best laid plans and best meant intentions so often do.  After waking up I usually lazy and cogitate my plans for the day – up & dress, make coffee & lunch, plant self at desk and tick things off the various to-do lists, shuffle to sofa, fiddle & rest before going to make dinner & cook freezer foods. Simples, right?

So, initially things went as intended, got to desk with coffee and lunch, began back up procedure for computer (not on to-do list but needed), began sorting through piled detritus stuffed through the door over the past few days (not on list).

Phone rings ….. It’s on the sofa, do I wheel across and grab it or leave it, best get it … BFF needed distracting while she walked home from the City (about 1.5miles) while carrying a 4ft6 stuffed swan resplendent in gold crown and punk tutu (the swan, not BFF).  Sandwiches munched and coffee drunk while chatting.

Right, back to it. Source a few photos for new FaceBook album on group I administrate. Hmm, need to crop, tweek and © mark them, but hey it’s a job on the list 👍🏼. Then wheeling self about to get recycling into waste paper basket (not on list). Started business banking log in (ahha, that is on the list) but it’s been so long it errored out on me so had to restart all over again which means waiting for authorisation codes to come in the post (add follow up to list).  Sort through post waiting to be dealt with, add two things to to-do list.

By now I’ve been at the desk just over two hours, which means hips need resting on sofa for a while before I can confidently get up stood ….. this ends today’s productivity time. Successfully ticked off one thing, postponed one thing and added two more. 

Oh and I’ve written a blog (not on the list)

*sigh*

 

January Jaggardness

I don’t like January, it is dark and grey, cold and dank. I don’t leave my dusty hovel, unless there is an absolute cannot be avoided need.  This year it feels like the morbid month began the day after boxing day and still hasn’t progressed past the first week and will drag interminably to its chilled bitter end.  Most January’s I feel like I’m waiting for the sn**, sn**, nope can’t say it, white rain, to fall, settle, freeze, melt, freeze, melt and bugger off.

Today is a typical day, I’ve not even opened the curtains.  Okay, part of that is being lazy, part is because it’s a Sunday and I didn’t begin my attempt at rising until after 12.30 (I was listening to the radio, mostly, but did doze through desert island discs).  By the time I got up-stood, been to the bathroom, then the kitchen to make lunch etc it was gone 1.30 and it would be dark by 3.30/4, hardly worth the muscle strain and ache.

That’s not to say stuff has not gotten done.  I’ve been working on my crochet, occasionally, I’ve grappled with the GDPR requirements on websites (thank you, piggin interfering EU), I’ve reconciled my finances and even remembered to pay the credit card bill.  I’ve got rather successful at playing cards and solved a few puzzles. 

There has been momentary respite, courtesy of my Great Niece and her rendition of ShotGun, Baby Shark, Twinkle Twinkle, Stick, and other pearls of wisdom.  She’s tall for her age and when she trots in wearing her nursery uniform she looks more like five than 3 years 5 months.

My erratic sleep pattern suffers too. I wake feeling more sleepy and weary than when I went to bed. I sit on the sofa feeling too alert to go to bed. If I manage a complete couple of hours unbroken sleep then it’s a rarity. 

Not sure what my next battle plan will be, it’s rather dependant on others and their availability.  Who knows I might even manage to conjure up a white blog or two (steady on).

Tis but the season, and shall pass…..

 

User Interface Stuck

Back a few posts ago I had set a to-do list with a completion date of before BFF’s visit ….. Let’s evaluate…..

1. Research and write the new article
2. Upgrade video player (current one doesn’t handle mobile devices)
3. Rework each video file/page
4. Upload everything to the server and publish
5. Update back-up drives 1 and 2 (I’m not loosing all that hard work)

1. The new article is written but it needs putting into an HTML format and a couple of things are needed from third parties before publishing – not done yet.

2. Website video – with the introduction of html5 a new coding method can be used, but it needs the videos to be in three different formats and uploaded to the server, time consuming – each video has been converted into the three types, I am currently still uploading, one set at a time.

3.  Video pages – in order not to get lost as not everything can be done at one go at the desk, I update the pages as the trio of files are uploaded. So the review pages additions are done, the YouTube embedded ones are done, a couple of short interview segments are done, just the longer interview videos needs to be done…… so almost but not quite.

4.  Uploading is done gradually as each page/video is completed…. so on-going.

5.  This plan was expanded as there was an operating system upgrade, so total system back up, download and install OS upgrade, then after satisfied everything is as it should be another total system back up.  Now just need to do the secondary specific files back up (hey better to have two back ups, just in case, mild paranoia is sometimes wise).

HOWEVER :: I did finish a cat blanket and am halfway through a second.

