The Underground Man

Burning Down the House..

So let me tell you about my journey into the land of DVD ripping (now that it has been ruled legal I can talk about it). It started several years ago when I bought a nifty little Sony 505F laptop from a good friend. 2.9 lbs and a super small form-factor. (It is the one I replaced with my new TiBook).

The problem with it was that the processor was a wee bit limited (200 Mhz Pentium II) and so was the RAM (96Mb max back then). And I wanted to play DVDs. Only it didn't have a DVD player, or even an integral CDROM.

So what's a fella to do?

I got me some software (DVD Decrypter, FlaskMPEG, VirtualDub) and set to work. My idea was (after replacing the hard drive with a nifty 20g Toshiba unit) that I could rip my DVDs directly to the fast hard disk in my desktop unit (an AMD 2500+ with 120g drive and 512Mb RAM) and then I would use FlaskMPEG to compress the DVD content from 6+ gigs down to about 1 gig. The thinking was that the little processor that could in my laptop would have an easier job playing a film that didn't need to be decrypted on the fly (most commercial DVDs use copy protection) and that after compression the DVDs wouldn't take up much space. (As a side note, I should have stopped after decryption because the processor doesn't deal terribly well with the demands of DiVX decoding. As the saying in my family goes, I "swapped black dog for monkey".)

Little did I know what lay in store for me.

You understand that I'm not really an alpha-geek. I just play one on TV. So here I am learning all kinds of things that, while interesting, are not really going to better the quality of my life. Stuff like timecoding, dubbing, syncing, and video compression algorithms.

Did you know it takes far more work/time/CPU to compress the audio than the video in your average film? I don't know if it is because I typically am going from Dolby 6 channel (5.1) to 2-channel stereo but the audio track can take up a huge amount of room during the rip process, not to mention a lot of time.

I won't go into the intricacies of the entire process (it's still too painful for me) but suffice it to say that the ripping and compression process can take up to eight hours per DVD--with a very fast processor and lots of RAM.

However the quality of the completed movie is nearly indistinguishable from the original DVD. This still has a high utility value for me as it allows me to put half a dozen of my favorite movies on the drive of Dark Star (my TiBook). The DVD player in the 'Book consumes a good amount of battery life. I can really only play one movie off the battery, maybe two at a pinch. But reading directly off the hard drive extends my battery life considerably.

Besides, it's a fun journey into the interface between hardware and software geekdom. But if you're going to do it, take notes! When Windoze crashes, you'll wish you had.

My Movie Rating

My life has been rated:
See what your rating is!

What does this mean?

Suitable for 18 years or older. This is real life. Anything in this category is considered to be of subject matter relating to adult life, that happens day in and day out. Walking down the street is an 18 certificate. You have a life, well done.

Examples: American Beauty, Scary Movie

The Friday Five

This from the weekly Friday Five web site.

You have just won one million dollars:

1. Who do you call first?

     The local Porsche dealer, the local BMW dealer, the local Infiniti dealer

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?

     see number one, add in an apartment in Paris, one in Prague, another on some obscure Caribbean island with high speed internet and a couple of decent restaurants

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?

     new cars for my parents, Kyocera smartphones and Apple laptops for all my friends

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?

     yes, to Medecins San Frontieres, the EFF, the WWF, and Save the Whales

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?

     yes, 50% in mutuals, 40% in property, 10% in options

Neil Gaiman

I've just found author Neil Gaiman's weblog.

I first discovered his work with his widely-acclaimed Sandman series, and then his novels, Neverwhere and American Gods.

To my mind one would follow that order as an introduction--his work really shines when accompanied by the fine illustrations of Dave McKean (his collaborator throughout the Sandman series of graphic novels). Author Stephen Rauch has even done a scholarly examination of Gaiman's work as it relates to the thought and writings of Joseph Campbell.

He has a dark and wry sense of humour and what seems to be an encylopedic knowledge of things fascinating and bizarre.

iFace

Found this cool entry from Bruce Sterling's weblog.

Hint: move your cursor around for some fun..

The Doctrine of Pre-emptive War

So I have to ask the question.

How are the actions of the United States in crushing Iraq (ostensibly to destroy the threat of an attack on the US homeland with WOMD) any different than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (to destroy the threat posed to the growing Japanese Empire by the US Pacific Fleet) or Hitler's attack on Poland (ostensibly to retaliate against attacks on German border posts)?

All were self-aggrandizing. Arguably, the actions of the Japanese are the most defensible. How does that make us feel? History will, at this early juncture, most likely judge the Bush administration very harshly for its either failure of intelligence assessment or its culpability in ignoring its own

intelligence estimates in order to further the misguided policy of regime change in Iraq.

The latest data seems to show that the US was wholly unjustified in portraying Sadaam as an imminent threat to the US and, if this is true, how are we any different from any other agressor in history? Because our hearts are pure?

I'm sure that's what Hitler's stormtroopers thought when they ran rough-shod over Poland.

I just woke up pissed off over these young men dying at an ever-increasing rate in Iraq and we still haven't killed or captured Osaama. We're spending our energies in the wrong place, pissing off the entire Muslim world and helping Al-Qaeda recruiting, and embroiling ourself in this quagmire of trying to "rebuild" a country we just laid waste to for a people who are coming to hate us.

What's the sense in this?

Social networks and social currency

So is there such a thing as social currency? That is, a value to our social network connections?

I think there is.

This morning, sitting over a cup of good joe, I had occasion to think about this. I belong to Ryze, one of the early business-based social networking sites. It was started by a FOF and I've been on it for a while. Recently, I've started developing my network and even friendships. I met some fellow Ryzers when I lived in Paris and thought they were "tres gentile".

Today someone added me as a "friend" and asked that I add them. Normally, I would do so without too much pause. However I have recently been MLM'ed on Ryze--an unpleasant experience--

and was cautious. I always check out people before adding them to my friends list. Nothing like the prospect of adding an MLM'er to your "trusted" list of friends to introduce caution into the equation.

