'2005' Archives
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It's rained in San Francisco for about 8 days straight now. So I haven't been biking to work. This has been OK, since the holiday week between Christmas and New Years is generally light traffic on US-101. I hope the rain eases up soon, now that traffic should be picking up.
The one nice thing about the rain is that it inspired me to finally have a fire in my fireplace. It's been great, and now there's an interesting slight smokey smell in my place. I've never have had a fireplace before (I decided that my senior year in college doesn't count), so I don't know if that is expected or not. #
A thoughtful review of two books about the torture American representatives have brought upon our enemies. This makes you wonder who is the enemy, and who the new enemy will be. "...the prevalence of brutality and inhumanity among American interrogators has robbed the United States of the high ground it desperately needs to maintain in order to win." One of the things I had admired about the United States in the past was the progressive (but admittedly slow) improvement of the lot in life of people here, and somewhat in turn, abroad. In many ways (with notable exceptional cases), the United States has maintained a moral high ground around the world. It is such an utter shame that the unfathomly horrible current "leadership" of this country has ruined this for this generation and more to come. A real leader would make right the wrongs that have occurred under his watch, and he wouldn't be rewarding fools and idiots with medals of honor. This whole debacle leaves me unbelievably sad. The president has squandered about 75 years of 'political capital'. What an utter waste. Has there been anything at all positive about the president's policies? History, even before we're dead, will reflect negatively on this travesty. I'm so ashamed of my country. #
I realized last night that one of the changes I had made to the web site generator had screwed up most of the music pages. I've fixed that and I've hopefully made the code a little better along the way.
There was actually frost outside on some cars that I saw on the CalTrain ride down today.
Speaking of which, CalTrain is apparently cracking down on 10 Ride ticket holders that don't get their ticket validated by a machine before they board. They now state that if you don't go to a conductor as soon as you board telling them of your problem, they will issue you a citation. I overheard a sympathetic conductor who said that management apparently doesn't think the validator machines have as many problems as they do. This same conductor (from Santa Cruz) was quite impressed with my bicycle this morning. #
Who is running for election in Iraq? Where will people vote? No one is saying. In the United States we value secret ballots, apparently the precedent of valuing secret elections is beginning in Iraq. Iraq only just had election in October 2002, just before the U.S. invaded a sovereign nation for no justifiable reason. Saddam won by a landslide. Does anyone truly believe this upcoming election is more legitimate than the previous Iraqi election? Please tell me how you vote for someone you don't know, and you don't know what they stand for. What would be a candidate's platform in Iraq? Let's see, fighting terrorism has to be on the list, as one can't get elected without that feather in your hat. I am so ashamed of my country.
So I saw two billionaires in two days last week. I went to Google for lunch on Thursday, and saw Sergey Brin. On Friday I went to Apple for lunch, and I saw Steve Jobs. Pretty cool, actually. Are there more charismatic founders of more influential companies around the Silicon Valley right now? I don't think so. Plus they both have products with the word mini in them.
I fixed a couple more bugs in my web site generation program. For example, the diary entries that appear on the main page would have incorrect embedded links to the bands, venues, and albums when they appeared on the archive pages. You'll also see that the diary archive pages now have month headings. There also have been lots on internal improvements to the code. I've done a lot of 'professional polish' types of changes to the build system and how the program gets its data. They are the types of things that would be expected in a product, which haven't been in the program yet because it is only a hobby.
And yesterday we had a beautiful sunset here in San Francisco. I took these pictures right from my patio in my condo! #
Wow. I guess you have to admire their doggedness. Laws that prevent CIA dirty tricks? Move the operations to the Pentagon, outside of the people's review. Laws that prohibit torture? Well, then, re-define torture. Repeatedly fail in vague goals for a preemptive war? Keep the Defense Secretary on another 4 years and give him even more powers to destroy our futures even further. Start a war and create another terrorist training ground beyond bin Laden's wildest dreams? Just do it. It sure shows their modus operandi; insist you are correct and damn the torpedoes, the law, common sense, and human dignity. This administration does what your stereotypical slimy lawyer does. They twist and maim a definition of the law beyond any reasonable person's recognition to reach definitions of the law as they see fit and to justify what they are already doing. It's illegal to torture? It's OK if you define torture as starting after the instant just before death. If these acts define my country and what it stands for, it seems to me that there is less worth defending. But I know that the U.S. is better than this. I am so ashamed of my country.
Jeff Wickenkamp figured out another unknown show date. It's been years since someone did that. His old band Pork Pie opened for some band called Smashing Pumpkins on April 29, 1990. He even has put up recordings, which he warns may taint your memories of this fine evening.
On the web site program update, you'll notice popup titles on the pictures, dates in the shows in the RSS feeds, and the last 20 most recent entries in the RSS feed (instead of splitting 50% between the shows and diary entries). #
Isn't it surreal that in the confirmation hearings going on for the presidential cabinet secretaries that all the Senators say that there is no doubt that the confirmation will take place? Even though several of the people are evasive and telling half-truths? It's illegal to lie to Congress. Isn't this a democracy, or is it all just a show? It seems to me to be nearly like the rubber-stamp Soviet Politurbo of the Soviet era. I am so ashamed of my country. #
On the CalTrain ride in the other morning, the guy sitting behind me was asked for his ticket. The conductor said that the ticket he was given was out of date. The passenger said something about how he must have grabbed the wrong one (out of his pocket, I guess). The conductor went on asking for others' tickets. The passenger behind me asked if he could use my ticket and show it to the conductor for his ticket. I answered no with a shake of my head. I was wondering for a moment if I should be cool to this kid, but I decided not to. You see, he gave the impression that he was a hard-ass. A hard-ass doesn't try to borrow someone else's ticket when it's obvious he got on the train hoping he wouldn't have to show a ticket. A real man fesses up to the conductor and takes the consequences. The end result would've been the same; the conductor would have lectured him, and asked him to get off the next stop. This is what happened anyways. While I was typing this, I noticed the same guy on the train again on the way up to San Francisco! He also has the absolutely most rusted out bike I've seen on two wheels, and a hip tan leather sportcoat jacket. A train ride like this sure is more excitement than I would've had driving on 101.
I just read a blurb in the New York Times about the upcoming Nirvana box set. The author, who says he was in high school when Cobain died, said that at the time you were either in the Pearl Jam or Nirvana camp. That's funny, because I saw it as you were either in the Mudhoney or Nirvana camp. I was on the Mudhoney side.
I went to the San Francisco Apple store on Saturday. The Mac mini is much lighter than I expected. After picking up and holding an iPod shuffle, I knew I had to have one. It has enough music for a cross country flight, so I think that's enough room, and I nearly always listen to my iPod on shuffle mode anyways. Too bad they were out of stock, or I'd have one right now. I did pick up the new iLife and iWork, however. The word processor, Pages, seems to load the MicroSoft Word documents I get from Azul employees properly. The new version of GarageBand has all sorts of fun audio effects in it. I think I want to dedicate some time to improving my musical ability. I haven't really delved into the new iPhoto features yet. And I was thinking about it. iLife and iWork are $80 a piece, and Mac OS X generally runs $130 retail. Add it up, and that means the Mac mini costs $209.
Together we can prevent earthquakes. I just saw this postcar/flyer in a local coffee house. I'll have to go the exhibit soon.
It pretty funny. The last couple of months I've noticed Chip watching T.V. It's hard to tell what he's most interested in. I think that some sound is what attracts him in the first place, and then he decides to watch.
So I'm still in the process of updating the code to develop this website. So I think I've made the CSS look worse than before, but the markup I'm making is better in the end. It'll just have to remain in flux for now. #
A bus went out of service on Church Street today. It backed up 6 J-Church Muni trains behind it. The bus was an electric one. In San Francisco, these buses run by dragging electrical contact along power lines suspended above the road. Apparently these are 'trolley poles'. So it appeared that, as occasionally happens, the bus's trolley poles detached from the power lines, and the bus was dead. Usually the driver will get out and maneuver the trolley poles back onto the wires using these guy ropes. But the contacts that the trolley poles uses to connect to the power lines were somehow caught up in a location of the power lines that is exactly like a train track junction. About 3 crew pickup trucks came out to work on the bus. They pushed the bus out of harm's way with the rams on the front of the pickups. Lots of action on Church St. tonight. #
I had the Super Bowl on while spending some of the afternoon doing chores and reading. The Paul McCartney half-time show was so damn nostalgic. It was also good. The fire works during "Live and Let Die" were just like the ones at Soldier Field so many years ago. The guy's certainly accustomed to playing football fields. However, even I'm being nostalgic for a time I didn't live the first time. What about everyone else? #
(Update: I mistook February 7 for March 7. I have no idea how I did this. I'll update again in March about my two year anniversary. Does this make me a liar?)
