Month: June 2004

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Matthew Sperry Remembered, One Year Later

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the death of our friend, musician Matthew Sperry. Matthew was run over by a pickup while on a bicycle on his way to work, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old daughter. His premature death sent waves of shock and sadness through our circle of friends, which resonate with us still. His daughter Lila is three now, and is beginning to better understand and articulate her daddy’s absence in sweet but chilling ways. His wife Stacia is coping as best as could be hoped, but is still suffering from his loss.

A large circle of Matthew’s friends gathered yesterday in the beautiful columbarium where his ashes lie. The bow from his bass was passed around as a “talking stick,” and people took turns memorializing him in words — so many different angles on his passing. It was truly touching. Matthew’s musician friends performed mournful pieces in the resonant, sun-filled chambers of the Chapel of the Chimes. Afterwards we gathered at Stacia and Lila’s house to eat, talk, and remember.

We love you, Matthew. You are missed. So missed. Blessings.

Music: Kahil El’Zabars The Ritual :: Another Kind Of Groove
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Green Ink

So guess who’ll be keeping his tattoo for the rest of his life? When I was 19, I had a 2″ question mark tattooed on my right ankle. I still stand behind the question mark as a symbol; no regrets there. But it was done in a kind of balloon-y, cartoonish style. It’s not terrible, but in recent years I’ve gotten tired of it, finally decided I wanted it gone.

Waited three months for a consultation, only to learn today that the fact that it’s comprised of mixed blue and green inks (the lasers are targeted at specific pigments) and is 20 years old means I would need 12-15 laser treatments at $650 each!!! In other words, $40 to have it installed, nearly $10,000 to have it uninstalled. So it’s staying put. Unless I can convince Amy we need to sell the Subaru…

Music: Tom Ze :: Tangolomango
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Cha-Ya

Last time I had an all-vegan meal (NO products derived from animals whatsoever, not even dairy, not even honey) I was living in Santa Cruz, in college. I hated it. Everything tasted flat and boring. I’ve never been into self-discipline where food is concerned. I don’t overeat, but I like to eat delicious food. Meals are meant to be enjoyed. So when rinchen suggested we go to Cha-Ya for dinner tonight, I balked; not so much because I need the meat as because I thought it would be a disappointment. And now I eat my words, so to speak. One of the best meals I’ve ever had, totally changed my opinion of the possibilities in vegan cooking. Not only not lacking in flavor, but fresh and delicious and creative and totally satisfying. Great idea to combine a Japanese restaurant with a vegan restaurant; the two styles complement one another perfectly. If you live in the Bay Area, don’t miss Cha-Ya on Shattuck — this has to be one of the more unique and delightful eating experiences you’ll find anywhere.

Music: Abbey Lincoln :: Long As You’re Living
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Celebrating Ten Years of BeOS

It’s 2004, a decade since the earliest versions of BeOS started shipping to developers. Over at OSNews.com, Eugenia Loli-Queru has a nice memorial piece commemorating the anniversary.

I haven’t run BeOS for a couple of years now, though it was certainly the core of my technical life for half a decade. Recently dusted off my old laptop (an early generation dell pentium, 64MBs) and booted Win2K. It was so slow I simply could not use it. All I really needed was a shell and a text editor for the day, so I booted its BeOS partition for the first time in a long time and was amazed all over again. The exact same hardware, but the OS was easily 10x faster. Such a treat. I’m committed to OS X these days, and mostly love it, but will always consider BeOS my only OS “tru luv”. Thanks for the memory walk, Eugenia. And thanks to everyone who ever worked at Be for creating such an outstanding monument to technical possibility.

Music: Billy Bragg & Wilco :: Another Man’s Done Gone
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MovableType 3 Sting

Completely sick of the comment spammers. MT-Blacklist is great at what it does, but only works after a string has been blacklisted, so every morning brings a heap of new garbage, “flies buzzing around my eyes, blood on my saddle.” Is the only viable long-term solution comment registration? To get that, you have to move to MovableType 3.0.