The guy has no page. No data on him at all and he's been on three months. It shouldn't be too hard to put in a few little tidbits and participate in a few discussions in all that time.

So I said "no". And I will continue to guard my list of friends because I value my reputation and their sanity. Not to mention the value of the whole social network thing.

It's not even about whether this chap could "do" anything for me. It's more a fear that he might bring a negative value to the experience. Am I alone in thinking that social currency is both important and may be growing in importance over the next few years?

Ethnically ambiguous

I guess that is the new buzz-word (at least among we cognoscenti, :>). I was reading this article in the Guardian about the continuing changes as homogenization progresses in English society (and here in the 'States). People like Vin Diesel (a poster boy for ethnical ambiguity), Christina Aguilera, and David Beckham (the first mega-star metrosexual?) have become immensely popular across all the ethnical and color lines in both nations.

My parents emigrated some 30+ years ago and when they left England was just starting to see a significant influx of peoples from their former colonies (chiefly the Caribbean at the time). Indeed, my father was just one of those colonials.

In any event, they are returning this year as they go off to visit Sardinia (a possible retirement haven because they cannot afford the cost of health care in this country) and I have assured them that they will find Britain a very, very different place than when they left. Certainly the crime is more prevalent and undoubtedly more violent and the country has lost some of the innocence that it had when I grew up there.

But in many ways, it has improved. Great new architecture, the growing culture of food and arts, and an almost complete lack of awareness of skin color (oddly enough, class barriers seem to persist though). In a lot of ways, modern Britain and France seem far more tolerant of color than America (witness the lack of miscegenation on American television).

I found this whole interplay fascinating in my brief visit last year and I'm going back this year to spend a bit more time there (especially in London). Where else can a white soccer player be termed the most well-known black man in England?

Charming.

Is health care a right or a privilege?

I normally give some thought (and time) to the more lengthy posts I make in this weblog but today I'm just writing "off the cuff".

I listened to a fairly long show this am on my local NPR affiliate about health care and the Democratic candidates positions vis a vis a national health coverage plan.

I just got absolutely incensed. I don't know where I fall in the political spectrum of this country (my political compass values are -4.75, and -1.85 which puts me right next to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, hah!). I feel like I have strong libertarian leanings and am quite fiscally conservative.

Be that as it may three of the four pundits on the morning show were discussing health care plans of the Democratic candidates (none of the top five advocates a single payer plan such as used in modern democracies in Europe) and the fourth was defending the insurance industry's rapacious practices.

One pundit, a US congressman, asked the most salient question in the first five minutes of the show: "Is universal health care a right or a privilege in our society?"

This is a question that we must answer as a society before deciding on further health policy issues such as how we cover the average American (what plan we implement).

Apparently, the US taxpayer/government combination spends an average of $4900 per person to extend what coverage there is in the nation today (with some 40 million uncovered, Lord knows how many "under-covered"). The average European democracy--whose health care systems rival or surpass our own--spend only $2600 per person (Switzerland is the most expensive as one might imagine).

Keep in mind that while I might agree that, funds being unlimited, one could get better care here in the US than just about anywhere else this is not the case for 95+% of our citizenry.

There is a metric from a social democracy class I took in college: if you were unable to choose your position in society, what sort of society would you create to live in? That is, in a society where you cannot be guaranteed a position one that is roughly equal for all participants is the best-case one for the individual.

Applied to health care this explains why fifteen of the other top sixteen industrialized nations have superior health care systems to the United States. The "average" citizen (and indeed, visitor) to their countries can be assured of a higher level of care than one gets here in the 'States. The French think little of going in to the doctor if they are feeling somewhat poorly because they know they are covered. So preventative medicine can be praticed there. Many ailments are detected earlier and are thus treated successfully (I have purely anecdotal evidence of this as I haven't looked it up).

These countries treat health care as a right for every citizen and having made that decision do their best to ensure that every citizen gets a decent level of health care. Yes, for the wealthy, they might still turn to the US for extraordinary services but the average citizen benefits from much better outcomes that s/he would get in the United States.

Here, I have to think twice before visiting the doctor. My coverage is $240 per month (a huge sum while I look for work). I'm nearly in perfect health (mild hypertension), nearly at an optimal weight, and I work out regularly. Never had serious health problems. And I pay a FORTUNE in insurance for a policy that has a $1000 deductible and a lifetime cap of $1 million.

I haven't personally answered for myself whether universal health care is a right or a privilege (in part because of my libertarian leanings) but given the cost to society of a lack of coverage (or an under-coverage), I think the answer has to be it is a "right".

triple espresso in a tall cup

I've got to cut back on my espresso consumption.

I spend a lot of time working on projects in Starbucks and being on the Atkins nutritional plan there isn't much I can consume there other than espresso.

So I might consume two or three double or triple espressos in the course of a long afternoon. Very bad. Lord knows what it is doing to my liver, let alone by blood pressure.

The cost of diligence I guess.

I was Flooded this am...

I suppose it was inevitable. My blog was found by some script kiddy who probably found my post about FloodMT and who decided to try out his "powers".

It's a pity I still haven't been able to get my ISP to implement GD.pm with the Perl interpreter. Without it, I cannot implement James Seng's security plugin and I don't have a defense against the flood.

Any suggestions welcome. I don't want to spend more time doing maintenance than doing writing.

Between two evils..

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I haven't tried before."

I love this quote. It appeals to the hedonist in me.

Friday Five - 24-1-04

Well, better late than never. (Just discovered the friday five today). So..

