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Switchers

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has a pretty fair and balanced piece on Apple’s switch campaign here. I’m particularly interested in this right now not just as an evangelist in remission, but because the environmental defense law firm I work as a consultant for is ready for a major upgrade. The choices are these:

– Upgrade memory, hard drives, operating systems and apps
– Switch from desktops to wireless laptops
– Go Mac

I know the Mac suggestion is unconventional for lawyer types, and many of their impressions were formed at a time when document compatibility wasn’t nearly what it is today. But for virus and spam reasons alone (I mention spam prevention because the spam blockers built into Entourage for Office X are so incredibly good), I think it’s worth it. Not to mention fewer breakdowns, less confusion, and more reliability with Macs than with PCs. But I would understand if they decide to stay PC. It’s an option, not an agenda item.

So I’ve got that gig coming up (just wrote up a lengthy analysis of these three options and their implications), and a 2,000 word piece for MacWorld due soon, and wrapping up the SKSM job. Birthing classes start in a couple of weeks, and we’re still trying to buy a house. Oh yeah, I still have a full-time job in between everything.

ORA blog: In Search of Perfect Search

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BeHive Archive

A BeOS die-hard just pointed out that all my old BeHive columns have gone missing from ZDNet. Reading them over now, I consider most of them embarrassing and somewhat naive, but they’re a record of the time, and of one journalist’s involvement in the platform. They’re historically interesting. So I put up a complete archive of BeHive articles 1996-1998 for the completists.

Update: Thanks to for providing a couple of the missing images from article 6.

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Husqvarna

Spent the weekend in North Fork, CA, below Yosemite, at the home of an old surfing buddy and friend from junior high and high school. A simpler life there, near a buddhist monastery. Matt and his wife Stephanie, 4-year-old Lucas and most of their friends all attend the monastery. So a very peaceful time – veggie food, honest people, hot tubbing under the stars (so bright!). Entertained ourselves with improv humor games after dinner.

Highlight: Up the river over a secret path, to a place where eons of bubbling dug amazing huge holes in the granite – bathed in the icy water and dove from rock cliffs, swam through underwater tunnels, ate bagels and carrots in the sun.

Back at the ranch, I goofed around with the mighty Husqvarna on Lucas’s swing:

husqy

Rushed home Sunday for more housing madness. More of the same.

Righteous Mac case hacks – I dig the low-fi.

fork1

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Why Americans Don’t Watch Soccer

As Joel Stein neatly summarizes at Time.com,

“There are just two things about the World Cup that prevent Americans from caring: it involves soccer and the rest of the world. We could get over the soccer part eventually — after all, it’s kind of like the soccer we make our suburban children play, only without the goal scoring. But the global part just isn’t going to happen. When I hear that Tunisia is playing Belgium for the crucial Group H runner-up spot, all I want is a map. The only way Americans are going to learn another country’s name is if it attacks us.”

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Netsam

Hello,

If you are in possession of blue or red time warping moon crystals,
I need some! Please make me an offer. Please send a (separate email) Email me at: dirtbikel12@aol.com

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Liberace’s Lover

In response to my piece Understanding Liberace: Grooving with the Fey Heckler, CNN writes:

We are delighted that Scott Thorson, who claims to be Liberace’s lover, is going to appear on Larry King Live this Wednesday. We would like the promote the interview extensively. I am in charge of promoting it via the Internet and ask for your help.

Would it be possible to promote on your website Scott Thorson, Liberace’s lover, on Larry King Live? This would be done by putting on your web site something as simple as “Watch Scott Thorson discuss being Liberace’s lover for the full hour on CNN’s Larry King Live on Wednesday, June 12th, 2002 at 9 p.m. EST. For more information, please visit www.cnn.com/larryking

All the best,

Eleanor Spektor

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Sanitizor Lamp

Found an antique upright cannister vacuum on trash day, decided to make a lamp for the kid’s room out of it. Of course the job ended up taking half the day rather than the couple hours I had expected. Still, it was worth it – I love doing projects like this, and don’t do enough of them anymore. Well, I do, sort of, just not in meatspace. It’s summer – you’re supposed to be out there getting your thumb crimped in the jaws of the pliers when they slip off a spacer hex. New blood blister!