It's tiring reading news articles about this administration. When this administration lies, which it seems pathologically inclined to do, the news articles couch their language about the lies. "Not entirely true", "Impugning their integrity", "Lack of respect for the truth", etc. I wish they'd call it like it is, and report that they are liars, The press simply doesn't call them on it. But maybe reporting "the administration lied today" wouldn't be news, almost as worthy as reporting the sun rose today. #
Could this be where my fingers are headed? Even if it might be a fake picture, it sure is nasty. I have to treat my nail biting like I did smoking. The thing is that I really have to want to do it. This unfortunately hasn't happened yet like it had for smoking.
As if it's necessary, but here's more proof that 1) our President is a liar and 2) the major media is emasculated by viperous right wing nut jobs who prefer to ignore this fact. This article still uses mushy terms such as "lack of integrity" and "dishonest." I wish they'd just cut to the chase. #
The other day I was listening to U2 - The Unforgettable Fire. It's been quite a while since I really listened to it. It's a great record. The band is amazing on this one. Great guitars going all over the place in that classic Edge style. The rhythm section is solid. Then Bono's vocals. They soar. This can be annoying for some singers, but it works. If he wasn't so over the top, I think this album would have been considered too radical due to the guitars. If he was a subdued singer, I'd probably not even be talking about this band right now.
It seems to me that everyone is going to have to watch their behavior nowadays. Of course a 19 year old going overseas is going to try some things they hadn't before. Maybe even take some pictures? But a female soldier mud wrestling in Iraq? Boy, you'll never live that one down. Google finds everything. #
The iPod shuffle is so cool. I picked one up while at an Apple store, and I knew I had to have one. The show stopper is that it doesn't track the last played time, which is probably my favorite feature of iTunes. I like to listen to music that I haven't heard in a year or 6 months or whatever. I'll just have to wait for the next release. They may be able to update iTunes so that is marks the last played time as the sync time, but then there'd be a group of tracks that were all listed as being played at once. Hopefully they'll just get a clock into the iPod Shuffle.
I think this writer has a great point. I believe it would be simple for the #1 music service (iTunes Music Store) to switch to a 'rental' plan. Normally I'm not on the side of proprietary software and solutions (despite my resume). However I think it's really really good that Apple is able to throw a huge monkey wrench into the "Microsoft everywhere" machine. I don't think Real Networks is capable, and there are no other players in this field. We have no idea how bad it could be if Microsoft ran all the media in the future. Because if you don't think that media is going to be coming through to you on some sort of a computer, which needs an operating system, a file format, and a delivery mechanism, well, you're wrong. Right now, anyone can make a TV. I don't believe you'd need to pay anyone to receive the signal and display it. This economic model is 100% out the window with the Internet and digital media. As expected, you must pay for the physical receiving device. But you already have to pay the people with the wires. You already have to pay for the service you get on the wires. Now, you have to pay to see the media. I personally believe that Microsoft would find a way to charge that would be unreasonable in some way, and would require a Microsoft TV package. The story goes that the Microsoft Windows license is the most expensive part of a P.C. This lock-in is sometimes known as the Microsoft Tax. More than likely, this is everyone's (including Apple's) goal. I just think that Microsoft would be one of the worst stewards for this increasingly important part of our lives. They have a horrendous track record, both in the business (i.e. the anti-trust suits, immensely predatory behavior) and technical (i.e. the endless security problems) aspects. Microsoft is not our friend here. Sony and Real Networks have no idea what to do. Sony is torn between being proprietary and free at the same time (due to being both a content and delivery device provider). Real Networks isn't an Apple, Microsoft, or Sony. They are doomed. Apple only might be our friend, only because they slow down the Microsoft machine. #
When I was a freshman in college (or maybe a senior in high school), a friend of mine was really into the band Psychick T.V. They are quite odd. They emerged from the band Throbbing Gristle. To give an example of their strangeness, the singer and his wife are currently in the process of slowly getting plastic surgery so that they look alike in the end. I'll speak no more of them; go look for it on Google. So this same friend was of course into William S. Burroughs. From him I learned of the Dreamachine, and he even gave me plans for one. The dimensions of the column were provided, and a scale template of the necessary holes. All you needed after this was a 78 RPM turntable. I built this and had it in my dorm. It was funny to have it running and the dorm room door open. People would walk by wondering what the hell was going on in there. I carried it around for years. I think I gave it up when I left Texas. It was pretty cool. Now I read in a New York Times article that there's a guy who started making Dreamachines about the same time I did. Only now he sells his for up to $3000 a pop! Now I wish I could try out my Dreamachine again.
So at work I was just doing work with pthread_once(). So it got me thinking about how weird the word 'once' is. If you look at it long enough, it starts to seem like you are pronouncing it incorrectly. The same word means 'eleven' in Spanish, and of course it is pronounced phonetically. English is so weird. I am so ashamed of my language. #
On Friday I was running late leaving for the CalTrain in the morning. However, I didn't have to stop at a single light (but I went through about 3 yellows) and I actually made it to the 4th & King station in 9 minutes. I asked if they could let me on the train, and I got on just before they closed the doors. Usually this bike ride takes approximately 15 minutes. I am the man.
So I went to Zeitgeist yesterday afternoon after a nice hike where I twisted my ankle. I was standing on the deck with my friend trying to find somewhere to sit. I see a totally recognizable face in the crowd. I turn to Mary, and I say, "I went to high school with her." Trust me, hers isn't a face you'd forget. So I walk over, and I say, "Aren't you Karen?" She looks at me incredulously and says, "Greg?". We figure we probably haven't seen each other in about 15 years. Karen's lived in San Francisco for about a year now; we exchanged numbers and promised to hang out.
So energy consumption, its sources, its problems, and potential solutions have been on my mind lately. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I feel I can articulate my views properly yet (especially since I'm no expert). However, I'm an engineer, and I think like an engineer. So when I see something that simply doesn't work and doesn't have legs like our current energy ideas, I want to kill it. I've talked about this in the past, check out what I wrote about 2 years ago, and what finally made it into the New York Times today. I particularly like where he suggests "making energy independence our generation's moon shot", since I like that idea the best of my previous post. We need to inspire people that the energy problems of the United States and elsewhere are a challenge to be met by all that will truly bring humanity to the next level of understanding. Or something. I see the journey to the moon as something on par with history's greatest art and writing. Just look at what man can accomplish. It was an amazing art project funded by Cold War fears and military dollars. There's no feeling more humbling than seeing the entire Earth and, by inference, everyone on it in a single glance! Such a shame that the vast majority of us will only experience it through a photo. Pictures of the Grand Canyon do it no justice. How can a picture of the entire Earth come close to the experience?. But I'm getting away from my point. Fixing the energy problems that we're all having on Earth will be an accomplishment that will have meaning and repercussions that should stand the test of time. I don't recall where I originally get my ideas anymore or if I even think of them uniquely. I'm sure that what I wrote then was just a summary of some things I had read.
I haven't seen a show in nearly two months. Ugh. I'm pretty sure it's not me; I can't think of anything that's played recently that I've wanted to see and missed. #
So I finally got out and saw a show. It was part of the Noise Pop festival that goes on here every year. For those new frequent readers of my site, I have an example where they ripped me off a couple years ago. Check out the old Noise Pop logo, and check out my logo. I wrote them, and they just said it was a coincidence. They didn't even give me a free pass.
Reading about Hunter S. Thompson this week I found two interesting things. The first is a speech. given by his son several years ago. Another tidbit is that I guess Hunter ran for sheriff in Colorado in the early 1970s. His opponent had a buzz cut, so Hunter shaved his head and labeled his opponent a long-haired freak. Classic.
SF Gate always has funny headlines for their stories. The headline for a recent one was "Expedition Turns Into Blazer". It was about some 20 year old with a $30K Expedition. This idiot tossed his lit cigarette, it went back in his SUV, and his SUV was completely torched. Was it karma, car-ma, or SUV-ma? #
Last week when I was riding the CalTrain in the morning, we slowed down just before Hillsdale. An announcement came on that said the train in front of us was disabled, and that our train was going to couple with it and move it along. First everyone on that train had to get off the train at the Hillsdale station. Then our train coupled with that train. Then our train pulled up to the station to let everyone onto ours. In the end it was about a 12 to 15 car train, which is huge for CalTrain. However everything seemed to be fine inside. I get the feeling these engines are as big as a freight train engine, but I really have no idea.