The J-School has been looking forward to MT3 for a long time, hoping for new features that would make it easier to manage the 17 blogs and 260 authors (with ~50 new authors added per semester) we currently support. What we didn’t anticipate was the new licensing scheme that could not only become prohibitively expensive, but a logistical nightmare as we try to track and pay for licenses for each new author, semester to semester. diveintomark has an excellent piece on why the “free enough” approach MT takes isn’t enough. Even if there’s a free version, tie yourself to a corporation and you’re subject to all their whims, prat falls, and unfortunate licensing decisions. Unless SixApart responds soon to my query on custom licensing, we’ll either be moving on to WordPress, a homebrew PHP/MySQL solution, or all of our blogs will be integrated into whatever CMS I choose for the rest of the J-School site this summer.

The licensing issue doesn’t apply to birdhouse — SixApart still offers a free version for non-commercial purposes. Disappointingly, MT3 offers almost no new features beyond comment registration. That’s okay – I’ve seen software revved to major numbers for minor changes plenty of times, and I wanted some real solution to the comment spam problem. So I ran the upgrade tonight. A few technical misfires (apparently not uncommon) — finally succeeded by installing the full version rather than the upgrade and then running the database upgrade script. Signed up for TypeKey, and received a token to drop into the new and improved back-end. Added the new DynamicComments directive to mt.cfg. But wait — after integrating the new comment registration tag into my templates, things fell apart. Not only were existing comments hidden from view, but when users clicked on the “Sign up to comment” link, they were told that birdhouse was not registered with TypeKey (it was). Screw it. Backpedal. Restore the original MT directory; fortunately it still worked, even though the upgrade script had modified some database structures.

MT3 is almost certainly a no-go for the J-School, and I’m increasingly skeptical about using it for birdhouse. There seems to be an MT –> WordPress exodus afoot, and I’ll probably join it. Lots of content out there on migration strategies.

Music: The Mekons :: Funeral
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Big Bird Flies Right

The common take is that NPR is the only bastion of left-leaning media in a field of right-dominated network and cable corporate conglomerates. But that view doesn’t stand up to the facts, according to a new report by FAIR, which found more right-wing sources and airtime than left on the network. In a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find balanced coverage anywhere on TV, even PBS is becoming toxic.

“Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge,” according to a report accompanying the survey, “individual Republicans were NPR’s most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance. ” In addition, representatives of right-of-center think tanks outnumbered their leftist counterparts by more than 4-to-1, FAIR reported.

And PBS’ legendary editorial independence is now being threatened by the fact that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – whose job it is to shield public broadcasting from ideological prssure — is now becoming subject to just that via right-wing appointees

CPB’s primary mission has always been to serve as a “heat shield” between government and public broadcasting, protecting programming from government interference.  But instead of serving as a “heat shield,” CPB now is the agent of ideological interference.  And public broadcasting’s news and public affairs programs in particular will be harmed if conservative members of the CPB have their way. The New Yorker’s expose, “Big Bird Flies Right,” documents several disturbing trends.

For example, CPB’s recent decision to fund two conservative-driven shows and cut Bill Moyer’s program from 60 to 30 minutes.

Music: Tom Verlaine :: The Deep Dark Clouds
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Shell Scripting Class

Decided to further my career and become UNIX certified. Have never taken a computer class in all this time; everything I know I’ve learned “on the road” over the years. I’ll be taking a series of classes through UC Extension one evening a week — a series that will last several semesters, since I have limited time to dedicate. The first class wasn’t scheduled for this semester, so am starting with a shell scripting class taught by John Muster, a gentle and wise Einstein-like figure. His book UNIX Made Easy is our text — he sees the book as a “sherpa,” which I can relate to.

Did a ton of shell scripting in the BeOS days (the 1,000-line RipEnc was my piece de resistance) and so thought I could coast through this, but after tonight, it’s immediately apparent we’ll be rowing this boat hard. Entire first session was on vi; I’ve got enough vi to get things done (which is exactly the level of knowledge he presupposed), but Muster wants advanced vi/vim usage to be like breathing.

Music: The Flaming Lips :: All We Have Is Now