Hurricane Part 3 - Patch is hurt
We're just about to leave for Miami. It's 7.00 pm and we decide to give Patch, our Great Dane, a shower outside, so he'll smell better at the hotel. But while drying him I press on his hip and he collapses to the ground, screaming. I don't think anything has torn at my heart more than hearing my dog in pain. I tried to help him up but he nipped at my hand "Don't touch !", howling the whole time. After about ten seconds he struggled to his feet and jumped in the pool - I guess he associates that with cooling off and reducing burning. We dried him off again, carefully, and I took him for a short walk to see if he was ok - he seemed alright and even stood on the leg while relieving himself. I hope he's OK on the drive down there; we're going to look for an emergency vet ASAP, assuming the worst of the weather misses Miami and the power is still on tomorrow.

You can read more about Patch at his website.

Hurricane Part 2
We're going to Miami to ride the storm out - we've picked up all the plant pots (I hate oograh - always said we shouldn't bother with it !) and lawn furniture, picked up all the furniture and stacked it up (we're expecting flooding - hoping for just a few inches, but a 15 feet surge is predicted) and will be leaving in a couple of hours. Our neighbour works for Hilton and got us a room down in Miami, which is about 1.5 hours away.

So we'll be doing the whole "come back and see what's left" routine. I'm glad hurricane & flood insurance are compulsory in Florida ! If some stuff gets destroyed - hey it's only stuff and can be replaced. Except Steve Kilbey's bass guitar and his gold record award for Starfish, which are safely stored away upstairs. We're taking our photos with us, and the pets of course.

Next post from Miami !

Brian

Hurricane Blog Pt 1.
A hurricane hasn't hit this part of Florida for a hundred years, but on Saturday that right might come to an end. We live half a mile from the ocean and are in the evacuation zone - it's nearly noon and we have to leave at 2PM. We're planning to sit out the storm at the offices of DSS, which is a new building and should be sturdy enough to stand up to Hurricane Frances, although it is still pretty close to the ocean.

Deanne is talking to her mother on the phone, trying to calm her down....that didn't take long :)

We went and put gas in both cars this morning, bought about $300 of groceries, withdrew $500 cash from the bank and took pictures of the house, cars etc. We're planning to take one of the cars out of town about ten or twenty miles to park it somewhere so that one of them will be, hopefully, out of range.

The TV is full of Very Scary People with dire warnings about how destructive the storm will be. We're hoping, of course, it will miss us and that can happen just a few hours before it is due to cross land. Apparently all the weather models agree it will turn more to the north and we're really hoping it does it soon. If it does so, we'll not bear the brunt of the storm, the 140 mph winds and 15 foot storm surge and hopefully get those numbers down to something our home can manage.

We have about 36 hours before the winds start to reach us, so I'm hopeful that we can move all our belongings upstairs and hope the roof stays on !

I'll try and connect later and post more.

the new job begins
I've been at my new job for two days now and so far it's been very good. I still feel a little useless, but I'm learning quickly and will soon be able to compile the projects myself. I have my own office, installed the software I wanted on my PC etc. I still have to get my speakers in here though - I'm not at home until my music is playing here :)

The drive in and back home is the biggest difference so far. DSS was only 5-7 minutes away, ScriptRX is about 30 minutes. It's a little strange driving in thick traffic and through downtown which is all one-way streets and construction right now. Driving home last night I totally screwed up and went south out of town instead of north. After about 15 minutes I realized I'd made a mistake and reversed direction, and got on the highway north. I screwed that up too - I was in the wrong lane and had to exit when I actually wanted to stay on, and it took about ten minutes to find a way to turn back around, get on the highway and get home. 45 minutes in all, but hopefully I'll get the journey home right tonight.

Patch is suffering a bit because now I can't pick him up at lunch at take him to work. I'll ask if I can bring him in here occasionally if he's not going to be OK at home.

I made two more good fractal images last night - see the link to "Brian's Fractals" on the right. I'm going to start bringing the camera in to work and take pictures of the new digs and the downtown area - it's quite pretty.

I've made a fractals page to show off what a even a talentless hack like me can do with a good bit of fractal software. I hope you'll give it a try too - there's a good mailing list to support new users too. 

The Wedge available online
My hobbies all seem to have hit me with good progress at the same time. Curt Stewart's short film, The Wedge, is available online for a week or so. I wrote one of the pieces of music in it - it's the part where the girl is introduced. Curt edited it together from stock footage and provided the voiceover - a mini horror story !

My fractal explorations (see below) are rocking along nicely and I'm going to post a page with my best results. Stay tuned !

Deanne is out of town this week, and I've been saying my goodbyes at work. There's been nothing but nice comments and I think I'm having another two farewell lunches ! It's a sad thing to leave a job you love, but I'm really excited about the prospects of the new one.

A picture I made with UltraFractal 3.0. It was only my second or third try, but since then I've improved a little with practice. It's a great program and you can try it free for 30 days.

A'ash al-Iraq !
That means "long live Iraq" and it's a phrase I learned from reading the excellent Iraq The Model website, run by three brothers in Iraq. The news came today that two of them are running for office in the new Iraqi government ! Their accounts of daily life, their observations of politics in the new Iraq are very enlightening and I really recommend you read it and I really hope they do well in the elections this December.

I've also been reading Chrenkoff's blog, especially his Good News From Iraq series. Its a roundup of all the good news stories you might find if you looked hard enough. He castigates the "liberal" media for ignoring the "good news" stories, but I think he's a little unfair here: nobody reports on a daily trickle of good news. Everybody reports the "if it bleeds, it leads" stories about death and destruction. This is the same for any subject, not just Iraq. But whatever his motives it's great to read about steady, unstoppable progress being made on issues like international trade, commerce, security, education etc.

I was especially moved by the work done by Spirit of America who buy what is needed in Iraq and Fedex it out there. Bam ! It's fast and effective and it produces good results, quickly. I donated to the program that supplied good quality tools to a program that teaches Iraqi men about construction and carpentry. I've always thought people donated to children a bit too much, and didn't think about donating to the parents. Yes, the children are the future, but if you help their parents today, the children will be fed, clothed and educated by their own families !

dont' be that guy
The hurricane missed us completely, and thanks to friends and family phoning and writing to see if we're alright. We survived ! Through gusts of up to 15, maybe 16 miles per hour, and enough rain to form small puddles in the driveway, we drank a couple of beers and watched telly, bravely braving braveness bravely :)

It was a total non-event in our corner of Florida, though 13 people died elsewhere, including the man who died when he went OUTSIDE for a ciggy ! Yes, this man was dying for a smoke (I had to say it and I won't be the last) and he did when a palm tree fell on him. How did he light the cigarette ? Who makes a lighter that works in 140 mph winds ? Or who makes a cigarette that can stay alight in a bloody hurricane !?

A word of advice, kids. Don't be that guy who's death is reported in the Odd Spot column of the newspapers. Don't be the guy who's the subject of "Hey, did you hear about the idiot who..." conversations around office watercoolers around the world. Death is coming for all of us one day, but for sooth's sake, don't make it easy for him to find you ! "Hey Death, I'll be outside under that palm tree IN A GODDAMN HURRICANE !"

Financial Analyst's Holiday
Just listening a story on the radio about the toy store Toys 'R Us possibly splitting up and spinning the Babies 'R Us into a seperate business. The Babies stores are doing much better than the others (and having seen the prices, I can see why) because "people buy for babies year round, but only buy for their kids on birthday and during the 4th Quarter Holidays."

The 4th Quarter Holidays ? "Happy 4th quarter, Johnny ! If you've been good, CFO Santa might bring you fiduciary instruments at 1 point above the prime rate !" HAR !

No, I know, he was being a nice guy and including all religions who have a different holiday at that time; but it took me by surprise and sounded utterly heartless, which is how economists sometimes seem.

I've heard back from the president of the company about me leaving - he asked me why I was going, of course, and wished me luck. He was nice enough to say I could come back if it didn't work out, but I told him I was pretty confident that ScriptRX had answered all my questions about stability, future prospects etc. So it's a done deal, and now I wait to say goodbye to the friends I've made over the past two years. I should take some pictures too.

storm's a comin'. Yyyyyup.
I have some news. I've been sitting quietly on this for a while but I sent the fax today and made the phone call, so there's no changing my mind. I've accepted a position at another company, ScriptRX and will be leaving DSS at the end of the month. I've had a great two and a half years here, but ScriptRX have made me a great offer that I simply couldn't refuse.