Amy and I both joined the UC Berkeley rec facilities and can now use any of the pools, weight rooms, etc. This morning went up to Strawberry Canyon. Worked out for half an hour, swam, read magazines under the trees. Totally relaxing. Didn’t come home until 3.

Last night out to dinner at La Note with Josh and Minnette. Great time, stuffed silly. The accordionist started playing “Stairway to Heaven” and “Paint it Black”, French cafe’ style. Between this and the Junior Brown show the previous night, it’s getting a little too pomo for comfort around here. Started remembering lyrics to the songs we played in the quote-unquote “band” we had in junior high… which was more like one brilliant musician, plus us embarrassing ourselves.

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Junior Brown

Went last night to Slim’s with friends to see the righteous Junior Brown. Holy mother of pearl, this was the most exhilarating show I’ve seen in a long time. Didn’t really have any expectations – just thought it was going to be good country music. So was totally unprepared for the range of this guy. First of all, he plays the “guit-steel” – a double-necked combined guitar and pedal steel guitar in one body. Apparently, the idea for this thing came to him in a dream, and put him on a quest to find a master guitar maker. Sounds great, looks great. He rests it on an elementary-school music stand rather than around the neck.

Four-piece band, all in sharp-fitting silvery suits (suits make such a difference). The bassist a wirey Alabama (?) nerd, flat-top rhythm guitarist, and the drummer an apparent cousin of Samuel Clemens – about 60 and playing a single drum and cymbal. “No city of drums on this stage, ladie and gents – when you know how to play, you only need ONE drum.” And he proved it, too.

They play Johnny Cash / Ernest Tubb-style country – honest stuff. But the thing is, it’s not just country. This is what happens when you grow up hearing Peter Frampton and the Moody Blues and watching Jello-brand gelatin commercials and make country music. It’s not fake country, not camp country – it’s the real deal, but it’s also, like, late 21st century or something. Just stomping, but with these breakout guitar solos that border on freaky, super staccatto hammer-on stuff, Hendrix blues. Like 7 degrees of camp, no more. Maybe a little more. I kept thinking Eugene Chadborne was going to take stage and turn the whole thing inside out.

Towards the end they went into this medley of TV and movie theme songs. It was relentless, punishing, hilarious. Hawaii Five-Oh, Secret Agent Man, Bonanza, I forget what else, but at one point you’re suddenly hearing the five-note aliens theme of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” played on the guit-steel. The audience busted a gut. Then it got way out – like lightning, he detuned his E string down about three octaves and played the mothership’s part. Back and forth between the human and alien parts, slick as snot. Then suddenly he comes out of Close Encounters and into Dueling Banjos. Like WTF?!!! Just amazing.

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LiveJournal, O’Reilly, and RSS

Ack packet via : LiveJournal now supports automatic RSS detection, and you can output your LJ blog in RSS format just by adding /rss to the end of your LJ URL.
Will take some experimenting to figure out how best to take advantage of these new capabilities. My goal is to have the equivalent of an LJ friends page but that also picks up on non-LJ blogs. Don’t have a lot of time for fiddling. Pointers welcome.Meanwhile, O’ReillyNet invited me to post a blog in their authors blog collection. So what I’m going to do is keep my LJ blog for personal / miscellany, but put all my tech-related posts in my ORA blog. I’ll also install a permanent link from this blog to that, eventually.

Jon Udell on Personal RSS aggregators: “The relevance engine that powers the emerging RSS network is, very much like Google’s relevance engine, decentralized and ultimately social in nature. The raw output of the online news collective is filtered for me by people doing what they do best: spotting patterns, alerting the tribe.“