Harnessing and fanning motivation is still an incredibly difficult thing, I ‘need’ to spend more time at my desk, I ‘need’ to not be disheartened by the faff of shuffling on the chair from desk to sofa and focus more on the enjoyment/accomplishment/occupation of being at my desk.  When every single element of everything I try and do involves an ever growing degree of struggle, and having to juggle how much time spent on job ‘A’ before impacting on necessary job ‘B’, it’s so much easier just to roll over and snuggle under the duvet where I’m pain free, struggle free, discomfort free and toasty warm.

Could do better, my dear, procrastinating isn’t going to motivate the mentals or bring satisfaction.  

 

Burnsy Woz Right

With Big Sis away for a weeks break, I decided to allocate this week to getting to grips with the video issues on the website. I had already googled and bookmarked a few how to pages and had mentally mapped out my productive days.

That’s where I went wrong, having a determined plan.

As some may know I’m pseudo consultant to the Resident Management Company that I used to run before handing it over to an agent when it got too much.  To say that the Agent have had ‘issues’ is a bit like calling pneumonia man flu.  Staff changes, lack of communication, confusing cross communication, time delays, etc have been adding to the general rumblings of dissension around here.  Consequently for every email sent, it generated two more, needing immediate attention. The Director and I decided to get to grips with everything and lick em into shape, we were going to go through the invoices of the past two years noting anomalies, we listed general running issues and we’re trying to get the next (already over-due) residents meeting organised.  

I did manage to list all the videos that need converting into three different file types (devices use different formats, desktop v tablets and phones, Apple v Microsoft v Android).  Apart from a couple of snaffoos that skipped along nicely, even managed to save the relevant back-ups.  This brought a recurrent issue, getting FileZilla to transfer the large files to the server. I’m three desk sessions into trying and I just cannot get it configured, nor find the instructions and answers online, it’s just something further than my limited knowledge and ability can handle.  So I’ll have to hope the web hosts ftp can cope with the file sizes.  It’s a time consuming process.

Each video page needs the HTML re-writing, all eighteen of them.  Some are videos I’m hosting, others are on YouTube, but I cannot start these until the video files are uploaded.  It’s already Saturday, that leaves a heck of a lot to go wrong right before Big Sis gets here at 9am Tuesday (her hubby’s car has a garage appointment first thing, so he’s using her car for work).  I’m polishing a draft for a new web article before coding that into a fresh HTML page as well.  BFF’s visit is coming up and I so want it all done by then.

Who was it who said, if you want something done, give to a busy woman, well if you find him, shoot him! 

 

Startember

My lists have broken, historically they helped me get organised, sorted and done, but the ‘meh’ apathy has set-in.  Is it because the list is on the iPad and a mere swipe deletes them as if they were never there, whereas writing them in longhand on a note pad and crossing it out doesn’t remove it from view, just reminds you of a failure?  It’s deeper than that, it’s a personality trait, accountability thing.

Sometimes success of getting stuff done is dependant upon the sense of satisfaction (personal and third-party) that comes along after the effort and struggle, it has to have a worth.  Sometimes it might be because someone else is relying on what you do.  Sometimes it’s something that is time sensitive.  I am fortunate that I don’t have things pulling at my time, I don’t work thus reducing the free hours for chores, projects and such, but because my days have no structure it’s neither here nor there what time I get up, go to bed, today is like yesterday and will be the same tomorrow.  Granted initially after ceasing work, having the comfort of so little pressure was so relaxing and reviving, and so needed after the stress and pressure of grief, work and deteriorating health, but now it has become a hindrance. Even enjoyable pastimes become things to merely fill empty hours, which takes the shine off the brightest activities.

But occasionally a spark of possibility needs seizing to try and wrangle the waining spirit, and ignite the motivation to get on and ‘do’, because it will bring satisfaction in a project successfully completed that others might just enjoy.  Give a sense of purpose and instead of time filling I’m being ‘productive’.

So, September is the month, BFF’s visit is the deadline.

1. Research and write the new article
2. Upgrade video player (current one doesn’t handle mobile devices)
3. Rework each video file/page
4. Upload everything to the server and publish
5. Update back-up drives 1 and 2 (I’m not loosing all that hard work)
6. Possibly pick up cat blanket crochet

I know, I know, I might be over reaching with the crochet, lol, but goals be goals.

Not being able to just get stood up from the desk is a major faulting factor, I could and should spend a couple of hours most days at the desk but the thought of shuffling on the chair to get to the sofa is a chore even though when I do do it, it’s not so bad, only some degree of hip discomfort.  It’s a mental tug of war. It is necessary to put myself in an outright absolute ‘have-to’ situation to give my mentals that extra decisive tug.

Right then ….. 2–6–heave!