what is it now?

not sure what this is about. my neighbor seems to have lost control of his truck. he left a note on the windshield that "it won’t start" but he just tried to jumpstart it and it’s still there, as it has been since the pre-dawn hours. how he managed to bump it into the fence before realizing it wasn’t running and without applying the brake is an exercise for the reader.
we’re not what you’d call "on good terms" or I might be inclined to help.

well, that’s interesting

We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did. [From Macs Trounce PCs in Popular Mechanics “Ultimate Lab Test” ] Remember when buying a Mac meant you were either some kind of pretentious graphic artist or a complete dumbass who couldn’t cope with Real Computersâ„¢?


“In our speed trials,” reports Derene, “Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.
[From Macs Trounce PCs in Popular Mechanics “Ultimate Lab Test”]

Remember when buying a Mac meant you were either some kind of pretentious graphic artist or a complete dumbass who couldn’t cope with Real Computersâ„¢? How woulda thunk Apple would have the edge in general computing hardware?

2:42

| Green Thinking About You | 2:42 | Radiohead | Pablo Honey Providence | 2:42 | Sonic Youth | Daydream Nation Oceans | 2:42 | Pearl Jam | Ten Coda: Marine 475 | 2:42 | King Crimson | Thrak Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | Louder Than Bombs Blitzen Trapper | – Wild Mountain Nation | 2:42 | 550 Blitzen Trapper | KEXP Song of the Day Get Outa Ma Pagoda | 2:42 | Chris Spedding | The Very Best Of Rusty Chevrolet | 2:42 | Da Yoopers | Culture Shock The Operative | 2:42 | Magazine | Scree Rarities 1978 – 1981 I Wanted So | 2:42 | Johnny Cash | Personal File [Disc 1] Baby Plays Around (Demo) | 2:42 | Elvis Costello | Spike Bonus Disc Holy Love | 2:42 | The Blue Nile | Peace At Last Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol…. 1 Bones | 2:42 | Foot Village | SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists I See You | 2:42 | Adrian Belew | Here Michelle | 2:42 | The Beatles | Rubber Soul How Great Our Lord | 2:42 | Randy Newman & others | Randy Newman’s Faust Walk Like an Egyptian | 2:42 | The Puppini Sisters | The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo by exactly, I mean make a playlist with a range of 2:41 – 2:43 and pull the 2:42 tracks from that: seems to give a better result.

Is two minutes forty-seconds the perfect length for a pop single?

I looked at my collection and while I have a few that come in at that length, a range of 2:40-2:45 yields 162 items or 7.3 hours of music. At exactly 2:42*, this is what I get:

Route 67 | 2:42 | Let’s Active | Big Plans for Everybody
Wildwood In The Pines | 2:42 | Johnny Cash | Personal File (Disc 2)
Get Up | 2:42 | R.E.M. | Green
Thinking About You | 2:42 | Radiohead | Pablo Honey
Providence | 2:42 | Sonic Youth | Daydream Nation
Oceans | 2:42 | Pearl Jam | Ten
Coda: Marine 475 | 2:42 | King Crimson | Thrak
Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | Louder Than Bombs
Blitzen Trapper | – Wild Mountain Nation | 2:42 | 550 Blitzen Trapper | KEXP Song of the Day
Get Outa Ma Pagoda | 2:42 | Chris Spedding | The Very Best Of
Rusty Chevrolet | 2:42 | Da Yoopers | Culture Shock
The Operative | 2:42 | Magazine | Scree Rarities 1978 – 1981
I Wanted So | 2:42 | Johnny Cash | Personal File [Disc 1]
Baby Plays Around (Demo) | 2:42 | Elvis Costello | Spike Bonus Disc
Holy Love | 2:42 | The Blue Nile | Peace At Last
Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol. 1
Lovely Rita | 2:42 | The Beatles | Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
I Will Always | 2:42 | The Cranberries | Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
Larks’ Tongues In Aspic,Part Three (Live) | 2:42 | King Crimson | Frame By Frame [4 – 1969 (Live)]
Take Me For A Little While | 2:42 | Dave Edmunds | Repeat When Necessary
This Charming Man | 2:42 | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol. 1
Bones | 2:42 | Foot Village | SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists
I See You | 2:42 | Adrian Belew | Here
Michelle | 2:42 | The Beatles | Rubber Soul
How Great Our Lord | 2:42 | Randy Newman & others | Randy Newman’s Faust
Walk Like an Egyptian | 2:42 | The Puppini Sisters | The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo

  • by exactly, I mean make a playlist with a range of 2:41 – 2:43 and pull the 2:42 tracks from that: seems to give a better result.

