BillSaysThis

Flying home yesterday was one of those flights you really just don’t want to be on. Full plane–why did United use a B757 on such a popular cross-country flight instead of, say, a 767? Of course 30 minutes was not enough time to board and seat every passenger, meaning we were late pulling away from the gate, missed our takeoff slot and therefore had to sit and wait 20 minutes for an opening. Get up in the air and less than an hour later the plane runs into some turbulence and the seatbelt signs go on. Just for a few minutes, no big deal.

A little while later, more turbulence, seatbelts on again, also for not too long. The oh so tasty meal is served and cleared. What next? More turbulence, of course! This time we’re locked into our seats for nearly two hours as the pilot moves up and down searching in vain for some smooth air. Amazingly, the Sweet One is able to nap through a long stretch of this. My stomach is not at all happy and my choice to take two Xanax before the flight turned out to be very wise. Finally the pilot is able to turn off the signs and half the plane runs for the toilets; fortunately I get to them before most of the others but TSO is not so lucky and has to stand in line for twenty minutes. Not finished with us yet, the seatbelt signs go on yet again and we are locked in for the last hour plus before touchdown, as well as 15 minutes more on the plane for an extra-long taxi to the terminal.

Still, we finally get to our car, have an uneventful ride home and sleep in our own beds!

Some changes in the executive ranks at Cygnus have resulted in a promotion for my sister Joanne. She gets a bump up to Publishing Director and the added responsibility of a second magazine. Congratulations Jo!

Just a quick trip report, details to follow.

The flight was okay, no problems with security or checking in, and the plane pulled away from the gate a couple of minutes early. Lilo and Stich was the movie, which I would have watched except for the nasty whine over the headphones. Dad was at EWR smiling!

Wednesday was a slow day, the only significant event was a trip to Costco to buy a new eMachines PC to replace Dad’s aged, no longer really functioning CompUSA special. Mom made a yummy lamb chops and steak dinner, with sauteed onions and mushrooms plus string beans. She also made a batch of Atkins blueberry muffins so we wouldn’t have to schlep from CA–thanks Mom!

Thursday was a NJ Transit train ride into Manhattan. Started out with a mixup on Amtrack ($38/person) versus NJ Transit ($9.80/person) but only cost us about 25 minutes. I hate train and bus rides! We made our way to my sister Joanne’s apartment on the Upper East Side, went for a little stroll around the neighborhood waiting for her to get home from work, and then we broke our adherence to Atkins for the evening and treated The Sweet One to her first real New York pizza (plus some yummy fried calamari).

Earlier today we took the bus down to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and ice rink (TSO’s big request) and then a looooon walk back to 1st Ave. to get the bus back up here. After I finish this we are off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (my big request) and then dinner and Nemesis with TSO’s best friend and her husband, who’re driving down from western Massachusetts. Tomorrow back to NJ for a big finale dinner with the whole family and then, sadly, vacation is over.

Pictures are being taken, will be posted soon as well.

Visiting family is a good thing! We will do this tomorrow and return Sunday night.

A recent conversation on Blogger User Support, the peer support community on Yahoo! Groups, led me to devise a set of instructions for people who want to periodically backup their blogs. Here’s what I wrote:

One thing that not a lot of people using Blogger do, though it would help with these concerns, is to output a backup file. Making a backup is actually quite simple and can be done at some reasonable frequency, such as weekly or monthly; you do back up your own data files, right? Here’s one way to do it, which I’m cribbing from the way MovableType instructs users who want to import Blogger posts:

0) Make (or after the first time, use) a standard backup directory. If you have your own website, this directory could be on that site. All the following instructions assume you’ll use this directory.

1) Open your main template. Copy the template and save it to a local file. For completeness sake you might want to take a copy of your archive template as well. I recommend a naming scheme for these files such as main_template_MM_DD_YY.txt and archive_template_MM_DD_YY.txt where MM is month, DD day, and YY year. I include the dates since over time you’ll accumulate several. Conversely you could leave off the date and only have the most recent.

