Who is Steve Konscek, Supermarket Manager?

Well, for one thing, he's managed at no less than 44 grocery stores over the past weekend, and brilliantly so.

TidBITS (#764/31-Jan-05) reports, or passes along, news that Apple has reconfigured the "auto-gouge" feature the product shipped with initially in build-to-order configs at the online Apple Store:

The 1 GB memory upgrade was originally a fairly ridiculous $475 when name-brand 1 GB cards of the same type can be found in the mid-$200s. The price now is $325, which is low enough that it's more reasonable to have an Apple-certified technician perform the installation - especially when you consider that Apple will warranty that RAM and replace it if you have problems. (Self-installed RAM is your own problem, a problem that bit me with my PowerBook G4 and Panther.)

The wireless combination of Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme is now $100 instead of $130 when installed together. Upgrading the hard drive to 80 GB now costs $50 instead of $90.

On the realization that I would regret not going more than going even if it sucked, I took Viv to see the Firesign Theater show tonight at the Moore. It was... rough. Still, it was a pleasure to see the act. I chuckled when I noticed that an image of a shack being apparently twisted by an encroaching tornado used as an element of the show's stage dressing had appeared within the month on either FilePile or tmbo.

Viv found the act confusing and the apparent confusion onstage regarding scripted bits and sound effects did not help to clarify things. Firesign's material is always murky and it wasn't reaching her. They did mostly new stuff, I think, with a few recorded bits that were vaguely familiar used as scene transitions. Adding to the problems were sound mix issues, including bad cues, over-amped mics, and so forth. The second act was largely a Nick Danger piece, with the customary post-modernist fooraw. There was only one brief multi-voice bit, which is a shame, because the layered speaking bits have always been my favorite part of their material.

It felt like a workshop performance, as if what we saw is going to evolve into a new album and a touring performance. As it happens, this was stop three of six.

Also: Firesign podcasting - a huge trove of downloadable mp3s, right here.

Nothing beats the crisp, clean taste of a cold Monkey Beer.

I met Dan and Jim at the U. District Safeway, where we discovered a produce section crowded with fifty or sixty folks, to the growing bemusement of the store's employees. Eric Sooros emailed me that he was accosted by a store representative be cause he, his wife Rose, and their infant child "looked like they knew what was going on." Both Eric and I, as it turns out, purchased some produce.

Jim took pictures.

In the midst of the crowded produce section, about seven people began by holding aloft a selection of produce, silently. Then one of the performers began to sing the Clash song, "All Lost in the Supermarket," which quickly spread to the otyher performers and some of the rest of the crowd. Slightly anxious Safeway employees looked on from the edges of the produce section, which was very full.

Suddenly a guy in a white shirt, featuring the classic managerial combination of cheesy moustache, thinning hair, and black tie rushed in and began scolding the singers, saying "you can't just sing in the supermarket," whereupon, of course, Jason struck a chord and the whole lot broke into a Broadway-style hand-waving kick-kick-turn chorus line as they sang a little ditty based upon the phrase.

Then Jim, Dan and I waited interminably for my onions to be rung up, whereupon we headed off to the dank recesses of Finn MacCool's for a beer and on to the brighter precincts of the Big Time, where we ended the evening, noticing that the brewpub both advertised free wifi and was remarkably uncrowded for a Saturday night, and as the de facto social comittee for MeFi Seattle, it's on the list of potential venues.

Partway through the evening the ever-amusing Dan remarked that a neighboring tabe had brought a giant robot frog out drinking with them, an amusing wisecrack that improbably turned out to be true. By coincidence, I was wearing the hopkin tee that John and Mikey gave me.

Later, the people with the frog gave it to me.

We saw The Aviator with Spence last night. It was... OK.

The subject, Howard Hughes' life as aviation-industry obsessive, is of intrinsic interest to me, and there's a link filled post in gestation, prompted by many questions I had as I watched the film. But after sleeping on it, despite DiCaprio's worthwhile performance, there's no way that this should be the film that wins Scorsese his best film Oscar, even if it leads the pack this year. Even though Gangs of New York was a terribly flawed film, it had the power of obsession, and images from that film echoed around in my head for over a year after seeing it.

In The Aviator, Scorsese is fundamentally forced to rely on CGI visualizations of the key visual expressions of Hughes' obsessiveness; thus, no full-scale reconstruction of 19th century Five Points, only digital ghosts of the Spruce Goose and the amazing in-flight sequences from Hell's Angels. Unfortunately for Scorsese, I found the CGI to be sadly weightless and unconvincing. As much as it thrills me to have been granted the chance to fly with Leo-as-Howard in the H-1 and the H-4, in the external shots of these planes in flight, I was reminded of the physical unreality of the planes seen onscreen.

