vendredi 6 février 2004

Hacking hiccoughs, nice Nupha (the other music store) I don't know whether current Net congestion is all the fault of the W32.MyDoom worm A or B (Sophos), but one of my virus detectors eradicated nine infected attachments from today's e-mail alone. While few viruses are any threat to Macs, I keep my anti-virus software up to date rather than risk contaminating my friends using Windows. The oddest development is that despite my computer firewall and having no file-sharing functions switched on, some guy called Baptiste, whom I otherwise know nothing about, appears to have access to my music library and has given me access to his. I've no strong objection, but I haven't got hours to search tech sites and bulletin boards to find out how the hell he's doing it. This isn't the first time that I've discovered somebody busy "hacking" my Mac, not that he's doing any harm. Maybe I need to get hold of the latest 'Take Control' e-book (PDF format) released yesterday by TidBITS, 'File Sharing in Panther', or ask one of my network savvy friends what's going on. zzz Had enough of reading about the wonders of Apple's iTunes Music Store without being able to buy anything there yet? Then take a look at the small, Paris-based and truly international Nupha Musicstore, which works with independent record labels. Nupha's "the 2nd Mac compatible Music Store in the US after Apple, and the 1st 'for the rest of us' (i.e. the rest of the World ;-). Let's hope that this will motivate the majors to help Apple launch the iTMS in Europe ASAP..." (brief article on MacBidouille, or hardmac.com, in English). The full interview with Nupha's creator, Marca Tatem, is on MacBidouille's French site. I've joined Nupha, of course, though I haven't bought anything there yet, and installed the Daemon for Mac OS X (a convenient menu-bar way of getting into their store, where the prices are certainly right). Even if I choose just one of the 10,000 CDs Marca says are available in AAC (Apple) or WMA (Windows) format per month, I'll happily encourage anybody inventive enough to set up operations intended to be complementary to the iTunes store. Nupha went offline after receiving so many "hits" a second following recent publicity that they had to get a new server and more bandwidth, but business appears to be back to usual tonight. At 128 Kpbs for AAC music files and 192Kpbs for WMA, the sound quality is not quite up to the highest CD standards, but it's fine for the average punter. 10:06:47 PM  link   your views? [] Let petals bloom in my desert Dr F. took me on a long time-trip. Or was it the other way round? Exhausting, yes, but enlightening. In illuminating the unexpected, the woman is gifted, her sense of navigation as sure-footed as an Amazigh trader (Art & Life in Africa, U. of Iowa) in the eastern Sahara. One of the oases where I led her will be the starting point of our next exploration. The subtitle of this log is still there for good reason. An ... experiment I posted last month led to one baffled e-mail and two to teach me something (but really, you're invited to comment here, no holds barred). Here's another. If still you're confused, let's recall that, Wednesday, I tumbled headlong into the big black pupils of a lucid gaze. Not deep enough yet to see stars; but a wellspring of pleasurably troubled nights, with dreams defying the passage of the decades. Hence, for those eyes, a suite of three more fragments from the six 'Watches': The desert was all. The knight messenger flashed his sword across the Gulf, where the prophet stood, still. Blood drained into shifting sand. The sand remained. (Gaia complained.) The shining sword was the wrath of God incarnate, the word of fighters and bombers & missiles that missed. The prophet said : Those missiles became voices, the voices of children. Sustained cries asked "Why" ? Because, replied the sand in the wind, unstained by their blood, because you were there. Bombs are made to drop from the sky & you were made perfect here to die. Of your wounds, I shall make a lasting grave. It shall not move, but I am tasked to sift it all away. (& Gaia bowed like a slave.) The Old Man bequeathed laughter ; proclaimed himself fallen from the 56th floor to the 17th. There is mercy above the clouds, but not beneath. Where does it come from, a cancer ? The crab holds & eats away. Sometimes the answer resides in the question, sometimes not ; the interrogation persists always. He gives substance to so many days & unless I help to save it, his wisdom will waste in the grave. The coming after resides where the laughter begins on her face. On Gaia’s face. The solitude of wolves proves to me that out of space, half lost, you came. Formed by night on the swell of a thunderous tide you flew to