I also had gone to see a movie over at Aram & Mary's large movie theatre in the last few weeks. They suggested "The Station Agent". I could barely remember a preview for this movie, and for some reason I was against it because of this preview. But they both said it was good, so I relented. Damn this is a great movie. Wow. I won't even tell you what happens because it was completely unexpected for me. The acting in it is wonderful as well. Speaking of which, Aram & Mary (and probably others) will see a movie multiple times. I don't really like to do that. There's so many others to watch, books to read, websites to program! I think that this subconsciously drives me to not want to watch movies more than once. #
So I went to see Slint last night. I'm also going to see them on Friday. I had originally bought tickets for Friday, and when the additional shows went on sale, Aram and I decided to go on Wednesday as well since it hadn't sold out yet. Nothing like seeing a great band only twice. I'll be writing the review today while it's fresh in my mind. I want to write it up before I see Friday's show, so that the two don't get mixed up in my head. I won't post it until after Friday's show, however. This way my readers here who will be going on Friday will have no spoilers. Suffice to say I'm looking forward to going on Friday as well. Today I'm proudly wearing my Slint t-shirt.
This is simply the very best Flash animation ever. It's a beautiful and wonderful interpretation of John Coltrane's Giant Steps. It takes awhile to load (it counts up to 100).
Darn. I've forgotten to mention in two posts that I went to go see the Mavericks big (actually huge-ass) wave surfing competition on March 2. It was a beautiful morning and Salim and I drove out to Half Moon Bay to watch the surfers. We started way out on the beach. However the big ass waves are about a half a mile off shore. We could tell they were huge ass waves because the surfers looks like tiny dots compared to the waves. Towards the end of the morning we hiked up to the cliff on shore to see from above. This gave a better perspective on things. For example, we could see that there were actually probably about 100 people (not all surfers) out there. We got into work at about noon. I'll try to post pictures later. Meanwhile you can check out the official Mavericks site and Salim's pictures as well.
Last Saturday Karen (my long lost high school friend) and I drove to Lake Tahoe. Karen skis, I do not. However she had a recent dislocated shoulder, so we just went to the top of Heavenly and had a burger and a beer. Then we drove back. It was a gorgeous day. I'll have to post those pictures along with the Mavericks ones soon.
The weather here has been beautiful, and it looks like it will last into next week. I actually rode my bike to the Slint show last night without a jacket. Incredible. California weather rules over all other places' weather. #
There's nothing like waking up on a Saturday morning to see that two good friends have already linked to my Slint show review. Salim has a nice picture that I wish I had taken, and Kevin created a list of why Slint rules.
The rest of my Saturday I spent with my cousin Brian who was visiting from Chicago for work. His wife, Edie, has a cousin, Ken, with a 41 foot sailboat in Sausalito. That Saturday was the only foggy day in a string of sunny days. But the sail across the Gate, into Aquatic Park (while under sail!) and back to Sausalito was fun nevertheless. Before we sailed we had fresh Dungeness Crab that Ken and his friends had trapped the day before.
Sheesh. The 7:37 AM CalTrain in this morning had so many bikes. For some reason the conductors weren't paying any attention and they let every single biker on. There were bikes 7 deep per rack, when it's supposed to be five. It was sheer and utter chaos. The conductor failed here.
Thanks to the Tim Kerr site webmaster Hugo, I have fixed yet another unknown show date. It was when I saw Mudhoney with The Lord High Fixers at the Emo's Fifth Anniversary show. #
I have music from every year back until 1936 (except for 1943 and 1938). I also have Jimmie Rodgers from 1927 and 1928. There's a playlist here somewhere.
This is what it is like at Google. I happen to know that Colin Powell isn't the only former Secretary of State to visit. Madeline Albright has been there too. I believe Google has also been visited by Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, and Queen Noor of Jordan. Gwyneth Paltrow and some Coldplay members added their star power one day. Not to be outdone, at Apple I once saw Robert Redford leaving the building. I saw Bjarne Stroustup out in Cafe Macs once too. I've seen James Gosling at Apple (and traded emails with him about an obscure Java font bug on Mac OS X). But like I told my friend at Google, don't these people understand that you don't have to visit Google HQ to actually 'search Google'?
The weather has been at 100% for a week now (less one foggy day). I am so glad I live here in the Bay Area! #
I bought the Dinosaur Jr. re-releases this week. That's been a lot of fun. They're one of those bands which I've heard at many of my friends' places over the years, though I've never owned them, I know the songs. Unfortunately I never got to see them. They had played in Champaign at Trito's Uptown, but regrettably I didn't go to the show. It's somewhat legendary among my friends; apparently it was nothing but constant noise. The picture of Lou Barlow on the back of the first album is classic. I also picked up The Arcade Fire only based upon vague buzz. The vague buzz was correct; this is a great record. It's unique but it also has lots of references to music you've heard before.
On CalTrain last week I saw Frank Chu, aka the 12 Galaxies guy. I overheard someone talking loudly. I looked up and saw a familiar looking Chinese man talking to someone in the vestibule of the train. He seemed to be leaning on a stick. I was pretty sure that it was him. Once he got off at the Redwood City stop carrying one of his signs, I was certain.
While seeing a movie at Metreon the other night, we saw the line for the midnight sale of the new Sony toy. I've never understood standing in line for something like that. I've stood in line for a movie or a band, but never at midnight. #
I saw another incredible movie the other night called "Children of God." It's a Brazilian movie from a couple of years ago about the slums and the drug trade in Rio de Janeiro. The actors were amazing, and apparently most of them were first time actors. The filmmakers and the story arc were also wonderful. Please go see this movie.
The rumors are starting to pick up about the next version of Mac OS X, called Tiger. I had been working on Tiger while I was at Apple. While at Apple's Developer conference last summer, I went to plenty of the sessions put on by the other teams at Apple. I was so impressed with what is coming up in Tiger that it really got me thinking. I wanted to work on something there with more visibility and pizazz. This was the start of when I knew that I wanted to do something different than implementing Java AWT at Apple. I learned that it's hard to change responsibilities within Apple. This search is what wound up leading me to Azul Systems. Things are promising at Azul. I'll soon be really jumping into the code base there. I've basically have been working in parallel with the rest of the team during my time there.
I've been living in my condo for two years now. I got my cat Chip about 9 years ago tomorrow. I started at Apple (and therefore moved to California) 5 years ago late last week. I have been in my current job for 6 months. #
So today I did one of my periodic Google searches for my name. I found that Edith Frost herself linked to my post about her show. I thought that was a particularly funny post, so that's good. I also found one of my Daniel Johnston posts on a fansite. So then I looked at Yahoo, and something called Bloglines has my website there. It looks like they read my RSS feed. It says one person is subscribed, but I can't see who that is. It's pretty weird to see my content re-purposed there. Someone else also points to my Hickoids review. Unfortunately their link back to my site is broken. This exposes a bug with my program that generates the web site; my links aren't permanent. Well the links to anything I keep sorted alphabetically aren't permanent. Currently each item gets an ID based upon its index in a sorted list of the items. So the problem happens that if I see a show at a new venue or with a new band that is somewhere in the middle of this sorted list, everyone else's index after that increases by one. Actually if I change the date of any show, the show links aren't permanent either. This will all be fixed once building my site isn't a two step process. However this feature is on hold for the time being. Famous last words.
I found another fixable bug in my code today. Today is the first day of daylight savings time. When I entered this entry, it would show up in the web site as '4/2', not '4/3'. So I watched the date go through the program. The convoluted system I currently have reads a set of text files, generates two XML files (one for the music and one for the diary), then reads in the XML files to create the HTML files. The proper date was being written to the XML, but an improper date was being read out of them. So I looked directly at the XML files. The human readable date did say '4/3', but the offset from GMT was different depending upon if the date was a PDT or PST timezone. In addition, there was no timezone information written out at all. So I looked at the XML Schema Datatype specification (my XML is auto-generated from XML Schema files). There's a more qualified date entity called dateTime. So I changed my Schema files, re-generated the XML data files, and re-ran the program. Problem solved. However, I'm still not sure if it was truly a bug in my XML Schema, even though tweaking that fixed the problem. From how I read the date entity, it should have timezone information in there. So it may be a bug in JAXB instead. #
Lately I've been chatting with my friend Kevin online more often. I'd heard from either him or Jeff Wagner (who come to think of it, I probably speak to less lately than Kevin who's in Ithaca, NY, not just 2 blocks away) that John Hastie had contacted them. John was in Jumpknuckle with Jeff & Rich Heid. Kevin was in Dissed Like A Roach, which preceded Jumpknuckle. So I looked up John on the web. He's in a new band now, Nonagon, along with someone from the J. Davis Trio. They've only had a few shows, but they have one of the very best live rock band pictures ever. Be sure to read the witty self deprecating commentary while you're at it.
