BillSaysThis

It’s been awhile since the last geek dinner in the area, the best we can remember it was the one Jeremy Zadowny organized when Tim Bray came down for a visit, and August is going to be a hot, slow month in the South Bay. So Bill Humphries and I are sponsoring one in downtown Mountain View at 7:00 on Friday, August 13 at Cafe Yulong (on Dana Street between Hope and Castro). So if you’re in the area, join us and even if you can’t, do feel free to pass along the message to others. Since neither of us have comments on our blogs, you can write me directly or send Bill a message through his feedback link to let us know you’re coming; just be sure to put ‘August 13 Dinner’ in your message.

Just watched the 2004 American Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony and I’m thinking specifically of Jonny Lang singing Steve Wonder’s Living for the City. An excellent instance of a great song remade as blasting rock and roll. Though I have to think that some people were wondering about the length of Lang’s blistering guitar solo, much as I enjoyed it. We need more of this and, for example, I’d love to hear What Becomes of the Brokenhearted done this way, after hearing the traditional arrangement on Standing in the Shadows of Motown the other night.

(Why am I not surprised to find that Lang covered the Wonder tune on his last release?)

Wow, had this one sitting on the To Read shelf for three years, just kept passing the book by until it finally caught my attention the other day. Probably better than the first two in the series, NetForce Point of Impact is apparently the fifth title so I must have missed two somewhere. No biggie, short review is more positive than I’d be but conveys the basics. Clancy’s name and I suppose he participated in some brainstorming/editorial reviews but actual author Steve Perry is getting better as the books go on.

moderately interesting

One man’s tale of how to do Vegas…

• Jonathon Korman of Cooper Interaction Design gives a very good explanation of why organizations need both IxDs and PMs
• One of these days I will sit down and experiment with ippfp – interface preprocessor for php
• Athletic Club Bilbao goes newbie with fonts crazy on their new UEFA Cup shirt (mention courtesy of Phil Ball’s latest column on Summer changes in La Liga)
• Speaking of football, Liverpool opened their warmups by giving new manager Rafa a win over Wrexham courtesy of two goals by Anthony Le Tallec and they travel to America for three matches as part of the ChampionsWorld Tour.
  

Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton: Reality Disfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, each volume published in two parts in the US but originally one (each) in the UK.

A Beowulf cluster named Night’s Dawn.

Possibly the best science fiction series of the 1990s, no kidding. You’d think that I would’ve read more of his work but no, never have. Rereading this every few years seems to be satisfactory.

An amazing story with the biggest scope one might imagine, 600 years in the future, Humanity spread across more than 800 star systems, friends with a few alien races, life is good for many though only great for a smaller number. Then the barrier between life and death is breached by some awesomely vile youths and everything is jeapordized.

Hamilton takes more than 3400 pages to tell his tale and I don’t think he wasted a single one. There are wonderful passages of prose, technical inventions galore and characters that are realized and well-fit.

absolutely recommended

Showing the ease with which good ideas can proliferate on the web, John Robb is launching Intelligent Defense tomorrow. ID is intended as “a series of conversations dedicated to a deeper understanding of next generation terrorism and what we can do to defend ourselves against it.” The series is a companion to Robb’s Global Guerillas blog, which itself is a research portal for books and other ventures he has in mind, and takes Doug Kaye’s increasingly popular IT Conversations model into a new topic space.

Props to Luke on a very nice new rev of SharpReader. Not sure why he doesn’t call this 1.0 yet, but that’s one of those little mysteries in life that will one day be answered. My main concern is that with each micro-release he’s fixed more of the usability issues I had. This time he got some biggies:

 

Remembering the app’s window size and position. I would have though that some of the basic .Net plumbing would have handled this from the start but good to see he’s conquered it.

Remember treeview expansion-state across sessions. Handy for me because I like to keep the category nodes closed and read them at that level rather than the individual blog level.

MouseWheel now scrolls control over which mouse is hovering, instead of the focused control. So now long entries won’t require the entry window to be selected.