1. Favorite song at the moment:  "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys", Traffic

2. Favorite food:  Steak tartare

3. Favorite TV show:  La Femme Nikita (series)

4. Favorite scent:  Lime bushes, early morning in the Tropics

5. Quote:  "Needless consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" —Ralph Waldo Emerson

I own a piece of HMS Victory

For those of you who don't know, HMS Victory is probably the most famous warship in the world (though many people might argue that the Bismarck holds that distinction currently). Suffice it to say, before WWII this honor would undoubtedly have been held by HMS Victory. She is the oldest serving warship in commission, having been built in 1758 (the same year her most famous commander Lord Horatio Nelson was born) and the only ship of the line still existing. (The American frigate Constitution is both much younger and much smaller).

Victory was Admiral Sir John Jarvis' flagship at the battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797) and Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar (1805). (For a very funny take on the battle, check out the French reportage of the action.) In the Age of Sail this massive 1st-rater (a classification of ship) carried better than 100 cannon and was very much queen of all that she surveyed.

I think every English schoolboy, myself included, was raised steeped in the stories about Nelson and his great victories. He fell at the height of the battle of Trafalgar (the modern era's most decisive naval battle) with victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets in sight.

I visited the ship last year where it is in drydock at Portsmouth harbour undergoing restoration in preparation for the 200th anniversary of that battle. I was stunned to find pieces of the HMS Victory on sail in the gift shop! Apparently, the restoration trust is trying to recoup the investment of having to replace some of her decking and other woodwork and is selling off the original oak in small pieces.

And now I own a piece of her. Capital.

Avalon

I watched a very unusual film last night. It is the work of Mamoru Oshii, the Japanese director who along with writer Kazunori Itô brought us both Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell, 1995) and Kidô keisatsu patorebâ (the Patlabor series, 1988).

Some would say that this film is a serious departure for him, others that is a realization of a long-held dream. Avalon (2001) is not Oshii's typical anime effort but for all that it still offers entrancing special effects. It is the closest thing I have seen other than the Matrix series at rendering anime in a real-world setting.

The film is set in the "near future" and it is a very bleak, dystopian vision (aren't they all?). The protagonists are players in the game of Avalon, an illegal virtual reality battle simulation. Unusually, the film has been digitally filtered to wash most of the color out of it so that it is presented to us in a sepia color that matches the dramatic tone of the film.

Our heroine, Ash, is an ace player of the game and former member of the never-defeated Wizard team. The team is now disbanded (after their first defeat) and she is a lone warrior competing for enough points to feed herself and her Basset hound (Oshii owns one and apparently has taken to including them in his films).

The special effects are quite stunning, easily on a par with some of the best that the Matrix has to offer. Of course, the original Matrix pre-dated Avalon by a couple of years but these effects are original and well thought out and add a great deal to both the feel of the film and to the storyline. Special features to the DVD include a very lengthy exposition (on the length of an hour or more) on the special effects design by members of the teams that worked on them.

One thing that struck me as particularly interesting was that the film was filmed in Poland, with a crew of Polish actors and Japanese special effects technicians. The world of film has truly become international.

To my mind this film stands up as one of the better examples of foreign science fiction done in recent years and I heartily recommend that those who liked Canadian director David Cronenberg's ExistenZ (1999) and The Matrix give it a chance.

VoodooPad Followup

I'm using VoodooPad every day now. I keep multiple desktops up and one of them is always dedicated to VoodooPad content. Generally, I have the index Pad open—this allows me to access all the other Pads quickly.

I've got Pads devoted to story ideas, one just for URLs, a To Do List, a list of software I'm evaluating on OS X, one for invention ideas, one for startup-related ideas, one for Etymology, one for Spring ideas, and a final one with epigrams and poetry.

I'm sure that I'm not using all the features yet, but what I have used is great for organizing my scattered thoughts. I can also embed images in a Pad, which has occasionally proved quite useful. I can strongly recommend VoodooPad and I think its worth the $20 shareware fee (which I've just paid).

FloodMT - the opening shot in a war

I just wrote this in response to this comment on Gagalac's blog.

Well, I got blammed last night and discovered the high utility value of MT-Blacklist. Doing further research today, I discovered your very useful site (thanks!) and FloodMT (search Google for this).

What's a guy to do? We're looking at a war between blog software owners and manufacturers and these black-hat hackers. Unfortunately, bringing down their sites (easily enough done if one uses their tactics against them) simply isn't a solution.

I suppose the operative question is whether or not the FloodMT code is exposing a valid flaw in the coding of MT and LJ or simply taking advantage of the nature of the software design (an inherent element without which blogs wouldn't work). I haven't looked at the code (yet) or studied how it works but I fear that a multiple IP-based attack using random strings is going to be very hard to sidestep.

Maybe we need to establish/enforce some sort of trusted cross-site identification system for comments. Something cryptographically secure and that uses certificates from a central issuing authority. That way, one couldn't post without possessing a key and we would "know" who the posters were.

This, of course, creates a barrier to entry to everyone but it could be a one-time process.

I imagine this sort of authentication would end the ability of these flood and blamming mechanisms to automate comment entries.

I just got spammed..

Boy, did that piss me off. I figured that my blog is pretty new and fairly obscure (only thirty or forty readers a day according to my logs) and so I wouldn't be a target for spammers.

No such luck. So I'm updating my MT installation to 2.661, hoping that that will help somewhat and I've installed MT-blacklist. What a great little piece of software! It has allowed me to delete all the crap from my comments and "immunize" myself against possible further attacks.

Don't know if this will work (protection against further attacks) but at least I'm happy to have repaired the damage so quickly. Be forewarned! I'm donating via PayPal to the developer and I urge you to install this software if you are using MovableType.

I am Ironman..

I think that Ironman, other than maybe Master of Kung Fu or Daredevil, was my favorite comic. I was happy to see this little gem on my new friend Donato's site:

Take the quiz and find out what sort of superhero you are. I was chuffed to find that the quiz decided that my secret identity is Ironman. Too cool.