They have a project they've been working on for a couple of years but recently their development team all left to form their own software development shop. Scriptrx needs someone in-house to oversee the source code, develop and design new features, manage any other programmers brought on board or manage communications with other contractors. They work in downtown West Palm Beach, right on Clematis Street and they've made me a very sweet deal.

Document Storage Systems has been a great company to work for and I'll miss it. I'll miss the respect and friendship I have with everyone, and the excellent feedback I've had about the software I've written there. It's a place that's given me a lot of confidence, and also experience in the medical software field, which while I was in college I swore I'd never do, because bugs in medical software can get people killed ! Well, here I am, moving into medical software for the second company in a row, and it seems like there's a great future in it. Very few hospitals have electronic medical records systems, and what I've seen at the VA, which has the best in the world, will help me greatly at the new position.

It's a pretty wide-open scenario which kind of reminds me of what I walked into when I joined Sausage Software in August 1995. I was the second employee and was hired at the kitchen table of a man who is now worth 70-80 million dollars :) Ah, the Internet boom; wasn't it great !? I got a big ol' house out of it, but I foolishly turned down the opportunity to become project manager of HotDog, our flagship product at Sausage. I figured that I liked software design and programming too much to get involved in management and didn't want to be held responsible for other people's work. I was probably right at the time, but over the past few years I've learned a hell of a lot about software design and become a more confident person.

So I'm stepping off one boat and boarding another train, happily mixing metaphors in the airport of life. Thank you to everyone at DSS, hello to everyone at ScriptRX !

New Stuff
We got a series 2 Tivo and I have it set up to play the music from my main computer. It's really cool to be able to turn on the TV, hit the remote control and choose any piece of music from my huge collection of music. Deanne and I have about 1000 CDs between us, so it'll take a while to rip it all to my computer.

Deanne has been away for a couple of days and I've really missed her - I don't sleep well when she's away...though that might be because I bought a Tivo and spent hours getting it set up, then walked the dog, shot some pool with my friend Scott, and couldn't sleep till 3AM. She's going away again on Sunday, so I'll try and get to bed at a better time...I can only do one five hour sleep per week :) But there's a Farscape marathon, the XGames, West Wing episodes....damn you TV !

tired of news
The news about the execution of the Turkish truck driver really turned my stomach. I've heard about all the others, of course, but this one really hit me, because the poor bastard was shot right after he read a statement urging all other Turkish drivers to stop working in Iraq. Then one of those disgusting thugs walked up and shot him in the head. I hope these animals get run to ground and feel some terror of their own before they're.....do I want them dead ? Do I want to see them erased from the face of the earth, or treated like any other criminal. I honestly don't know. But I do know that I've reached some point where this same thing has happened too many times. Iraqi people, on the whole, want free and happy lives, but a few thousand thugs can threaten that, and it's not fair.

Y'know, I liked most of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, except the part where he tried to paint the Iraqi insurgency as freedom fighters, or some kind of noble movement who are resisting American aggression. It's total crap - they're power hungry control freaks who's Daddy was kicked out of power and they're terrified of having to make decent, civilised lives for themselves and work with other Iraqis instead of being handed everything they want. Moore has this image totally wrong. The war was the right thing to do, and it's wrong that the rest of the world didn't take Saddam's government down a long time ago. Not because of the War on Terror (you can't do with that with guns - you need good schools and tolerant societies), but because he was a brutish dictator who slaughtered his people and kept his country in fear. And shame on the Arab media for filtering all information through a "America Is Bad" filter. I think Mahmood (see a couple of posts down) said it best - I won't even try to match what he said.

Iraq will eventually be a prosperous democracy because that's what the majority of it's people want. If it receives support from the rest of the world, it'll happen, no doubt in my mind.

Looking back to South Florida though, we're still waiting for our fridge to be repaired (3 months now). I got tired of being ignored by Fisher & Paykel's office in Jacksonville, so I called Australia and ordered the new fan and motor myself, and will have a local repair guy try and install it. Apparently I have the only F&P fridge in the whole USA and I totally broke their heads trying to get a part sent over to replace the dud one. They were so paralyzed they couldn't even phone me back...I hope they recover soon so the healing can begin. Bastards.

Curt Stewart told me that my piece of music "A Good Beginning" is the most prominently featured music in his short film, The Wedge, and that he'll try and send me a DVD of it soon.

Mercury Mailroom is nearly done - we need to set up our ordering page, but lots of the other little tasks are done and we'll start our publicity blitz soon !

If any blue men with no faces or legs float up to me, I'm ready to knock 'em down.

My friend Scott took me to a shooting range for my first experience with guns. I've never been a fan of guns, but I think people should be allowed to own them for sporting purposes and self-defense, as long as they make sure their kids can't get to them, and they're prepared to be held responsible for whatever that gun is used for. Semi-automatic and fully automatics seem to have no redeeming use outside of the military: nobody should need one (or more) of those and I agree with Australia's ban on those types of weapons.

Getting off the soapbox now, it was pretty amazing to fire a Magnum .357. It's such a simple device - Scott showed me an automatic pistol in pieces and there were surprisingly few components. You drop six bullets into the chambers, snap it closed, rotate the chambers till it locks...and you're ready. I wondered if the other shooters had ever thought..."what if I just turned around and shot all these people ?" Or maybe that was just me...a weird thought to have, but then I've never held a gun before.

They all seemed to be having a good time - the serious rifle guy next to me was aiming at tiny targets at the furthest extension of the range, about 50 feet, and getting a nice cluster of bullet holes. A tall, balding guy with buck teeth and a tight black tshirt, jeans and big boots fit the stereotype of the gun-totin' redneck perfectly, and was smiling as he fired the loudest damned gun I've ever heard, and picked up the spent shells afterwards. It was a .50 calibre Desert Eagle, I found out later, and Scott said he was surprised the range allowed that size weapon to be fired. Picking up the shells was common practice - you can refill them and fire them again two or three times before they start to warp and become unsafe to fire.

So...I was *really* nervous as Scott showed me how to load and clear the gun. It was heard to hear him because of the earplugs we wore, and every few seconds someone would fire and make me more jumpy...you didn't know when one of the .50 cals would be fired, and you'd feel the air bump against your skin, and resonate in your chest. After a while you get used to it though. Scott loads the gun for me, tells me to keep it pointed downrange always, and I pick it up.

My hands are a bit shaky and I'm sweating a little because the range isn't airconditioned. It's fairly heavy, and cold. I cock it and aim at the blue man target, 15 feet away. I pull the trigger and BLAM ! It kicks back hard and a neat circle appears in the guts of Mr Blue. Wow...I fired a gun :) ! I do this about 87 more times at different ranges...I think all that video game time paid off. The gun cocks easily and each set of six shots goes by too quickly. I get into the rhythm of loading up, firing, and clearing the chamber, and I find my aim tends to be low and quite erratic. But, and this is the important part, I didn't get any power thrills from hefting and firing such a powerful gun. No red mists over the eyes, no visions of soldiering against evil enemies, no defending myself against hideous hordes. It was just an exercise in aiming and firing; a game.

Both of Scott's automatic pistols have problems, so we finish up and leave. I enjoyed the experience, but I'm probably not going to do it again - it's expensive, my hands hurt a little bit for a couple of days afterwards, and I'd rather play my games on the computer. Deanne and another lady at work each took one of my target sheets and stuck them on their office doors as a warning to others :)

everything and nothing
An excellent essay by a man urging his fellow citizens to stop living in the past, open their eyes, and turn the Arab world towards democracy.

I moved the computer out of the laundry and into the office last night...maybe I'll start using it more often instead of the old laptop which isn't good for much more than web-browsing and light development. But I gotta promise Deanne that I won't vanish into the office for hours at a time :)

I had a great experience over the weekend while watching Acoustic Remedy playing at Paddy Mac's . I asked Jason if he knew "Blues Run the Game", a fairly obscure Simon and Garfunkel tune. He said he didn't, but plucked out the first few notes and lyrics and I sang along with him to help jog his memory. The guy sitting next to us turned in surprise and as I stopped singing he said "Hey, don't stop !" which was nice :) I've been told I have a nice voice and with the computer upstairs I may bring the ol' guitar out, get a new microphone (Shure SM57) and see if can record something nice.

More to report later, including my experience firing a Magnum .357 at a gun range !

My friend Chris Duffy was a groomsman at my wedding and is a very funny guy with a very interesting history. He sent me this observation about the USA being admitted to the ranks of cricket playing nations.

I wish I were making this up.

The ICC has admitted the US to the ranks of international cricket. While I am not a fan, apart from the concept of having a game where there can be a difference of hundreds and hundreds of points and still call it a draw, there is something nicely formal about cricket that I can only see this being to the detriment of.

