Testeez 0.3 has been released. Minor enhancements.
Might as well never see 2x2 hex character boxes in Firefox:
apt-get install "^ttf-*"
And to taste a bottle of 1963 Movia merlot, full of laserlike fruit flavors, is to understand that graceful yet intense merlot is not restricted to Pomerol.
—Eric Asimov, "New Wine in Really Old Bottles," New York Times, 2005-05-25
OK, formidable vernaculars are fine, but now I think they're just making stuff up.
In fifth century China, there lived a monk named Tai Qin, who was intellectually savvy since childhood. Once the abbot asked a question: "There is a bell hanging on a tiger's neck; who can untie it?" Everyone was rendered speechless except little Tai Qin: "The one who tied the bell on the tiger can untie it."
—Anne Wu, "Avoiding a nuclear North Korea," Boston Globe, 2005-05-22
Yesterday I got some snapshots of an obscured USS John F. Kennedy, as it was docked in Boston. All the security was a bit of a drag. On one approach, I inadvertently walked past two police checkpoints that were supposed to stop me, and was walking past a third when I was first alerted to the fact I wasn't supposed to be there. A few of the photos: full length, tower closeup, tower closer-up, and bow. Half-hearted editing cannot salvage them.
I got frustrated with the limitations of my camera, and, before leaving one of my vantage points on a concrete pier, I took a blind snapshot of the pier posts that lined the pier. Leaving the end of the pier, I'd walked a ways when I decide to return and see if there's a longer pier within lens range. I turn around and see that a large black SUV with open doors is now where I was standing. Two men, in what appear to be dark blue jumpsuits or BDUs and caps, are scrutinizing the posts I'd photographed. As I approach, they're looking at each other like, "I don't see any WMDs here, Jim." I guess I was under surveillance. Dear all-seeing government authorities, please be reassured that my Canon PowerShot S10 has no aftermarket rocket launcher nor any other offensive capabilities.
All the Boston Police and unidentified personnel seemed polite, and were just doing their jobs as they'd been directed. But I was disappointed that, despite 5 hours of heavy walking, I didn't get better photos.
As shown in a typically parochial Boston Globe graphic, the aircraft carrier named after favorite son John F. Kennedy has returned home to Boston, where it will begin a new life. Tomorrow, city officials and surviving members of the dynasty will participate in a ceremonial groundbreaking at the USS Kennedy's final resting place: the Boston Common.
In cooperation with commercial developers, the famed warship will be transformed into Kennedy On The Common, a luxury condominium and apartment complex. Penthouse suites in the tower will be awarded gratis as incentives to Fortune 500 executives whose companies have not yet fled Boston costs of business. Amenities for these executives and other elites around whom the Hub revolves include a courtesy Boeing 747-400 airliner, just steps from the front door. Concierge and spa services will be available in Faneuil Hall, which will be relocated to the roof deck of Kennedy.
Adam Curtis' 3-part BBC series, "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" is good. Excellent info, well presented, without the Michael Moore demagoguery.
To watch it, download the three MPEG2 files from the Archive.org page linked above. The files played gine in GXine on Linux for me, although some other decoders and players definitely have trouble.
This past weekend, I did some video editing and DVD production on
my Linux boxes. Modest Pentium III machines: a 600 MHz laptop, and 500 MHz
desktop. Among the software tools I ended up using were Ffmpeg, Mplayer, MJPEG Tools, Kino, Kino Plus ImageMagick Overlay, Gimp, DVDAuthor, and dvd+rw-tools. I also developed a Makefile to build the DVD, which
I'll adapt for my next DVD project.
At the end, as I went to test the DVD in a consumer player, I was dismayed to learn that my burner, a NEC ND-1300A with 1.08 firmware, does not seem to permit me to set the DVD book type. We suspect that's why a Panasonic player known to support DVD+R rejects the one that I burnt. Firmware upgrades from NEC USA, which might fix the problem, are available only in the form of a Microsoft Windows executable, which is useless to people who don't run that operating system. I am annoyed because I'd made a point to get a good brand of burner, hoping to avoid dumbness.
I also tried the Cinelerra editor. It certainly appears more powerful than Kino, but, as I'd been warned, the version of Cinelerra that I tried was unstable to the point of nearly useless. Cinelerra is also so gaudy in appearance that I want to call it "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Nonlinear Editing Suite."