Too smooth, the perfectly even silver skin of aluminum airplane dope the CGI emulated exceeds even the factory-fresh finish of any plane from that era. Shots of the real Spruce Goose on its' taxi run in Long Beach harbor show weight and mass behind the wake and spray the plane kicked up. Undoubtedly, the film's CGI artists knew the imagery, and it's very likely that there are frame-matches for well-known stills of the event on-screen.

But this problem - of accurately integrating CGI-based images into real-world photography in ways that capture the effects of mass and weight on the environment of the object - is the non-anthromorphic equivalent of the uncanny valley. It's not unsettling to note these problems as one watches the imagery; but it just looks wrong, and distracts from the sought after illusion. Viv commonly critiques this observation of mine, saying that she doesn't see the problems, and she probably represents the vast majority of moviegoers. But over time, as we become educated in the ways in which CGI fails mimesis, more people see the problems.

Remember the first time you saw Titanic, or Jurassic Park, or Twister? Flipped into one lately in the tube? Looks a whole lot more fake now than it did originally, huh?

I think, in the end, this is part of my concern. Films like Jackson's LOTR trilogy and The Aviator are intended by their creators as works with a longer half life than even Titanic. Reliance on CGI, as long as the imaging techniques are in motion, shortens the effective lifespan of these films as accessible, ambitious works of art for a mass audience.

Right. Well, I gotta go. More on The Aviator soon.

So, a while ago, I posted to MetaFilter about the hilarity that is "Ron's First Goatse," which I had seen at an interesting image-sharing site known, variously, as [this might be offensive] and also "themaxx," after the site's domain.

At the time, the site was a silent filepile imagestream mirror. I was mostly unaware of this when I posted to MeFi about the image; I had seen a lot of FP references in the imagestream, but I see a lot of the same images on BoingBoing, so I hadn't connected the dots in my mind at the time.

Shortly after my post, the site's maintainer and developer, known as themaxx, ran a graphic illlustrating the dramatically escalated bandwidth demands that were placed on the site after the MetaFilter post. Since that time, membership on the site has climbed, to what I estimate to be about 2000 members; many are apparently also MeFites and/or Pilers.

Apparently, over the last week or so, some sort of huge drama broke out on FilePile about themaxx's mirror. See, FilePile evokes the inexplicably cultish "Fight Club," and the first rule of FP is, well, you either know, or you know how to use Google, and frankly, I find the topic tiresome.

It's been interesting catching glimpses of the dustup on [tmbo]. I have been chuckling about it all week, and a couple of days ago, I pointed this out to that expert provocateur, Danelope, who immediately frittered an hour of his life away constructing an animated fumetti.

Fumetti are photo-based comics, best known in the US as having been an importat element in the 1970s National Lampoon. This month, the form has been pressed into service with remixes of scenes from, mostly, The Lord of The Rings, and so Dan's choice was tres au courant, if I myself did not recognize the film he repurposed. I do not have a copy of his animation, but will link to it when I find a copy.

In his animation, he made light of the dustup and provoked a storm of comments on [tmbo], notably including remarks from one "andre," which is the first name of the Southern California-based programmer who originated FilePile. (Since this was posted, internal evidence makes it much less likerly that this andre is the FP guy).

Shortly after Dan's posting, themaxx posted a monochromatic image, similar to the color image at the head of this post; he'd disconnected the mirroring.

The image at the head of this entry is what occurred to me as I watched all of this, chuckling, from the couch. The internet is like a slow-moving sitcom that you have to poke at and peer into to get the jokes.

A missive from my friend Jason:

Hello...

Something is happening in the produce section of your local Supermarket this weekend:

Jan 29 - 12:30 pm - Ballard Safeway - 8340 15th Ave NW
Jan 29 - 7 pm - University Safeway - 4732 Brooklyn Ave NE
Jan 30 - 12:30 pm - Capital Hill QFC - 523 Broadway E
Jan 30 - 7 pm - Everett QFC - 2615 Broadway

Thus, my vague Saturday plans appear to begin to sort of coalesce.

the hand collector, via everlasting blort.

Unreal Aircraft, via things, which I have been sorely slacking on.

I'm roping some sort of posse in for vague social activities, probably in the University District, this Saturday. I wanted to throw the floor open for self-inviters who are regular readers. I don't have the time to ride too much herd on this, however, so in all probability, after a brief consultation with my brain trust, I will name a time and a place to hook up. If you're interested, leave a comment on this entry and an email address I can contact you at. In the comment, let me know if you want me to publish it or not.

This reminds me, someone sent me an evite I haven't gotten around to evaluating from a scheduling perspective. I wonder if it's for Saturday! If so, perhaps this idea is moot.

UPDATE - ah ha! It was for February.

