Friday 27 June 2003

Recovering from cancelling some things I really wanted to do, losing hundreds of dollars in the process, and skipping work thereby. That and just a little too late playing poker, and trying to get home while making all the wrong decisions. Because of screwed-up NJ Rail tracks, where only one of four rails were working. This put me home at around 3:45. I might as well have stayed for the rest of the game. World Poker Tour championship on the Travel Channel (thanks to TiVo): what a last hand! It was an amazing race, right until the river. The WPT series, despite some problems (<cough>Vince Van Patten</cough>) is amazingly well put together, well-paced, and a solid foundation, hopefully, for next year’s tour. Wednesday: Went to Connecticut for a proof of concept. I got there at the right time, having only traveled for about two and a half horus, which is what it should be. Despite leaving somewhat early, hit monstrous traffic on the way back over the Tappan Zee and Garden State Parkway. Also made many wrong decisions while going home, steadily dehydrating. Almost got into two accidents with the stop and go traffic. Turned off at Clark, where the only road to town had suddenly turned into a one-lane bridge. Got home three and a half hours after work. Blech. Nothing of note really, lost in a fog of my own ineffectualness: meant to go to Atlantic City this weekend, but suddenly overwhelmed by inertia. 7:51:06 PM    comment []

	Tuesday 24 June 2003

PowerMac G5: Can I hold out for the 3 GHz, or will I break down and pick one up in September? A.W.Apps class: Why am I so insane? What is with me? What is wrong with me? Gaaah. It’s too hot. 11:36:01 PM    comment []

	Friday 30 May 2003

Someone got us a set of pinochle cards for us to play Texas Hold ’em. Royal flush, beat that! After a number of rounds of three-of-a-kind kings and full boats aces over jacks, we gave it up, especially trying to push imaginary chips into the pot. 12:10:34 AM    comment []

	Friday 16 May 2003

My parents’ anniversary today, in celebration of which I expected to take them out to dinner, was actually celebrated, without my help, in Atlantic City. There was a lunar eclipse this night and last, but as it threatened to rain on each day, I didn’t see the percentages in it. But I should at least have tried. Instead of all these things, I crashed the New York Blogger Bash, the fifth or sixth or fifteenth of its name, and my third or so. I would add more, but I put one or two too many pales into this head of mine with no dinner and no sleep besides, so later, later. 11:43:53 PM    comment []

	Thursday 20 March 2003

I heard the President’s address while driving to the bookstore to pick up the Fowler book on enterprise architecture patterns. It is so sad that it had to come to war. Spare a prayer for the men and women who have gone to Iraq, and spare a prayer for the Iraqi innocents who, through no fault of their own, have been caught up in this sorry affair. Is it a just war? It is a just cause, and a just authority which makes the claim for redress by force. (Elshtain, Novak, Niehaus, Pope John Paul II, Carter) The only questions that remain are: was it a last resort? (after 12 years of dodgy non-compliance, I think it is, contra JPII and Carter) will it cause more harm than good? (For the Iraqi people, it will most definitely not, unless we of America foresake all sense; for America and its standing in the world community, perhaps it will.) The selective attacks so far seem to argue for jus in bello, but war has never been a certain thing. Who now remembers France’s occupation of the Ruhr? Not that posterity has anything to do with morality, but we are talking about standing, with which it does. But these things will pass. 12:18:19 AM    comment []

	Tuesday 11 March 2003

For the last week or so, “The Shadow of Your Smile” has been running through my head. It started last Tuesday or Wednesday. I remember at Matt’s valedictory dinner (with mahimahi wrapped in halibut, yum) I asked the pianist to play it, so it was firmly ensconced by then. The song was written by Johnny Mandel, who also wrote another haunting song, the theme from M*A*S*H. It took me a while to find this, folks! Sinatra comes up first on writer "shadow of your smile", but lists no writer. Paul Francis Webster wrote the lyrics: The shadow of your smile when you are gone Will color all my dreams and light the dawn Look into my eyes my love and see All the things you mean to me. Our wistful little star was far too high A teardrop kissed your lips and so did I Now when I remember spring All the joy that love can bring I will be remembering The shadow of your smile. It was composed for the movie The Sandpiper. While I’m at it: the lyrics to the theme to M*A*S*H. Mike Altman, the lyricist, is, I believe, the son of Robert “Scumbag” Altman. Good lyrics, but he seems not to have produced anything else afterwards. I hope he didn’t take his lyrics to heart. According to IMDB, he wrote it when he was fourteen. Speaking of IMDB, Neil Gaiman printed a letter from a certain Cathy mentioning Internet Book List, the book-reader’s hopeful counterpart to the IMDB. And a Manila site I haven’t explored much: Songtrellis. 11:58:32 PM    comment []

	Saturday 8 February 2003

Liz at Capital Influx points to a haberdashery for the dysfunctional, with tees sporting such slogans as “i chain scarf brownies in the dark,” “i buy a lot to fill the void within,” “i use big words to impress people,” and, hey! that’s Liz Vassey of the Tick! I still have all the episodes on my TiVo, awaiting the day I can take them off. Sniff. I miss the Tick, both animated and live-action. But why go so far afield for a dysfunctional tee? Paul has got the goods. 10:41:03 PM    comment []