I quite like the idea that the ICC will only allow the US to play if henceforward all coloured maps of the world show the US in pink. :-) Are there persons in the US who aspire to being as good as a Pakistani or West Indian? How will sports commentators cope with the prospect that an innings is when everyone on your team goes in till everyone is out? ("Thats gotta hurt Bob.")

I wonder if the ICC is just making allocation in case India glass hardens Pakistan, or global warming sinks the West Indies. Possibly New Zealand and Australia are planning unification. Surely the ICC is privy to some esoteric information along these lines, its the only thing that makes sense.

The US playing in a world series where other countries are invited? It's just not cricket.

the music, man
Well, this has just been the coolest couple of days...a film maker called Curt Stewart (imdb entry) (no site yet, but maybe soon) has used a piece of music I recorded in his film, "The Wedge" ! The piece he chose is called "A Good Beginning" and it's available on my music page (scroll down about half way). I released that music under a Creative Commons license which allows me to very easily tell the world how much control I want to have over my music - in this case, not much :) If you have anything you want to give to the world without letting others make money off it, use this license to do it. Curt has released his movie under the same type of license.

Here's the information Curt gave me.

The movie was created for the StockStock 2004 film festival (www.stockstock.org). The festival worked like this: every entrant received a tape of stock footage from www.archive.org. Everyone got the exact same footage. We then had to create a movie without adding any additional footage, but we could add music, dialogue, digital effects, etc.

My movie is about a young boy that reflects on his relationship with his best friend. I know it sounds kind of sappy but it turned out funny and bittersweet.

I wanted to use some cool music and, after searching www.opsound.org and www.archive.org I found three great songs by three different artists - one from Florida USA [actually I'm Australian, but live in the USA - Brian], one from Germany and one from Sweden. The internet has made this movie a truly global project!

I'm releasing the project under a Creative Commons license.

The screenings so far:

Aug. 1 Seattle, WA USA: StockStock 2004 screening
Aug. 18 Los Angeles, CA USA: Filmmaker's Alliance DGA Awards Event

About me: I'm a CG lighting artist and I work on animated feature films in Glendale, CA USA. Digital filmmaking is my hobby. I have a modest entry on www.imdb.com.

Go me :) And go Curt too ;) !

frustrated
Damn. DAMN ! I'm so annoyed; all I wanted to do was plug my guitar in and have the laptop record some lame-ass playing. Was that so much to ask? Apparently so.

Here's 90 minutes of my life I won't get back:

1) Spend 30 minutes finding the 1/4" to 1/8" adapter that I *swear* I used to have. (It turned up in the closet, not the "Big Box O' Adapters" that all geeks are required to own.)

2) Wonder why this doesn't work right away....develop ominous feeling of Impending Doom

3) After much cursing and downloading, find that the sound input on the laptop is microphone ONLY - this laptop doesn't "do" line-in. There goes the guitar idea.

4) Plug my two microphones in, yelling "HELLO !" into them, trying to get the audio meter to acknowledge my existence. Immediately follow with "Shut up, Patch !" as the dog thinks I'm greeting a pizza guy, which means he has to bark in order to make Mr Pizza-man drop the food and run away. This gets old quickly.

5) Curse laptop for remaining totally uninterested in my voice unless I twitch the microphone cord by a fraction of a millimeter, which triggers a storm of static and a 100% signal overload situation.

6) Throw microphone in the bin.

7) Curse Microsoft for designing the crappiest volume/record source interface EVER devised by sentient life. Why, pray tell, is the microphone's +20db gain checkbox on the Playback screen? And why do I need to go Options->Properties->Recording->OK to get to the screen that allows me to choose a recording source and volume ? Can't I see playback and record at the same time, or is that too much to expect ? Apparently so. I need to be protected from having two choices at once.

8) Give up on the whole thing, put my beloved guitars away and go do a puzzle in utter silence to calm down.

If you want to hear some music I managed to record 10 years ago, click the "Brian's Music" link on the right. It will not escape my notice that NO computers were involved in recording those tracks :)

Pretty blue lights falling 

We went into sultry downtown West Palm Beach for the holiday fireworks display, called "4th on Flagler". It was a very pretty show with a stunning and LOUD finale! A constant stream of loud bangs, much louder than normal fireworks, exploded in gold down low while high up, the gold trails got bigger and bigger. After a few seconds it got even LOUDER, then finished with the biggest firework I've ever seen...very good show :) The coolest new firework was one which blows up in gold, goes DARK for a few seconds, then relights in gold. It's very trippy to see the second colour appear from nowhere :) It was generally agreed that last year's show was better, but it was worth the trip down all the same.

I really enjoy living in America, despite the backwards, corporation-centered attitude of it's leadership. I think the essential goodness of the majority of the American people is reflected in the general optimisim and progressive, liberal spirit that you see in the culture, especially the movies and television. A good example occurred the other day when I watched a debate about gay marriage on TV. The interviewer quoted a poll that showed around 60% of people were opposed to it, a figure I'd heard before and had had trouble understanding how so many could be opposed.

"That opposition is a mile wide and two inches deep." she replied.

I hadn't thought of it that way before - it always disturbed me that so many people were against this basic human right; to express a commitment to another person and have that respected and legally recognized. It rang true to me that very few of those 60% would hang on to that opposition with any real vigor: I see it as a "I'd rather they didn't, but if the court says its OK, then I'm OK with it" kind of sentiment. The lady of TV was certain it was only a matter of time before it was federally recognized and I agreed with her.

David Brin wrote a good speech which, among other things, pointed out that western society, especially American society is brainwashed into a most suprising condition: permanent rebellion. We are taught by a large fraction of the films and TV programs that we authority is not to be trusted, we should try new things for ourselves and always look for a better way. Governments may come and go, but this message keeps coming, relentlessly. I'm glad it does, because it keeps the public pre-disposed to think in what I consider the Right Way: Never settle for today's answer - look for a better way.

Hmmm...I do ramble a bit, don't I ?

happy 4th of july
And a big welcome back to all the Curly Oxide fans out there...the ways of Google are mysterious and random - I'm the #1 result on the "Curly Oxide" search again! Go me! The links to Mr. Oxide are further down the page, but really you're better off going back to google and trying some of the other hits: I'm just someone who heard the show on the radio, like you did.

But if any of you intelligent and discerning public radio listeners need help answering email, which seems to consist of a thousand people asking the same few questions, My Program Can Help ! We're still building the full website for it, but you can try the first version now. It's all explained in the help file and readme.txt and it's only a wafer-thin download, so please try it.

On to the main point of this blog, which is to let my friends and family know what Deanne and I do to occupy our time - we went to the fourth of july celebrations downtown last night and watched the fireworks. It was hot, humid and uncomfortable, but the sparkly lights were very cool. I took some pictures, which I'll post later on. I also just finished reading Larry Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" and have downloaded his next book, Free Culture, which you can also read for free - he'll explain why.

I'm reliably informed that today is a day of cleaning and Putting Stuff Away...my wife's predictions in this area tend to come true.

fickle google
It seems my brief brush with the heady heights of High Google Ranking are over...not only am I no longer the #1 result for the search "curly oxide"; I ain't even in the list any more. My 15 minutes of fame lasted from Jul 01 2004 2:46:54 pm until Jul 02 2004 3:36:23 am and approximately 50 people came to this blog looking for information about Curly Oxide, the Hasidic Glam Rock star, who also burned briefly and brightly :) You can click the "Sitemeter" link on the right under the links to have a look through the logs...the data will be there for a little while longer. Here's an interesting statistic you might note: only two of those visitors used a search engine other than Google. It's a powerful and effective tool and it's clearly the first place most people go when they think of searching the web.

Did you notice that the companies which dominate various aspects of web life have made up names ? Think about it...auctions are "eBay", books are "Amazon", searching was "Yahoo" and now "Google". Those people who paid millions of dollars for "business.com" and "auctions.com" were wasting their money :) It's better to make a quality web site and teach the surfing public a totally new word that will come to "mean" [auctions|buying books|searching].

quietly sitting on the couch

I'm at home this morning waiting for the insurance inspector guy to come and make sure that my house is my house :) We just switched insurance companies so we have to go through this again...and one of our sliding doors is broken ! It happened while I was painting; I was carrying a huge ladder and let the momentum get out of hand. It's been there for a few days, but the weather has been so nice I haven't felt motivated to fix it ;) Actually the glass held together for a few days and just plopped out yesterday, so I hope it doesn't cause this guy any heartache. I've called a couple of repair places and I'm getting quotes to have it fixed.

