Well, my visit to SXSW will not be cheap. I've figured out that airfare is about $300 from Seattle and the conference is $250. Add in car rental and food and I'll be surprised if I get out of it for less than $900. Thank God I have family to stay with down there.
But it will be nice to take a break from work and do something intellectually stimulating at the same time. Not that work isn't intellectually stimulating, it's just quite different.
Here's hoping for good weather. Should be in the low 70's (it is historically).
Here's a plug for a service that I discovered when I set up my desktop PC again (pulled it out of storage so I could do testing for work). Anyway, I have Windows Media Player up and I'm desperate to have some good music to listen to. My office abuts my workshop (where I build my RC planes) so I thought, "why not use Windows Media Player to stream some music?"
So that's how I found Accuradio. They offer a ton of different channels, including quite a few jazz ones (my love for listening all evening). One very nice feature is that you can turn on or off the artists you would like to hear. Very nifty.
I'm playing the Cool Jazz channel right now.. lots of Chet Baker, Ahmad Jamal, and Miles Davis. Old friends, all. It's a bit of a relief to get away from the TV and do something with my hands.
If you're a PC-type try it out. I haven't tried it with my Mac yet -- I doubt it works but you never know. There are some good channels on iTunes as well. This has inspired me to go out and get a new turntable.
(nb. I just checked, they are starting to provide their channels for the Mac as well.)
Vinyl, here I come.. :>
I just made my first contribution to Heifer International. This is a great organization that takes the attitude that we who are more fortunate can help those who are less fortunate by giving them livestock to build a self-sustaining economy.
The livestock aren't used as food, but rather to produce a cash crop (or survival rations) on the basis of which people can live themselves out of poverty. Those who receive the livestock agree to pass on the female offspring to others who are less fortunate.
The organization started during the Spanish Civil War and operates in something like 115 countries now.
To my mind, it fits perfectly with my personal philosophy of teaching a man how to fish, not just giving him the fish. One of my resolutions is to make a contribution from every paycheck.
The name just gives me a warm fuzzy. I first discovered their speakers in the early 1980s. They built uncompromising designs in what I think was the hey-day of acoustic speaker design. Not absurdly expensive (but still pricey) and they had an ethos that said "these should be accessible to the normal enthusiast". So they made most of their speakers available as kits.
I bought a set of DAS-6s and have had them ever since. I've blown out a tweeter (with the 1812 Overture; my master recording on vinyl claimed to have the single largest transient ever recorded) and then a mover put his hands through one of the 8" woofers a couple of years ago when I moved from San Francisco.
I've reclaimed the speakers from storage and have just bought two new 8" woofers for them from Speakerlab - who have managed to stay in business all these years. They're down-sized but still produce components.
So I am very eager to return home tonight and install the new woofers. I'll probably have the 12" woofers re-coned (it's hard to get the same quality of components anymore).
Now, of course, I face the minor nightmare of wiring up the system. I have a couple of NAD amps that can be set to put all their power through one channel and fancy multi-media receiver to fit the TV output into the 6 speaker stereo components. Plus DVD, CD, and soon phonograph.
Best of all, I'm just making use of an investment I've made over the years. Total outlay will only be about $300 to get everything going again and most of that will be the phonograph.
I posed this question the other day at dinner to a group of friends. (I think it was brought to mind by the anniversary of WWII's commencement). "Is the world better off today or in say, 1939?"
This occasioned some argument. Some thought that the levels of pollution in major cities were far less today than then and that this was a good thing. I argued that that might be true of the visible pollution (notably coal) but we had lots of invisible pollution (PCBs) that scared me far worse today.
Plus we only had that level of pollution in the major industrialized cities of the West, not in every city on earth. Then there is the matter of the population doubling since then (3 billion to 6 billion) plus the number of people at starvation level.
Ok, Movable Type is just a bit odd. I was playing around with the main page template to try and clean up the display of categories. So I commented out the listing of the individual articles in the Category display and it still displays the contents of two categories for absolutely no reason that I can discern.
It's XML but I'm just not sure it's parsing properly. I think I may just change the display so that it randomly selects one of the Categories and displays its contents. That would be interesting and perhaps a fun exercise.
I'm finding lots of uses for XML in my current position. I'm not a big fan of writing it but it certainly supports a lot of imaginative uses.
I've found some beta tech for Firefox that allows one to block advertisements in Web pages.
I've been trying it for the last couple of days and it works pretty well. One has to select each string that calls up an ad to block (and that's fairly tedious) but once enabled it blocks pretty consistently.
