soundgarden access restored

Seattle Parks & Recreation: Warren G. Magnuson Park – Public Arts :

NOAA ART WALK AND “SOUND GARDEN”
NOTE: Due to security concerns, access to NOAA and the Art Walk has been restricted. Photo ID is required to enter (such as a student ID, state driver’s license, etc.). All visitors must use NOAA’s main access road and stop at the security guard station for access. NOAA’s main gate is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Visitors can walk in (but cannot drive in) to Art Walk and Sound Garden. Backpacks will be searched; picnic baskets and other large containers are not allowed. NOAA’s back gate is open as well Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., so visitors can pass between NOAA property and Magnuson Park. No access on weekends. For more information, contact NOAA site facility manager at (206) 526-6163 or view NOAA’s website at http://www.wrc.noaa.gov/

learning

Owing to the generosity of Jack Shedd, I bought my own copy of this:


“The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” (Betty Edwards)

which means the procrastination that allows me to avoid doing the exercises in the library copies no longer works. It’s not going anywhere. So I assembled the materials it calls for last weekend and worked through the pre-education exercise:

  • a self-portrait
  • a drawing from memory
  • a drawing of whichever hand you don’t use to draw with.

Came out better than I expected (and no, I’m not sharing them — yet).

good ideas, poorly summed up

This just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

As counterintuitive as it may seem, this inexorably leads us to Kontra’s law:

A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.

[From Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products” « counternotions]

Actually, as the essay makes clear, it’s not counterintutive at all. How’s this?

A company’s willingness to invest in concepts that not designed for a real market underscores its inability to lead.

down for the third time, or brother can you spare a dime?

Looks like my venerable (Oct of 2003) iBook G4 is casters up for good and all. Some unusual freezing up yesterday, then a refusal to boot which continues, whether it be from a CD, from it’s own disk, whatever. It works fine in Target Disk mode, so that subset of features is still good. But as a full-fledged laptop? Not so much.

Oh, well. It’s on its third hard drive, second logic board, second case. I think everything has been replaced but the display and keyboard, including the batteries.

For about the same as I spent on that one, I could buy one of these:
Picture 3

If I had it.

another clumsy hack

Seeing a lot of junk that looks spammy, so this is a first cut at denying them whatever they are looking for. 

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
cat /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.base > /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.tmp
grep "Successfully fetched" /var/log/httpd/httpd-error.log | awk '{ print $8 }' | cut -d"." -f1,2,3 | >> /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.dyn
sort -n /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.dyn | uniq | awk '{ print "Deny from "$1"." }' >> /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.tmp
cp /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess.tmp /usr/local/www/data-dist/.htaccess

clumsy hacks, if that’s what it takes

I haven’t yet figured out what makes my system here get so sluggish under load: I realize it’s memory-starved, but I don’t yet know why. In the meantime, I am running this script out of cron.

I haven’t yet figured out what makes my system here get so sluggish under load: I realize it’s memory-starved, but I don’t yet know why. In the meantime, I am running this script out of cron.

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
export FREEMEM=`vmstat 1 2 | tail -1 | cut -d" " -f7`
if [ ${FREEMEM} -lt  10240 ];
then logger "free memory @ ${FREEMEM}; restarting apache"
/usr/local/sbin/apachectl stop
sleep 10
killall -1 httpd
/usr/local/sbin/apachectl start
fi

feh. This somehow doesn’t always work if you use “-f7.” Overnight, it seemed to want to use the 8th field. Whatever . . .

Flickr: Flickr 888

Flickr: Flickr 888.

Given the success of last year’s event, we hope that you’ll join us in celebration of another 24 Hours of Flickr – Flickr 888 on Friday, August 8th, 2008 (8-8-8!), a most auspicious day!

How can you participate? Take a photo any time during the twenty-four hour period that’s August 8th where you are and then share it with the group. We’ll accept one (1) contribution per Flickr member into the group from noon PST Friday, August 8th until Tuesday, September 2nd, noon PST, 2008.

We’ve partnered with the cool folks at MOO to create unique Flickr 888 Postcard Packs. Those images with sufficient resolution (1795×1287 pixels) that feature “safe” content (as defined in our Community Guidelines), will be printed and sold in postcards packs this coming fall at MOO. We’re still working out the final details of how many, how much, etc., and we’ll share the full details here in the group when we’ve got our ducks in a row.

So, mark your calendars, and get ready to capture August 8th in all its glory.