2) (optional, this is to save only the posts and not extra formatting) Replace your main template with the following, with non-Pro users leaving off the title and URL fields since they won’t be present and Pro users including them only if used:

(Delete the dashes before each of the keywords, Blogger choked if I tried to publish this without something to differentiate from the real tags)

<-Blogger>

AUTHOR:

DATE:

TITLE:

URL:

—–

BODY:

——–

<-/Blogger>

This step may be skipped if you prefer, which would simply make your backup file bigger and also have it include whatever other matter you generally publish. I still recommend saving off a copy your template since Blogger does often have transient issues with template.

3) Open the Settings page, Publishing tab. Change the Blog file name setting to _MM_DD_YY.txt where is, well, your blog name; this will let you easily go back to a specific time and prevent you from overwriting your normal blog file. If you have your own website, and want to put these backup files in a directory other than the one you normally publish to, also change the Server Path setting to match. Adjust the Blog URL to account for these changes. Note: you probably want to make a note of the original settings for any of these changed fields so afterwards you can change things back.

4) Click to the Formatting tab. Change the Show on Main page settings to 999 and days’ posts, which is the highest number allowed, to ensure all (or as much as possible) of your posts are included. Conversely, you could change the settings to only capture the last week or month or other time period (depending on your backup schedule) in each backup file. I prefer to have everything in one file at least until my blog grows older than Blogger will allow me to put out in one shot.

4a) Change the Timestamp format to the first choice (mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss am/pm), which is necessary since we don’t use any date headers in the output file.

5) If you use BlogSend, turn it off before publishing (or use it to email a copy of the output file to some useful place).

6) Save your changes and click Publish. Blog*Spot users will need to open the result in a browser and use the browser’s File | Save As function to grab a copy for storage. If you’re storing these three files (blog output plus two templates), I recommend moving (creating) a Zip file with them for each backup (named _bu_MM_DD_YY.zip).

7) Finally, go back to Blogger and restore your normal publishing settings and template. Click publish to put back your normal file (which actually should not have had any changes) and test that you restored everything properly.

Less than 10 minutes a month (or week) for a hunk of peace of mind.

Update: Rumor has it that blog backups in RSS will be coming soon as a standard feature to Blogger but no idea if this will be for all users or Pro only. So all this yummy goodness will be of little value very soon. I hope.

Well, in keeping with how far from reality my weekend sports dream was, the Niners are blowing chunks early. Completely unable to take advantage of a huge Jimmy Williams punt return or a midfield interception, the Cowboys lead 6-0 on two field goals early in the second quarter. Not a single touch at all for Terrell Owens!

Meanwhile, yesterday Liverpool FC made some serious lineup changes, Kirkland for Dudek most prominent, yet still lost 2-0 to lowly Charlton and lost Emile Heskey in the 37th minute to a leg injury. The Reds slip to fourth in the Premiership following their eight straight League match without a victory.

No better result on the college football front either. Miami slipped by Virginia Tech to retain their number one ranking and spot opposite Ohio State in the fiesta Bowl for the national title, Georgia wiped the field with Arkansas, and Jason Gesser ignored his sprained ankle to lead Washington State to the automatic PAC-10 Rose Bowl berth. USC should keep fourth place in the BCS ranks, and an automatic major bowl bid, but their opponent and destination (Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl?) will not be known for another 90 minutes.

We can only hope the 49ers get something going while the defense holds tight on the Cowboys to get the potentially division-clinching win.

Update, 1:40 PST: With a last second touchdown grab by (who else?) Terrell Owens, the 49ers came back and won 31-27. Combined with the Rams’ disaster in Kansas City, San Francisco clinched the NFC West. Next up: Green Bay comes to visit and a win in this game means we probably don’t have to go to their house if the teams meet in the playoffs. But the defense has to be a lot–a lot!–stronger than they were today. Kevan Barlow or Garrison Hearst or both need to be healthy by Sunday. And Owens needs to get the ball earlier and much more often.