I think the biggest win would be for modem users. Blocking the ad definitely speeds page loading on sites like Hotmail or Yahoo. Note, I've only done this with my PC version of Firefox. Time to go off and try it with the Mac version, too.
Caution, beta software!
I'm beginning to think I should create a category for "this is so wrong".
Not just that a 66-yr old woman chose to get pregnant and give birth. But that two of the three triplets died in the process. There has got to be an ethical consideration in our actions. Obviously, both the doctors and the patient gave little or no thought to the ethical side of their actions.
I imagine as we go forward into the 21st century we're just going to see more and more dubious actions sanctioned by the "scientific" community. I consider myself a rational, order-loving individual and I'm beginning to think that there should be an outcry about some of these things. We have to ask, "Is it right?" not just "Is it possible?".
Science fiction become real. On some level, I find it really disturbing. What are the ethics around this?
Is anyone even thinking about it? It's a bit like the guys who invented the atom bomb. No one asked whether they should it seems.
I think I first learned about SXSW about 18 months ago. It hadn't been on my radar at all over the last couple of years. Partly 'cause I figured how important could it be and not be in the Bay Area?
Anyway, I'm over my Bay Area-centrism somewhat 'cause I visited Austin last year in the spring and saw the buzz this "festival" called. With music and film added, it's not really just a conference.
I'm planning on attending this year for the first time. It helps that I have family living in Austin with whom I can stay (decent hotels are expen$ive there). So I'm off for the weekend of March 11-14. Now I just have to book tickets and pay for the conference.
I'm looking forward to real Texas barbecue again with my family.
So I've installed iTunes on my work PC (a Dell Pentium 4) and so can enjoy my music library while working (occasionally).
But the most interesting thing I found is that the help system is just crap. In complete contrast to the outstanding help system on the Apple OS, the one Apple provides with iTunes is pathetic (keyword-based). How are they going to convince anyone to convert when their first example of Apple tech on the PC is so poorly represented?
It's a mystery to me. There is probably some reason behind it that I cannot fathom. Perhaps I'm unusual in that I use both platforms daily (Apple at home, PC at work)?
I've just realized that one of my favorite TV shows is back on the air for the third season. Known as MI-5 in the 'States, it is known as "Spooks" in the UK, where it originated.
Brilliant writing and sometimes controversial topics. Quite a contrast to "24" to which it has occasionally been compared.
I can strongly recommend it and now the first two seasons are available at Amazon.co.uk (uncut, unlike the way they are shown here).
I've got to say that this was one of the best episodes of a TV drama that I've watched in a very long while.
The writer, Ronald D. Moore, really knocked one out of the park with this. He's been a long-time Star Trek writer (mostly on Deep Space Nine) but also has writing credits on Mission Impossible II.
Absolutely first-rate story premise (Galactica is attacked exactly 33 minutes after every trans-light jump by the Cylons). When we join the story there have been 237 successive attacks and jumps. What a great plot vehicle. What a great way to open a new series.
I'm really looking forward to more and have to restrain myself from looking for episodes online (the series started in the UK several months ago and so there are episodes available online that haven't been televised here).
It's a pleasure to see this quality of writing (and acting) in television. It's good to be a sci-fi fan right now..
I haven't noticed any commentary on this in the press but I noted the financial results of both Apple and Microsoft came out in the last few days. Extrapolating from Apple's form in the last quarter they are on a pace to do a gross of about $16 billion this year. Microsoft, which own 96% of the desktop market or so, made $36.8 billion last year.
So Apple is grossing almost 1/2 as much as Microsoft with a much smaller percentage of the desktop market. Is that perhaps due to selling hardware rather than software? There are associated costs to this of course which make selling software much more desirable but it seems that Apple has been growing dramatically in the last couple of years in total sales volume.
Hmmmm.
This from a new MS friend after I showed them "newsmap".
A different take on the same idea. Not as cool in information design terms but still with a pretty high wow factor.
Through an odd chain of events I found an old friend this evening on the
Web. He now writes his own blog. We worked together on the design of the Coremetrics site a few years ago.
Through his site I found this tremendously cool page, newsmap. It presents a real-time graphical map of news as it is occurring on the Web (and thus, in the world).
Very nifty use of informational graphics. I think Edward Tufte would be proud..
Ok.. not that I can really justify it. Not having just dropped several hundred on a new T3 Palm. But now that I'm in an urban area, I can use another phone service than NexTel. And my contract is up! And I get to keep my number!