Deanne had a root canal done on her bad tooth. It doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as the prevailing myth would have you believe. We're lucky to live in a modern age, especially where pain is concerned. She was in the chair for one and a half hours, then came straight back to work and she felt only low-level pain even after the novocaine wore off. We watched a lot of Star Trek and had takeout Italian though....we haven't cooked a meal for ourselves in ages, you know ? When we do eat at home it's just grazing on random stuff from the pantry. I wonder if our fridge will be fixed soon...yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I would've cooked six complicated meals a week except my fridge is busticated.

Finishing touches are being put on Mercury MailRoom and we're collecting "ooh gosh, it's fabulous" quotes from our beta testers. I've also thought of a plan where we would let buyers from poorer countries pay less than the $US 99 we're going to charge for it. I don't want it to be out of reach of people that would find it useful.

from the top

Deanne's got a tooth situation that's going to require a root canal on Monday, so she's spending the weekend clutching her jaw and groaning. A dentist was able to see her and put it a temporary filling on Friday, but she's on the pain pills to keep it under control until then. We went out for a little shopping today and while looking at carpets, a weird thing happened. One of the staff approached me and asked if I liked the carpet.

"Sure, it's pretty nice. We're thinking of getting it."
"Do you want it cheaper? I can get you a discount."

Hmmm...strange way to phrase it, I thought, but let's see where it goes.

"How much of a discount ?"
"50% off. Just give me fifty bucks for the rug and a hundred dollar tip and meet me outside. You'll get your rug....but you can't bring it back."
"How is that different from theft ?" I asked.

He backpedalled a little and said he could get me a discount because the rug was damaged while being unpacked etc. but I just thanked him and declined politely. I've heard of employee theft but never actually seen it happen.

Curly Oxide
As we were driving home we listened to This American Life, an excellent radio show. This episode was about Curly Oxide, an Hasidic Jew named Chaim who felt the pull of rock'n'roll and for two years performed as Curly Oxide. He soaked up popular culture like a sponge and leapt right in with both feet, but eventually gave it up for marriage. A great story. And apparently just talking about it has made this blog the #1 hit on Google for this fellow...those of you who are disappointed to find out I'm not him :) will want to read this interview with Vic Thrill, Curly's friend from the radio piece. Vic Thrill also has his own site.

Then we listened to From The Top which featured Peter Schickele, who is better known as the discoverer of P.D.Q Bach. What was unusual was that Deanne didn't ask me to turn the radio over to a regular music channel - she's usually got no patience for NPR, but we listened to two whole hours of it today. I think it's because I was a very compliant shopper and also I'm wearing a stylish baseball shirt that drives her crazy :) She's napping now and around four o'clock we're going to see Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's new film.

Looks bad in Texas - I hope it's not heading over this way. 

stormy weather

It's summer in Florida and that means afternoon storms. Right now there's a total doozy going on out there and I wish I'd brought my camera. The lightning is leaving white lines in my eyes and I'm not even looking out the window; the thunder is rattling the windows and the wind is whipping the undulating grey rain sheets away from our building and north up highway one. I like watching it but I'm glad I work indoors :) The storms have been quite heavy at night for the last two nights, but only out at sea. We live half a mile from the ocean and as we take our midnight swim before bed, we can see the clouds lighting up every three to four seconds, but we don't hear the lightning. Every minute or so it pauses and about eight seconds later there'll be a tremendous white flash that lights up the whole western sky. Cripes...a huge bolt just hit the ground and made a weird ripping sound, like a kid playing with a toy spaceship..."psheeeewwww!"

Today we had a presentation from the four different insurance companies that are handling different parts of our company's insurance plans. In case you don't live in the USA, the cost of health insurance is very high here - I think we're paying about $1200 per month for each employee - and we're very lucky to have an employer that covers the cost for us. The only part I turned down was the optional "accident coverage" provided by AFLAC because I'm young, relatively healthy, have a very safe job (safe meaning not physically dangerous) and I don't even get on the highway to drive home - I'm 5 miles away on one lightly used road.

Two bridges across the river in Redding, CA. I'm testing out the BloggerBot image posting service - looks very cool so far :) 

Then I've come in and added this stuff. Does anyone else think that Star Trek's Prime Directive is a cold, heartless and totally nasty thing to adhere to? Me too.

waiting for the sun on the mountain

Good old King Crimson...always saying something vague enough to link to whatever you're thinking...and I'm thinking about copyright. Cory Doctorow went to Microsoft to give a talk on why Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a Bad Thing. If the Powers That Be have convinced you that all downloading is STEALING and that all the music and movies that could exist on your computer have to be LOCKED UP to protect starving artists, go read his talk.

He's released it into the public domain, and you can read his two science fiction novels as well as a short story collection he's written. They're not crappy, they're not being given away as loss-leaders...he's just putting his money where his mouth is on the issue of promoting his work by giving it away. Confused? Don't be. Also look at Baen Books, who found that giving their books away over the Internet increases their sales. Stick that in your paranoia pipe and smoke it, Ellison.

nibbled to death by cats

A weird scary headline for a day which sees me sneezing and sniffling. Deanne and I played host to our friend Jennifer, who was Deanne's maid of honour, and we had a great weekend, right until Deanne caught a helluva nasty cold. She's travelling all this week too, so she's sucking down the medicine like there's no tomorrow. Luckily New York is quite warm this week, but she's in a different hotel each night and has to talk for about 7 hours a day, so I'm expecting a wreck of a woman to come back on Friday :(

I stayed home today because of the cold too, but I used the time to complete the 2nd beta version of Mercury MailRoom. The site isn't up yet, but I've asked all the beta testers (there were seven) if they'd like to look again. As soon as the site is up we can start doing sales, which will be an exciting thing :) !

Kipp came over yesterday after work and we played some NHL Hitz hockey on the gamecube. Lots of fun, but I'm definitely feeling that my gaming days are behind me. I enjoy them, but don't feel the need to spend long hours winning every possible stage. Bit late in life to come to this realization, but there you go :)

A big day for Babylon 5 fans today - JMS revealed that the coming B5 movie is called The Memory of Shadows, but that the untimely death of Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin, has slowed preparations somewhat. My guess is that there's going to be some script changes. He also said that the coming "Crusade" DVD collection will have him telling the story of how the show got screwed by TNT...eeeeexcellent.

The fridge guy will be coming on Friday and I've just knocked a big chunk off our home insurance costs..the last company was, I'm afraid, screwing us.

bought myself a liarbird

Today's proposal to Save The World, or at least the American political system, constrains free speech but as a tradeoff spares us from watching a lot of political adverts and wondering who the next President will owe favours to.

The problem seems to be that the electorate has, on the whole, a very short attention span and not much interest in seeking out information on the candidates and their policies. This leads to parties needing to flood the airwaves with lots of short, attention-grabbing ads in the hopes of drawing our eyes away from Law & Order for long enough to consider the future of the country and the free world. Sad, isn't it ? This requires years of fundraising to raise the millions (President Bush has raised over $200 million, Kerry about $117 million) needed to even attempt this race, casts suspicion on those organization making donations, makes the candidates look suspicious for taking it, and leads to the need for massive legislation like McCain-Feingold.

This situation has arisen because of the quite noble idea that Freedom of Speech is a Good Thing. You can say what you want, and that includes the right to give money to whomever you want when it comes to politics. There is also no law requiring citizens to get involved in politics, so the parties have to blanket the country in the hopes of getting our attention. If we paid more attention voluntarily then I suspect the quality of their ads would improve, and they might take longer to say it instead of squeezing their policies into thirty second sound bites.

So my proposal is that political advertising on TV and radio be banned. It is just TOO EXPENSIVE [Kerry spent $18M in June on TV ads] to expect candidates to raise the funds every four years. Each candidate will instead be able to write a 100 page book and create a 2 hour DVD (production budget to be kept to some low figure) that will be delivered to every house in the country and to every library. In this book and DVD they can outline everything they'd do if they're in charge. In return, we the people (remember that?) promise to take some friggin' interest in the country we live in. The press is, of course, encouraged to analyze each set of proposals.

It's not perfect though; here's some of the problems I see with it.

• No interaction: the candidates don't get to respond to each other's proposals, except perhaps in interviews. This leaves the general public to evaluate each proposal without hearing criticism from other candidates - hopefully the press will be balanced in their analyses....erm...oh dear.
  
• The DVD could easily be turned into a propoganda film. People can be easily steered by messages in "movie" form, it's something we're trained to do from childhood. Perhaps some restriction on the format of the presentation?
  