Update, 2:32 PST: The non-championship matchup that I’d hoped for is now set. It’s in the Orange Bowl instead of the Rose Bowl, but you can bet I’ll be watching USC take on Iowa on January 2. A facet of the selection rules gives the bowl with a higher payout first choice of available teams, giving the Orange two selections before the Sugar, which wanted USC, had any. One loss Georgia can bite my ass, the winner of the Orange Bowl will end the year ranked higher. And let’s have a big woohoo for the BCS selectors for leaving Notre Dame on the outside looking in.

Attended a very interesting, informative lecture today at Fry’s Electonics Sunnyvale store given by Bruce Dale. He mostly focused on tips and tricks. In these two photos, taken at the end of the session, I tried to use a little of what he said though there are certain limitations imposed by my four year old, one megapixel camera; Bruce is wearing the grey-ish sweater and has the gray hair and beard:

Dale, as far as credentials, has published over 2000 photos in National Geographic. He has a how-to book on digital photography coming out next year, which I hope to beta read since when I asked him about it, I seem to be the perfect target and am (*cough*) pretty good about giving concrete, useful feedback.

Some of his tips:

Close one eye and squint. This makes up for the monovision and lower resolution of cameras compared to the human eye. Frame the picture with your hands (you know, just how you see the directors do it on film) to see the way the shot will be captured. Along the same lines, try to compose in the camera and don’t shoot with the expectation that you’ll crop the photo in software.

Don’t be tricked by your camera’s Auto Color Balance setting! Try the manual settings, especially cloudy (4200 degrees K), to get warmer colors rather than ‘perfect’ ones.

Make sure to focus on your subject’s eyes when shooting humans, not their ears. When taking pictures of buildings or lights at night, include a little sky in the shot and wait until it’s darker than you think is necessary to get good contrast. And remember that sometimes a detail of your subject, such as a really interesting pait of hands or jewelry, speaks more powerfully than the whole.

Use a tripod whenever possible for maximum sharpness but compose your shot first and do not let the tripod dictate positioning. Since Dale had a TiBook driving his presentation, one audience member asked why he chose Mac over PC. “I have both,” he said. “I hate them both equally.” Another question: JPEG, TIFF, or Raw format in the camera? Surprising to me, Bruce said JPEG for convenience and because, although there is some information loss, there isn’t enough to be really noticable. He just finished an assignment in Hawaii that will show up next year in A Day in the Life of the Military and did all his work in JPEG.

The lecture was sponsored by Panasonic and Dale was recommending the new 4MP Panasonic LUMIX camera, “the first digital camera line to combine world-renowned Leica DC optics with Panasonic digital technology, including the SD Memory Card.” A little pricy at $699 (not sure if that’s list or retail) but he went over the feature set and I have to say I was impressed–not that I know a heck of a lot about digital cameras. Lots of features that my current Kodak DC doesn’t have.

Of course garret may disagree with all of this, he does know a lot about this.

All the headlines today are trying to convince us that the resignations of Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and White House Economic Advisory Lawrence Lindsay were big shocks. But if that’s true, how come I saw Larry Kudlow on CNBC this morning claiming that the White House was canvassing for potential replacements over a month ago? Second, the post-election timing seems just a bit too convenient as Rove et al try to line up their ducks before Congress convenes and a huge new tax cut package is proposed.

Well, not really. A press release came out this morning announcing that Julia Stiles has made a deal to star in a romantic comedy called The Prince and the Freshman. She’ll play the rebellious farmgirl frosh at college in Indiana where a British prince is studying and spending a year out of the limelight. They fall in love, the news gets out, and the Queen must clean up the mess. I’ll give you one, and only one, guess as to the ending of this film.

No word on who’s playing the prince just yet; maybe they’ll get Naomi Watts’ boyfriend Heath Ledger. I thought Stiles was trying to step up in class with her small role in The Bourne Identity and co-starring in the upcoming Julia Roberts film Mona Lisa Smile but apparently money talks. Can’t really blame her for that.