 

All told, much to like especially since SharpReader is still freeware. I even got in the first thank you in the announcement thread’s comments.

Over two years ago, I mentioned that thanks to being on the winning side of a class action lawsuit against BankAmerica that $16 would be coming my way in around 12 months. Well, it’s been quite a bit longer but I made out much better–given money market account interest rates taken into account–when the check arrived in today’s mail for the princely sum of $25.32, reducing my net loss on the original investment to only $1237. Go to love those lawyers. Suh-weet!

I always remembered To Live and Die in L.A. fondly even if I only saw it once in the theaters during its run in 1985 and on cable shortly after. A very slick movie that had ahead of its time visual editing and a purpose-built rock soundtrack. Not to mention writer/director William Friedkin’s sure touch with the relationship between cops and crooks.

 

Tried to get the thing recorded by TiVo for the longest time but for some reason no luck; then Fry’s had the DVD on deep discount and voila! A lazy Summer afternoon is a great time to watch this icy cool flick.

 

The first starring roles for Willem Dafoe (the bad boy), William Peterson (the anti-hero) and John Pankow (badling before his time), the story turns on a murderous counterfieter faced off against two Secret Service agents. Peterson will go to any lengths to avenge his murdered partner (played by Michael Greene), even though his partner more or less brought his own death on by mysteriously refusing backup.

 

Not too many big blowups or action sequences but the ones we get are really strong. Most spectacular, perhaps, is an amazing, very long car chase where Peterson and Pankow don’t even know who’s chasing them or why. And a lovely romantic interest for each of the leads, with matching personalities.

 

The end is very surprising for Hollywood and I was not at all surprised to hear the director say, on his commentary track, that the studio ordered an alternate shot; watching what was proposed (an extra on the DVD) I’m more than happy he was able to stay with the original. Sadly, this was Freidkin’s last decent flick, though not his last by far. Remember Samuel Jackson’s rancid Rules of Engagement or Shaq in Blue Chips?

 

recommended

Brian Ching reclaimed joint lead of the MLS goal scoring list this afternoon with two goals, leading the Earthquakes to their first league win in what seems like forever. Have to give the team credit for this one, they dominated the Rapids all afternoon until the heat and pace got to the players for the last 15-20 minutes or so.

 

Landon and Ching were really on the same page, with Donovan assisting on both of Ching’s goals and scoring the third himself. Ronnie Ekelund also showed he’s fully recovered from the injury that cost him most of the season till now. Onstadt was never really challenged except for the one goal, which was late and a blast that he never had a chance to stop. And this is a good time to have a full week off.

The Big Guy and my Dad both pointed me to A View from the Eye of the Storm, a speech by Haim Harari, a theoretical physicist, on War on Terror. Lengthy but unlike many essays on the topic, concrete in both examples and required actions. Too bad politicians in the West will not listen to plain spoken truth such as this.

Depending on when you asked the question, Sun’s CEO was either one of tech’s greatest businessmen ever or one of the worst. These days the latter view seems to be more prevalent, according to the tenor and quotes in this Business Week cover story. A few years back, during the dotcomboom, no doubt everyone, especially including journalists and analysts, couldn’t praise him highly enough.

 

I met him once, very briefly, when Sun acquired NetDynamics. Just a “Hi Scott, I’m Bill Lazar, glad to be a part of the team” kind of thing. He gave a good CEO smile and a firm handshake and kept walking. Actually got to speak with Ed Zander for a couple of minutes two or three times during the same period–now there was a guy who I got great vibes from.

 

Wither Sun? My few friends still inside aren’t telling me anything that inspires positive thinking. Nor are any of the bigger public decisions, like the plan to cowboy up with Fujitsu or open source Solaris, doing anything to help. McNealy claims to be working on new disruptive innovations that will lead the company back from its wanderings, but I (and most other observers) still need convincing.

[Sent to the hosts and program director at The Bone but of course there was no response from them.]