Man, today is the first day in months that I've felt refreshed and efficient. I was a whirlwind at work today, just cranking out the orders, and when I got home I immediately piled into jobs two, three, and four.

I still have to move the laundry around downstairs, but I was able to bat cleanup on everything else, in time to meet Greg tonight to discuss his project.

Unfortunately, he sent me a new draft today - a day after my first read and initial notetaking - and so that added time to my evening. Printing it, transferring yesterday's chicken scrawls over, and trying to get one more readthrough in before we meet tonight used the entire time budget I had for a second read. So the piece won't have the benefit of a leisurely review, red pen in hand, this evening.

Greg will be here in 45 minutes. We're going to Georgetown. I have to break the news about boozing it up on project nights to him. He'll be doubtful.

This ca. 1921Vickers Airship Catalogue provides the apparent source material for the lovely, previously linked cardmodel by Ralph Currel.

[via, who else, The Cartoonist, who unaccountably did not make the cut for the '05 Bloggies, despite his remarkable linking skills.]

So here is how I did. Strikeouts represent incorrect predictions and italics represent the film or person nominated instead.

Director:
Marc Forster - Finding Neverland
Mike Leigh - Vera Drake

Film:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Ray

Lead Actor:
Paul Giamatti - Sideways
Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby

Lead Actress:
all correct

Not bad! I have the impression that I was more accurate than I would have been in previous years, but of course, I didn't try this previously.

I should note that this summer I ran into the now-nominated Ms. Moreno while attending Folklife at the Seattle Center.

So a Snowstorm among the century's worst has dumped gobs of snow on everyone between Chicago and New York City, and a subway fire has limited service on two lines in the City.

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, the sun was up before I left home yesterday morning and the mild, sunny weather smelled of spring.

Museum thief spirits away old crystal ball (timesonline.co.uk, December 11)

A RARE 16th-century crystal ball that belonged to a maverick consultant to Elizabeth I has been stolen from the Science Museum in London.

A man dressed in a long leather coat smashed a display case on the fifth floor and ran down flights of stairs and out of the museum before he could be caught by security guards.

The crystal ball, thought to be worth £50,000, was used by mediums and for curing disease. It belonged to John Dee, philosopher, mathematician and astrologer, who lived between 1527 and the turn of the 17th century. Dee became an authority on "angel magic" and beliefs that man had the potential for divine power.

The thief also took a statement about the ball's use by the pharmacist Nicholas Culpeper, written on the reverse of ancient deed manuscripts in the mid-1600s. The theft happened on Thursday afternoon. Detectives are investigating whether the items were stolen to order.

Interestingly, this little tidbit was passed on to me by a reliable informant of things otherworldly who is known in these parts as Alice Dee. Co-inki-doink? I don't think so.

Please note that the tsunami followed this theft shortly thereafter, as did the snowstorm of the century.

Here is a book by Dr. Culpeper, The English Physitian.

Lucky for England, it looks as though it's easy to buy replicas of Dee's crystal, although I personally suspect the good doctor favored a slightly less gothick mode of presentation. For some background on Dee, the John Dee Society would appear to be a good place to start. The John Dee Publication Project looks interesting, too, as it's devoted to publishing electronic facsimiles of Dee's primary source materials.

(Did you know that Armin Shimerman, the actor who played Quark on DS9, has published a series of novels featuring Dee as a character?)

For a project I'm working on, I had occasion to compile reasonably comprehensive lists of award nominations and winners for the film industry this year. The lists are not as extensive as the lists maintained by the Oscars Guy, but they are pretty decent.

I developed a simple formula that weights the nominees based on how well the associated film has done over all in category, and as a result, find myself with a list of nomination predictions. This is the first year in several that I find myself having only seen one of the films producing probable nominations, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so rest assured that this represents nothing more than cold, hard mathematics.

Don't rush out to your bookie or anything, though. I can't reveal my methodology until after mid-March, unfortunately, so if I've made some sort of gross error, we'll only know on Tuesday when the nominations are announced. The underlying theory is that the Academy voters overlap significantly with many of the voting bases for other awards-season nominations and that generally speaking, a voter in one of the other awards will also favor the film they voted for in the Oscars balloting.

Director:
Alexander Payne - Sideways
Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby
Marc Forster - Finding Neverland
Martin Scorsese - The Aviator
Taylor Hackford - Ray

Film:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways
The Aviator

Lead Actor:
Don Cheadle - Hotel Rwanda
Jamie Foxx - Ray
Johnny Depp - Finding Neverland
Leonardo Dicaprio - The Aviator
Paul Giamatti - Sideways

Lead Actress:
Annette Bening - Being Julia
Catalina Sandino Moreno - Maria Full of Grace
Hilary Swank - Million Dollar Baby
Imelda Staunton - Vera Drake
Kate Winslet - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Cringely sez the mini Mac is "all about the movies," and he's pretty persuasive. Speaking of movies, Bart, we saw Sideways this evening.