Some very shizzat this time out, courtesy of the bad mama jammas over at MeFi:

– the original entry, ‘coz the comments be g!

– the slammin’ rap is whassup!

As pretty_generic says, “One bling to rule them all.”

For the past two nights, Ted Koppel has been interviewing Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau on his post-Nightline show UpClose. Trudeau is notoriously publicity-shy and this was his first major media interview in over 30 years, so it was interesting just to see what this man, who I’ve been reading daily for so many years, might have to say about how and why he works. And the show’s format (you can get the video from the ABC News website, at least today), low key, simple, few graphic cutaways, and just a one to one interview between Koppel and the guest, really lends itself to true conversation and not just the soundbites that so many other shows produce. One answer in particular from the cartoonist really stuck with me:

Trudeau drew President Clinton as a waffle in the strip. After that, he expected never to be invited to the White House. A few months later, though, his wife (Jane Pauley) was invited for a state dinner and he went as the spouse. The dinner was for the King of Morocco (who’s since died). Trudeau told Koppel, “We’re going through the reception line; Clinton shakes my hand, turns to the king and says ‘Your Majesty, this is Gary Trudeau. He writes a comic strip. He makes fun of me for a living.’ And the king looked at him, like, ‘What? Why is this man not in a cell attached to a car battery? Why is he here having dinner with us?’ I’ve never been quite so proud to be an American.”

Yeah. I agree.

The Center Cannot Hold is the second book of the American Empire trilogy, following up Blood and Iron as Harry Turtledove explores a world where one crucial event in our history, lost orders to General Robert E. Lee, never happened and so the South went on to win the War of Succession. The Center Cannot Hold covers the mid 1920s until early 1933, mostly a time of peace but also when the world is ravaged by something similar to the Great Depression.

[Note: minor spoilers ahead]

In How Few Remain, Turtledove opened this alternative history 20 years later and told the story of the second war between the states, which the South also wins. Next came the Great War trilogy, when the US (the North) teamed up with Germany to defeat an alliance of the Confederacy, France, and England; Japan was somewhat involved, opposed to the US, but was too far away and only a minor player. These three books (American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs), turned the tables and left the US on top. And left some of it’s characters aching for revenge and change.

Turtledove developed and continues a stylistic architecture in this series (also used in his Worldwar/Colonization series) that rotates the narrative through a cycle of characters. Many characters, each of whom gets a few pages in turn to develop their personal story as well as present developments from the world at large; most of these folks have been in place since American Front, though a few come to an end and others are introduced as the author needs to adjust his viewport. This architecture is very different than most anything I’ve read by other authors. One comparison who comes to mind is Peter Hamilton and his Night’s Dawn Trilogy, though everything else about these two series is quite different from aesthetics to timing to plot. Not everyone has cared for this method, though, prefering tales where focus is kept more closely through one or two key characters.

The character in the forefront of this book is Jake Featherston, the leader of the CSA’s Freedom Party, a man bitter from his treatment at the hands of the South’s elite during the Great War and at the treatment of the South afterwards. He is determined to pay back all who have done him wrong and to make his nation strong again. And he leads the Freedom Party back from a great debacle into more and more power. Featherston also provokes much comment and activity by the other main characters, most of whom cannot stand this proto-Hitler (except for the characters who belong to his party). One weakness, I feel, is that few scenes show this man interacting with people one would expect to see someone at his level dealing with, such as high level businessmen and foreign leaders.

One great strength that Turtledove displays here is an ability to give realistic portrayals of the concerns and emotions of so many different types of people. The cast of main characters includes a high society woman, rich and powerful, a single mother (her husband was killed in the Great War) in Boston, black men in both the USA and CSA, two quite different Freedom Party members, Canadians of various stripes plus a Yank who lives there and is married to one (the US conquered Canada in the war and split Quebec off into a separate, allied republic), a Jewish female politican and a woman, a former American spy, who runs a coffeeshop in DC. The range of all these players is pretty amazing.

