a crank’s progress

I may once again join the ranks of the paid (and insured) working class. I’m not going to slay the fatted vegetable calf just yet, but perhaps next Tuesday I’ll be able to muster some honest enthusiasm.

Seattle Symphony
Beethoven Ninth Symphony
Gerard Schwarz, conductor
Seattle Symphony Chorale
Seattle Symphony
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, Choral
I have seen this performed once (Roberto Abbado leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus) and listened to it on radio and recordings countless times.
Astounding to think Beethoven was deaf when we wrote it: or perhaps the lack of [...]

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Analysis | Mr Chips or Microchips?
Computers have been hailed as the transformers of education, a dazzling technology that changes the whole nature of learning, reduces the burdens on teachers and equips everyone for the modern economy.
Yet disturbing evidence is emerging that computers may harm, rather than help, educational progress. There [...]

Glass Panes and Software: Windows Name Is Challenged
The single person most responsible for Microsoft’s selecting the name Windows, according to court documents, was Rowland Hanson, a marketer who came from Neutrogena, the soap and cosmetics maker. Until Mr. Hanson arrived in May 1983, the new software was called Interface Manager, which the programmers liked.
Understandably, Mr. [...]

NemWiki: DiscID
This page spells out clearly enough for even me how DISCID’s are derived, and demonstrates how to verify them. Very nice. Of course, this means DISCID is not written to disc but is instead derived from what’s already on the disc, so if the tracks and offsets differ from the canonical, ie RIAA-approved, version, [...]

tried to look at the Pacific Science Center’s website this morning . . . . couldn’t resolve their address.
Here’s why:

[/home/paul]:: dig pacsci.org ns

; DiG 8.3 pacsci.org ns
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER

In the process of burning these CDs, it occurs to me I’d like to tag them so that freedb.org can return title and track data for them. But I’m not having a lot of success finding out how that’s done. So I have emailing dev-support at freedb and we’ll see if it’s possible.

Salon.com Technology | Mozilla rising
“The browser’s not even going to matter.”
In 1995 it was the OS that was irrelevant. We see how that worked out.
Now will we see the browser come into its own as a platform-neutral application/work space?
It’s been too long in coming . . . .

xmcd2make
One day I got tired of typing in song names to the albums I was recording and encoding to ogg.
I knew that a lot of the albums I was recording had song listings available via the CD database at freedb.org.
So I took an .xmcd file, and I wrote a perl script to read xmcd and [...]

The Seattle Times: Local News: Windstorm arrives early; trees down
Today, sustained winds reached 44 mph in some places, with gusts up to 60 mph. At Snoqualmie Pass and at Crystal Mountain ski area, sustained winds reached 60 mph and gusts up to 108 mph.
Power cut this morning had me off the air for about 90 [...]