About 20 years ago I first met Roger Luteyn. I can't remember if we were freshmen or sophomores in high school. I wish I did remember how I met him; I bet it was funny. We'd ride our bikes around Palatine before we could drive. We became punk rock together. I remember buying The Replacements' "Let It Be" with him. I think he bought it and I taped it. Hah! Anyways, he'd always draw great comics. Unfortunately, I've lost touch with him. I think the last time I saw him was an utterly frigid night where we went to a Hum show. We were both still in the suburbs then. I was back from college, but not living on my own yet. He's in Minneapolis now, still drawing comics as Roger Lootine, but doesn't have email apparently. So I am going to write him at his P.O. Box later this week. I wanted to put some links up to his latest stuff, called Residue. Based upon this flyer, I can tell he doesn't look too different than I remember. He's still on a bike. I can't tell if his hair is still crimped, however. Roger is the one with the chimp on his back. 20 years. Damn we're old. #
So Daniel Johnston used to work at McDonald's. Rik Didjit worked at Jewell in Champaign. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips famously was an employee of Long John Silver's. Does anyone else know any unusual day jobs of rock stars?
I just got an email whose sender was upset about one of my posts. The sender demanded that I remove my posting. I declined to remove the post, but I've updated it. It's unusual to have had my observations of my life affect someone so strongly, but I understand not that every public action requires a public record.
So my fair weather fan days for the Illini are done. It was fun while it lasted, however. Those games, particularly the Arizona game were damn exciting. This team had more of my college friends excited than I could remember in a long time. Lots of other unexpected fair weather fans came out of the woodwork as well. At least I saw Illini basketball games (and football games) when I was a student. #
Wow. Salim with the post of the day. I live right near this mint as well. I'm going to take pictures of it this weekend. Here's Google's satellite view of the New Mint in San Francisco. It's the large building on the southwest corner of Hermann & Buchanan. I wonder if the satellite had to produce identification.
After reading a couple technical blogs lately, I wish I could write as eloquently about my career. This one is a very interesting one about how easy it is to ship new software when it's on the web. I imagine that you could beta test your new software with a small subset of IP addresses that access your site, or only use the new software for a period of time, or only for a given number of hits. It's pretty intriguing, especially in light of how complex Google's latest web based software offerings have been. I've linked to Daring Fireball before as well. I think this is a reasoned analysis of all the noise on the web about Apple's lawsuits about their private information being leaked. The trade secret law seems like the very narrow advantage that Apple's lawyers sought out. Apple's tough on leaks. Before I started working at Apple, it leaked like a sieve. This wasn't good for Apple's business. Everyone would hear the rumor about the next great powerful machine coming out, and wouldn't buy the current ones. This wasn't good for Apple's business, nor did it bode well for those like me who program Macintoshes for a living. Here's a scoop: Apple is always working on a better machine and operating system than the one you're currently using. This is a very good thing. I wouldn't want it any other way. There was recently a funny post on Macintouch, referencing a Mac rumor site about how Apple was already working on updates to the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. What do they think the software engineers at Apple do after their component is complete for the current Mac OS X build train? Sit around and twiddle their fingers? Yes, it is when most vacations are taken, but once they are back, if they weren't working on an update to the OS that just shipped, they'd be fired. I'd post a link to the story, but as far as I can tell, Macintouch will expire old posts. At least I can't figure out how to get a link into their search result. #
Azul Systems has turned on the marketing machine on the company website today. I haven't read the new web site in much detail, but it certainly gives more detail than before. For those readers who aren't familiar with the enterprise technology market, Azul's top of the line 384 core, 256 GB RAM machine has an asking price of $799,000. So obviously this isn't a consumer level item. This is the first place I've worked that I'm working on something that I wouldn't have a possibility to buy for myself. Of course it would be fun to have one of these, but it would be fun to have a Lamborghini as well!
So I was up late on a Friday night and at home, so I watched Dinosaur Jr. on TV tonight. They played "Lung". According to Lou's website, they practiced as a full band beforehand for all of 2 days after 15 years hiatus. Before the set, there was a TV commercial with Jane's Addiction's "Mountain Size", showing the Coors mountain logo. Ugh. #
There are reports on the web that the Mac OS X 10.3.9 software update may have broken java. I ran the update, and my java still works fine. However, I have been able to confirm that it apparently does happen in some cases. Apple should have a fix for this soon. However, if the problem is occurring for you now, and you need to run java, the fix is to run the following command lines in Terminal. sudo requires you to enter your administrator password. "cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.4.2/Libraries; sudo rm classes.jsa; sudo java -Xdump" then "cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Libraries; sudo rm classes.jsa; sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Commands/java -Xdump:/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Libraries/classes.jsa -version". (I wish I could get that to format better.) You may read that some people say to re-install a previous security update. This voodoo works because that installed some java fixes (that actually won't be re-installed) but then the installer knows to make the above occur after the reboot of the system.
So why did this problem happen? The classes.jsa files are pre-cooked parts of java. With the commands above, the Java Virtual Machine will load invariant class meta data and compile it for your platform (G3, G4, or G5 specific code). This is loaded into memory at a specific location in physical memory. This is because it's like a dynamically loaded shared library, like just about all of Mac OS X. These dynamically loaded shared libraries all load into a specific location in memory on demand. It's loaded into a known address. After installing Mac OS X software, you'll sometimes see a install phase that mentions it is updating pre-binding. In the non-pre-bound case, when an application calls into a dynamically loaded shared library, it will look up the pointer to a function each time and cache the location for subsequent calls in the lifetime of that application. This makes things slightly slower for the lookup, both the initial one, and even each subsequent one when it loads it from the cache. However in the aggregate it is much quicker than an unknown cold lookup each time. The architecture of Mac OS X up to Panther (this actually changed in one of the Panther dot releases, but pre-binding is still used) will pre-bind libraries and applications that indicate they are pre-bound. What occurs during pre-binding is that all of the dynamic function lookups in all the libraries and applications are resolved at that time instead of runtime and the real pointer to real memory is written into the binary. This way there is no dynamic look up at runtime, thus making the application faster at runtime. The reason that pre-binding needs to be re-run each time the parts of Mac OS X are updated is that some pre-bound libraries may have changed in size. If one in the 'middle' changes in size, all the libraries above (or below, depending on how you look at things) will have to shift location by that new size. So all of the pre-bound pointers into all of those shifted libraries have changed memory locations and need to be updated. Now in Tiger I understand that the dynamic loader has been made so much faster and smarter that pre-binding is no longer an issue. But I'm certain that some people will 'miss' this. It's become one of the rituals you read about on the web for 'fixing' Mac OS X. Another one of these is 'repairing permissions' or 'zapping the PRAM'. There will unfortunately always be voodoo in the computer world. Once someone says something has fixed a problem for them, others want and need to believe it. I think they are still intimidated by computers and are grasping at straws to try to make rules for a world they don't fully understand.
The Paul Maliszewski referenced in this story has written for The Baffler for years. He specializes in writing absurdities to people who believe him. I wonder if this is yet another misunderstood missive?
Hopefully that New York Times link won't rot as time goes on. I found a web page that hopefully generates permanent links to their web site. These links will also permit non-registered readers to view those pages. I've just updated all of my New York Times links, and I could see everything I linked to. Excellent. #
If you go to Software Update on Mac OS X now, you'll see that Apple has provided a fix to the java in Mac OS X 10.3.9 problem. I'm glad they were able to provide a simple solution to the problem so quickly. If you go the the explanatory web site about the software update, you'll see Apple actually provides some details about what the problem was. The readers of my last entry will be familiar with the problem.
Have you noticed now that Mac OS X Tiger has been announced, Microsoft is beefing up their ad campaign about the stale Windows XP, and that their main Windows executive is schlepping around previews of their next OS to reporters? I'm pretty surprised that Apple's small market share concerns them so much. It's probably all of the cool new features Apple will be providing (remember those when you read about Microsoft touting them in 2 years). In the Apple share holders meeting the other day, Steve Jobs (of course) said it best, "They can't even copy fast."
Lastly, I found a nice long interview with Neal Stephenson. He's the author of the last three fiction books I've been reading. The three are called "The Baroque Cycle", and total about 2500 pages. I have about 300 to go. #
So yesterday was the date that I saw my first show, Van Halen, in 1986. What does this mean? Two things: it's 20 years since David Lee Roth was their frontman (I saw the first Sammy Hagar tour), and that I'm old and I rock.
Otherwise I've felt myself in a playing video games mood (which happens about every 2 years). I bought Katamari Damacy, which is a wonderful, unique and playful idea for a video game. My description can do it no justice; check out the web site and then come on over to play the game. It has a two player mode. #
So I decided to cover this here, rather than in the review of the Gang Of Four show. They are the third reunion show I've seen in the last year. First I saw Pixies, then Slint, and now Gang Of Four. I'd seen Pixies when they were around the first time. Thinking about it now, without reading my review again, it was more of a novel nostalgia experience for me than anything else. I enjoyed it. With Slint, right now I remember liking to see how well and even how the band would do their songs. It now seems like I was wondering how they'd handle their delicate perfect songs. With Gang Of Four, I frankly only got turned onto them in the last couple years. A good portion of their set I didn't even know. But they were there to put on a rock show. No doubt about it. They weren't interested in their legacy; they wanted to rock hard. Along the way, they cemented their legacy in my mind. So I wonder what the next reunion show I see will be? It's interesting about these reunions. They've catered to such small audience that they can come back in a small form and totally affect those who really care. Pretty interesting.