The final book in this trilogy, The Victorious Opposition, will be released in July. Presumably the focus will be on Jake Featherston, his nasty plans to remake the Confederacy, and the rise of the Confederacy and it’s allies. You will not be at all surprised, then, to hear that this week publisher Del Rey announced that Turtledove will follow up this American Empire trilogy with another three book series that covers the WWII analog. Since this third trilogy will likely be published (the original hardcovers, that is) beginning no earlier than 2005 or 2006 and make for a total of 10 books, one wonders if that will be the end of Turtledove’s enthusiasm and the series. Not to mention that the Communists, at least as of 1933, are unable to take over Russia or any other nation–China plays no role at all in these stories–so the Cold War we experienced would not have a direct comparison.

Recommended

no one wants to be sick, especially not at this time of year, with so much to do before the X day. so bill sends his get well soon wishes to mr. dangerousmeta, in that distinctive dm style. g, if you’re really “blowing materials out of my head that would do good service on your average horror/sci fi ‘b’ film,” please don’t post any photos.

We come back from the gym, eat breakfast, and when I check the web, Liverpool FC have broken out of their funk, at least enough to take an away win at Charlton in the EPL. That’s first. After blowing out of the Champions League, then losing the top spot in the Premiership, then losing to injury depleted Man United, Houllier needs to make the team win. I read that Owen and Baros have scored and at least one of the following go net as well: Murphy, Hamann, Riise.

Through the late morning and early afternoon we watch Virginia Tech shake off their late season funk, realize they have a chance to make the year mean something, and put together a slim but real victory of the Miami Hurricanes. Four weeks ago this would have barely been an upset, with Miami at a low point and VT riding high, but the teams have each gone the other way since.

Then at 3:00 we dig in for Georgia-Arkansas in the SEC Championship. This would be annother long shot, but I know that the good ol’ boys at Arkansas can beat the (third ranked) good ol’ boys from Georgia. Even though it’s essentially a Georgia home game only an hour drive from their campus.

This combination of unlikely results would be incredibly sweet and put USC into the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State for the national championship. And only possible because somehow the Trojans slipped ahead of idle Iowa in the BCS rankings.

Very unfortunate indeed. The following two sentences were the entirety of the text, other than navigation, posted on the Careers page of a company which I’d like, one day, to employ me. So I won’t be naming any names.

“If you are looking for an opportunity to work on the technology of tomorrow, then join us.

[Company Name] currently has no positions available.”

Kind of a sentence-length oxymoron, isn’t it. The side effect of a page template and lack of attention to detail: who ever thought a company with millions of dollars in sales per quarter.

This seems to be the year for dark movies, even for children. So James Bond should be no exception and is not as he comes to the screen a twentieth time in 007 – Die Another Day. Kudos to director Lee Tamahori and producer Barbara Broccoli for their strength and willingness to reinvent what many have called limp and even irrelevant.

For this is a different James Bond, a new style for the new century, though clearly care has been taken to keep his character, and the overall movie, in league with the past. Change is apparent right from the opening frames: Bond has what looks at first to be a typical pre-credit action sequence, his mission to take out a rogue North Korean colonel who’s trading arms to African armies for banned diamonds. But while James does destroy the man’s base and inventory, he himself is taken prisoner. Then as the title credits play, instead of simply showing us silhouettes of beautiful yet dangerous women–as all past movies have–the screen is intercut with shots of Bond’s torture and interrogation. When the credits end and the film truly begins, 14 months have passed and Pierce Brosnan could pass for Tom Hanks halfway through Castaway.

Bond is released yet cut adrift from MI6; even M wonders to him why he hasn’t done the honorable thing. “I threw the cyanide capsule away years ago,” he replies. Brosnan is, perhaps, not quite too long in the tooth for this role at 49 but he’s getting there. Supposedly the next one will be his last and I will be glad that he does not try and stretch as far as Roger Moore, who made A View to a Kill at 58. Sean Connery was wiser and only 53 when he made Never Say Never Again.

