Posts

Posted on

Stratmospheric

After a ~5-month hiatus, we’re officially house hunting again. Back on the Sunday open house circuit, slogging it through the Bay Area in search of the mythical perfect house — nice neighborhood, within bicycle commute distance to UCB, not tacky or flimsy or unloved, big enough to spread out in, extra room to turn into a darkroom, garage with room for a workbench, a few trees on the street….

Now more conflicted than ever. Both of us feeling so oppressed by the idea of going into eternal hawk and living close to the bone for god knows how long to get anywhere close to this dream. Should we pull up roots and head back to Massachusetts? Morro Bay? Portland? Portsmouth NH? Or better yet, Sweden?

But my work situation is so good. But no way can Miles play in the street here, let alone head off for 45 minutes of surfing or hiking before dinner. What’s the answer? Feeling like we’ve been in limbo over the housing thing for far too long. Already missed our big opportunity to cash in on the boom…. now the market hovers at saturation point. Interest rates in our favor, but housing prices “through the stratmosphere” (as an immigrant ex-boss used to say).

Music: Tim Buckley :: The River
Posted on

Daily Photo

Want to really get some mileage out of that digital camera of yours? This guy takes a photo of himself every day of his life. The same expressionless gaze. In sickness or in health. Bad hair day or no. Has done so for five years running. Vows to do it for the rest of his life. The irony, he says, is that he won’t live to see the project completed.

Music: Electrelane :: Film Music [Jagz Kooner Mix]
Posted on

Contains Multitudes

Sometimes I hold Miles and just dig on all the innocence and beauty in his soul, and his growing sense of discovery and wonderment at the world around him, and then over his shoulder I see the TV news and the world seems so difficult and tragic and dangerous and am amazed that both of these things can be true at once.

Music: Les Baxter :: Mombassa After Midnight
Posted on

Embrace File Sharing or Die

Possibly the single best piece on the impact — and necessity of — file sharing I’ve read is Salon’s Embrace file-sharing, or die (long). So many good points… “Why is it that record companies pay dearly for radio play and fight Internet play?” and Tim O’Reilly’s : “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” Worth the read.

I think 2003 is going to be the year the music industry either figures out how to give customers what they want (not to be spoon-fed, not to be gouged, not to be told they can’t play the music they’ve purchased through multiple vehicles…) or implodes under the weight of its own fear and stupidity.

Music: Legendary Pink Dots :: Madame Guillotine
Posted on

DDT

Was thumbing though National Geographic’s new swimsuit issue at the grocery store tonight — which is very well done, would like to read it more carefully sometime — and came across a picture that blew my mind. A beach in the 1930s with a sandfly problem. To keep the sunbathers from going elsewhere, they decide to spray. The picture is of an old jalopy of a truck driving along the beach spewing immense clouds of white vapor behind it. A painted sign on the side of the truck says in giant letters:


DDT
Powerful insecticide!
Harmless to humans!

Reminds me that when my dad had acne as a teenager in the late 40s, the doctors were blasting his face with radiation weekly, thinking it would vanish his zits. Now he has to be checked yearly for melanoma.

Music: Stereolab :: L’Enfer Des Formes
Posted on

Wheels in Motion

It has begun. Chris Simmons has been selected as the new den mother for betips.net. Just went through years of accumulation and cleared out a distributable version. Redirects, discussion boards, credits, database exports, dynamic content linked in from other sites (such as BeBits.com’s Tip of the Day), working through all the little details of domain transfer. This process is like getting ready to leave a home, or a town, or a relationship that isn’t working — leaving sounds great when you first think of it, but unbearably sad when the time actually comes.

“You’ll never miss the water ’till the well runs dry.”

Music: Linton Kwesi Johnson :: Inglan Is A Bitch
Posted on

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

“Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not … Hedwig!” Had been wanting to see this show ever since friend Matthew got a gig as the bassist and had to cut his beautiful long locks to look like a ghoulish glam rocker and paint his fingernails black and come home every night with remnants of thick black eyeliner still on. With Amy and Miles out of town, finally got my chance and went for it. This is Rocky Horror for a generation 20 years later. Rock and roll transgender glam rock Plato’s Symposium for people who watched the Berlin wall come down on VH1. Totally outrageous funny wonderful. And did I mention rocking? Kevin Cahoon is explosive. The movie is good too.

Music: David Fiuczynski / John Medeski :: Lillies That Fester
Posted on

Fixing the iLife Backing Store

ORA blog: Time for iLife Apps to Share a Unified Media Database?

To me, all of these database issues point to a similar need — find a more efficient backing store for the iApps. The more I ask around, the more it seems that XML is the smoking gun on iLife performance drags – it’s a great format for interoperability, but horribly inefficient and resource consumptive. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to reconsider using XML for the iApps. Maybe, just maybe, Apple should consider using some of the highly efficient open source database code out there — MySQL would do nicely I’m sure.

And since the iLife apps are all so wonderfully integrated now, why not place all of my media in a single, integrated media database? Whether such a database would store media objects themselves (allowing full export to original formats of course) or just references to them (with iTunes-style non-breaking inode references) is unimportant to me. With modern Mac hardware, I should be getting modern media database performance where it counts the most — when using my Mac as the digital lifestyle hub it’s touted as.

Music: Frank Zappa :: The Legend Of The Golden Arches
Posted on

Tanjias

Dinner at Tanjias with friends for Roger’s 41st. Nestled in on low leather hassocks in a tented room, low light, ancient and modern Moroccan music, amazing belly dancers (as in amazing), everything eaten with hands, no utensils. Tea that tasted like we had never had tea before. Hard to believe it’s already been a year since the debut (and penultimate performance) of Los Platanos Machos Quattros on Woj’s 40th.

Music: DJ Vadim :: Headz Still Ain’t Ready