It was by no means a hard sell - I love wine, and have been raised to, and I have loved Paul Giamatti onscreen since seeing American Splendor at SIFF in, what, 2003? 2004?

As you intimated, Bart, it was great. We both loved it very much. Viv looks forward to identifying and trying the wines seen onscreen.

I recently read - more devoured - Gerard Jones' breezy, sprawling Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book.

Here's a Comics Journal discussion thread about the book - it looks like I'm not the only comics lover that found the book gripping.

Jones charts the rise and diffusion of the contemporary American comic book from the 1930s to the present day, and properly uses the tragedy of Seigel and Shuster's experience as Superman's creators as the tentpole upon which he drapes an entire socioeconomic history.

His prose is clear and propulsive; the book could be written about nearly any American industry's 20th century rise, and this is one of its' great strengths. By carefully showing how comics and periodical publication were tied to and reflected the economic realties of their time and place, the specific story becomes general, allowing the reader to identify with the colorful people Jones depicts.

Jones' approach is distinct from that of other comics writers and flows from his determination to set his story in the full context of America rampant. Instead of restricting his primary sources to the people of greatest interest to comics fans, the artists and writers and publishers, he spoke to the families and business associates of these people as well, and in so doing, found his way to the men behind the curtain. By asking people who had no exposure to the often-repeated creation myths and anecdotes of self-definition, Jones uncovers some significant and fascinating facts about the first generation of superhero cartoonists.

The single most compelling item is Jones' discovery that Jerry Siegel, Superman's creating author, lost his father to an armed robber while in his teens. That's right - the Batman's creation myth, apparently crafted independently of Siegel's life history, somehow is a direct reflection of the creation of Jerry Siegel's need to invent the Man of Steel.

The book is full of clear-eyed, thoughtful analysis of the lives and characters of people that are almost always offstage in comics writing - from his evenhanded presentation on Frederic Wertham to the life histories of DC's (then National Periodicals) founders, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. Donenfeld's ties to bootlegging and the mob, which helped pave the way for the success of the company's distribution networks are given particular attention. Like the Kennedys, Warner Brothers (which can be seen as having grown from National) owes its' prominence in part to bootlegging; Batman's utility belt was paid for with money that Meyer Lansky helped to gather.

The book is completely nonjudgemental on these and many other matters, generally striving to narrate the events associated with these characters with sympathy. I know I'll still never be able to hear the phrase "Truth, Justice and the American Way" quite the same way again.

Others have noted that the books is practically a required companion to Chabon's monumental Kavalier & Clay. I concur. The book is worthy of its' companion in every way.

'Epileptic': Disorder in the House, by Rick Moody.

It's not uncommon now for readers of literature to admire Chris Ware or Julie Doucet or Joe Sacco or Joe Matt with a partisan vigor formerly reserved for renegades like Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. Among the reasons for this popularity is that comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is.

A big, fat, Sunday-Times wet kiss from Moody to the Fantaboys in the little grey shed on Lake City. MMWAH!

Or is it? The book is translated by Kim T. of Fantagraphics, but published by Pantheon.

Aha! The indispensible Egon has the scoop (January, 2004):

Fantagraphics will not co-publish (with L'Association) David B.'s "Epileptic" Vol. 2 as originally planned, Kim Thompson confirms in a post to the Comics Journal's message board. "The complete EPILEPTIC will be released all in one volume by Pantheon in January 2005," says Thompson. The book will include the totality of "Epileptic" Vol. 1 and what would have been "Epileptic" Vol. 2. "It'll actually be priced about the same as a L'Association-published EPILEPTIC VOLUME 2 would have been, so no one's out any money... the art will be shrunk a bit to make for a smaller, more novel-sized book. (Which will also make it less unwieldy.)"

Just finished (finally) watching The Fog of War. I found McNamara's early background to be in many ways strikingly similar to my father's early career. I have a vague recollection of Mom and Dad telling me that they'd recently seen the film - something of a red-letter event, as they are not really big movie watchers.

McNamara went from an assistant professorship at Harvard to the Army in World War II. Dad recently told me that he turned down a permanent position teaching at Harvard around 1973 or 1974. We lived in Boston during 1973 and 1974; my dad had a visiting professor position. What he told me is that he was offered the job on a permanent basis.

It's unclear in my memory if we discussed whether the position was tenured or not but I suspect it had to be by that point in his career. He told me that the most important aspect of his decision making process was his and my mother's concern about raising kids in a big city.

I believe I goggled visibly at this news; I still turn it over in my mind trying to make sense of it.