I was feeling good about what I'd managed to do on Linux, and had in mind some DV filters I wanted to write. Then I took another look at the info on Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects, and they're just lightyears ahead of what can be done on Linux right now.
I'd be willing to write a good nonlinear editor framework for Linux, but it's a big enough project that I couldn't afford to do it without funding.
Released Quack version 0.28. The impetus for this release was the simple
addition of quack-smart-opening-paren-p in response to a
discussion on comp.lang.scheme. You'll also notice probably some
special fontification if you look at any of my Scheme code files.
I am not surprised at the duplicity. But I am astonished at the acceptance of this deception by voters in the United States and the United Kingdom. I've seen two U.S. presidents go down the drain -- Lyndon B. Johnson on Vietnam and Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal -- because they were no longer believed. But times change -- and I guess our values do, too
—Helen Thomas, "Credibility matters little to Brits, Americans," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2005-05-13
See the free downloadable book Merchants of Deception by former Amway distributor Eric Scheibeler.
The "Merchants of Deception" Web site feels slimy, but if the allegations are true, Amway is more evil than I previously thought.
Steve Kettmann, "It's curtains for Okrent," Salon.com, 2005-05-12
Neil Hickey, "A Public Editor's Private Story," Columbia Journalism Review, 2005-03
Here's a popular news article at which to point non-techies when they don't appreciate why you think Florida is a cesspool (Internet-wise, separate from election-rigging, you mean).
Only one good thing ever came out of Florida, and she's brunette.
Infotainment has reached a new level of ubiquity in an era in which "reality" television and reality have become so blurred that it's hard to know if ABC News's special investigating "American Idol" last week was real journalism about a fake show or fake journalism about a real show or whether anyone knows the difference - or cares.
—Frank Rich, "Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished," New York Times, 2005-05-08
It wasn't until Washington news editor Greg Brock pointed it out that I noticed how frequently responsibility was put on the source, not on the paper: "The officials requested anonymity because. ... " carries one implication; "The Times granted anonymity because. ... " suggests a very different one. "If we are indeed committed to giving readers as much information as possible," Brock suggests, "we should start by acknowledging that we made the decision."
—Daniel Okrent, "Briefers and Leakers and the Newspapers Who Enable Them," New York Times, 2005-05-08
Knuth's Programs to Read page indicates that he now uses Emacs, Fvwm, and Tcsh, and even hacks a little Emacs Lisp. I hope he's not just fanboying me.
Boston has surpassed New York as the most costly metropolitan area in which to do business, primarily due to the highest labor costs in the nation, according to a study. Massachusetts had the highest cost of doing business among states.
—Robert Gavin, "Business costs found highest in Hub," Boston Globe, 2005-05-06
Meeting is Thursday 6pm at 10 Park Plaza. See the MBTA Draft Website and Electronic Fare Media Privacy Policy page.
Snailmail notified me of an IBM Deathstar settlement.
If you registered for the Sheller class-action suit to which I linked on 2003-11-24, or IBM has a record of your drive failure, then it looks like you probably just won $100 per drive. It's small consolation for downtime or lost data, but still a nice little surprise if you wrote off the pain years ago. Non-dead drives (do they exist?) may entitle you to 25 CD-ROM blanks (total value: 25 cents) or a 15% IBM.com discount.
For more info, see: http://www.ibmdeskstar75gxplitigation.com/
Experts Cite Four Years of Fertilizer
In an e-mail to several dozen bureau chiefs Monday, a group of top D.C. bureau bosses urged their colleagues to push more for on-the-record briefings when government officials deem them to be on background only.
—Joe Strupp, "D.C. Bureau Chiefs Launch Push to End On-Background Briefings," Editor & Publisher, 2004-05-03
The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."
—Bob Herbert, "From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'," New York Times, 2005-05-02
Is this true, and if so, how prevalent is this kind of behavior?
The blog (www.lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com) went public in January and since then has registered more than 100,000 visits, with more than half a million pages viewed and more than 5,000 comments. [...] Since most messages are anonymous, there is no way to know how many laboratory employees contribute to the blog.
—William J. Broad, "At Los Alamos, Blogging Their Discontent," New York Times, 2005-05-01
Uh-huh. You have to be more than a rocket scientist (or nuke scientist) to post to that blog with anonymity, if the NSA thinks it's worth watching. Which I think they might, when LANL is involved.
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