• This craps all over the candidate's right to freedom of speech. It's definitely a trade off, so I'll leave it to wiser minds than mine to decide if the benefits outweigh the harm done.
  

And remember, the American system of voting is not the only democratic way of doing things. Australians are compelled to vote - you are fined $50 if you don't vote, and even the method of counting the votes is different. So there's more than one way to run an election - it's not the End Of Democracy if we make changes to our current system.

And the bugger of it is that since I'm not a citizen I'm not actually allowed to vote :) But it's fun to speculate :)

you can't spend the whole song in space

Today's Thing I Agree With is an article by Bruce Sterling in Wired about the Bush government's propensity towards legislating science. In Suicide by Pseudoscience, Sterling gives us a summary of how a political nutcase called Lysenko derailed Soviet science, and how we're beginning to go down that path here in the USA. We're a long way from it, but this administration seems more hellbent than most on filtering the science they want to hear. Wasn't it Reagan who said "facts are stupid things"? Well, Bush is going one one (two? three?) steps further, so far that the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report warning about how far this government has gone to twist the scientific method and the body of knowledge in order to fit it into it's own view of the world. I hope this policy is halted before it does any more damage.

In other news, is Amarok not the greatest instrumental album of all time?

bastard spyware

I spent 90 minutes this morning wrestling with the unspeakable evil that is the n-Case spyware demon. Having cast it out, I will now close the filthy portal through which it gaily entered, that limping kluge that is called Internet Explorer.

I'm all Firefox now. Are you?

welcome to the garden of earthly delights

We had a really nice weekend. Breakfast on Saturday at a new gourmet breakfast/lunch placed called Eatsy's that turned out to have really good food but very spotty service. We had to ask for silverware three times, water twice, two plates got sent back because the side dishes were wrong, but I guess they're just getting started and need time to...I dunno...LEARN TO READ!?

Deanne and I napped for most of late Saturday afternoon, then went out with friends Vicky and Scott for dinner and some live music at Paddy Macs. The band was three acoustic guitarists called Acoustic Revue (?). They were really good and played lots of covers and a few originals. I asked for Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" because The Church played it and I've never actually heard the original. These guys seemed to know their Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Eagles etc, so I think what I heard was close to the original Neil Young. I bought one of the guys' solo CDs too. Scott commented that, since he bought one too, he was surprised I hadn't offered to just burn a copy for him. "Hey", says I, "I'm happy to buy a CD that hasn't been put out by those greedy hypocrites that run big record companies." The title track, "piece of the sun" is available on his site for free, so take a listen and support our local artists.

On Sunday we swam a little, attack the north face of Mount Laundry, painted the house a little more and I started the long process of copying parts of my video collection to DVD. I began with a Church live show (what else?) and found that at this 1989/90 era concert Steve was using the bass that I now own - cool :) !

Lastly Mercury MailRoom has been installed in our tech support department, so I'm heading over there to see how they're doing with it.

harness your horse and catch the wind

That's not *actually* the title of what I'm listening to, but it is the real title of a Tuvan throat singing song that I have somewhere...just not the actual bit I'm listening to. There's a really good film called Genghis Blues about this amazing singing style and the effect it had on a blind blues man called Paul Pena, who taught himself to sing it after hearing it on shortwave radio from Moscow, and eventually got invited to Tuva to compete in their singing competition...terrific stuff and a potent reminder of how lucky we are to be able to hear each other across the world.

I'm a pretty quiet and shy kind of person, but I have a recurring desire to want to be really good at doing something in the arena of musical performance, so I tried to learn Tuvan throat singing. Long car trips (luckily I was alone) turned into "EEeeeeeeeAaahahahhaaaaaaooooooooouuuuuuuu" as I tried to coax a harmonic out of my voice. I think I might have made a start on the "karygra" style, but mainly the only result was a sore throat and an appreciation of the level of control it takes to do this.

Actually I started this entry wanting to point readers to my friend Daniel Bowen's latest missive, a summary of how volunteers can force a pig-headed government to fix something that's broken, even when they claim it isn't? How? With video cameras and some organizing.

It was another nice day at the office today. Fixed a bug with how one of my programs interacts with our database, and I watched a corporate helicopter land and take off at the building opposite ours (see pic from a few days ago). FPL, our local electron wranglers, fly execs and secure documents regarding the two nuclear power plants in our area between that office and the Miami office. One of my colleagues used to work for them and he said that legally they had to do this for any written material regarding operations at the two nuclear plants. Wonder if they had a list of doughnut deliveries to Sector 7G?

Lastly my brother's computer got it's domain name back, so I can start my pursuit of beta testers for Mercury Mailroom. I also got a 120GB drive into the new computer and hooked up my VCR to the video capture card and, for the first time ever, the whole thing worked smoothly! I can start turning my old VHS tapes into DVDs, though there seems to be no easy ways to do chapter points without VERY slow video editing software.

games without frontiers

Lesson 1: Don't close your browser before you publish a new entry in your blog...

Lesson 2: I saw this news item a couple of days ago and wondered why the last point it made, as a funny little tag, wasn't instead the 2nd or 3rd point and taken much more seriously. Here's the article in question and here's my favourite bit:

(In case the article is gone, it's a litany of incorrect guesses about the history of WWII, kids not knowing who was the US President or UK's Prime Minister during the war, what the Normandy invasion was about, who participated, or where it took place.)

There were some exceptions to the general ignorance. One teacher at Great Addington Church of England Primary school in Northamptonshire was amazed to find that one of his pupils had scored 100 per cent in the test.

He said: "I asked him how he knew material which we had not covered in school. He told me he had picked it up from a D-Day game he played on his computer."

I want to know why anyone would be surprised that kids learn from video games and if you put a historically accurate one in front of them (and there's lots, especially based around war), they might learn a thing or two. Instead of automatically assuming games are bad, try encouraging them to play accurate ones instead. Wired has a good piece on the subject too.

do you like our owl?...artificial?

It's been a damned fine day today...I stayed home till noon to allow some contractors to come in and fix various broken things. We got a new tap set on the kitchen sink and a fit, healthy bloke came and sweated his arse off changing pipes and stuff. He actually had to cut the sink out of the counter and take it outside so he could properly beat the ever-lovin' crap out of it before it'd give up the old tap set, which time, love and chemical corrosion had sealed into place. He's coming back later to change out a shower valve which, I'm told and thus believe, is a totally different kind of plumbing job that requires welding equipment and far more money. Also had visits from the pest control guy, the pool guy and the washing-machine repair guy.

But, I'm a contented fellow because I used the time productively and re-finished the not-quite-finished-as-it-so-happens Mercury MailRoom. See, I'd always told Deanne that I shouldn't do manly chores such as plumbing because I'd screw it up and my time would be better spent writing software. Then I'd sit down and play games :) But not today!

A small interface tweak was needed and the old name "FAQ Support" had to be taken out of some of the documentation. As soon as the tristesse.com domain comes back to life (it should be today) I'll start contacting companies that might want it and see if they'll beta-test it for me. I'm thinking of giving it to them free for a year as I'm hoping to find a way to do an annual license sort of thing. $99 per user ? Seems like a fair deal for the amount of time it'll save them. But I need my email account to be working before I can contact anyone. Or it'll be a short call...

"Would you like to use my software? It's cool and stable and will really help you!"
"Sure, where can we email you?"
"Actually, my brother's PC isn't working, so I can't get email. But if you..."
*click*
"Hello? Hello? No, please! I am *so* a professional!"

I also got a bonus for project completion at work, bought $50 of nuts, raisins and granola bars for office snackage (to avoid paying the vending machine people), wrote to some friends and family, had sushi for lunch, listened to the Bladerunner soundtrack, walked the dog in a light summer rain, failed to beat my NHL Hitz 2003 hockey game, and even talked to my brother! Keith is on vacation in Seattle and is having a grand old time...wonder if he'll go visit Microsoft?

So it's a quiet happy evening for me while I wait for Deanne to come home. Actually I suspect she read this today - someone from her college, Nazareth, searched on "sirenbrian" and came to this site and read four pages yesterday. Ah referral logging...is there nothing you can't tell me? I wonder who that was though?

monkey off my back

I've finally got the first version of Mercury MailRoom out the door. I finished the help file, added the "don't do that stupid thing, userboy" protection features that it needed, and bought a Delphi component to do the file attachments thingy. You don't want to know...suffice it to say that getting actual files into the clipboard, so that when you paste them into Outlook they'll look like regular attachments, ain't easy unless you're Microsoft.

But it's done and I'm Hap-Hap-Happy. I've never written my own product before and this has been a lot of fun. I hope to get insanely rich off it and retire to a life of debauchery, consisting of lots of new toys for me and the spousal overunit, houses all over the world and people paid to iron my clothes and mop the floor.