Anyone else remember the scene from The Kids Are Alright described here?

The Who had 10 minutes left to fill on the LP. Kit Lambert, The Who’s manager, suggested to Pete Townshend that he write “something linear… perhaps a 10 minute song.” Townshend responded by saying that rock songs are “2:50 by tradition!” Lambert then told Townshend that he should write a 10 minute story comprised of 2:50 songs.

[From A Quick One While He’s Away by The Who Songfacts]

grace and generosity

Some other details: the rear screen is amazingly bright if you need to check something in the field the image counter counts down , not up: in other words, it knows how many images you have room for on the card and keeps track, rather than letting you run the card full so you have to delete images while the action is happening there are a lot of options and choices you can make, but you don’t have to — the program modes are pretty reliable it just feels solid and substantial without being bulky…. The reason I wanted it is that I will be helping wrangle some kindergarteners for the Dalai Lama’s visit and there’s a chance that some photography might break out, even if I don’t get into the session.

I am spending a couple of days with this:

thanks to the generosity of Kate McElwee.

For all my grousing about digital photography, a lot of my issues would go away if I had access to one of these. Why? It feels like a good SLR camera, not a digital or film camera — just a camera. The controls are easily worked out (I declined the tour of the controls as she was pretty busy when I picked up the little gem), the quality of the images and the experience of getting them is first-rate.

It offers the control you need for some images but can do all the heavy lifting as required. The main thing I noticed (and loved) was that it’s responsive: it writes pictures to disk as fast as you can take them, something my over-rated 5400 has never done well. And that’s taking RAW images, 14 Mb in size, not jpgs or tiffs.

Some other details:

  • the rear screen is amazingly bright if you need to check something in the field
  • the image counter counts down, not up: in other words, it knows how many images you have room for on the card and keeps track, rather than letting you run the card full so you have to delete images while the action is happening
  • there are a lot of options and choices you can make, but you don’t have to — the program modes are pretty reliable
  • it just feels solid and substantial without being bulky. It’s not heavy (an F4 weighs 3 pounds, more than twice what the D80 weighs. I took one of those on my honeymoon — 3 weeks — and I wasn’t sad to turn it back in to the rental shop.)

The reason I wanted it is that I will be helping wrangle some kindergarteners for the Dalai Lama’s visit and there’s a chance that some photography might break out, even if I don’t get into the session.

Not having used any other D-series cameras, I have no idea how much this offers vs the D50 or even the D70. But I have to wonder what more you get with a D300.

well, that’s annoying

It looks like in the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, I inadvertently lost all the uploaded images up to that time. I back up the database nightly, but ancillary stuff? Apparently not.

To be clear, I did have a backup of the whole mess from the upgrade: I moved the old wordpress directory aside, set up the database connections, repopulated/upgraded plugins and themes. But never moved the uploaded images back. And I remember deleting that huge file, thinking I didn’t need it, just couple of days ago. Almost 6 years of it all, too.

Ouch.

late night mutterings

Today I observed 46 years of continued excellence, with the donation of 7.5 * 1011 platelets. I had no great plans for the day. Someone asked me the other week if this was a milestone birthday and my facetious reply was that at my age, they all are.

As you go through life and your circle broadens to include an age range of 1 to 81, as my daily routine does, it lends some perspective. I can’t claim any material accomplishments, no patents, no published works (or unpublished ones of any consequence). I was listening to something on the radio about some educational project and realized/reminded myself that if I did have the resources, all I would want to do would be to make it useful for others. I won’t say give it away, as that doesn’t imply any conscious thought or plan. But the happiest people I know are the ones helping or doing things for others without trying to make it worth their own while.

I have known for awhile now that my kids weren’t the only ones getting an education these past six years. I have had a lot of catching up to do.