Must mention the second among equals performance of Halle Berry as Jinx. Quite good, quite delectible, and stunning in one of the movie’s homages to the past when we first see her walking out of the Caribbean surf in a bikini (Ursula Andress as Honey Rider in Dr. No, the first Bond film). For most of the film she is pursuing her own mission, separate from 007, though their paths intersect; she’s also the first woman Bond beds after his long stint in North Korea. The media has been full of talk that Jinx, and Berry, are too good to waste and that they’ll make her the star of the first spinoff from the franchise. Some of us remember, though, that much the same talk was around five years ago when Michelle Yeoh partnered up with Brosnan and that came to naught.

The villains are much in the style of the past as well, yet new in ways. The action man Zao, played by Rick Yune, is smoother and smarter than, say, Odd Job, and has better weapons as well. The gorgeous Rosamund Pike, who looks quite familiar though this is her first major role, follows the path of Sophie Marceau and Famke Janssen as bad girls who can’t keep their hands off the main man yet can’t kill him either.

Toby Stephen and Will Yun Lee play the master villain in a nasty twist which isn’t nearly obvious for quite some time. In any case, they come up with a diabolical plan using a huge mirror in space, controlled by a cool remote control worn as a gauntlet. Their planning, reach, and wealth put them in the same fine company as Ernst Blofeld and Emilio Largo but are far more willing to get their own hands dirty and get physical.

Lee Tamahori (who also directed an episode of The Sopranos) blows out the doors here. Writer team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who also wrote The World Is Not Enough, came up with snappy dialog and a spiraling, ever tightening plot. Earlier this year, after seeing xXx, I thought that perhaps Vin Diesel and his character could become the combination that finally knocks 007 off its perch. But if the producers are smart enough, and hire this trio for Bond 21, that won’t be true any time soon. This is probably the best in the series since the end of the Cold War.

Highly recommended

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of George’s death from cancer and a few of his good friends got together to put on a tribute to him and his music last night at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I’m sure it was an amazing experience. McCartney, Starr, Clapton, Petty, Billy Preston, Jeff Lynne, and George’s son Dhanni played Harrison’s songs after Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka opened with a performance by a 50 member orchestra including a special piece composed by Shankar especially for the evening. Most of the living members of Monty Python, whose films were financed by Harrison, came on to sing the classics Sit on My Face & The Lumberjack Song. Fortunately the show was recorded and a DVD, with proceeds going to his Material World Foundation, will be released.

Plenty of fans attended the show and posted their thoughts to the web already, for more details on the show itself. The official website has a short but well made video online with some bits from the rehearsals and comments from the musicians. I would love to have been there but there’s a continent, an ocean, and too long a stretch of unemployment that got in my way.

There was also a flower vigil on Hollywood Blvd. yesterday comemorating Harrison.

Forgot to include this last night. I made the Atkins Crustless Cheesecake. Very tasty but I ate too much of it. I paid the price at this morning’s weigh-in, believe me. The very simple recipe is: mix 12 ounces of softened cream cheese, a teaspoon of vanilla, and three packets of sweetener (Splenda) with a cup of heavy cream beaten to have soft peaks, refrigerate for a half hour. The result has 20 grams of carbohydrates and I ate half. Plus I used my finger to clean the mixing bowl, because waste is a terrible thing. Just terrible. And very white. And yummy!

One thing that I have tried to be mindful of for many years is just how fortunate I am. I have a good family and we all love each other very much. I have never wanted for food or material things, or a place to live; in fact, I’ve done quite well for all three of those. Not better than everyone but surely better than a very high percentage of all the human beings who’ve ever lived. I’ve known, and know, the happiness that the love of a good woman can bring. The simple pleasure of waking up in the morning next to someone who smiles back at you. I am thankful, today and all days.

Vivian has the recipe and her own sweet Thanksgiving memory and thanks.