So if you need a tool to help your rapidly diminishing tech support crew answer a rapidly rising tide of email, leave a comment asking about Mercury MailRoom.

Pictures - yay!

I've remembered that my bellsouth account entitles me to 10MB of disk space, so I'll use that to host my images. Entering the HTML by hand is a pain though...why does Blogger's new image hosting service only work work through an instant message bot ? What the heck is that about ?

Our company, Document Storage Systems moved into its new offices today. A lot of people worked very hard to get it ready on time and it really looks terrific. I haven't worked in a proper office since 1999 - all the dotcoms and smaller companies I have worked for were on pretty tight budgets, and the current employer had been in rental digs for the last few years. But we all worked hard and it resulted in enough money for us to buy a whole 4 storey office building and re-fit it. You can still smell the paint :) Here's a shot of the view from my window. The big office building you can see is of the Florida Power and Light main office.



Deanne is in New York this week and the products she's now managing are doing very well, with some new sales to her name. I'm slowly moving the stuff from the old office into the new one, but it's so damned hot here right now that I'm not taking more than one box per trip because I don't want to go back to the car more than I have to :) Plus the elevator isn't airconditioned yet.

OK, once again I have to filter out the really interesting stuff and just post the daily trivia of my life...what makes people decide to post the really juicy bits of their life ? So far I haven't found a reason :)

another thousand years

Well, it's been a week or so since I posted, which I didn't plan. Lots of interesting stuff happened and I wanted to put up pictures with the post, but I haven't made time to process them yet, so it's just going to be text today.











We took Patch up to Jacksonville to visit the big dog parkup there - actually its the largest one in the whole country! 42 acres! Scott, Vicky and the two huskies came with us and we all had a great time ! We drove to St. Augustineon the Friday night, got to the motel around 10 pm and spent the next morning and afternoon in St Augustine itself. It's a cool place and looks far more European than anywhere else in America than I've seen, except perhaps for New Orleans. We got a lot of attention, of course; it's not everday you see a Great Dane and two walking carpets on the main streets of St Augustine's tourist district. Top phrases heard: big dog....you could ride that thing/put a saddle on that thing....is he friendly?....can I pet him...."awwwww!!" Patch was really good and didn't object at all to all the attention he got, but he slept like a rock that night.

The dog park itself was very well laid out. It was a hot day so we spent most of our time in the shallow lake at the back of the park where the dogs kept cool by running laps in the shallows. Retrievers kept up a constant shuttle between the shore and lake center, happily fetching the frisbees and floating balls thrown for them. We didn't see a single fight all day; Deanne thought it was because there was so much space that they didn't need to fight over anything. We also walked in their "forest trail" section, which was heavily wooded and gave you the feeling you were tracking through the woods - Patch enjoyed that too :)

Our company is moving to it's new building at the end of next week so everyone has been packing up their offices and it's all looking very bare. Deanne and I will be in Dallas from Sunday to Thursday night next week, representing the company (most of which will be there anyway !) at a hospital trade show.

castaway on a desert island

I'm going to copy Wil Wheaton's idea of using the song lyrics that is playing when you write a new posting as your title. I've got XTC's "Mummer" album playing, and if you're not familiar with XTC but you like well-written songs, pick up "Nonsuch", their 1992 album.

Anyway, I wanted to write about the next crop of geek movies that are in the pipeline. The Lord of the Rings trilogy took the film world by storm and also pushed geek culture more into the mainstream. I still met a few people that claimed they "didn't get it" and couldn't understand anything that went on in the film, but such claims don't automatically get approval - you can't score points by putting geeky things down. Films based on comic books are scoring well at the box office, such as Hellboy and Spiderman, more people are using gadgets that would've been considered nerd toys such as PDAs, Gameboys, MP3 players...just look at the iPod and the bloody awful iPod mini ! I hate that mini thing...the geek in me says "$250 for only 4 gig of space ?!" but the mainstream are saying "Ooooh ! PINK !" and buying them in droves. Go figure.

But to my point - the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie began filming a few days ago !! I remember reading this book for the first time when I was 14 or 15 and laughing so hard that I couldn't breath...it was the part about the second worst poetry in the universe (the Azgoths of Kria if you must know). I loved how unabashedly the book took wild tangents showed a universe full of absurd and trivial details, such as Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged who was immortal and decided to use his gift to insult every sentient being in the universe...in alphabetical order. I mean, wow. Just fantastic stuff :) Adams came up with loads of good ideas and made fun of every single one of them. This sort of thing fit right in with my world view that was being shaped by Monty Python, the Goons, Red Dwarf and Blackadder (ok, he's not sci-fi, but as cynical as any character ever written.)

I'm most interested in the fact that they've cast Mos Def, best known as an American rap artist, as Ford Prefect. This was an unexpected casting choice and it has me very excited. H2G2 is a very English book and has become one of the Sacred Geek Texts - we used to say that you couldn't graduate in computer science unless you'd read it and could quote from it - and I had not met any black people in America who seemed geeky; it's something they seem to avoid culturally, or it is being actively kept from them (which I don't believe). So if Mos Def has read it, grokked it and delivered an audition to the fans who are making this movie which convinced them that *he* understood Ford better than any Englishman...well, this is going to be extraordinary. I hope :) And I hope his performance brings more black people into geekdom, because it's really a universal thing and a very positive and supportive community to be a part of. A quick search turned up a scholarly examination of the issue; a sort of Minority Nerd Report.

Also in the pipeline - the Babylon 5 movie seems to be in the deal-making stage, and the Red Dwarf movie is still not cancelled, so hopefully they'll get off the ground soon !

Busy Couple of Days

We've had a busy couple of days, and I've been put in touch with a group of friends from my high school years in Saudi Arabia, which has been a lot of fun so far ! Last night we went to the Palm Beach Convention Center for the graduation ceremony of Kim Carchia, a friend from work. She's had a rough year - her father passed away after developing cancer - and we wanted to be there at her ceremony to try and lift her spirits. There were six of us from work and we made quite a noise when she went on stage for her degree. It was a big ceremony - over thirteen hundred graduates, so it was standing room only in the big hall at the convention center. Afterwards we had dinner at Brewzzis in City Place and we gave Kim a round of applause whenever the Secret Word was spoken..."graduation". I think this happened about twenty times or so :)

Today we went to Tsunami restaurant, an "Asian Fusion" place for the birthday of another friend from work, David. It was a great place, very stylish and modern food, which matched the decor. The highlight was, for some reason, finding that the bathrooms had red glass sinks which were operated by foot pedals. We talked briefly with the owner and she ended up taking our group birthday picture in the men's bathroom ! We just got home and are looking forward to a day at home tomorrow, relaxing and recharging our batteries for the next week of work :) We'll both be in Dallas for a work event starting May 23rd, so that's something to look forward to as well.

A Fine Evening

We had a really nice evening yesterday. Despite the fact that it's now May, the weather is still really nice and we're not suffering the scorching hot days and sticky humid nights that we had last year. So after work Deanne and I went to the dogpark with Patch, where he played for about half an hour. Then we stopped for an ice cream (yes, Patch got one too) and drove to the beach to eat it and listen to the waves. We went to a part of the beach we hadn't seen before, a semi-deserted stretch between Juno Beach and our development in Jupiter. There were two guys finishing up their parasailing for the evening, so we watch them deflate their sails and pack their gear. The wind was cool and the ice cream was cold.

There was a couple there with two dogs, one of whom didn't want to leave. He spent 15 minutes chasing this dog all over the beach, so after talking to his wife for a while, and suggesting they leave a long leash on the dog so she could be caught more easily, we went down to the beach to help him. It didn't take long, because the other dog took an interest in Patch and while she was sniffing him, she stayed still long enough to be caught. They thanked us for our help and we went home :)

I've just realized that I can, in fact, add images to these posts as long as the images are stored on another website. I can do that, so later on I'll try to add pictures along with some of these messages.

Title Goes Here

A sudden pause...but I'm still here. The new computer ran into some teething problems and it's taken a while to find a compromise. See, I got all these new parts and kept my old case, not remembering that new computer parts operate at a far higher temperature than my old computer did. That's why new computer cases often contain two fans in addition to the one in the power supply. So I'm running the new beast with the case off and that seems to keep it happy, if a little noisy. I put an extra 512MB in there too, so it's running a very respectable 1Gb of RAM - very nice for the video editing that I hope to get to soon. There's about 10 years of home videos that need to be saved !