I suppose the turmoil and uncertainty of the times must have strongly influenced their concerns. That fall, the September 1973 Chilean coup would have been fresh in their minds, as would the first rumblings of Watergate with October's "Saturday Night Massacre." One can imagine that some of the folkways of the Yard in 1973 might have been a source of interest to my dad at the time, given his teaching experience in the polarized atmosphere of the Chile in 1969. Of course, the next school year, 1974, was the first year of the tumult in Boston around busing, and surely the newspapers had coverage of the political battles that preceded that unpleasant episode.

I think, possibly, that the business school actually is on a physically separate campus from the location of the Yard, I should note.

Finally, I have asked if Dad recalls teaching a certain well-known HBS grad who was enrolled the year he was a visiting prof. His answer is "No."

I should note that I found amazingly little analysis of W's degree out there in web land - that one opinion piece was all I could come up with. I seems that most folks are content to refer to it offhandedly and let it mean what it already means to he reader, left or right.

While googling revealed no reports of concern regarding the square white power supplies curently shipping for iBooks and Powerbooks, I just noticed that the one attached to this computer is so hot that it hurts to touch it for more than a few seconds.

In other news, I looks like the feverish intense and concentrated two hours of magazine-related work I have been doing on coming home from work will draw to a close for a couple of weeks, possibly mid-next week, which will be a relief and possibly afford more time for blogging.

The Movable Type Publishing Platform: Movable Type 'nofollow' plugin has been implemented. So, you hear that, spambots? Go away, and do not trouble me again!

Damme!

I was scheduled to meet some miscellaneous digital reprobates at the behest of Mr. Dent this evening.

But this morning when I woke up I had nausea, bad enough that I went home from work and crawled into bed. Naturally, I said to my self, "Self, this is a perfect time to try a trial install of OS Commerce." So, one hand tapping the keys of the powerbook, one eye closed in misery, I did so, and the setup appears to have gone off without a hitch.

Then I passed out. I was unsure if I was feverish for much of the day, but I certainly felt quite hot. Even now, at 9 pm, I'm not hungry at all. I am preparing to eat some ramen, in an experimental fashion.

I did not vomit or experience diarrhea at all, so my initial thesis, that I had eaten some bad food, is unlikely. When Viv took my temperature, it was 99, not really enough of an elevation to count as a fever for me (I run hot anyway).

So, I regret my illness and wish it to be gone in the morning. Currently, I have a massive headache and muscle aches, no runny nose or sneezing or coughing, and recurrent, mysterious long, slow pains deep in my lungs. I really don't believe I'm at risk, but some of these symptoms are reminiscent of a heart attack. I don't have a center-chest pain at all, or any odd symptoms in my arms, so I think this is pretty unlikely.

Whatever it is, it's making me very uncomfortable.

Fastmail may offer the mail service I need. I am not happy about a couple of things on the pricing page, though.

I need to be able to use the service to provide email for a minimum of four other users over at least four TLDs; eventually, I think, I'll lapse some of the domains and probably only keep one.

So a "5 alias" limit does not meet my needs, I think.

Additionally, they provide TLD-addressed email only as a premium option even for the highest-level account: it's a dollar a month per domain with ten-cent fee per address. This may be negotiable.

Looking at it, it's as though they've designed the pricing structure not so much against the needs of someone to operate a domain in the manner that, say, a business needs to use email, as around it.

SPI S&T #19- ZEPPELIN Unpunched, on eBay, via the comments a few days ago from Matt.

This 1993 turn-based hex-paper strategy game should not be confused with the computer game.

Block I Apollo Guidance Computer Replica:

Abstract

This report describes my successful project to build a working reproduction of the 1964 prototype for the Block I Apollo Guidance Computer. The AGC is the flight computer for the Apollo moon landings, with one unit in the command module and one in the LEM.

I built it in my basement. It took me 4 years.

If you like, you can build one too. It will take you less time, and yours will be better than mine.

Next stop, the Sea of Tranquility.

Manuel has followed up on the "unsecured webcams" meme and has a personal tale of righteous, mighty battle in the service of, um... Well, the morality is complicated.

Shesaiddestroy.org offers an .avi of The Clash, onstage in 1977, performing "London's Burning." [via The Cartoonist, again!]

For reasons unclear to me, there has been a subcurrent of Joe Strummer in my mediasphere over the past week.

This clip is interesting to me for several things:

Mick Jones looks at his fret hand the whole time he is playing the basic chords of the song and only looks away when he freestyles.

They must be hot in those jackets.

What is up with the oddball flat-and-bright lighting?

The cameraperson might be new to the game, not varying the shoot at all. Could this be from Don Letts' footage? Is it a rip from "From Westway to the World"? Is this one of the art school gigs? The original site says it's a gig in Munich.