Vive le Starbucks!

Well, last Friday Starbucks opened their first Paris store. I'm not sure how I feel about this. The Paris cafe is an institution. A frequently smoky, frequently cliquish environ—it is still quintessentially Parisian. I don't think they have changed much since the days when Toulouse Lautrec haunted the cafes of Montmartre. (The bathrooms in many are still a joke).

That being said they have an ineffable charm and there is something quite reassuring about being able to walk into any cafe and order "un express" and confidently plonk down a euro knowing that this is about as close to a fixed price as you will find in cafes in France. Almost every cafe offers the same coffee drinks. Indeed, walking into a cafe in Paris one can imagine that Hemingway and Gertrude Stein drank coffee prepared the same way decades ago. None of this "double-decaf latte with soy milk and caramel" crap that I hear almost daily at my local Starbucks.

I really have mixed feelings about the news of this opening. I don't want American culture to invade France—I love it as it is. On the other hand, when Starbucks invaded Noe Valley in San Francisco a few years ago I had to admit they offered a better product. Their store was clean, well lit, comfortable and they poured a good cup.

The down side is of course that such an enterprise is very capable of predatory pricing (they have been accused of it in the past) and after they have put all the local coffee shops out of business they jack their prices to the point where one is paying $3-4US for a cup of flavored coffee. The American attitude is that competition improves the breed.

So what does this all mean to the French? I don't believe that their coffee will be "improved" by the addition of Starbucks. Presumably the store is non-smoking (a small revolution in itself) and just as revolutionary, it will have modern, clean bathrooms and great service. But Starbucks will not be able to undercut prices of other cafes significantly (French law most likely wouldn't permit this). So they'll have to compete by offering a better product (and will the French think its better) and presumably, reasonable prices.

But is France really ready to pay 3-5 Euros per cup of coffee? I seriously doubt that the current pricing structure will work in many areas of Paris—the economics of the average wage plus the sky-high rents in the best areas make it unlikely to my mind. The Avenue de l'Opera (where the first store opened) is home to a few nice stores and lots of boutique travel agencies but the proximity to the Place de l'Opera should mean pretty high rents. Of course, a firm with 7000-odd stores should be able to run a single store (or half a dozen in Paris) at a loss for years.

I look forward to visiting their storefront. I just hope that I can still buy that 1E espresso.

Thought for tomorrow..

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Spalding Gray is missing

I just learned from reading John Perry Barlow's blog and NY Newsday that auteur and performer Spalding Gray is missing. Because of a history of depression and previous suicide attempts, authorities fear the worst. (His film Swimming to Cambodia (1987) was a fascinating piece of work.)

I think its unfortunate that anyone would commit suicide whilst still facing a full life but it is particularly unfortunate that we might be deprived of his artistic genius.

We can only hope that they find him alive and well.

Pulp Fiction and the Man of Bronze

I love pulp fiction. I'm not writing here of the movie—though that is one of my favorite flicks. No, I mean the lurid magazines and paperbacks of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. I grew up listening to rebroadcasts of OTR (old-time radio) Flash Gordon, reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mickey Spillane (what can I say, my parents were liberal), and loving the romanticism of the '30s and '40s. There is something very engaging about the ingenuousness and naivete of the pulp fiction writing of that period.

To this day I get a real kick out of films like The Phantom, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, anything with Bogart and Bacall. I've got a quite a few MP3s of OTR shows like The Shadow, Nero Wolfe, and Flash Gordon. When I began loading these up into my TiBook iTunes program the other day I had the bright idea of looking on the Web for pulp fiction novels that had been digitized.

I figured that the copyrights would have expired and I should be able to download them to use with my MobiPocket reader on my Palm Vx. I found this great site, Blackmask Online, that has an absolute ton of pulp fiction novels.

The original idea that some of these might be available on the Web came from having seen the Doc Savage film on satellite recently. I've only seen one Doc Savage film (I don't believe that any more have been made or are planned) but the back story and characters seem very well developed for a 110 minute film. That's not to say that it was a terribly good film (maybe the 12 minutes cut out of the American release would have made it more intelligible) but it was probably a decent attempt to render the characters in the books accurately. (As an aside, I heartily recommend the modern pulp fiction flick
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the 8th Dimension. Make sure to see the fully restored version as it is much, much better than the butchered version commonly shown on network TV)

Apparently, there were hundreds of Doc Savage novels and his adventures spanned a couple of decades (real-time). I know that I've got dozens of Shadow episodes over about a fifteen year period. These are great old recordings with the commercials intact. Undoubtedly taken off 78-rpm vinyl, each episode is about 22-23 minutes long.

My mother tells me that while growing up in Ireland she would hear episodes of The Phantom regularly on the radio.

Now if I could only find them.

Football Analysis and Merrill Hoge

I've got to say that I love analysis as it relates to football matches (both American and the variety that the rest of the world plays). Typically in the English or Italian TV coverage there is a detailed analysis of both teams playing styles before, at half time, and after the match. (In the Italian case, the analysis can last longer than the actual game.)

Here in America, we've got NFL Matchup with Jaws (former Eagle quarterback Ron Jaworski) and Merrill Hoge (former Bear running back) at midnight Fridays on ESPN. If you have watched football for a while you probably saw both of these guys play. I certainly did. They were both excellent in their respective positions but in spite of their success in the NFL I think they've found their niche on Matchup.

Hoge manages to illuminate the critical elements of each game, both in his pre- and post-game analysis. I find his analysis more comprehensible than Jaworski but it is a real pleasure to learn something from their dialogue every time I watch the show. As much as I think I know about football (doesn't every American guy over 15?) I learn just how little I really know in watching this show. They help to de-mystify a lot of the game and let me know what to look for in tomorrow's Championship games.