I've installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger onto my PowerBook. It's been working nicely; it's much faster on the same hardware. It's funny; while working there, it was usually hard to tell if it was faster or not by feel. This is because you install a new revision of the operating system every few days. And usually, performance improvements aren't dramatic increases. They are slow in coming. So you wouldn't even notice when things speed up (or slow down). Before I had left Apple, I had done work for Tiger, and now that work has shipped. I had started the work to make java AWT have much more reliable behavior in edge cases that also just winds up making the whole thing work better. There was always one developer in particular who would focus upon these nit picking really hard to fix bugs. They all had an obscure root cause I had found, and the java team at Apple finished fixing it for Tiger. The other feature I worked on for Tiger was java 1.5 support. I was the first to get the jdk compiling on Mac OS X. So there's nothing coming down the pipe from Apple that I know anything about before anyone else anymore. But that's fun, I can be excited along with everyone else.
While biking from Golden Gate park to Hunters Point Naval Base a few weeks ago, we zipped through the Potrero Hill area of San Francisco and saw this $235K Lamborghini wrapped around a light post. Thankfully Aram took that picture. The police there said the driver was OK, and looked like he could afford a few more cars if he wanted. The area this happened in isn't too populated on the weekends, and the guy probably figured he could push it, and failed miserably and expensively.
I was happy to see that www.sfgate.com has an RSS feed. Now I do all my web surfing via RSS feeds.
I'm going to Austin, TX this weekend. My friends Ginger and Dan are getting married. I'll also get to see Marc & Ellen's daughter Lucy for the first time. I hope to get some swimming and BBQ in as well. #
I had a fun time in Austin. I'll put up some pictures soon. The weather wasn't really what I had expected. It was mild and cloudy. There was a great thunderstorm during Ginger & Dan's wedding. I got to see Lucy, and my friends Jon & Kim are pregnant for the first time after being together since 1988! Everyone there has nice houses with nice yards. I was a little jealous of the nice yards, but then I reminded myself that it should have been about 95 degrees and hotter than hell, and the yards may be less appealing then.
On my flight out there, I wound up sitting next to a really big guy. He had to lift the armrest to fit in the seat, and he asked for a seat belt extension. When he asked for an extension from the stewardess, the 6 and half foot guy that I saw sit behind us asked out loud, "What's an extension?" The woman with him answered under her breath, "It extends the seat belt so that it can fit around..." At the same time, the really big guy next to me says loudly, "It's because I'm fat, and the seat belt doesn't fit around my fat body!" This is well, unsettling social behavior. The tall guy perfectly diffused the situation by saying, "Oh! When I heard extension I thought it might be for more leg room!" Everyone laughed wildly.
I went to an engineering open house at Google last week. They had free tequila (it was Cinco de Mayo), beer, and food. They had some technical talks that included a fair amount of hand-waving. They were quite interesting hand-waves, however. The founders spoke to us quite a bit about compensation, and what their goals are in running Google. It sure would be an interesting place to work. However I still think it appeals more to someone fresh in the work world. With my 10 years (!) experience, I don't know if I could deal with the 25 year old multi-millionaire in the next cube. I also won an iPod as a door prize. #
So I ran the Bay To Breakers yesterday. I completed the race in about 1 hour 30 minutes. I thought that by biking more I'd be OK during the race. My stamina was fine, but my legs were not used to running. By the last mile, I was really looking forward to the end. The nice thing is that I'm certain my stamina was better than in my previous runs.
After the race I went to a fun party on the race route. The race's end had finally passed at about noon or so. The party was just about around the half way point of the race, and I had finished the whole thing about 2 hours before that, and they still had the whole race to go. But these people didn't mind. They were a part of the roving party that is what Bay To Breakers is to many people. I had no idea it lasted so long.
A notable thing happened at the party. I'm going to keep this short and sweet, just the facts. A guy hit me in the head with a bottle. He ran away, and the police found him, and there were several witnesses. I bled quite a bit, and the wound required seven stitches. Suffice to say, I and my friends are all surprised by this. #
I went to see The Flaming Lips documentary "The Fearless Freaks" tonight. The singer Wayne Coyne was there afterwards to answer questions and sign the DVDs along with the filmmaker Bradley Beesley. I can't remember if someone suggested it or if I thought of it myself, but I took the picture I had taken of myself bleeding and I printed it out. I had Wayne sign it. It says "Hey Greg- Nice Head Wound Love, Wayne" He also enjoyed my story, and really liked the positive attitude I had about it by bringing the picture there, and telling the story. He's such a really nice person in person. Afterwards Aram and I talked to their manager, Scott Booker, and I asked him if he remembered my friend Pari Ghorbani from Warner Brothers, and he remembered her.
I decided to go home then, since I found that getting enough sleep is good for my head wound. Aram was going to go to some show he heard about after the film. It's a crappy drizzly night. I know it's dangerous, but I quite often ride through red lights on my bike. So do about 80% of the bikers you see in town. I was doing it on the way home, especially since it was so crappy out. I'm slowly going through Market & Gough, and suddenly my front tire is perpendicularly grazing across the front fender and door of a moving car! It didn't even knock me over, and it felt like it was in slow motion. Utterly surprisingly, nothing happened to me, the bike, nor the car. I brushed death. Along with the head bashing on Sunday, this is the week of being closer to death than usual for me. So I was really thinking I need to take lyrics to The Flaming Lips "Do You Realize?" to mind.
On this note, I call Aram to tell him about my brush with death. And believe it or not he's getting a ride to the club with the filmmaker and other interesting folks. Total proof that you make interesting choices every day of the week. I made a choice that got me soaked, almost hit by a car, and home by 11 PM, and Aram is hanging out with interesting folks. When I first wrote this last night, I was under the impression that he was hanging out with Wayne. #
This morning I got up and soon thereafter I got a call from Alexandra suggesting we go get a bite at The Tartine Bakery. I've been told of this place for years, but I still hadn't made it there yet. And, get this, it is about a 5 minute walk from my house. Yum! The pastry and coffee were delicious, and we sat outside on the sidewalk and were treated to the sites of the most attractive people getting coffee and cakes on a sunny day.
So I got my stitches out on Friday afternoon. My head wound is looking better. Sometime my head feels numb above the wound, all of the way up to the crown. I'd now like to point out that I'm afraid I've been a numbskull for some of the last week.
I found this website with subversive anti fascist ribbon magnets. I guess the idea is that you'd swap these out for the real thing on cars that you find with ribbon magnets. It also contains notable information, such as the fact that magnetic sheets of paper have a tendency to stick together!
I saw a recent commercial for a huge sugared water marketer and manufacturer with a group of subversives going out in America to film what real kids are doing. There are several variants of this advertisement I've seen. There was a long one before the latest Star Wars installment I saw on Thursday. These kids make it to a line of people waiting to get onto a singing competition on television. Hmm, wonder what that is supposed to reference? So they find a beautiful black woman playing an acoustic guitar who sings a few lines. Then it cuts to a red curtain hanging in what appears to be a parking lot. There's a microphone standing in front of it. One of our intrepid traveling documentarians is trying to get up to it, but is being somehow blocked by some man. After a few quick cuts, we see that he gets to the mic, and while someone it pulling away, he says in his best skater boi voice, "punk rock's not dead!"
This is an interesting article about energy consumption in a data center. If you walk behind many big Sun servers in a data center, it's hot. And you are in a room that feels like a large walk in refrigerator. The costs of cooling the machines is now one of the big hurdles in enterprise level computing. Thankfully, Azul's boxes address this issue. It's a real issue that even Google runs into. For Google, a more significant bottleneck in their process is the amount of power and money it takes to run a server, NOT the amount of data that the server can process in a millisecond. This is most likely since Google's infrastructure is based on many servers, with strong software. They run so much in parallel, that the performance of an individual machine isn't as crucial. Their latency would most likely be found in network I/O rather than individual processing speed. You can see from a paper Google published that describes how their process works that all processing is split up across many computers. Sometimes in rumors you read that Google has nearly a quarter million computers (250,000). It seems they need to process so much data that it's done best while 250,000 computers are doing it. The speed of the individual computer is insignificant, when the program is written to solve a problem while running in parallel. #
There was an interesting article on The New York Times today. The basic premise is that the decoding of genome allows us to be able to determine genetic defects. These genetic defects will inevitably be determined to be pre-existing conditions by the private insurance companies. But due to nature, most likely a large proportion of the U.S population will have pre-existing conditions and will not be deemed insurable. This will cause problems. Therefore a solution is to aggregate this large proportion's health liability via a national insurance program. It's an interesting read.