	Friday 24 January 2003

The Animated Atlas is an interesting idea, but I would have liked to see little dots representing the densities of populations, perhaps how they ebbed and flowed. That would have been cool. Or even a broader brush, with world history, along the lines of Colin McEveady (?) (!!!). That would have been cool. Oh, wait? What was I saying? I could get off my lazy ass and do it myself. (Hah!) 12:03:43 AM    comment []

	Sunday 19 January 2003

What was I saying? Having done the GeoURL thing, I want more! So... GMT is a set of Unix tools to manipulate geographical data. Perhaps I can use it to plot an electronic version of Ptolemaius’s Geography. Ooh: Metis: Quicktime panoramas of ancient sites. Kind of small, especially when you’ve been spoiled by certain high-bandwidth sites. 8:20:46 PM    comment []

	Sunday 12 January 2003

Lost Futures Mike has finished posting the transcripts of the interviews he did with David Sanders to produce his Cinescape article and written a very personal, nostalgic cap-piece to it. Read it. 12:10:01 AM    comment []

	Saturday 4 January 2003

If you have MAME or MacMAME, an overwhelming tang of nostalgia, thirty minutes, and a spare $999, you too can satisfy your cravin’. 3:36:00 AM    comment []

	Tuesday 31 December 2002

The Recueillement thing I did reminded r@d@r (at ex-lion tamer) of a poetry class exercise. I do remember something like that in the Behn and Twitchell book, but what I was doing was more along the lines of N’heures Souris Rîmes—accents later/read with an outrageous French accent—and, more pretentiously, the Oulipo. This is an Ormonde de Kay obituary. My copy of the slim tome was purchased when I was in New Brunswick’s Rutgers from a Pyramid that had an excess of copies. What I was really after, though, was trying to reclaim the sound of the piece, which, with my decaying grasp of French, was being lost in half-formed thoughts of, “this word is probably...this word looks like....” 11:40:38 PM    comment []

	Sunday 15 December 2002

Hey, maps in 3D orthogonal blocks. Coolness. Wish I knew about this before I contributed to the company boss-present pool. But the cost is a bit steep for full renditions. [by way of Nick Tang] 1:58:07 AM    comment []

	Sunday 10 November 2002

Sidebar notes on losing my site history Whoa! Sometime in the last several days, Radio Userland re-published the whole site! Each and every post, which means the nice template I was using in the springtime and early summer are gone (radio.weblogs.com is a static site, so previously those posts had been rendered permanently in the template that I had at the time, I nice blue one, even as I changed my links and RUL dropped my template), and I lost some sense of the history of how my sidebar links have grown. So I will have to do it by memory. Happy Tutor of Wealth Bon-da-ge first pointed me out when I commented on anonymity, and gave me a full sidebar link; I linked back to him once I figured out how to do the sidebar thing, but as WB, which got me some strange hits. Happy T has a great deal of hits on his site, but those who arrive usually don’t care to follow the sidebar links, sigh. Graham Leuschke pointed to me as well on seeing WB’s post, but only in a daily post, no sidebar. Jim of Objectionable Content pointed out my blog after Blogapalooza, and often comments. Paul Frankenstein and Ravenwolf may have done the same, or right after Paul’s own turn to host the NY Blogger party, BABB3. Aaron Haspel, Sasha La Blogatrice Castel, Zeebahtronic’s Liz, Ken Goldstein, and Hands Free pointed to me after BABB3, definitely. Liz permalinked me, and Ken had a semi-permanent special sidebar edition in which I was one of the BABB3rs featured. Goliard Dream’s pinax started commenting in my blog, then permalinked me. Those who cared to comment started with Charles Hornbell, who sympathized with my tire troubles going to Philadelphia. Mobius One of the44 commented after I linked to his coverage of the Dodge Poetry Festival. Pinax also commented, but was later promoted, as I said earlier. Bill Hayduk commented recently but I missed it until recently, whereupon I had an editorial crisis as to linking all commenters and yet not linking to where I work while explicitly disclaiming any relation of this blog to work or clients. But he commented, and I resolved it as you see to the side. Doc Weevil linked to me in a set of photographs not well publicized from Blogapalooza, but doesn’t read me very often, as far as I can tell, though I try to keep up. Megan McArdle doesn’t link me, but as her travails not four blocks from where I beach when not on site was an inspiration, Live from WTC stays there. Always been a fan of Neil Gaiman since my RA introduced me to Sandman when I was at University of Southern California. RXC is a column I regularly read. I would put Instapundit there, but then I’d never get anything done. As you can see, Smart people is where I eventually put people who would never link to me normally. Roland Tanglao and Jenny the Shifted Librarian have their news aggregators attuned to many hundreds of RSS sources, so they have their fingers to the pulses of geeky technology and information storage/copyright issues, respectively—that is, when Jenny’s Radio installation is working. She actually posted me, once, concerning my contention that loose copyright enforcement led to the freedom of the slaves in America. Everyone knows BoingBoing, and many of y’all know A & L Daily. Too tired. Links later. 4:39:13 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 R Allan Baruz. Last update: 6/29/03; 22:02:12.