a year ago tonight

A year ago tonight, on the eve of the World Trade Center attacks, I found my eyes drawn to the Seattle skyline for no conscious reason. I had no premonitions, I didn’t have any kind of “bad feeling.”I just couldn’t sleep, around midnight, and as I often do, I stare out my windows at the skyline (no, my view is not quite as good as the photo). A year ago, I just couldn’t stop staring.

if it’s broken, just say so

Mac OS X-Installing Perl 5.8 on Jaguar

OS X users that have installed Fink may experience various symbol errors when executing certain Perl operations. More on this can be found in the macosx@perl.org archives.

What this means is that perl 5.8 breaks fink. Plain and simple. This claims to be the solution, but right now I would just as soon get 5.6 back. It isn’t, but read on for a solution.

How annoying. There’s nothing in the excerpt above that I parse as “fink and perl 5.8 are incompatible: choose one or the other.”

Update:

The two versions of perl — the 5.6 release that ships with OS X 10.x and the 5.8 release that’s supposed to be better — put their libperl files in different places.So I simply copied the perl executable from another machine I hadn’t “upgraded.” I’d feel better if I had the original distribution or was building from source: that’s next, I guess.

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 862676 Jul 27 20:02 /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE/libperl.dylib
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root admin 1118836 Sep 10 12:25 /Library/Perl/darwin/CORE/libperl.dylib

/Library is for user-installed stuff and /System/Library is for, well, system stuff, what ships with the OS. Version numbers would be useful, but this filing convention saved me this time.

fortune cookie

I get these randomly generated nuggets from the UNIX fortune(1) file, when I login,create an email, etc. I never saw this one before.

What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil’s view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America’s place in the scheme of human
activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. … The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
— Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt

Much has been written about the cyclical nature of societies: I wonder where our communal biorhythm is right now?

roll on

Rolling Requiem: Broadcast and Streaming Information

One of the largest Rolling Requiem performances will occur at Safeco Field, in Seattle, WA, conducted by Maestro Gerard Schwarz, and featuring the Seattle Symphony Chorale, where the plans for the event originated. KING FM will come to you live from Safeco Field beginning at 6 A.M. pacific time on September 11th. The broadcast can be heard on 98.1 FM in the Seattle, WA area and streaming online from: http://www.king.org/reg/king.ram

I expect I’ll be listening to this throughout the day. I would like to go to Safeco Field, but that collides with school starting time, and as magical an event as it will be, it won’t reach a 4 and 5 year old just yet. Also, we’re trying not to make too much of the event or its commemoration just yet: it’s too hard to explain, especially if you have no good answers to the inevitable questions, like “Why?”

Find a broadcast/webcast that fits your schedule and listen in as the world remembers.
Continue reading “roll on”

fear as a business strategy

Balancing Linux and Microsoft

After it bought Compaq this year, the combined company became the largest single buyer of Windows for personal computers and data-serving computers, and thus more dependent on Microsoft. A rising threat to Microsoft is GNU Linux, an operating system distributed free and developed using the open-source model in which communities of programmers donate their labor to debug, modify and otherwise improve the code.

After the merger with Compaq, Hewlett also became the largest vendor of Linux-based server computers, ahead of Dell Computer and I.B.M. Yet Hewlett’s bet on Linux still pales compared with its reliance on Microsoft. And after the merger, it was mainly former Compaq executives who took senior positions overseeing the Linux business.

According to the blurb at the Times, this article is supposed to be about how companies can balance their use of Microsoft and open source tools. The reality of the story is that even an organization as large as the merged HP/Compaq is unwilling to risk antagonising Microsoft.

cookbooks as an object of lust

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

But the great books are about more than mere recipes. Just as a great pop song forces you to get up and dance or play air guitar, a great cookbook is one that forces you into the kitchen.

That or a craving for something, whether or not you’ve made it lately or ever.

I share the author’s love of cooking, food, and the tools that enable them, though I’m well shy of 200 cookbooks.

I use the Joy of Cooking as a reference book, more than a recipe guide, just as I use every recipe as an outline, rather than the rigid series of steps some would decree. Trouble is, it like so many encyclopedic resources, has a lot of pages on meat which as a vegetarian is just so much baggage. I cooked meat for years, liked cooking and eating it, then stopped, and don’t miss it. (I realized most of what I ate it for was the spices it came with: barbecue, sausages, chilis, etc.)

I dip into others as well — the Moosewood books, all vegetarian, are quite good — but sometimes the mainstream references are essential. I have come to regard meatless cooking as I do filmmaking during the reign of the Hays Office’s Production Code of 1930: you can make your statement, but it might take some imagination, and there are many films of that period that defined the art for many years. Just as the filmmakers of the 30s were unable to show full-frontal nudity, I’m unlikely to dish up a rare filet mignon, but my chilis, tacos, and pasties pass muster just fine.

Another thing I share with the author is a love of Asian and Italian foods,for the practical reason they are often or can be made meatless, and as a matter of taste. And that is actually where I see a big hole in my collection, so perhaps I’ll hit the Friends of Library sale myself.

imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Yahoo! News – Is Gateway’s Profile 4 a ‘Smarter’ Buy than Apple’s iMac?

In the more playful of the two ads, dubbed “New iMac Dance,” the iMac’s igloo-shaped base bobs and weaves while the screen tilts and pans. The effect is cartoonish, but even the most extreme positions could be duplicated with a real-life iMac.

Compare that to the less flexible Profile with a screen that only tilts upward or downward — no height or side-to-side adjustments are possible. The animated Profile on TV looks much more agile, but Gateway must run a disclaimer that says, “base and monitor movements are simulated.”

Coupled with quotes like “Apple has sold the iMac purely on the basis of its design” and you have to wonder how it that so few people understand design as more than just surface appearance.

Is it any surprise that Apple can show you the iMac from all sides while Gateway insists on a single product shot?

The Profile is just a repackaged collection of the same old annoyances and shortcuts. Old wine in a newer bottle.

a blast from the past

Cruise Ship Profiles Cruise Lines – Orient Lines – Marco Polo

Adapted from the first to earn hard currency, the ALEXANDR PUSHKIN was employed in the service of the Baltic State Steamship Company to run between Leningrad and Montreal via ports in Western Europe and Britain.

This is the ship on which I crossed the North Atlantic in 1966, not long after she entered service.

It looks like quite a big ship, but even by the standards of the 1960s, she’s quite small. The QE II, buiit in 1969, is 70,000 tons to the Pushkin/Polo’s 19,000. The Queen Mary II, slated to enter service in 2003, will be 150,000 tons.
Continue reading “a blast from the past”

words to live by

In my son’s new school, I saw a poster/sign in a classroom, obviously made by one of the staff, and I thought it could be a pretty complete philosophy for life:


  • Have you been kind today?
  • Are you making good choices?
  • Are you doing your very best work?

Ilike that these are questions, rather than imperatives: there’s the opportunity for reflection, rather than just another message being dinned into your head.

I especially like the second question. The extension of that is, what are you doing right now and is what you should be doing?

Some may find this simplistic or childish, but think of all the events in the news or your daily life where a little self-examination might have made all the difference.