I finally got some painting done on the house - I started at the back, but we really need to get the front done ASAP in case the home owners association starts to complain. "The what ?" you may ask ? For those of you who don't live in South Florida, if you buy a house or apartment in a development, there's likely to be a Homeowner's Association. They tell you what colour you can paint the house, make sure you do the upkeep on your property, and collect dues to pay for area landscaping and the like. Our association are a nice, relaxed bunch, but I've heard of "Condo Commandos" in other developments who are just *obsessed* with finding fault in other people's properties. I think the solution is to vote for people who have jobs to serve on the associations' various committees - that way they won't have time to get ridiculous about things.

We watched Seabiscuit last night. Not a bad movie, but a bit formulaic, and it didn't half remind me of .Phar Lap. The same plot devices...underdog of a horse, fighting spirit blah blah blah. The characters were all a bit cartoonish (rough-n-ready jockey who comes good, slightly weird trainer who Has A Way With Horses, Good Millionare who cares about the little man and whose life is tinged with tragedy, Fat Jowly Billionare who sneers at people). Perhaps I've watched too much Babylon 5 and Lord of the Rings, but I don't think two hours is enough for a movie any more !. In B5 we had around 130 hours (including commercials) of material, LoTR was 10 hours in the extended DVDs...now that is enough time for character development. I think I've been spoiled by shows/movies that don't try and cram too much into their running time, and so have to reduce characters to one-note themes.

Trail of Text

A trip down memory lane is only a short google away for those of us who spent time on Usenet newsgroups while at University. I just found some schtuff I used to write, a sci-fi space opera comedic gem called "Rocket Roger", plus two postings accepted on rec.humor.funny, the History of the Jolnopski family and the Long Airplane Flight. Jeez, the stuff I thought was hilarious when I was 20 :) Bits of it hold up OK, IMHO :)

Rocket Roger was a lot of fun, actually. My friend Daniel Bowen and I decided to try writing something and getting people to subscribe to it over email. I wrote Rocket Roger, which went on to fame and glory, and he did Toxic Custard, which disappeared into obscurity. Or was the other way around ? Anyway, I posted my stories twice a week, and Daniel did his once a week. I prided myself on never editing or plotting; I just wrote whatever came to mind. This worked well (by my standards) for quite a good while. I got Rocket Roger printed in the student newspaper as a single story, which looked very odd, but it did come with a cool illustration of Roger and Chadwick with a retro-style rocket in the background. Wish I knew where that was now :(

The new computer is totally rocking - I'm using all Mozilla software, Open Office, downloading The GIMP for image editing. Oh, and Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo is insanely fun.

Hot Bodies

So I got to thinking about body temperatures this morning. Why is our body temperature 37 Celcius (or 98.6 Fahrenheit). Why not higher or lower ? Is it a sum total of all the chemical reactions going on in our bodies, such as breathing and digestion ? AquaticApe.org summarizes some info about us: our temperature depends on our activity and the time of day, and talks about evolution a bit too, and compares our temperatures with those of other animals. No mention of why it's that number though.

And here's the answer ! We've evolved to make maximum use of the enyzmes and catalysts in our bodies which handle our basic chemistry. They work most efficiently at around our body temperatures. Interesting stuff :)

The Computer Is Done - Where Will We Keep It ?
My new computer is secured in its case and ready to be placed somewhere in the house. Now comes the negotiation :) Up till now we've have just the laptop in the office upstairs, while the old Big Beige Box sat in the laundry downstairs, seldom used or needed. But I'd like to keep the new computer in the office, along with its 19" CRT (old style, not sleek thin LCD screen). I wonder how Deanne's going to like that idea :) ?

The New Computer Works !

Phew ! After a real problem that caused a 24 hour delay, I got the last part I needed into place and the new computer started up ! I'm currently installing the software it needs, which is going to take a few hours...Windows XP, new drivers for all the parts....I hope it goes smoothly, especially the video capture card. I've had nothing but problems with every one of those I've ever bought - they'd freeze up when you tried to use them, or even change their settings. Frustrating as anything I've ever tried.

I read a bit about Mother Teresa last night - did you know she was, at best, a misguided and dangerous person ? At worst, someone who increased the suffering of thousands because she thought more about their souls than their daily life ? I hope she doesn't get made a saint, but in today's religious climate, it's probably inevitable.

All right, another nice swim to cool off, and I'll be posting more photos today on the photo blog, so click the buzznet link on the right if you'd like to see.

[Edited on April 29th 2004 after seeing that this page comes up if you google for "soyo k7 vme"- I'll also add K7VME as a single word for google to find]
Installation Notes for Soyo K7VME K7-VME K7 VME
Mobo Page http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=281

The only hassles I had with this motherboard involve its layout. You can see a picture at the above link and get a detailed image too. Just beneath the CPU socket is the 3 pin connector for the CPU heatsink/fan (HSF). I you get a big HSF (my first one was 88 mm long), it will sit over the top of this connector and you will be unable to plug it in. In my case, even when I plugged it in first, THEN installed the HSF, it actually pressed down on top of the connector and created a short. I ended up buying a smaller HSF, so if you buy this mobo, stick with a HSF that is 60 or 70 mm. 80 *might* work, but be prepared to do a return if it doesn't.

The other problem was with the CMOS battery and the tv capture card I bought. See on the left of the board how the CMOS battery sits vertically, right next to a PCI slot ? Well my PCI card had a tall capacitor sticking out right at that point, and the CMOS battery prevented me from installing it in that slot. That means, as I'm sure you gamers know, I had to PCI card right next to the video card in the AGP slot. The video card install actually asks you to leave the adjacent pci slot free, to allow the card to cool off more easily, so I hope it can cope with being crowded in.

I've only had it a few days so far and the temps on my AMD Mobile 2400 are about 42C in the case and 51C on the chip with no overclocking. I'm planning to upgrade the HSF later if I do any overclocking.

A Day Alone (One of Six)

Deanne is in Chicago for her first business trip in a quite a while and, I believe, one of the few times I've been alone on a weekend. This leaves me to complete a long list of things to do, some fun and some not :) I spent a few hours last night trying to get the new computer to work but had no success. I think the motherboard is broken, so I'm going to return it and get a replacement. I got up a nine this morning and had a nice swim to cool off and wake up, fed the pets, contacted a couple of local furniture consignment stores about selling two armchairs, played some guitar, played around on blogshares for a while, cleaned the kitchen, put some Mike Oldfield and Hoodoo Gurus on the stereo....just generally relaxed and unwound.

This afternoon I'm going to continue writing the help file for my Mercury Mailroom program, which I've been neglecting for a while. If I finish it this week we can start selling the damned thing and see if I can make some money outside of work. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, so why am I so slack about finishing it off ?! I'll do some painting this evening and list a few odds and ends on eBay in the continuing effort to get the extra crap out of the house !

Juggling, AQ Test, GMail and Llamasoft

OK you try and come up with one snappy title that encompasses all those topics ! It's been a rather good day so far..it's "Bring Your Kids To Work Day" here. Apparently it was on TV last night and in the papers, but we only watch what the Tivo records and we get our news from the net, so I only found out about it when I got to work and saw large numbers of tiny people looking bored :) Can't really blame them though, can you ? An office is a pretty quiet, sterile environment filled only with the joys of the mind (for those who enjoy their work !) and clockwatchers.

So being of a juggling bent I thought I'd liven things up a bit and impress some eight year olds with some juggling skills. They enjoyed it and asked some pretty good questions too. The bottom line is that the lad Matt is outside my office door throwing balls around like there's no tomorrow and shaking the floor as he leaps for each off-target throw. It's good to pass my obsessions on to the younger generation :) Actually he's picked the basics very quickly, but his sister Amber is a little younger and hasn't got the accuracy needed to do the throws - she's having fun though, which is the important thing. If you want to give it shot, it's pretty easy to learn to juggle.

I got one of those google email accounts where you get 1GB of email and they get to show you ads based on the content of your messages. Google owns Blogger, the company that provides the storage and tools which build this blog, so they offered me an account. I'm not planning to use it yet though, because it's taken a while to get my current account working the way I want it, what with the necessity of training a spam filter, building folders, getting into people's address books etc. I might start using it for something or other though.

The AQTest is a measure of of where you lie on the Autism Spectrum. I scored 31, which apparently is borderline autistic...well, actually it means if I *did* display any sort of behaviour ("Get out !" "Gotta watch Babylon 5 !" "74 toothpicks !") that looked too Rainman, this test result would reinforce that. Luckily I seem to be pretty functional anyway, my weird behaviours being confined to watching the same tv shows over and over and over (Red Dwarf, Blackadder) and listening to the same albums for weeks at a time (XTC ! The Church ! Madness !) :) Leave your score in the comments so we can all point and laugh.