I just right now saw the most incredible PBS documentary about Patty Hearst and the SLA. I was too young when this happened to know anything about it. Then I only knew about it through anecdotal jokes. But it was crazy. As I'm sure you know, she was kidnapped, and after about 100 days, became a member of the SLA. But before this her father conceded to the kidnappers demands and gave away $6 million of free food in the Bay Area! There were then riots, and he was criticized by the media and then her for botching up giving away free food! Then she robbed a bank, where it was caught on a famous video. Then they went to Los Angeles, and half of the gang (but not dear Patty) was killed live on TV. Then most of the rest were caught back in San Francisco, at 625 Morse St. Patty Hearst was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and President Carter commuted her sentence. Then in early 2001 she was pardoned by President Clinton. Then after 9/11, the last SLA fugitive was caught, and the remaining four were charged with a murder that happened during a bank robbery. The irony is that the SLA kidnapped Patty, and she joined her cause to fight the rich corporate types. Everyone in the SLA but Patty is either dead or in jail. Do you think any of them could have obtained a commutation or a pardon? In the documentary, they play the real SLA tapes. I had no idea that John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" influenced the SLA so much. It was uncanny to me how much the SLA tapes sounded like the movie, which actually came out before the kidnapping. #
I've finally finished Neal Stephenson's epic "The Baroque Cycle." It's a three volume 2700 page novel about the late 1600s and early 1700s. It traveled from Boston, England, France, Germany, Turkey, Algiers, Cairo, southern India, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico (aka Nuevo Spain) and Spain. It's about money, the enlightenment, alchemy, the fight about calculous between Newton & Leibniz, the start of 'credit', gold and the gold standard, and the succession of the monarchy in England, and counterfeiting. I loved it, but I'm ready to read something new!
I'm clearing out some links I've wanted to put up on my site for awhile. I can't recall where I first found about this site. It provides quite a sobering look at things that are happening lately. This series of quotations about Uzbekistan is the type of style that struck me the first time I read it.
I've never been a good liar. I wonder if I have to fix that. This article says that lying can help you with the opposite sex. Perhaps this is my problem?
So the administration is gung-ho on eviscerating government provided, expert guided, social security for all. They want to replace it with private accounts, where everyone can take advantage of the benefits of the stock market, instead of being taken advantage of by government. Despite this being what caused Social Security to come into being in the first place, many people are mistaken and actually believe that the purpose of the stock market is to make stock prices rise. That's what the sharks hope the suckers think. I am so ashamed of my country. #
I've added a link to the 'official' Bay To Breakers 2005 pictures that were taken of me. #
I have a backup script on my PowerBook. While I'm at work every weekday it will back up to my network drive at work. Then once every week, it will copy the previous week's archive back to my PowerBook and send me an email reminding me to burn the archive to CD. The size of my backup has always stayed below the size of one CD, but recently (perhaps due to Tiger?) it has become bigger than one CD. Sure, I could burn it to a DVD, but I already have lots of blank CDs. I knew there had to be a way to break up the archive files so that I could split it across several CDs. My archive files are using Apple's .dmg format. My backup scripts use the commmand line tool hdiutil to create the archives. They can also be created from the GUI tool Disk Utility. I usually use that tool to burn my CDs. The GUI tool has no way of segmenting the archives, but the command line tool does. However, when I'd try to burn the segmented archive parts to CD, it would still indicate that the CD wasn't big enough to hold all of the data. This was frustrating. Eventually I tried moving the two segments into separate directories. In normal usage, I knew that if I opened one of the segments, it acted like it wasn't segmented; the segmentation is handled transparently. It seems this was also automatically happening when I'd try to burn only one of the segments; to the burner it looked like one big archive again! When I tried to burn the separated into directories segments, the burner wouldn't proceed because it couldn't find the additional segment! This made me even more frustrated. It's too big, and when I use the provided software to try to split it up, it refuses to accept the separated segments for burning! Ugh. So I worked around this by archiving up the unique directories that contain the individual segments. This way the tool just treated the segment as a file in a directory instead of trying to find its other segments. What a hassle! #
I took a late CalTrain back today; I got home about 10 PM. So I treated myself to a cold beer for the ride up. I didn't have a bottle opener for me, and I had a hell of a time opening the damn bottle. I ripped up my knuckles pretty nasty. So I've added a new tool to the toolset I carry with me for bike emergencies; a bottle opener!
This morning here was an interesting article about discontinuing the manufacture and processing of Kodachrome Super 8 film. The quote that struck me was right at the end, "When people started using synthesizers, we didn't throw out our pianos." I'm pretty much fully living in the digital age. I have a stack of old photos I want to scan into my computer. I've ripped a miniscule portion of my vinyl to mp3. I can't wait to get them all digitized. But I wouldn't give up the originals at all. There's still something nice about having them, to touch and look at. Making sure all of your digital life is backed up is a big hassle and worry. My grandfather wants to convert his 50 years of Super 8 and SVHS video to digital. But it is all so expensive; either in time and / or money. I found a link to some products that purport to assist converting Super 8 to a DV stream. This would be really fun, and so time consuming!
I've been reading "Revolution in the Valley" by Andy Hertzfeld. He was on the original Macintosh team. It's a book about the bring up of the Macintosh hardware and software, as written by him and some of the other engineers behind it. So it's interesting to have the engineer's perspective on things. It's also interesting to see how the guys on the original Mac team invented the way that I see nearly all of my coworkers over the years work, act, have fun, and think. Either that or they and my coworkers are all cut from the same stereotypical mold. I really like how much the team really felt that what they were doing was important. It would be great to be able to have this feeling about your work at all times. For me it has also ebbed and flowed. It really isn't that easy to keep up the energy and the pace! Since I've been a Mac programmer for nearly all of my professional life, you keep the Mac folklore in mind. I think one thing that my coworkers would say about me over the years is that I have been quite stubborn about doing things the right way. I like to think this is my Mac aesthetic showing through.
When I was in high school, maybe my junior year, I went to the Amnesty International club after school a few times. I know the club's existence is probably due to U2, and my joining was due to a cute girl named Beth. But I digress. I remember really being against torture (go ahead and call me an idealistic 16 year old). I also recall how it was clear that Amnesty International groups could only criticize countries other than the one you lived in. I agree with the high moral stance of this group, which I truly believed was the same ideal of the United States. The fact that we couldn't criticize the U.S. made sense to me, especially since I believed there was little to criticize. The current administration has turned this on its head. It's utterly horrific how they are twisting legal definitions to allow my country bring itself to pathetic new lows. President Bush says those who wrote the report condemning the U.S. human rights record "hate America." I do not hate America, and I agree with the report and most all of the other reports that have come out about this matter. I believe the acts of this administration will harm the U.S. for many years to come. The U.S. can no longer take a higher moral ground. The line has been crossed, and the problem isn't fixable. I truly believe one learns by example, and the U.S. has been setting a record number of bad examples lately. I am so ashamed of my country. #
Sometimes you wonder what your cat does when you are away from the house all day. I'm not. I'm certain Chip sleeps following the sunny parts of the house all day. In the morning the sun only comes into my place via the skylights, so he sits there. Later in the morning it will come through the sliding glass door. The middle of the afternoon is best because the sun can shine right through the front windows.
I've now put up recent pictures from Austin when I visited for Ginger & Dan's wedding. I've also posted the pictures I took during Bay To Breakers. I'm going to save the most striking photo of that day (the one with my bloody head) for when that ordeal is over. Lastly, Aram decided to make a Potato Gun yesterday. #
It looks like Apple's World Wide Developer Conference will be interesting tomorrow. The Apple web sphere is wild with reports that Apple may switch to Intel processors. I'm going to miss the excitement, no matter what pans out, which bothers me a little bit. WWDC has been a yearly milestone of my Mac programming career since about 1996. When I was at Metrowerks, I did a presentation in the big room in front of more people than I've ever spoke to at once. The tools I was demonstrating (the Java RAD [Rapid Application Development] tools) have since been unceremoniously cancelled by Metrowerks. I'd always happily work the Metrowerks booth, answering developer's questions as an official Metrowerks engineer. It was fun because you would wind up feeling like a rock-star. People would come up who would recognize my name from Apple Java mailing lists. I think these types of interactions may be how I wound up getting the job offer from Apple. It was also fun to come visit the Bay Area whenever I got the chance. Once I was on the java team at Apple, we'd be cramming to get the next developer release ready for WWDC, and work on presentations about it at the same time. I've been to other developer conferences, like Sun's JavaOne, but WWDC is heads and shoulders above the rest. The presenters are required to attend a week's worth of speaker training. There is nothing worse than spending time in a technical presentation by an engineer who has the speaking skills of a troll. I've found Apple's (and I know I sound biased, but you can ask anyone in the know) to be the most professional and informative 'presos' I've attended. They were so good last year at WWDC that I wound up wanting to change what I was doing!