Merrill seems to have grown into the role over the last couple of years and now he is assertive, analytical, and insightful. There is now a good balance between Jaworski and Hoge and both are convincing in their roles as analysts.

I think I'm in the minority hoping for a Colts-Panthers Superbowl. I still maintain that the Eagles are over-rated. But I wouldn't feel bad if the Patriots made it again.

Now if the coach of my beloved 49ers would just watch the show perhaps we would have a season next year.

Etymology, the history of language

I love the history of words. Etymology comes from the ancient Greek and means the "true sense of a word".

I first encountered this sense of the relationship of words in high school where I "studied" (and I use the term loosely) French and German for years. It was interesting to go from one class to another and see the relationship between the different languages. Admittedly, the connection between French and German isn't terribly obvious but it is very obvious between English and either of those two languages.

I've always been amazed by my mother's ability to speak so many languages fluently (German, English, French, Polish, some Russian). But then she grew up over there, surviving both the German and Russian occupations.

But what I didn't understand is that this ability is not unusual in Europe (or indeed, the rest of the world). This was made manifest in my time living in France. Most of my friends spoke at least English fluently as well as their native language. Almost all had third or fourth languages.

I'm considering getting a Masters in Business Administration but I want to do it in France where the process will only take a year. One of the requirements is that I am fluent in French (at the DALF level) and have working command of another language. It is striking to me that this is very common in Europe.

I looked up the word "travelling" today because I wasn't sure whether to spell it with one l or two. Turns out either is correct. But what set me off on writing this entry was the etymological footnote that the word was descended from a Middle English base, which in turn was derived from Old French:

[Middle English travelen, alteration of travailen, to toil, from Old French travailler]

As a historian by training I have noted that the further back one goes the more European languages bear a close resemblance to one another. For instance, I found that I could read medieval Dutch when I was studying medieval German.

Whilst spending time in Holland I was a bit mystified by the Dutch language until I realized that if I ignored the appearance of the language and simply pronounced it phonetically it would make much more sense. When pronounced I find it intelligible to my German-familiar ears.

Very odd but pretty darn cool.

Using Mail (Panther) with Hotmail

I hate Hotmail.

Mostly it's the ads. I've been using it for a couple of years now, simply because I've been to cheap to pay someone to co-host one of my Linux servers. But I'm getting fed up with the limitation on storage size and the slowness. It has a limited utility value when I'm travelling but I could with very little effort duplicate the functionality on my own server. So what's the point of continuing to use it?

What I need to do is transition to an account that re-direct my email (like SpamCop) to my own server. Then when I get a fast, permanent connection I'll just redirect it to my own Linux box.

In the mean time the HTTPMail proxy server for Mac OS X's Mail seems to have a lot of promise. It can "scrape" the content from my Hotmail account and I can then store my email locally and use the Mail app under OS X to read it, categorize it, and to send mail.

It was very easy to get working (even through my proxy server) and I can recommend it (though I've only had it worked for a couple of hours).

Now if I can get it to work with my yahoo account. One can only hope.

Adding Apps to Mac OS X

I'm exploring what is available in building the set of apps that I use on my OS X laptop. I'm not terribly happy with the complexity of BBEdit. In part because it seems to assume I don't know how to write DHTML and HTML so a huge number of its menu choices are devoted to shorthand keys which do simple pastes of text. I haven't used the tool in something like six or seven years (since I switched to a PC platform for business reasons) but I had hoped that it would be a little more user-friendly. So I'm sort of still looking around for a good editor to speed my hand-coding of DHTML/XML/HTML.

As far as design theory goes, I tend to be an adherent of the school of "add complexity as requested by the user". The perfect app, to my mind, is one that has a minimal set of functions to be classed as useful to very useful. It has progressive and logical "layers" of additional functionality that can be added as the user grows in technical sophistication. Unfortunately, BBEdit has grown but its approach to the user has not evolved. You get two hundred odd functions (at a total wild-ass guess) with little or no differentiation as to level of utility or ease of use.

I've added VLC, Spring, NetNewsWire, GIMP/X11, LimeWire, Transmit, VoodooPad, and CodeTek Virtual Desktop to my Dock. I'm evaluating a ton of other apps to see whether they are worth my time to invest in.

I was most annoyed to see that iChat requires either a .Mac account or an AOL Instant Messenger account. I would much rather use a free chat account than have to pay. It's just a convenience and not a huge one but it's a great app made useless by its limitation to paid services.

I'm very interested in Spring, especially as an interface to a project I'm developing conceptually but its requirement of an AOL account (for the use of the AIM mechanism) is very annoying. Why on earth does anyone expect that users want to use AOL? Granted, it's got a lot of users (even if you cut there estimates down to a more likely one-fifth) but that's still a vast minority of both American and international Internet users. It holds down a place in my Dock 'cause the general idea of a new interface metaphor really appeals to me. I've designed quite a few Web site and application interfaces in my day so I know a little bit about the subject. Anything that promises to be revolutionary or to alter the way we interact with our desktop is something that I have a keen interest in. That being said, I've got a couple of VoodooPads full of ideas on how I can use it and I'll be playing with it over the next couple of weeks (and putting up screenshots).

VLC I love because I can take MPeG4's I've created and view them - something I've found just doesn't work worth a damn in Quicktime (yet). So this means that I can take movies I've ripped from my DVDs and store them on my hard drive. Very cool.

LimeWire looks like a great app though as with all P2P filesharing apps it really is only usable over a fast connection. Still, I've found some pretty obscure stuff with it and it's a great alternative to Kazaa Lite. Besides, it's Open Source!! The only downside is that it doesn't work well (or at all) through a firewall/proxy.

I like Transmit's simple interface. It's easy to use, conforms to the guidelines for Acqua so it looks like a part of OS X, and it's not too expensive (important in these days where I'm looking for full-time work). Fetch quite disappointed me. It was a mainstay when I first started out in Web development on a Mac (1993) but it doesn't appear to have improved all that much in the last ten years. Amazing.