Who knew the future would be so bright? Let's see -- what do I want in a phone. A Palm interface (what do I do with my T3 then?), Bluetooth so that I can a wireless headphone, and expansion slot so that I can put in extra memory, headphone jack so that I can use it as an MP3 player, and a big enough screen that I can actually browse the Web occasionally.
I think this all means that I'll be looking at Nokias.
I've been jones'ing for KQED for the last couple of years (ever since I moved out of the Bay Area). Up here in the wet and sloppy Northwest we don't have any fulltime NPR stations. They are drivetime only, with sporadic newsbreaks during the day.
I've been considering getting Sirius or that other satellite radio for my car just so that I could pick up the BBC 24/7.
Then I remembered today that (1) iTunes runs on the PC, and (2) KQED broadcasts on iTunes.
Joy, joy, joy! Now I just have to move over my 7Gb of music to my office desktop and it'll be all good.
Ok.. so last night I take one of these NyQuil things and pass out about 1/2 way through the 2nd wildcard game. Wake up at 5am and am just having my first cup of coffee about 6:30 when I hear what sounds like a knocking on the door.
I'm at my folks' farm this morning (they are in Texas at the moment) and I've been enjoying some quality time with dogs, cats and horses. Who, I think, is knocking at my door at this hour of the morning?
And then it hits me.. It's gunfire.
Yes.. I'm back in the country alright. Here I am on Camano Island, population about 20-25,000 and my neighbors are popping off with their shotguns at dawn. Huntin'.
Now I'm a gun-owner. I actually have quite a few. But I've never been a hunter. I like animals too much and I've never had an interest in venison or lead-filled duck. Shotguns are not particuarly dangerous at over 100 metres or so, so I suppose it's not unusual that the island hasn't banned them. But I think you can still take out the odd .30-06 and go "bag" yourself a buck.. That worries the hell out of me. From the way these yahoos use their autoloading shotguns I'm afraid they can't hit the broad side of a barn, much less an unsuspecting deer.
The Sammamish plateau (where I now live) has just banned hunting. Of course, they can't really "ban" it. Against state law. So they passed an ordinance that forbid doing harm to animals with bow, knife or gun!
I can understand hunting if one needs to feed oneself or one's family. But just for the "pleasure" of it? Sometimes I think I'm living in the wrong culture.
It's the greatest club competition in the world.. The FA Cup. Four divisions (down to part-time village clubs) get to compete for the most famous of football trophies.
Today, little Exeter (which is in the next to lowest division - the Nationwide Conference) managed to hold storied Manchester United to a draw at Manchester United. 58,000 Manchester fans couldn't believe their eyes (nor could the nation I imagine). What a tremendous result.
Under the rules of the competition, now Exeter gets to host Man Utd. at their little park. For those of you not familiar with the real football this would be akin to the 49ers in their glory years having to go an play an arena football team. At a bumpy, small, and probably soggy pitch.
Man Utd. will probably win. But then again, it's equally possible it will go to penalties and we will see one of the greatest upsets in the 100+ year history of the competition.
There is a lot to be said for English football.
So far I'm really enjoying my time at Microsoft. It's refreshing to be able to use my brain again. Working for myself I didn't really run into more than garden variety problems. The stuff I'm dealing with now is an order of magnitude more challenging (and thus rewarding).
Have I mentioned the room for creativity in coming up with solutions? I'm loving it.
I have just moved into my new apartment (in preparation for starting my new job tomorrow) and one of the first things I did was to get a high-speed Internet connection.
Initially, I picked Verizon DSL because they promised me a wireless modem with my connection. That, and I liked the guaranteed bandwidth (not sharing it as one does with a cable modem). However, when the modem arrived yesterday two things were apparent. One, I had been a victim of the old "bait and switch" and secondly, they wouldn't be connecting me for another couple of days. I could have handled the latter if the former hadn't been true. I was promised the wireless modem without a contract and they send me a wired modem.
Now because of my negative experiences setting up wireless routers with cable broadband I was leery of buying the cable option. But I was very aggravated that Verizon expected me to sign a 1yr contract just in order to get the wireless modem.
So after calling the cable rep and finding that if I picked up the cable modem I could set it up right away I called back Verizon (and after half an hour on hold) cancelled their butts.
A couple of hours later after some time with tech support (bad account number) I was up and running on my Powerbook using my newly-secured wireless router (I had a Netgear lying about). The speed seems to vary between about 750 kilobits to 1 megabit. Hardly the three megabits they promised but I can live with it.
My motto: trust but verify.