Category: observations

currently 64º at Boeing Field, likewise here in the village of Wedgwood. Not a patch of blue sky to be seen . . . . . a nice change.

Just Another Cultural Co-Op? / Blogging hits the mainstream, for better or worse

Blogging “punctures the self-importance of gatekeepers, ombudsmen, media critics, J-school profs and everybody else who is institutionally biased toward defending the values of monopolist daily newspapers,” says Matt Welch. “It has allowed many people to realize that the weird retired guy down the street is a better and more interesting writer than anyone on the local op-ed page.”

If this keeps up, perhaps we’ll see more and more of the trade schools that have insinuated their way into higher education wither and die.

If a broad, humanities-based education or solid life experience were good enough for the founders of this country, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

It is odd how we have moved over the past 200-300 years from producers of our own entertainment to consumers. How many people today play music or sing or write for the pleasure of it and to share with others? I’m not talking about journals and novels in progress but stuff to share after dinner. This wasn’t uncommon years ago, but with the advent of commercial media, particularly broadcast media, we have looked to others to do that for us.

Perhaps the weblog ethic will spread and more people will do their thing.
from John

Voodoo Machine – The World’s First “Digital Drug” – Voodoo Magick Box

Voodoo Machine products are for entertainment purposes only.

Loth as I am to give them any free publicity, what brings people from there to here? Perhaps this site is the antithesis of the “heightened state of consciousness” they’re selling . . . .

Quartz.

Now that some browsers support it (IE, OmniWeb, Chimera), you can really appreciate the crisp text rendering it does. Everything looks like a high-quality PDF or other typeset document. Just a joy to behold.

I just rode my bike to run some errands: to the library to exchange some books, to the grocery for supplies for the school, and to the bank. Not far, 2 ½ miles tops.

Last errand of the trip, I roll up to the ATM, do my business, and as I’m mounting the bike, a guy drives up with his A/C on, gets out of the car with the engine still running and the A/C still blowing, to do his banking.

I’m not riding to save the earth or anything, just to get some exercise, but that still annoys me. I never did that in Atlanta, after all, and it’s a damn sight hotter there than it ever gets here. They have hotter nights than we have summer days.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, but the fact I was on the bike made it just a little more galling.

I checked out “Sailing Fundamentals” [ISBN 0 671 60598 4] from the library and noticed inside, partly covered by a piece of paper, a dedication:

“from the woman in the treehouse
to the man living out on a limb

/signed/ S

17-i-95”

From there, the book went to the Seattle Sailing Club, and then on to the library.

What would induce someone to part with a book inscribed to them? Perhaps they forgot or parted on bad terms . . . .

See a scan of the flyleaf.
Continue reading “the provenance of books”

yes, I know I lived in the humid and sticky southeast for most of my life, where 90º temperatures ran from May to September. For the most part, one looks out the window at it, pausing to wipe the condensation off now and then.

Here, air conditioning is a rarity, so days of 80-90º and up are tough to deal with. I’m used to brown lawns in the summer now, but this is hot by any standard.

On the plus side, my tomato plants are loving it, as are my salad greens. If I had counted on this, it wouldn’t have happened, not in this inconstant region . . . .

Paul Holbrook’s Radio Weblog

This has got to be one of the shorter Internet RFCs there: RFC 2119 officially defines the terms MUST, SHOULD, SHALL, REQUIRED, MAY and such.

How frustrating the IETF felt compelled to put these definitions down.

as much as I struggle to get my mind around C/C++ stuff, it makes me nervous when things work the first time.

But I can relax: I just sent some sample output to the instructor and I’m sure he’ll tell me what I miss.

Especially frightening that this problem simulates a credit accounting system, an area I could never pretend to understand.

salon :: :: col :: leon :: R.I.P. World Birthday Web, By Andrew Leonard :: Page 1

Are human beings really that lame?

I guess I missed the fact that I didn’t get any felicitations on my birthday this year (perhaps the fact that I have attained 40 years of excellence had something to do with it), but it never dawned on me that the world birthday web was defunct.

The time-wasters of the world — spammers, direct marketers, and telephone solicitors — have claimed another victim. Remember the B Ark from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? That’s where they’ll be seated.