NetNewsWire seems to be great at aggregating RSS feeds - though as yet I haven't found a way (in an admittedly cursory examination) to search for a particular blog before adding it to my feed.

I'm considering using Desktop Manager rather than CodeTek Virtual Desktop (CTVD) 'cause it's free. But in the course of using it I've had it crash three or four times in as many days. Not a big deal but this can leave windows stranded on your non-current desktops. Also with CTVD I can set different images on different desktops which is a lovely feature. It's currently discounted, just before the release of V3, so I'll most likely buy it.

VoodooPad is a very cool little app. Sort of sticky notes with Web page/Wiki capability (one can also paste in images). The interface can be kind of confusing (I've lost a couple of note pages already somehow) but it has a pretty high utility value. I use it right now to keep track of invention and startup ideas as well as topic ideas for this blog.

I just installed xbMovieSaver that allows me to use my Matrix trailers and BMW QT films as screensavers. Very nifty. Seems to work flawlessly. The only drawback is that the CPU seems to work hard enough to require the fan to fire up when playing the films. I may yet have to change to a less active (flashy) screensaver.

Finally, I should mention Adriaan Tijsseling's work here. He's got a cool little app called Kung-Log that allows one to author blog entries on your desktop or laptop machine. I can save the entries locally (on my TiBook) and upload them later when my connection is up. It's a nice piece of work.

How to install GIMP for free with OS X (Panther)

I found very little about how to first find GIMP and then install it for Mac OS X. Thanks to a pointer from Joe Kissell's very useful 50 Fast Mac OS X Techniques I found the www.osxnu.org site with GIMP already packaged for OS X.

You can obtain it from a couple of unnamed sites but they (1) charge for it, and (2) are using older version of GIMP. I'm not sure what their value-add is (there must be one surely, or they would be violating the GPL license) but I'm not about to pay money to find out.

So on to the install info. At the end of this article is a link to a PDF of the instructions that you can download from my site.

1) First, obtain the GIMP package from osxgnu.org. I found it at:

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Xwin/Applications/gimp/

It’s 121Mb, so make sure that you have a high-speed
connection to download it on.

2) Download and install the X11 package from the Apple Web site (I haven’t checked but it appears that it is already included in the Panther distribution on the 3rd CD):

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/

It’s 44Mb, so you’ll need a fast connection for this as well.

3) Install the Fink software package. I found it at:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php

It’s 20Mb. This is necessary for the init.sh program (used in step 5 below) that launches Gimp (I imagine one could get it elsewhere with less effort, but Fink is useful for running other Linux apps as well as Gimp).

4) Install the GIMP package.

5) Launch X11 by double-clicking on the icon (find it in the Applications folder) and a terminal window (xterm) will appear on your desktop. In this window type:

% gimp

at the prompt. If gimp launches, congratulations are in order - you have the basics working.

The next step is to write a little Applescript that will launch it (and X11) for you and place it in the Dock.

5) Open the Script Editor (found in Applications->Applescript->Script Editor) and
enter:

tell application “X11”
activate
end tell
do shell script “export DISPLAY=.0 && source /sw/bin/init.sh && gimp”

I wish I could credit whomever wrote this script properly. I found it somewhere in the Internet cloud and saved it for when I got the Gimp working.

6) Select “Save As->Application” and put it somewhere you’ll be able to find it (I put mine in Applications).

7) I then found a GIMP icon on the Web (I got it from a little applet called Gimp Control) and replaced the Applescript icon with it. Gimp Control was created by Alex Niksay, and can be found at:

http://www.nicksay.com/alex/software/GimpControl/

It is intended for use with the Fink software package of Gimp, so I found it wasn’t as useful for me as it might have been, but it provided a nice Mac OS X icon.

8) Then I simply dragged the Gimp Applescript launcher to my dock, and voila! I can now launch Gimp and X11 by clicking on the icon in my Dock. Here is a clip of my desktop with the icons for X11 and the Gimp launcher added:

This document can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Self-actualization

Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented, and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another has already achieved.

DRM, downloading music, and Baen Books

I've been thinking about the whole issue of Digital Rights Management (DRM) a lot lately. Partly it has been occasioned by my use of a lot of free software (open source) on my Macs and PCs. Partly, because of the whole music downloading issue which has been in the press a lot lately.

If one reads the EULA (End User License Agreement) that you implicitly agree to when you open many commercial software products, you'll find that you have been laboring under the misapprehension that you purchased the software. This is not so as I explained in an article I wrote for Streaming Media a couple of years ago.

It's insidious, but you've only "licensed" the right to use the software. Now, this isn't quite the case with an album of music or a book. We don't have to agree to "shrinkwrap" agreements with these. Indeed, when we loan a friend a great CD to listen to, or a book to read, we are not breaking any laws.

So why the fuss? I would imagine it's because we are not copying the book (for example) and giving the copy to a friend. So the argument runs that we are depriving the artist of sales because if we can copy it for free, why would we buy it? However, as this article by one of my favorite authors points out this perception is changing in the literary community. I think its somewhat fitting that the charge has been led by the futurists amongst us.

Baen Books has been a leader in this sea change of thought on rights management and ownership. Indeed, I was lead to this when I recently went looking for content to put in my eBook reader (I use MobiPocket) on my Palm Vx. I've got a whole host of books and essays in it right now (including this pretty gnarly exposition by John R. Boyd called Creation and Destruction that I'm still working my way through). But I wanted more content. So where to find it? There is a ton of stuff at Project Gutenberg but what if I wanted modern fiction or poetry or critical essays?

Then today I had a serendipitous moment. I have been reading through (and buying in hardback) the military sci-fi series by John Ringo. These days when you buy a Baen hardback you will find a multi-format (PC/Mac) CD-ROM in the back. I had always ignored these and filed them in the back of a desk drawer thinking they were just promo pieces for books.