I remember as a thirteen-year-old thinking those spring-coiled patch cords were the shiznit. Later in life I actually used one for a while, and they suck: they tangle in epic manner, and when they age, the cables snap in the coil. Avoid them.

I love the film scratches. What gear was this shot with? That really seems to be the live audio, and with that static camera work I'd guess this is an 8mm shoot; in which case the footage may have been shot silent. Whatever, it would be interesting to get the backstory.

Huygens, ten miles high and falling fast, snaps the farthest shore.

Given the chance
I'll die like a baby
On some faraway beach
When the season's over

Unlikely I'll be remembered
As the tide brushes sand in my eyes
I'll drift away

Cast up on a plateau
With only one memory
A silver sail on a boat
Oh lie low lie low, li-li-li-li li-li-lo

-- Brian Eno, 1974

LiveJournal.com, for much of today: "Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We're currently dealing with bringing our 100 servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later."

I recall looking at some hosting facilty just when they opened, looking for facilities for our tiny set of boxes. I think we may have gone with them too. I had the stupid role in the movie where the other people get to fiddle with the gear and I answered the cell phone over and over again, hand holding increasingly far-removed-from me upper-ups.

The best one was when we sweet-talked our way past the night-time security guy even though we didn't have any good credentials or the passphrase, and then talked our way into the on-site tech-staff's glass room to get a clean test connection to our boxen from outside our class C.

It sounds like a bad movie from the eighties, huh? Apparently we got everyone in trouble there because of this but I went to bat for them, since I could have yanked our account there.

Other things I remember from the hosting center: the deep chill of the rooms, cooled to keep the hardware from overheating. The black-enameled hard wire mesh that enclosed many other clients' systems, keeping information caged, as it were. The dizzy-headed 3am feeling that somehow we'd become ensnared in some sort of hacker wet dream or pulp novel. Arriving onsite as the sun set and leaving as dawn pinked the sky. The 2001-like all-over flourescent brightness of the space. The plastic-and-lacquer gas-off smell of new computers and freshly installed network paneling.

Battle Lesssons, by Dan Baum, in the January 5 issue of the New Yorker.

In March of 2000, with the help of a Web-savvy West Point classmate and their own savings, they put up a site on the civilian Internet called Companycommand.com. It didn't occur to them to ask the Army for permission or support. Companycommand was an affront to protocol. The Army way was to monitor and vet every posting to prevent secrets from being revealed, but Allen and Burgess figured that captains were smart enough to police themselves and not compromise security. Soon after the site went up, a lieutenant colonel phoned one of the Web site's operators and advised them to get a lawyer, because he didn't want to see "good officers crash and burn." A year later, Allen and Burgess started a second Web site, for lieutenants, Platoonleader.org.

Fascinating. It would be interesting to look at the sites to see how they are similar to and different from less life-and-death online communities.

This week's issue also includes a pretty wonderful profile of Miyazaki by Margaret Talbot, in which we learn that the great man is quite the pessimist. Talbot seems surprised by this, as Miyazaki's films are notable in their lack of mean-spiritedness. This surprises me, as in my experience, it is optimists that create many of life's small cruelties.

Apple's Tipping Point: Macs for the Masses is a beautiful visual analysis of Apple's business strategy by Paul Nixon. Persuasive and elegant, it appears to summarize Apple's business strategy, and if it's accurate, presents a strong case for Steve Jobs and company as businesspeople of the decade. Remarkable.

The Mac mini is making a big noise, predictably enough. Rob from Macosxhints had the good sense to shoot a pic with his mitt on the coffee-warmer for scale. Others immediately saw the unit as the long-rumored Mac media center; of course, one question in that incarnation is "How do you get NTSC out to the tube?"

Apple's thoughtfully provided a DVI-to-Video adapter as an option, although the store's product page lacks the image seen on the Mini's product page. Scroll down to near the bottom; it's on the lower right, and, confusingly, it links to a page touting the Mini's graphics which also lacks an image of the dongle. Neither page links to the dongle's product page.

On the Mac Addict forums, the debate centers, as it has elsewhere, on the extortionate pricing Apple reports for a loaded Mini with a full gigabyte of RAM. Adding the memory to the 80gb model results in a price of $1,024, an astonishing jump of over $400 for RAM which can currently be found independently for less than half that cost.

(Updated) Apple is People think Apple is deploying the dreaded "no user-serviceable parts" clause here to milk folks, which is too bad. The purchase documents clearly indicate that installing the RAM yourself voids the warranty, something which is certainly sufficient to keep most folks grubby paws right outen thar.