Lastly, a link to celebrate the work of Jeff Minter, who surely scores higher than I do on that test. He's the last of the one-man games programmers who gave us spotty anoraks something to do with our time and computers back in the eighties. His games usually features sheep, camels, llamas and other random ungulates and seizure inducing lighting. He's working on a game called Unity, which is the primary reason I bought a Nintendo Gamecube last November. This link goes to his potted history of Llamasoft, the company he founded. I think it's very interesting and should appeal to all of us who know what its like to get *really* into games.

Idiot of the Day

Congratulations to the woman I just saw ride her bicycle across Alt A1A at the corner of Indiantown Road against the red light. I mean, the light is just there to oppress you, right ? You don't need to worry about the trucks and SUVs that have a green arrow to turn left and had to jump on the brakes to avoid hitting you. And your baby. Did I mention your baby ? He/she was sitting behind you, safely strapped in to a plastic seat that is surely impervious to SUV impacts. But I'm sure you'd thought that through as you casually surveyed the six lane intersection and decided to give Survival of the Fittest a try. Your baby thanks you for the up-close view of the trucks too...he likes trucks and might like to drive one IF HE SURVIVES HIS CHILDHOOD !

more about diamonds

OK, that last diamond article was written in 1982 and while still correct, there's twenty more years of information out there. Here's one link to get you started, but google on "diamond cartel" and you'll find a lot more information.

music and diamonds

I stripped my old computer down to its seperate components last night, and will build the new box on Friday. I wanted to do a POST (Power On Self Test) last night, but Deanne wanted her kitchen back :) So instead I picked up my guitar, plugged her in and sang some Church and Police songs for about an hour, which was great fun. I haven't done it for quite a while, and I'm pleased to find my voice is better than it used to be...at least I think it is :) I have an A4-sized ring binder of musical notation paper (it's got five-line staves on it) and between the staves I've written out chords for lots of songs. Here's the neat part, though. When I worked out the chords I also wrote the date including the year, so I'm looking at chords I did back in 1990 and onwards...wow...time flies, huh ?

Anyway, after listening to a guy on the radio, today's lecture is about NOT BUYING DIAMONDS !! They are *not* rare stones, the DeBeers diamond cartel has socially engineered us to believe we have to buy them if we really love someone. Read this article from The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and tell me you still think you want to buy diamonds. There are plenty of artificial, inexpensive sparkly stones in the market that didn't involve people being exploited. If you must spend a large chunk of cash, spend 10% on the cubic zirconia and send the other 90% to charity. Send your money to African orphans, not the people they work for.

The parts arrived !
Let joy be unbounded ! Let celebration reign throughout the land ! Let comical people bounce around with bells on ! The parts arrived ! I thought Fedex might have made a terrible mistake and delivered my computer components to the wrong house, but luckily they all arrived today, so tonight will be, hopefully, a tech-fest. I haven't actually built my own computer before. My current Athlon 600 is 5 years old, cost a small fortune, and was built for me by a good friend of mine back in Australia, Tim Watts (aka "Burger"). I'm going to break the old one up and sell the parts, just keeping the case, so by the time I've finished I think the new PC will only have cost maybe $300 or so.

And I found my drivers license, which had been missing for a few weeks. Those of you who already know me will not be surprised to hear it was in my wallet the whole time, a wallet I'd diligently, though incompetently, searched three times. I hadn't thought to look behind my social security card and resident alien ("Beep ! Beep !") cards, until "Kipp with two P's" suggested last night over dinner "Hey, did you look in your wallet ?". I activated my sarcasm chip.

"Duuuurrrrr....no, Kipp with Two P's, I hadn't thought of checking my wallet for the three weeks I've been without my license. I thought I'd look under the fridge first."

"Haha - dude, I'm just sayin'."

So let that be a lesson to you, grasshopper - listen to Kipp With Two P's and search the most obvious place THOROUGHLY before moving on to the sub-fridge area.

I added a sitemeter.com counter to this site, since I'm hoping some of the fine people who see my buzznet pictures will click through and read my blog. There's something very satifsying about counting visitors, seeing where they came in from. I might be over this in a week or two, but in the meantime I want stats, I want details, I want them NOW ! :)

Had a pretty good, quiet day at work, but I was looking forward to getting home and building my new PC. Fedex claimed to have delivered both packages containing my CPU, operating system, video capture card, power supply etc at 12.19 pm today. I should have suspected there was a problem, because I got home at 1.15 pm for lunch and there was nothing there. I looked again when I got home in the evening and there's still nothing ! I called Fedex and they said they'd look into it. I hope there's just been some kind of mixup...I'm really looking forward to building this new PC, because I'll be able to burn my old home movies and video tape collection onto DVD. There's 250 tapes of programs I recorded while living in Australia. Most of it doesn't need to be saved, but plenty of it does. Those parts had better be here tomorrow....

DelRay Affair Street Festival

I woke up late today - 12.15 in the afternoon. I don't know why - I went to bed at about 1.30 am and slept like a rock...must have been the food from the German restaurant I suppose. Anyway we went to this street festival with our friends Vicky and Scott and spent a few hours walking around the stalls...wow...HUGE festival ! I think they blocked off 4 city blocks along Atlantic avenue.I took lots of pictures of people and I'm getting very good a snapping pictures of people who don't notice that the camera, though its upside and in my hand by my side is actually pointing at them ! It's a good way to get candid pictures - nothing terribly exciting or special, but posed pictures are only good for parties and family. The first picture of the day was taken with the camera upside-down in my right hand, held down at arm's length...and the guy was smack dab in the middle of the frame, so I'm pretty pleased with my aim.

Also saw a Segway today, only my second sighting. I'd love to own one of these wonderful transporters, but its not practical for me right now. I need to have a car with me so I'll be able to go anywhere I need to at a moment's notice. If I rode a Segway to work (which I could do - the new office is only 5 miles away) it'd be hard to go anywhere but straight home after work. Plus the Florida weather in summer is either scorching hot or raining heavily...you want to be in an airconditioned car in either case.

Yard Sale Today !

The community we live, Ocean Walk, had a community garage sale today, and we made about $200 selling extra stuff that we didn't want. Goodbye old clothes ! Goodbye under cabinet wine glass holder that has not fit a single cabinet in the FIVE houses we've lived in since we bought it. Why did we carry it around so long..."we might use it one day".

This phrase will cause more storage problems than you can imagine, and if you find yourself saying it, put the item down and don't buy it. Or if you already own it, taken it away from the place you keep it, and put it in a box labelled "Yard Sale". When its full, have a yard sale, and donate the unsold items to charity.

A good rule of thumb, as seen on many fine afternoon decorating programs, is to only keep those things you love, or have used in the last year. Anything else should be really considered yard-sale fodder. A clear house leads to a clear mind...erm...I think :)

A few months ago I decided to release the best bits of the music I'd recorded while twiddling about with my four-track recorder. You can read all about the intent behind it all and download them for free, of course. Hope you like bits of it :)

I've installed Mozilla Firefox, a small fast web browser based on the Mozilla source code, which in turn descended from the old Netscape browser. It's not quite where I'd like it to be, interface-wise, but the actual web surfing experience is just fine. Give it a try :)

Can anyone tell me, for the love of Mike, why all the paragraphs after the first in all my postings, are in a smaller font than the first paragraph ? It's really annoying.

In the meantime, I've succumbed to Sweet Lady Bargain and picked up several components for a new computer. Here comes the geek...

Soyo K7-VME motherboard...FREE after rebate ! In fact, if the rebate cheque comes, I actually make two dollars on the deal.
512MB Kingston PC2700 DDR RAM - $84 shipped from eBay. It's new (though the package was opened, which was a little weird) and currently costs about $100 retail.
120GB Maxtor Diamond 9 Hard drive, $40 after rebate. The rebate cheques arrived two days ago, so it's legit.
CPU hasn't arrived yet, but I'll be getting an AMD Athlon 2400 XP Mobile, which is nicely overclockable and runs cooler than the non-Mobile version.

I opened up the current computer to see if the new RAM worked, but it didn't fit (168 pin vs 184 pin), then when I put it back together it wouldn't start up for me....so....oops !? I'll be parting it out anyway because I don't need another computer...two is enough :)

Since this blog doesn't allow images, I've started posting them at my buzznet account. What a great site ! Visitors see thumbnails of your images, you can group them into galleries, add new images by email (so you can use your fancy new phonecam) and it's free :)