 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that much of what we call humor involves pain but only when that pain is another person’s. Fair enough, I suppose. This morning’s routine, however, where Lamont and Tonelli called a father to tell him his 12 year old son was busted for pot was just too much.

I really enjoy the music your station plays (though you could add more Springsteen) but today makes me realize you have no limits. I can only imagine the pain you put this guy through–short of death or serious injury there’s hardly anything worse for the parent of a 12 year old child!–just to entertain listeners. That’s sick, seriously sick, and I have to say I pushed the button for KFOG immediately.

I know that the victim of these jokes is called back a few minutes later and told the truth but what gives you the right to inflict such anguish? The other week I heard the hosts calling a woman to tell her about her husband or boyfriend fathering a child by another woman, again this terrible, but a perfect example of how you’ve gone off the rails.

Isn’t there enough pain and hurt and anguish in our world today without you adding to it intentionally? With all the experience of your team in radio, can’t you find a better routine for Friday mornings? Maybe you could just play more good music and leave the obnoxious chatter to Greg Kihn?

Testing the new Blogger editor first time.

[Later] I cannot say I’m thrilled with the improvements in the editor. How many Blogger users, for instance, need to link to gopher or WAIS servers? And the old shortcuts, like CTRL+SH+T for the emphasis tag, are worn into my fingers after three plus years but no longer work. Viewing this entry as is in the Edit HTML tab shows that a non-breaking space was inserted on the otherwise blank, second line of this post, why is that? And even though it says Edit HTML, I’m not shown the <br> or <p> tags that are obviously in here. No, not thrilled at all.

[Even Later] Also, I’m still not thrilled with the recently introduced overall interface. Why oh why couldn’t Google leave the old style, with editing box on top and post listing on bottom, as an option for those who prefer it? The new style introduces unnecessary extra key and mouse work. The interface was essentially dumbed down with no advanced mode for experienced users. And they still haven’t added Trackbacks or Categories, which I always thought were the two most requested new features.

 

Interested discussion/bug reporting over at Massless, the blog of the primary coder for this stuff.

You know we’ve slipped past the point of good sense when they start giving out awards for non-entertainment, non-sports, pure product categories. Oh well. But there are a bunch of resources mentioned that me, Mr. Low Carb Expert, hasn’t even heard of, so that’s cool at least.

when was the last prelude manufactured?

2001? Looks that way.

In today’s letters column, Edward Styles writes:

“Marriage benefits originated not as a reward for monogamous heterosexuality, but as a means for humankind to perpetuate itself and to meet the huge needs of our dependent young. Redefining marriage would make these goals more difficult to achieve.”

As someone opposed to the FMA, I think Mr. Styles has inadvertently hit the proverbial nail head. Instead of redefining marriage, perhaps what we need to do is redefine the benefits, or rather how they’re parcelled out. That is, direct the social rewards based on relevant actions, such as providing for children, rather than a simpler definition such as a wedding ceremony.

Further, Style’s extension of the discussion to benefits like healthcare coverage reminds us that the current employer-based system leaves too many families and individuals without any, and burdens employers in ways that would be quite unnecessary in a universal system. If two people, or more, choose to make their lives together then more power to them in finding happiness.

Today’s FoxTrot uses Springsteen in a really funny way!

Apparently my ‘temporary new home’ loaner laptop will be less temporary than I’d ever expected. Just got a call from Fry’s to find out that because my poor, broken down Toshiba is still under the manufacturer’s warranty the store is required to send it to Toshiba for repair. And the average (meaning it could easily be longer) turnaround time is eight weeks. EIGHT WEEKS?!?!?! Have you ever heard of a consumer business that can take so long to do a repair?

I was informed that this is not Fry’s or Toshiba’s number but an industry average across manufacturers and big retailers so my experience would be the same wherever I’d bought it. Of course if the hard drive had managed to live out another three weeks I’d be past the one year mark and then the Fry’s extended warranty would kick in, and I’d get back Little Steven in under a week.

What a freaking joke.