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G4

Over the past 48 hours I have fallen completely, totally, and hopelessly in love with OS X.1 and this G4. As in, so in love I can’t pull myself away until the wee hours. Everything is so tight, so well composed, so _designed_, so coherent. I’ve complained publicly about MacOS for years. But almost every single complaint I’ve had about Macs has been addressed. I think they’ve really finally nailed it with OSX. It’s so invigorating to have that excitement about computing that I originally had with BeOS again. Only this time, it doesn’t feel like a futile battle. Apple has a chance, has industry momentum that Be never had.

This whole user experience is just so sexy…

I do have some complaints, so it’s not perfect. There are things that remind you you’re still using a young OS. But overall, it’s so on the right track it’s not even funny. I can’t say I regret dabbling in Windows after leaving BeOS behind, or the three months I just put into learning Linux – they were good educational experiences. But this feels like coming home.

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Panna Cotta

Amy and I celebrated my bday last night with dinner at Mazzini – wonderful restaurant near our house where we sometimes go for special occassions. Discovered the miracle of Panna Cotta — basically cooked cream with a bit of gelatin sitting in a berry sauce. The mouthfeel is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted – I didn’t know the meaning of creamy until last night.

Came home and took digital pictures of things in and around the house, getting jiggy with the look of things. Reminded us of something we used to do years ago when we were first going out — the Otis Panic (now called Sito). Back in the 94 / 95 time frame, some of us were getting really excited about the collaborative aesthetic possibilities of the internet. On Friday nights we’d drop source images into an FTP dir. Others would grab them down, manipulate them in Photoshop or whatever, then re-upload them. It was fast and loose, weird, great fun. Amy and I used to do these Panics for some of our early dates. Hadn’t thought aboout that for a while.

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Debate != Dissent != Unpatriotic

Very good interview with Susan Sontag at alternet, giving her a chance to comment on the firestorm that arose from her controversial essay in the New Yorker just after 911. It is appalling to me how patriotic, non-pacifistic people can be labeled unpatriotic traitors just for expressing counter opinions.

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Migration Notes

Bringing dad over to Windows was a mixed bag. On one hand, now he’s got a world-class browser and Eudora (my beloved Eudora…). On the other hand, the machine is much slower (because Win98 ignores his second CPU and because Win isn’t as efficiently designed in general). His modem drops connections sometimes under Windows – never did in BeOS. He says it “looks ugly” (this is a person who has used only MacOS and BeOS and has never used Windows).

But the biggest headache was in trying to find usable software for his digital camera. I was so proud the day he got his camera a couple of years ago, hooked it up, found the Camera app, and started using it with no help from me. I fully expected there to be a wide range of great camera apps for Windows. But the Camedia software that came with his camera is so arcane it’s almost unusable. The Adobe software that came with only grabs one image at a time and tries so hard to be user friendly that it backfires on itself. I downloaded three shareware apps that didn’t work at all. I read countless messages from people complaining about the terrible state of Windows camera apps out there. All over a slow mountain modem connection. Wasted half of yesterday. In the end, the solution he’s going to use is that he’ll boot to BeOS, download his images, and copy them to his Windows partition from there. What a freaking joke. I hear that XP finally addresses the camera issue fully. Great, but that’s not an option.

Since I stopped using BeOS a couple of months ago, I’ve only had occassional needs to boot into it. But every time I do, I feel like I’m missing something great. The same old refrains : how can something this great, this powerful, this usable, not have taken over the market? Of course I know all the answers to that question. But it still pains me no end. BeOS is still like a great orgasm for your computer.

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R.U. Sirius on Feeling Conflicted

Very good essay by R.U. Sirius on the difficult position traditional leftists are in… torn between knowing how evil the Taliban is and how important it is that they be removed on one hand, and a deep distrust for the Bush regime and bombing campaigns in general on the other. I can’t say, as he does, that I feel stuck in neutral. I support the anti-Taliban effort whole-heartedly (though I pray for sanity and care). But I have been doing battle with my own emotions over all of this. I think a lot of people I know have been. Slowly, though, I am realizing that my complaints are basically irrelevant to the situation at hand. Sure, the U.S. has had problematic involvements overseas. Yes we’re responsbile for the death of innocents all over the world. That’s all important stuff and needs to be addressed at some point. But right now, we have more important things to do, like preserving freedom. Who cares if that sounds corny and jingoistic? It’s important, it’s real, and it’s here now.

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Hashishim

The word “assassin” derives from “hashishim” — Arabic men who led, short, opulent lives and served as mercenaries for Jihad. They considered their lives already over, and so lived every day like it was a freebie, a gift, giving themselves permission to consort with loose women, get high, drink, etc. Basically a way to circumvent the laws of the Quoran in exchange for their fore-ordained commitment to die for the cause. Sound familiar?

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Skronk

Last week I mentioned that I had just been turned on to Betty Davis, ex-wife of Miles Davis. Betty did a couple records of this incredible skronk/funk/badass deep soul that almost no one has ever heard. Doesn’t really fall on the jazz side, though one can imagine it going really well with some of Mile’s early 70s stuff (On the Corner, Agharta, etc.) Apparently Miles and Betty actually did do a recording together at some point, but Miles destroyed it in a fit of rage after one of their frequent arguments.

Anyway, I promised to put some up for folks to get a taste. I normally don’t do the MP3 trading thing, but in this case it’s rare stuff that people aren’t likely to go out and hear on their own, and it’s just a couple of tracks… so I’ll leave this up for a few days. An exception to the rule.

Betty Davis on birdhouse

“He was a BIG freak!”

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The War on Dissent

Many thanks to (actually, a friend of his) for pointing out this great article at The Globe : The War on Dissent. If you’re afraid the media isn’t telling the whole story, and that censorship is alive and well in America right now, please forward this URL around.