I only have once comment about the Apple Intel rumor. "If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned," said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. "I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners, he said. This guy is an idiot. For the non Macintosh historians, Apple had switched from using Motorola's 68040 to using PowerPC 601 about 10 years ago. I believe this is what he's referring to. I'd like to know what this 'analyst' thinks Apple should have done then, should they have stayed with the 68K (as it's known), which was a dead architecture that wasn't keeping up with what Apple demanded of their hardware? Saying the changing of the chip is what affected Apple's changing market share is disingenuous, to say the least. The changing of the chip was the least of Apple's problems, and frankly it probably helped them out! They proved to others and themselves that they could dramatically change computer architectures through smarts and emulation and that 3rd party developers and then customers would follow. It also allowed Apple to toss all sorts of the legacy stuff in the Mac OS and look towards the future in their design. This is how Apple knew they could pull off Mac OS X. This is why Apple absolutely is an innovator, and many other companies just seem to pale in comparison. #
I wrote the following before any official Apple announcement. After this change the only upset people should be PowerPC compiler writers and direct assembly writers. For the typical Mac OS user and developer, nothing should change. This shows once again why using the Apple supported development toolset has always been the correct move. The Metrowerks customer is even further out in the cold now. Mac OS X on Intel behaves exactly the same way as Mac OS X on PowerPC. This is why it's so wonderful. It's been working for years; while at Apple I personally used a version of Mac OS X on Intel since the Jaguar release. The PowerPC and Intel versions of Mac OS X have been built in tandem since I started at Apple. What's nice is that this finally levels the playing field. Mac OS X can compete against Microsoft while running on the same hardware. Apple gets a partner in Intel, who is interested in and focusing on selling more PCs. A problem with PowerPC is that the chip suppliers were focused on many other things besides delivering CPUs. I believe (without ever looking at its source code) that WINE could be brought up on Mac OS X on Intel without too much trouble. WINE is an open source program that runs Windows programs under Linux. My professional guess is that most of the lower level stuff would be straight UNIX code that would also work on Mac OS X. With a little work, the user interface could be brought up under X11 running on Mac OS X. With some more work, perhaps the user interface could be done using the Mac OS X Aqua interface. This would provide a way for the user who is hesitant to switch because of a crucial application or two hasn't been ported to Mac OS X. I have been surprised over the weekend that I haven't read too much about people worrying about how they will run their existing PowerPC 3rd party applications on Intel. Maybe this is because Apple has successfully done the emulation trick twice; once for running old 68K applications on PPC, and again for running classic Macintosh applications in Mac OS X. I think it's reasonable to believe that Apple is doing this because the notebook segment is where the growth in computer sales is. However their PowerPC manufacturing partners haven't been able to provide fast enough chips that can run in the notebook form factor. Intel has been able to provide this to their customers. I also assume that Apple will be an all 64-bit Intel OS all of the time. They also now have two potential chip suppliers who are both competing strongly. The rate of multi core chip introduction and 64 bit support in the Intel space has been impressive recently. I'd like to think that Steve Jobs will do the entire Keynote Presentation without mentioning it until the end. Then he'll say "One more thing. The entire presentation you saw today, all of the demos, even Adobe's, and the Keynote program that is running the slides were running on Intel. Apple creates and innovates with the best software and hardware. The problem has been that not all of our parters have been able to keep up all of the time. Fortunately the talented engineers at Apple haven't been hampered by that, and now neither will you. When you leave today, you'll get Tiger Intel Preview. Go home, try it out, and bring your application up on it, and I'm sure you'll be as happy as we at Apple are with this. Thanks." Now I have some pure idle speculation on this. Intel is upset that Microsoft went to IBM for the next generation XBox. Microsoft is already positioning the new XBox as a digital hub that will play games, get HD broadband movies, and be the overall digital hub in the living room. Intel wants that business. Apple is upset that IBM is paying so much attention to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They will all be using PowerPC variants, and at faster speeds than Apple is currently able to use or obtain. Apple has already been successful in bringing digital music over the Internet to people in a fashion amenable to the music industry. It wants to do the same with movies. Steve Jobs is also the CEO of Pixar, a wildly successful movie company who has just had a very public divorce with Disney for their distribution. There has been no new distributor picked up for Pixar films. How about if Pixar distributes it's first movie without Disney itself using QuickTime and HD (via the pretty H.264 codec)? The movie would be played using Mac OS X Intel boxes projecting in movie theaters. Then wouldn't it be interesting if Apple and Intel teamed up their marketing teams to sell a box running Mac OS X on Intel chips that has an amazing movie download and viewing store? "As seen in the theatre with the last Pixar release." Pixar and Apple would be historic in breaking down the movie studio system. Also, do you think there is any way in hell Steve Jobs will allow and "Intel Inside" sticker on a Mac?
Now that I've read the coverage of the event (and even watched the event via QuickTime) it looks like I was pretty close in guessing how Steve Jobs would announce it! Oh in old my entry about the original release of Tiger I said I didn't know about anything else in the Apple pipeline. Obviously I knew about this, but I had no idea if it would ever ship! It was kept extra secret at Apple. In fact, I had to sign an extra non disclosure form about it, despite non disclosure being a part of my employment agreement. The articles about the the news have been good. A nice thing is that Mac OS X Intel won't have to work on every damn hand built PC out there. That would be a support nightmare. I'm certain that some freaks will complain about this, but when Apple controls the hardware, they control the experience. The control of the experience allows them to provide simplicity and that 'it just works' factor that seems to be lacking in other platforms. It's great that Apple will have developer kit computers for Intel in just two weeks, and that the PowerPC based Intel targeting tools are already available for download. I'm telling you, Mac OS X on Intel totally works, and has for some time. I had fixed java AWT bugs for java 1.4.2 using the Intel build of Mac OS X over a year ago! Most programs do not need to delve down and 'know' what processor or hardware they are running on. And for the few that do, they will have been designed (if they are well written) to know when they are doing this. This way the programmer can handle it cleanly. How do you think all of Linux works on Intel, PowerPC, Sparc and other chips? As for the big 3rd party developers (Adobe, Microsoft, Macromedia, etc) their core code is already cross platform. If their code bases are in good shape, I would suspect that Apple's change will be little work for them. The only issue that comes up is if they are not already using Xcode, they will have to convert to using XCode to support Mac OS X Intel. It's been confirmed; Metrowerks will not support Mac OS X Intel. Seriously, any Metrowerks user that didn't see the day coming where their tools don't provide what they need to support new directions in Mac OS X hasn't even attempted to do 64-bit G5 work. They haven't been thinking too hard either. I guess this also means the end of PEF/CFM applications. Since XCode doesn't build PEF/CFM, I assume PEF/CFM won't be on Intel. As I've said on usenet countless times, Mach-O is the way to go. I have to also point out that the Intel project was so secret that I never really heard a managerial or marketing 'pitch' about it. As a software engineer at Apple, it was just a cool challenge to see that the code I wrote for Mac OS X worked great on a completely different architecture. It was also fun to wonder and talk (with disclosed people) about what the heck Apple would do with this kick ass OS that can be ported so damn easily. These are exciting times. If I know developers, I think most Mac OS X developers think so too. I think that many developers and people commenting out on the web are simply scared of this change. It really isn't that hard to do this. This is because the excellent team at Apple has been pulling this off for years. This isn't something new except outside of Apple. I'm really looking forward to the cool things Apple will be providing for developers and customers. #
I've made a couple tweaks to the program that makes my web site. First off, it displays the processor architecture in the 'Generator' meta tag in the HTML headers. This is very important, as then you'll be able to know what kind of Mac OS X machine I'm running on. I've also added the RSS Item Author tag to my RSS feed. I did this because Safari RSS will show it, and I missed seeing my name in yet another fashion. I've also fixed a bug. You can't tell, but until now the page for shows I saw in 1986 wasn't generated since about January 2005. How this bug escaped me is a mystery. How I noticed is a conundrum. Nevertheless it happened because I saw a show in April 1986, and the next show I saw was in April 1987. Because the months were the same, my program messed up. It didn't 'know' to start creating a new page.
The woman from So So Many White White Tigers sent me an email correcting my recent review of The Coachwhips. She wanted me to know that she doesn't wear 'faux fur', only real furs. I welcome all corrections, and thank you for your time. #
My friend Graham Stewart recently posted twice about how George Lucas has had a sustained vision of Star Wars for 28 years, thus making him a great artist. I always enjoy Graham's supremely unique take on the world.
