"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring, will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time."
-- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" (Four Quartets, 1959)
"If I could do it, I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement. Booksellers would consider it quite a novelty; critics would murmur, yes, but is it art; and I could trust a majority of you to use it as you would a parlor game. A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point."
—James Agee & Evans Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1946
Recently I received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.
I tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else I could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.
Finally, I was fed up and I yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. Then I shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder. In desperation, I threw up my hands, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed - then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.
Fearing that I'd killed the parrot, I quickly open the door to the freezer. The parrot calmly stepped out onto my outstretched arms and said,
"I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior."
I was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As I was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"
So... yeah. Belated honeymoon. Got back Sunday. Had a wonderful time, except for a torrential downpour outside the Vatican, hail at the Colosseum, and a small flood at Pompeii. Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence was lovely, Burano was exquisite, and I discovered really like Caravaggio.
Edit: These are links to albums, not solitary images.
And then Monday I got to present at the NEURISA conference, which was extremely interesting. Adena Schutzberg, Editor of Directions Magazine gave a great keynote, and except for the shortage of time killing our sessions Q&A (and the rather vicious jet lag), it was quite a good conference.
So... I have three 6 TB NAS (storage) devices at work that need names. And I need suggestions for names. In case someone can find a way to work it in, one is a primary storage device, one is a backup for the primary storage, and one is for my own use.
Here are some that have come in from other sources:
Curly, Larry, and Moe
Attic, Basement, and Garage
Parsley, Sage & Rosemary
Peter, Egon, and Ray
Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego (... mass bonus points for obscurity and the confidence that I won't have name conflicts. Ever.)
Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Shinjo, Rei, and Asuka
Yakko, Wakko and Dot
Shem, Ham, and Yafet
Earth, Wind, and Fire
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Bart, Lisa, and Maggie
The good, the bad, and the ugly
Pandora, Athena, and Persephone (I like this one, as my box get's to be Pandora)
Pandora, Aphrodite, and Athena (where Aphrodite is the public one that gets used by everyone)
American History themed ones (which might be appropriate) are few and far between. MA based would be better, but... still.
Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery
So... more ideas? Thoughts?
and some additional good ones I've had to discard, as I'm sure they'd draw negative reactions:
Father, Son and Holy Ghost (previously listed above... problems with expandability.)
An odd little software giveaway for a nice software package... Apparently the company bet that if, during the last 6 months of GWB's presidency, any of a few things happened, they'd give away their software free. Most of the points were relatively safe... until gas prices took a nosedive below 2.79.
Software is Crossover, which is basically the corporate (ie: supported) edition of Wine.
Alas, not using a Mac, and with my linux box being unstable... etc.
CORRECTION: You can actually register without downloading and installing anything. So... if, like me, you don't have a linux box now, but plan to have one soon... or if you're planning on buying that mac, or if you just don't have the time to see if you really want this atm. 2 minutes to register for 1 year of updates, support, etc.
Barely.... Circling because they started their approach too close to the plane in front, all while the pilot waggles hello to the flooded swampland below. And of course once down.... No power. Well... Not much.
No sending transcribed emails to yourself, let alone to other people. Now, it just sends a dinky little link. And it has a 15 second max length.
I'd only just started using it too. I'm almost happy I didn't get too attached to it.
Yes, I should mention that its still pretty cheap to get the Email functionality back, and contacts... but seeing as how my main use of it was only during half of my commutes, or when I was already done with the computer for the night... can't quite justify it. Alas.
So... its not that often I have friends who have books coming out.
Well, not books that would appeal to anything greater than a tiny academic audience wherein quality may or may not have anything to do with content, writing style, or the mad rush to get tenure. ;-p
So, tried Hulu for the first time. How did I miss the Total Recall 2070 TV Show? Alexis enjoyed watching it too, not for the show, but for the brilliant commercials. ( ...Collapse )
Through May 16th, microsoft is selling copies of Office 2007 Ultimate for 60 bucks, to anyone with a .edu address. ToS claim you need to be enrolled in .5 credits of classes as well, and they may track you down, kill you, steal your first born, and sacrifice you to the goddess... er... and make you pay the $620 difference if they find out you weren't actually a student.
Once more, I'd like to thank the MBTA for reminding me why I'm a Yankees fan, and will continue to be, until I stop having to commute on the Green Line. Damn Red Sox fans.*
*I have been asked to clarify that not all Red Sox Fans are damned by this generalization. Just the overwhelming majority of the ones I've encountered. That overwhelming majority includes the mob on the T the other day, who almost knocked over the guy with a child strapped to his front when he tried to get out, and later pushed me down the steps when they decided to get out.
Right, this question is for those of you out there who dabble in web development. (The professionals can answer too, if they feel like it)
The pet project combines google maps api and virtual earth api, such that when one drags a marker on the google map, a birdseye view pans to follow it. This works fine. The birdseye view can be in the same page, or in a popup window which holds all 4 birdseye views. No problems. However, I'd like the tool to be usable by government offices, and I think the VE API is off limits to government use without significant fees, and probably not even then for the birdseye views. The same is not true for the birdseye views accessed through map.live.com, directly though the URL(?cp=lat~lon, etc). It will be significantly less smooth, but the base functionality can be provided by simply reloading the birdseye views directly through maps.live.com with new coordinates after every movement of the marker.
So, this is simple. Use window.open to generate a named popup window, then update the location.href everytime the google map marker is moved. This works fine in IE. It breaks in FF. The popup claims to be loading, our favourite little spinning icon spinning away in the top right of FF (2.0.0.12), but nothing ever happens.
Solution.
Everything needs to return false, all the way back down. And then it works. The post I found which hinted at this was based upon activating through a button, and claimed that the button was submitting, and thus needed a return false to stop it, but I'm activating it through javascript only (either via the event on the marker, or in the onclick on a link). So... why do I need to return false?
Functional code snippets:
function LocateVEMap(VELat,VELon) { return updateBirdseye(VELat,VELon); // Structured as a return to return false, to allow FF functionality. }
function getBirdseye() { if (winBirdseye == null || winBirdseye.closed) { var valLat = document.getElementById("latbox").value; var valLong = document.getElementById("lonbox").value; var strHref = 'http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?cp=' + valLat + '~' + valLong + '&style=o&lvl=2&v=2' winBirdseye = window.open('about:blank','winBirdseye','location=no,resizable=-1,menubar=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,width=600,height=600'); winBirdseye.location.href = strHref; winBirdseye.focus(); winBirdseye.moveTo(800,0); birdseyeVersion = 1; return false; // Allows FF functionality } }
I figured this was due a heads up. https://diamondsclassaction.com/ Apparently, there is a class action law suit against deBeers for price fixing (and more). The settlement is such that you are eligible if you bought diamonds from 94-06 in the US from anyone. I'm pretty sure at least a few of you might qualify. 292 million isn't much, but... hey.
I mean, really... Ancient Native American was the best they could do? One language? Dude... Mesoamerican was obvious at the first glance, after day one of arkeo 100.
And yes, it sucked. But was funnish, and given as I'm sick, I wasn't so much in the mood for enchanted, so it fit the bill.
Parents just left, next house guests arriving thursday. In(s)anity will no doubt ensue.
It's like the start of a bad post apocalyptic story, or a scifi channel movie.
Everyone knew the Google slogan. "Don't be Evil" We smiled as they set about rebuilding everything we knew, laughed as they cataloged us, indexed, measured...
"Don't Be Evil"
It was just supposed to be a general idea of their company outlook. No one ever thought, no one even suspected, that one day they'd start enforcing it....
