8th
February
2006
The Grammy awards, for a change, were all about performance. Rarely have I watched an award show that actually would have been fun to attend. Great stars, great sound. The marching band number between KW and JF (West and Foxx) was a “hoot”. Paul McCartney coming onstage to help sing one of his own songs. Sly Stone, with a white-blonde Mohawk cut, seen in public for the first time in two decades. Green Day, U2, on and on.
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posted in media, music |
7th
February
2006
One byproduct of cheap scanners and large hard drives has been the progress made in OCR. As of this evening, I have a small library in paper of several hundred volumes, and another library (virtual) of several thousand volumes. Ebooks are everywhere. I now collect bits and pieces from various newspapers and magazines in the ever so portable .pdf format. Teams of rascally e-monks are mimics of the historical scriptoriums of medieval times… but, no trees were mangled into paper to provide the media, and no lives were “lost in praise/prose”.
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posted in computing |
6th
February
2006
Today I decided to try debugging a problem I’d noticed with the WordPress 2.01 upgrade; namely that when I post the screen does not return to a view of the blog. Of course, I’m not at home right now, so I had to call (twice), have the power cord plugged back in and the computer restarted. Then, the Apache server had to be brought back up (why doesn’t that autostart?) before the blog software would respond.
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posted in computing |
5th
February
2006
We’re half way through Superbowl XL, the half-time show is over, and I’m speechless. The Rolling Stones. It’s like watching a bad car wreck; I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. These guys have been performing, like that, for more than forty years without a break of any substance, although their career has certainly involved “substance”, abuse or otherwise.
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posted in media |
4th
February
2006
On a day like today, I really can appreciate how a low stress schedule can be very appealing. Since the weekend is here and there was no pressing reason to “go out and about” I simply haven’t done so. Ditto on the heavy kitchen duties. Just a day spent listening to some music, watching a documentary about amphibious vehicles, adding some images to the wiki and using low energy amounts. After all, the next week will begin in a matter of hours. Elsewhere in the city the Carnaval parade will take place in exceptionally warm conditions without me standing there. We all have to make choices. Elsewhere in the world, embassies are burning to retaliate against the printing of cartoons in newspapers. Elsewhere in the universe something must be happening, except that I won’t know about it since the first images won’t arrive for years (talk about a long commute).
posted in environment |
3rd
February
2006
One of those sleepless nights (unexpected uninvited visitor will do that) meant that the departure for work this morning was somewhat precipitous. Skies were grey, and by noon the snowfall was heavy. The administrative council decided to close the office just before normal quitting time. I shouldn’t complain; it’s hard to change decades of dangerous behaviour quickly.
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posted in Wx |
2nd
February
2006
Another year of my favourite not-yet-a-national-holiday has come and gone. The Marmota monax didn’t see its shadow in Canada, which augurs another forty-two days of winter, but did in the United States, which augurs another six weeks of winter. The old half-full/half-empty glass. The old six-of-one/half-dozen of the other. Whatever. I want my holiday. (repeat rant in 365 days)
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posted in computing |
1st
February
2006
A new month, and a new round of upgrades are available for software. Internet Explorer 7 beta is out, and I have installed a copy. So far, it “seems” both esthetically pleasant and marginally slower at interpreting pages. Is it more secure?
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posted in computing |