Today I was listening to Zen Arcade. Whenever I hear the song "Masochism World", I think about the cassette tape Kevin made me years ago. It had a recording of a big skip that happens right at one of the great air guitar moments in the song. I like to think of Kev jumping around his house while that was being taped, most likely with a cigarette hanging out of this mouth. (Side note, my program is at its wits end. I can't enter Husker Du with the umlauts in place in these comments. Bummer.)
I rode my bike to my dentist appointment on Friday morning. On the way back, it suddenly sounds like my bike was caught up in a plastic bag. But as I slowed down to pull over I realized I had a blow out. I picked at the tire for a bit to get the glass pebble out and it stopped hissing. I was able to make it the rest of the way home on my bike. I then patched up the rear inner tube and I replaced the tire with my last blue one as well since the tube was poking out of one of the many cuts in the tire. Then I rode my bike to lunch to meet Aram. Just as I got to Fritj, I had a big blow out on my front tire! It was immediately flat. I hadn't brought my bag with my patch kit to lunch, so I had to walk the bike all of the way home. This blowout was bad enough that some of the inner tube was missing. The front tire and about a quarter inch cut in it which the new tube found and filled quickly. I was now out of spare tires so I used the dollar bill trick to get over the Valencia Cyclery to get cool blue and black striped tires. Then I read that Salim had the same type of day. Who knew that it was Flat-Tire Friday?
Tim Bray has written about multiple core chips before, and has an interesting read today. He works for Sun, so he has a Sun-centric view on the industry. The Azul Vega chip is already shipping, and has 24 cores per chip vs. 8 cores per chip of the not yet shipping Niagara chip. Besides this nit picking on my part, the article provides good and valuable insight to what will be the next fun stuff in computing. The thing is that you can get it today with Azul! #
Ugh. I rushed to catch the Baby Bullet this morning and I realized that I had a flat tire again! The new tires I got are tighter on my rims. It takes a hell of a lot more muscle to get them on than the previous tires. Then once I got the brand new tube pumped up (I didn't patch the old one to save time) I proceeded to somehow break of the damn Presta valve tip. I missed the Baby Bullet this morning.
Awhile ago I found out that the New York Public Library has digital scans of so many wonderful pieces of art online. Since libraries already lend out records, CDs, and DVDs, I wonder how long until I can check those items out online? #
Something on my mind is the lack of imagination on the part of the U.S. government and corporations about what to do about oil. The U.S. depends upon oil so much that it has gotten into more than one war over it. In addition, its unchecked use certainly seems to be damaging the environment. Meanwhile our wise business and government leaders continue to sell and not regulate oil guzzling machines that are bad for our economy, bad for our environment, and bad for our security. This will affect our freedom and liberty. Our president and his administration are neglecting our freedom and liberty. And as if this were not enough, the U.S. is so dependent upon oil that if anything were to interrupt this supply, once again our freedom and liberty would be at risk. And there are other large developing countries who are clamoring for the same oil resources, thus risking our dependent supply, which can also risk our freedom and liberty. I don't know the solutions to these problems. I'm a computer programmer. But I haven't bought gasoline for my car since sometime in April. I've driven it twice since mid-May. There's only so much I can do alone. There's a list of links about 'peak oil' on Boing Boing, and Salim sent along a nice angry rant today by one of the authors mentioned on Boing Boing. Yes, I'm looking towards a site called Boing Boing for solutions! #
My CalTrain broke down in the California Avenue station this morning. We had to meet up with the train behind us. I got some pictures as the engine behind us coupled with the bike car. The headlight of the engine behind us was so bright that I could feel its heat from within the car in front of it! I was about 3 to 4 feet away from it and through the glass window of the door.
About two months ago there was a long article in the New York Time Magazine about how there are a group of people who actually believe that most of the New Deal is unconstitutional. The lengths that the current administration and their allies are going to discredit every good value of my country is simply astonishing. I really just have to think that they are hoping that they can grab as much as they can now, and when the inevitable defeats come they hope to come out ahead in the end. #
I found this great interview with Jerry Casale of Devo. He talks about hippies, Kent State, Neil Young, potatoes, and sex.
Believe it or not, but the recent television commercial for a burger joint with a certain billionaire heiress dancing around a car in a thong has none other than the wonderful Eleni Mandell singing "I Love Paris"! Will wonders ever cease?
There was also a ridiculous article in the New York Times Magazine about 2 weeks ago that generated some discussion in the office. The premise of the article is that everyone in Silicon Valley are multi-millionaires who do nothing but found wildly successful businesses and drive very expensive cars. This was absurd to the point of comedy. #
So every time I listen to The Arcade Fire I am blown away by how amazing this record is. It's the kind of music that if I were to make it, the first time I heard myself and my band play these songs I'd look at them all and say "Holy shit! That was incredible!"
Today Salim filed a feature request of sorts. When viewing the HTML pages of my diary entries, there's now a link that gives a permanent link to the entry for those who want to link to my entries directly. RSS users can already get a direct link to the entry via standard RSS means.
On Friday most of my recent ordeal came to a close. The guy who hit me pleaded guilty and got 6 months in prison. The other guy got probation. Both had been in jail since the incident in mid-May. Both had priors, most notably the guy who hit me had a crystal-meth conviction. Both of these guys were 22. They also have to stay away from me for 3 years. A hard part was that the father of the guy who hit me apologized to me. In the end, I'm satisfied that they will have to live with the consequences of their choices, just as I must. #
Somehow I updated this same entry twice (and now three times) in the same day! I guess I didn't sleep too well last night.
A strange thing happened to my PowerBook Sunday. I had been using it, and then I was away from it for about a half hour. This is enough time for the screen saver to kick in and for the PowerBook to go to sleep. I woke it up and then I needed to enter my password. It wouldn't accept my password, and I'm certain I had it correct. I was able to login from another Mac. I killed LoginWindow, so that my session would end. This also causes LoginWindow to restart, which brings you to the LoginWindow. But my password still wasn't accepted! I didn't try restarting it then; I just booted from the Tiger DVD and used the Reset Password Utility. This was super strange.
I never should have written about the Bible late last night. It's a slippery slope I started down. I say this because as an engineer, I can't stand it when things don't follow the rules. That's absolute. But I'm usually working within a closed system of some design. I expect the rules to work, and I mostly know the parameters of how they can fail, and my design could recover gracefully. However the rest of the world wasn't designed, so expecting it to follow every rule laid down is futile. I see science as the continued updating of the rules of the universe along the way, refining them as the inevitable problems are found. Since the universe wasn't designed, it's rules can only be inferred.
My good old friend Kevin went to a wedding in NYC and he saw my old friend Roger at Rich's wedding. Damn am I jealous.
Here's more widespread information about how messed up the Bush energy policy is. Man this should be my generation's moon shot. I'm so ashamed of my country.
Now I finally understand why people seriously believe gay marriage means the institution of marriage is 'under attack'. Since some people literally interpret the Bible as saying that homosexuality is bad, this implies that if gay marriage was allowed then part of the Bible would be false. This is a problem for the belief systems of some. Aha, now I understand why I've always had doubts with religion; its absolutism just doesn't work for me. As an engineer, you learn to be able to make the rules 'fault tolerant'. Actually, as an engineer you might believe that fundamentally, things will definitely negate your assumptions! Because of this, I truly think that everyone should be able to deal with things like this. As much as it's hard to deal with, there will always be exceptions to a rule you create. #
My head wound story made it into the local news. Scroll down to the bottom as find the "Bay To Breakers" mention. The only error is that I wasn't a host of this party.
I'm old enough to remember the last time flag burning was an issue. I remembering thinking that it was pretty odd; I threw out a copy of the American flag every single day when I was done with my Chicago Tribune. Wouldn't that be an objectionable action? I found a article where the writer points out all sorts of ridiculous ways this amendment would be worthless. I like the idea of retiring a worn out flag in the proper way (via burning) while giving political speech. A nice twist. What are they going to bust you for with that action? Ignore the comments on that page, by the way. Lots of vitriol. Except for one that mentions the flag on the cover of the Chicago Tribune. Go figure! #
We have an oil problem, and these people are publicly admitting they are trying to sell more SUVs, thus wasting more oil. I think there is a special place in hell for these advertisers, especially now that clean and efficient energy is attracting venture capital. If only these advertisers would put their skills into saving the planet, our liberty, and our security instead of destroying it.
Richard Stallman wrote an interesting article on software patents. For those of you not in the know, Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation. Most of my day is spent using software tools Stallman originated or copyrighted by the FSF. His point is that because the patent offices of the world are not staffed by working engineers, they allow patents that are obvious through the system. In this article, I like how he draws an analogy between writing code and writing prose. He points out that things as fundamental as standard plot li