Eric Sinclair, in the comments, notes that Macintouch remarks that the RAM is user upgradeable, which is in line with previous Apple product and policy. The technical specs are pretty clear, though: "Memory upgrade must be performed by an Apple Authorized Service provider." For comparison, here is the tech spec page for a G5 tower. Alas, there is certainly no Apple-certified tech restriction on that page, and I'm forced to conclude that the squawking is justified.

Happily, someone at the MacAddict forum dug up a nekkid pitcher of the Mini (from here):

If this image, posted without original attribution, is accurate, I'd have to say that swapping the RAM outgha be a piece of cake. The single stick is the green object on the left face of the item in the photo. Man, I really can't wait to see the takeaparts of this thing.

Imperial Airways: Cairo - Baghdad - Karachi. [via things.]

According to current coverage of today's Stevenote, iPhoto has added movie support. About freakin' time!

iChat will have the expected conferencing features: up 10 audio participants and up to 4 video participants. Given how often my family uses iChat video, this is likely to sell some more iSights.

I'll probably update this after getting some work done.

"Mac Mini" rumors confirmed (quoting from MDN as they are clearly experiencing server issues):

- "Mac mini" height is about half the size of an iPod mini. Ships January 22 in a smaller box than the regular iPod box.

- "Mac mini" better model: UIS$599 with 1.42GHz G4, 80GB drive, combo drive...

- "Mac mini"base model: 1.25GHz G4, 256MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive.

- "Mac mini" will retail for US$499. Jobs, "Priced so that people wanting to Switch have no more excuses."

- "Mac mini" comes without a keyboard or mouse and uses any industry standard display. FireWire, Ethernet, Modem, and USB. Comes with Panther and iLife '05.

- The "Mac mini" fits in the palm of your hand and looks like a 3" tall CD drive. A short cube featuring DVI and VGA connections.

- The Headless Mac is now known as the "Mac mini."

- "Mac mini" announced. (1:33 PM EST)

It's the return of the cube! That sounds great! Can you say "media server / internet services box"?

MacDailyNews says this URL will be a live-update blog link to the Stevenote Tuesday morning. Apple's gone to crazy lengths to embargo coverage, though, so I half-expect them to turn off wireless in the auditorium. This year's rumors are the best of any in recent memory, so who knows. I think it would be hilarious if there is no 'headless Mac,' even though I think I buy the concept.

So let me be the first to boldly predict that El Steverino will unveil a mac-branded inflatable hydrogen-fuel cell-powered car.

The Harry Stephen Keeler Story. Improbable plots from a pulpist. [via MoFi.]

Danelope pointed out that mathowie has linked to Tom Harpel's for-sale loft. Hey Matt, Tom's place is exactly two blocks from the Elysian!

For a recent project, I was surprised to note a near total-dearth of statistical charts for two areas of internet usage which one would expect to see widely available.

The most surprising omission is the limited reporting available on peer-to-peer network traffic. For something which is widely cited as being the largest single component of internet traffic in terms of bandwidth, there is surprisingly little easily-available consumer-friendly data available online.

BigChampagne currently offers a measly single chart tracking music available for download. The company has come under some fairly stringent criticism for methodology and other things, though.

It appears that Redshift Research once provided something similar, but ceased doing so in summer 2004.

The other area of data which is missing is time-period keyed comparative information concerning blogosphere topics. Technorati and others do a good job tracking real-time stories and links, and provide some gross over-time data.

Presumably, both Daypop and Technorati have plenty of historical data. The specific information I want to see is similar to the information which Google presents every month and end-of-year, but with more contextual data, like film and music metric charts, noting a story's longevity and motion in-chart.

Ideally, I'd like to see these charts available like this weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. If traffic reporting in addition to link reporting could be factored in, that would be even better. Add bandwidth consumption, and I'd say that's a pretty complete package.

Of course, the same is true for the P2P stats.

C. Douglas Hall was on hand for this summer's "Starship Exeter" shoot, and provides a visual record of the bridge being constructed.

Scale corrected satellite tsunami before and after photos. Many of you will have seen these, but there are some that were new to me, and it's quite amazing.

My candle gutters, for I have been overly employed this week.

I have also been reading and very much enjoying Gene Wolfe's "The Wizard," but I'm mighty sad that I can't seem to lay hands on the prequel, "The Knight," which I am certain I purchased and devoured 'long about springtime.

Did I perchance loan it to a loyal reader?

I have written about my love for Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry here, quite some time ago.

Among other things, I wrote

My personal favorite was the little room off one of the stairs into which one stumbled upon discovering the floor had been faceted in many crazy angled slabs. These slabs simulated random motion, as though the room were being turned and rocked this way and that - architectural cubism!