Today, on inserting it into my laptop, I found that that this CD contains some twenty free books in various electronic formats (rtf, html, eBook). The basic premise is that one can try out the works of different authors and if you like the books, odds are you'll probably buy one. Their sales have apparently proved this to be the case.

So what does this do to the whole question of how downloading music rips off artists? I know that after hearing Norah Jones in MP3 format I went and bought her album. So I have a personal data point.

I guess the jury is still out. But some artists have decided to cut out the record companies and self-publish their music and keep a much larger share (~50%) for themselves. This is just what the music industry is afraid of. I don't know what deal most artists get but I would be surprised if they got more than 5% net of the revenues of their albums.

The Greatful Dead went the route of permitting taping at their show many years ago. Even now there is an active trading scene for their music on DAT tape. Why not? Live shows have an ephemeral existence and why shouldn't fans have access to them.

I don't know what the future will bring. I suspect, as Eric Flint at Baen argues, that people want to be honest more than dishonest and we will see the iTunes model of micropayments become more common.

I certainly hope so. I know I plan to use the iTunes store to download music I already "own" - simply because it's in currently inaccessible album (vinyl) format. How can that be bad for the artists?

Packers fall at the last fence

What in God's name was Mike Sherman of the Green Bay Packers thinking?

Less than two minutes left in the game against the Eagles - they just need TWO feet to get a first down (its a fourth down) and they decide to punt to Donovan McNabb and the Eagles. The same Eagles who have just run roughshod over the Packer defence for the last six or seven minutes and come very close to tying the game. Absolutely insane if you ask me (as events proved). I mean, I'm not an NFL coach, I only play one on TV but is it asking too much for a professional team with title aspirations to gain two feet on one play to put the game away? If you can't get that with your O-line push and a quarterback sneak you really don't deserve to be playing the game. Did I mention that you have Brett Favre as your qb and Armand Green (156 yds in this game) as your running back?

I don't really like the Packers (because they cost the Niners four Superbowl opportunities in the '90s) but I do like and admire Brett Favre (who owns the 49ers). I'm sure that every offensive player on the Packers saw that as a mistake given the swing in momentum in the Eagles favor in the last few minutes of the game. Certainly, the Eagles must have breathed a sigh of relief that the Packers were going to give up their best chance to win the game and give that chance to Donovan & Co.

I ask again, "Why not just go with the Jumbo/Elephant package (two tight ends, biggest linemen) and trust that your 350+lb behemoths can advance the ball two feet? Since the loss, Brett Favre has been blamed for the terrible interception in overtime but I would like to point out that it would have never been necessary had Coach Mike Sherman made the obvious call and gone for it on 4th and 1.

I see the Eagles as a seriously flawed team (what run defense?) and will bet that the Panthers steal their lunch money. And make them run home crying to Mommy.

The Panthers have one of the best (if not the best) lines in football right now and a really great running back (Stephen Davis).

And a much better coach than the Packers.

Iron Chef

I've got to admit that I love this show. It's called Iron Chef. I discovered it on satellite maybe two years ago. You have to watch the show and perhaps be a bit of a chef yourself to really appreciate it. As the show's Web site says:

Two chefs, with different specialites (e.g., Italian, Japanese, French, Chinese) compete against one another under a time limit (normally one hour) to make four or five courses (appetizer, main courses, side dishes, and - gulp - dessert) out of some of the most incredible ingredients. Frequently, this is not something that a European/North American audience would ever consider eating (sea urchin?).

A sea urchin dessert??

It's quirky and half the fun is the hilarity of the translation (not that I speak Japanese, it's just that I have a hard time believing the translation sometimes). The inventor of the show is the main judge, who introduces the contestants and he has built a "stadium" in which they ply their trade. They don't know what the ingredient for the competition will be until the show starts.

Of course, they have sous chefs to help out but as in all places where culinary talent is revered, the hand of the master chef must be seen in all the dishes. It's not a conventional competion like the Bocuse d'Or but it is compelling just because both the format and the ingredients are so unusual.

When I'm bored, late at night, I try to imagine sea urchin dessert.

La Salaire de la Peur

I was up late a couple of nights ago and caught Le Salaire de la Peur (1953) on AMC. Fortunately, it was subtitled as my German is quite rusty and Italian nearly non-existent. It's predominantly a French film, that is, it has both a French director and a largely French cast but throughout the film the actors speak French, German, English and Italian pretty much interchangeably. The title translates as "The Wages of Fear". It was directed by Henri-Georges Cloutzot, a brilliant French director. He wrote and directed something on the order of twenty films, one of which was "Les Diaboliques" (which I learned he beat out Hitchcock in optioning the script). In any event, this particular film is absolutely stunning, starting out with a gradual pacing that sets up the tension later in the film. The long lead-in lets us get to know the principal characters (this was one of the first films of French heart throb and singer Yves Montand).

Montand later went on to do many films, including the seminal John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix (1966), and the wonderful Jean de Florette (1986).

Back to the film. A motley band of adventurers down on their luck are stranded in a little Venezuelan town because of financial reasons. After an oil well fire occurs in an even remoter region four of them are offered positions as drivers by the local American oil company. Their mission: drive trucks full of nitroglycerin 300 miles through moutains and jungle to the oil well so that it might be used to put out the fires. It's a suicide mission, but that's just the start of our journey into an exploration of fear, bravery, fatalism, and friendship.

This film was eventually re-made as Sorcerer (1977) with Roy Schneider. Not in itself a bad film but a pale shadow of the original B&W film.

Sometimes one has to wonder why Hollywood remakes films. I can only imagine that they felt that Americans would find the original inaccessible.

Surely it wasn't a lack of imagination.

Call me Yeti!