me on the wind off the hills. We warmed & shared a cup or two & the shivering ceased with a lingering smile & the hope in the storm’s embrace. Starfire seeping from your hollow bones, I nearly had you then, gnawing on your succulent admission but you dissolved and made me a mist chill as the threat of no return. & with the dawn, the loss was there again. Song of Death, Dance of Hell "Your style," Death whispered, "is doomed to die." "We do but try," I told him back. "The enemy will take the flak." It was under a tree that the Buddha made his flames. My Fire Sermon is free of anybody else’s games. "It says ?" "Love." "What do you know about love ?" "Nothing, my friend, not a thing. But we live by & for it." "You’re insane," Death informed me. "And you think you’re God ?" I warned him. Distant the frontiers where first I pitched my posts. My brain will not circumscribe them. "And your Fire Sermon ?" Death insisted. "Nothing," I said, "not unless I speak of love." "How so ?" screeched all my ghosts. Hell is mere burning, a possession by fire. But when Gaia is turning, she’s alive. A live wire, the best of all our play. Death, you are dead ! I say ‘Hallo to Gaia’, some of us are bound to love you. ______ Notes (& picture credit): 'The desert' - 1995 (from the 'FIRST WATCH'); No sea this, but the Shatt al-Jarid (or Chott el-Djerid - more on 'Lovely world'), a sometimes treacherous salt desert in west central Tunisia: I took the photo during a crossing with the Kid in 1996; 'The Old Man' - 1993/1976 rev. 1995 (from the 'SECOND WATCH'); 'Desert Lion' picture - from Deborah Hill's 'Online Creative'; 'Song' - 1995 (from the 'SECOND WATCH'); while 'Incident de Voyageur' (included in the 'Metropolitan mishap' entry of Jan 19) was a "bleeding chunk" (1994) extracted from the 'FOURTH WATCH'. 4:58:16 PM  link   your views? [] The Kid's education: mention assez bien She had a tough week: two days of exams as a dry run for her Brevet, which Marianne will take, turned 15, at the end of the school year and is a major time for decisions already in the making. Though I ask questions and monitor the homework the Kid brings with her at weekends, some of the workings of French education have bewildered me. Not least because the classes are numbered backwards from the system I grew up with, but some of the crucial orientation choices come at slightly different ages. From what's left of my English perspective, French kids are asked to make some key career decisions a little too early in life, while the weight of the textbooks, paperwork, exercise books in plastic folders, photocopies, pens, pencils, rulers, etc. most are expected to lug around on their backs every schoolday is a scandal. While I've only been to two or three parent-teacher meetings, those I've attended remain alien to what I'd expect from my own upbringing, too reverent and regulated. Rather than an exchange of views, the parents get told, "This is how it's going to be and you don't have much say in the matter" - an opinion shared by some of my British and American friends with children in "ordinary" French schools. Still, what the Kid usually doesn't want to talk about and what I should have asked her mother but often didn't, I've learned from such friends and a host of resources on the Web. There are clear explanations in English at sites like 'Moving to France Made Easy', which reminds me of a disgruntled prediction my friend Jacques made recently at the Canteen: "You'll see, if things go on the way they are, in less than 20 years' time southern France will be one big retirement home for foreigners!" Given the English colonisation in the past couple of decades of whole tracts of the Dordogne, I see what he means! However, whatever reservations I have about the rites, rotes and rigours of this country's educational system, I can't argue with the fact that like the French national health service, it often produces admirable results. I got out of an appointment a little too late to head off to join Marianne and her mum for a first "orientation meeting", but I've kept my fingers crossed for the Kid under examination for a couple of days. It turns out that I shan't be seeing her this weekend as I'd expected, but I've still got potentially glad tidings for her. It's not just me and her chums who keep up with her doings on the 'Belcatja' (Fr.) blog she shares with a friend. So does François, a buddy of mine who's been very busy of late making a music album he was kind enough to let me hear as a work in progress. The feller's scouting for lyrics. And he told me he's been very taken with some of the things he's read of late on Belcatja. Now that's worth a special mention. Does it count as orientation? 4:39:05 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.