The impetus for such a wonder of danger and insanity? Why, look out the window! there's the GIANT HEAD OF PAUL BUNYAN, his 24" eye-globes rumbling and clacking llleft, then rrright, as he surveys the interior of the little cabin he holds aloft and its' ever changing cast.

The sole link, to an undersized scan of a pencil drawing of the interior of the room, has succumbed to linkrot.

Therefore, great was my joy when a fellow Vulgar Boatmen enthusiast, unknown to me by sight, emailed a terse note informing me of our shared appreciation for not only the music of the VB but also for the past wonders of the Bunyan room.

Attached to the note was this handsome souvenir image, clearly demonstrating why it is that terror and giants have always been synonymous.

My correspondent further noted that he and a family member searched the museum for the missing woodsman, concluding, "we finally found Paul's big mute face hung on a wall in the basement,
opposite a snack bar."

Clearly, the next time I am in town, another expedition must be arranged.

On my way home from work today, I ran into fellow KG-appreciator Murph, who was hurrying home to tend to his ailing spouse. We discussed Ken's recently-revealed secret career. It was great to see him, and hopefully I'll run into him again at the bus stop.

Hey look! It's blurry pictures (and a very dark 11mb video) from last night's MetaFilter Meetup.

In attendance: kindall, agropyron, cirocco, astruc, alexgb, caitlinb, mwhybark, non-MeFite Adam, black8, Danelope, Keyser Soze aka Frito, fatllama.

Here are the photos. (Alas, I found that ecto won't play nice with MT3.x + Blacklist while attempting to upload these pix here. Bye, ecto! I'll miss you! Maybe I'll miss you enough to try to troubleshoot, but not tonight!)

As part of my techno-wrangle yesterday I beat on my router for a portion of the afternoon. It appears that the dropped-connections issue I was experiencing was indeed the result of a badly-configured router. Thanks so much to the inattentive support staff at my ISP!

To be fair, I'm their client because of legacy ISP purchases and they are really not set up to support residential DSL. Still the problem of the misconfigured router came about because they'd failed to rebuild the network interface once Qwest had reset their fiddly bits. Amusingly, Qwest's forwarded support number for my account goes to the old ISP's former CTO's voicemail box.

At any rate it's a relief to have stable connections again.

I took the time to reconfigure my DSL router from scratch today, as we've been slowly losing our minds due to connection instability since the router was set up. So far, it appears to be performing much more successfully than it had been. It's set to bridge mode, which means that its' extended features are disabled. That's kind of a drag, as it has inbuilt DHCP and wireless; but we already have both of those via four-year-old Airports. The primary thing I wish I could do is use the wireless to get better coverage - this summer, for example, a third access point could be located by the back window to get solid coverage on the deck.

Ah well, neighbors' wireless has worked fine for the past couple years - I bet this will still be the case this summer.

I was also able to fine-tune some aspects of MT3 and Blacklist 2.x, and see some slight performance benefits.

Not yet tackled are

• use-testing the ported blogs for functionality and comments (I dropped a bunch of test blogs and inactive sites)
  
• adding the MT3x templates for the new UI bits
  
• merging the MT3x style sheets with the active stylesheets
  
• troubleshooting the apparent inability of MT + Blacklist to recognize and remember a moderator-authorized commenter
  
• troubleshooting SmartyPants and Markdown
  

(UPDATE: Oh, look, an aborted attempt to implement the dynamic features of MT3x has replaced all my files with new files named "foo.html.static," breaking searches and old links! HOORAY!)

(UPDATE 2: As it turns out, the rebuild that produced the "*.static" pages also helped identify a troublesome post in which non-ASCII dragons lurked, and have been blowing up Perl good for over 2 years now. So all's well that ends well.)

It's interesting that three friends - Jerry, Dan, and Adam - all mentioned either their implementation of hand-rolled commenting systems or their use and customization of a bolt-on element to improve comment spam resistance.

Like my desired "Simple Email" provider, I think there's a product opportunity here.

Returning to consider the saga of bellerophon, my internet services box, there's a problem in the Perl install that makes me think I should probably rebuild that - I first noticed it last year when Markdown started blowing up on certain blank replacement strings. That and the generally sloooooow performance of certain long-list-item activities (adding an album to Gallery 2.x, waiting for Blacklist to parse all n-thousand entries) on the server are arguments for a server rebuild and migration. I do have a spare box to move everything over to, which would make the rebuild invisible. What I do not have is endless time and patience.

I have a backup system implementation to develop first, though. I'm being herded in the direction of hard-drive-based backups, which just makes me grit my teeth and shake a little bit. I have come to the point where I actively loathe the idea of yet another piece of computer gear.

Doctor Steel, a mad toymaker. Flash-based, but very worth your time. Fantastic!

I, for one, welcome our mad toymaker overlord.

[via the Cartoonist.]