A huge snow storm has hit the Pacific Northwest overnight and we are expected to get 9"-12" of snow today. It's probably just a one-day snow (temperatures are expected to warm dramatically tomorrow) but we had to make preparations nonetheless. My family raises Arabian horses and while we are building a new house we are living in rented property a good ten miles from the farm. So we planned ahead for the snow (laid in more hay and feed and insulated taps) and I have volunteered to spend a day or two isolated here at the farm taking care of the horses. It's funny - in Canada or the East Coast this sort of snowfall would probably occasion small comment. Sort of business as usual. But up here (we're north of Seattle on an island) it snows about once every five years and then only about an inch or two. Nothing like a foot. So the county isn't prepared, most people have no experience driving in it, and almost nobody has snow tires. The horses really don't seem to mind much - they get a snow day too. They'll stay in today, eating their way through a 1/2 ton or so of hay (we have a lot of horses). Of course, someone has to clean the stalls tomorrow. That'll be a joy. I get to pass most of today mucking about (horse joke!) with Applescripts on my new laptop. Could be much worse. I could have no coffee!

Rugby World Cup

There is an old saw that "soccer is a ruffian's game, played by gentlemen and rugby is a gentleman's game played by ruffians". This comes from soccer being the game played by street urchins and rugby (the antecedent of American football) having been invented at the English public school, Rugby.

I've got to say that I love both games. I know far more about soccer having followed it for much longer. But over the Christmas holidays I have come to really respect and admire the game of rugby.

The Rugby World Cup, held every four years, was held this year in Australia. For the first time in a very long while, the English team has won it. I kind of identify with them because I was born in Scotland and so I follow English teams in all kinds of sports. I suppose I should support Scotland, rather than England but it's hard to even get to see their games on satellite, much less on television.

Over Christmas I worked on my revisions to my Web site and I had the chance to watch the quarter, semi-final and final matches on Fox Sports World. I had been aware of the upward progress of the English team for several years, ever since I worked at Coremetrics where I had a Kiwi co-worker who was a fanatic. I told him then "watch England over the next couple of years, they are going to get better". And so they have.

The best teams in the world right now are probably South Africa (the Springboks), Australia (the Wallabies), New Zealand (the famous All Blacks), France (Les Bleues), Scotland, and England. There are some other contenders but these teams seem to consistently be both top-ranked and perform very well in the big tournaments.

I knew of the All Blacks even when I didn't follow rugby at all. For many years, the All Blacks were the most consistently dominant team in rugby (between 1987 and 1989 they didn't lose a test match, playing 19 and drawing only 1). Now they are somewhat in eclipse - still a formidable foe but the they have been beaten in the big tournaments at the final hurdle with some regularity of late. But they still have a cool ceremony (the Haka) at the start of every match.

It was a very exciting final. England took a early lead and kept it most of the way through the game but the Aussies fought back in front of their home crowd to tie it up at the very end of regulation. Then England took the lead in the first half of overtime, only to have Australia tie it up again near the very end of overtime. I don't think there was more than 30 seconds left on the clock when Jonny Wilkinson scored his brilliant drop goal to secure the win.

A truly great introduction to an exciting sport. I think what I love most is that it never stops (an attraction to soccer too). As much a fan as I am of American football, the interminable length just drives me to distraction. I love being able to get together with friends and take a long lunch and watch a soccer match. Just impossible to do that with American football.

Noam Chomsky rocks..

I just heard parts (my car's radio reception is lousy on the island) of a lengthy interview with Noam Chomsky. Presumably as part of publicizing his new work, Hegemony or Survival about our new American Empire. The interview was fascinating and I didn't know who they were interviewing because I jumped into the middle of it while driving home. I thought he had to be a retired statesman because he had that sort of "gravitas" in his voice. But an unusually well-educated statesman because his knowledge of history, specifically of imperial histories, went beyond skin-deep.

It's a fact known only to a few historians who read obscure texts on empire (I am a member of that group only because my thesis was intimately involved with a few key events in the history of the British Empire) that the British Empire reached a point where it was only "break-even". Eventually, the income from overseas possessions only barely balanced the investment into those possessions and the military necessary to protect them. Chomsky knew this and it blew me away that a statesman would. Then, of course, the interview ended and I learned who he was.

I've resolved to buy the Amazon book. If the quality of his writing is anything like his spoken thought, it should be a fascinating read.

Why do I need another MP3 player?

I'm not sure about this one.. I already have an Archos MP3 player, that I took to Europe with me. It has a 6gig capacity, more than enough to hold all the music I could want. It worked quite well, with a great decent battery life (rechargeable NiCads). The only real drawback was that loading music into it was a bit slow (USB 1.0 connection).

I'm very interested in the new mini-iPods that Apple is rumoured to be launching next week. I love the utility of my iTunes application and if I can buy a 2-4gig mini-iPod in some color other than that ghastly white for about $100 I am going to be seriously interested in acquiring it. Especially cool would be a Firewire interface so I could transfer files quickly.

Time will tell - it would be a great move by Apple to expand the low end of their market. As Arstechnica says it would go a long way toward dispelling the belief that Apple cannot make products "for the rest of us" (ie. affordable).

Created with Mac OS X

Well, the vagaries of IE aside, I finally have my new Web site launched. Took me a couple of hours to hack the CSS and HTML to give a satisfactory result. I still think the new site looks dramatically better on OS X , but I attribute that to a combination of screen gamma (Macs are brighter screens by default) and much better type rendering (OS X has subpixel anti-aliasing that makes type look much better than under Windows).

The site isn't quite complete, as I have yet to add some downloadable files that I must make into PDF but at least it launched on the 1st as I promised myself. I also have to go through and rewrite some of the code to make the best use of CSS. Right now, it's a bit of a mish-mash between HTML and CSS, not as up to date as I would like.

Happy New Year to all, and may it prove to be a better year in every way for you!