...more recent posts
Apparently I'm the only person in the world who likes this holiday. Fine. So be it. I know you'll be celebrating anyway, so aren't your protestations a bit hollow? "I just hate staying up late into the night with friends drinking champagne." Huh?
My friends this is it. This is the great major holiday. Unencumbered by religious significance or family duty. The one where alcohol, rightly, takes precedent over the large dead animal featured on the lesser holiday tables, over trinkets of commerce exchanged to and fro. For truely, who needs such foodstuff? Who needs material gifts? I tell you, good friends and fine bubbles are all that are required for life. For the good life. Drink deep. Kiss long. Float up into the heavens. This is what ever happens, yet our earthly bodies do not always get to partake. Don't scorn your chance. That decision might speak of regret.
But what do I know? As Frank says, I'm just a high class wino, and of course the first part is debatable. Or just wrong. Still, we'll be drinking the good stuff. The new restaurant isn't quite ready yet, so we'll be at AKA from 8:30 on. Stop by if you're on the gLower East Side. Everybody is welcome. Leave the scowl at home.
The Guardian is running an article on the seven wonders of the web. They are, according to the article: Google, Yahoo, Project Gutenburg, Multimap, Ebay, Amazon, and Blogger. The only one I hadn't heard of is Multimap. At first glance it looks pretty useful. My own list would probably tend more towards: Google, Google Images, Google Groups, and uh.... Google, Google, Google, and Google. God I hope they are profitable. I think I'd even send them money if they asked. As Jason Kottke famously opined: "Google is the default command-line interface to the Web."
Put my mother on the train back to Boston this morning. We had a full couple of days. Alex took us on a walk through Central Park one day. We ended up at the MET which is very enjoyable with a knowledgable guide. Yesterday we walked down to the site. Absolutely crammed with people at Broadway and Fulton. The debris removal is far enough along now that you really can't see anything. If you're not familiar enough with the area to detect the presence of a giant absence then the view is not too powerful. Looked like they are constructing a wooden ramp to a viewing platform at that location. When completed (next few days is my guess) it will provide a good look at the remaining destruction. Not sure if this is helpful or not, but clearly people want to see. I think it's a bit more than gawking, but surely there is some of that.
We stopped in to see the lobby of my favorite NYC building, the Woolworth building, but were unceremoniously turned away. "It's a federal building now, you'll have to leave immediately." What! When did this happen? The lobby is one of the great architectural gems of the city. Built by Cass Gilbert in 1913, this 792 foot tall building was the tallest in the world from it's completion until 1930 when the Chrysler building went to 1046 feet, followed one year later by the Empire State which held the record all the way until the WTC passed it in 1972. The Empire State is 1250 feet tall and the World Trade had stood at a mighty 1368. That's on the way to being twice as tall as the Woolworth which is now, again, one of the tallest structures in lower Manhattan. In other words, those things were frickin' huge. Out of scale huge. Massive.
Many New Yorkers (and others) never liked the WTC. From an architectural standpoint they were decried as horribly ugly boxes blighting the Manhattan skyline. I always liked them, but maybe because I don't remember a time without them. I mean not counting the past few months of course. I think I've mentioned before that from my desk I have a great view of lower Manhattan. It's certainly less impressive now, but some of the smaller giant buildings - most notably the Woolworth - are now returned to their place at center stage. Hopefully the closing is some sort of over reaction and the Woolworth will be reopened to visitors. At least the lobby. I'll have to look into this claim that it is a federal building. I can't believe that. Perhaps it has been designated as some sort of landmark, and thus under federal protection in this time of crisis, but I don't think the feds bought it. I'll report back if I find out more.
Here's an interesting aerial shot of the top of the Woolworth poking through some low lying clouds.
O.K., I didn't say I wasn't going to post at all. Here's a great Robert Cringely on building his own supercomputer for $6000.
Wrapped up in the end of the year. My mother is visiting for a few days. Making the restaurant rounds. I'm trying to keep up the flow, but the pickings will be slim here until after the first. Hoping to return with strength in 2002.
I took the advice of Craig at booknotes and picked up a copy of the Rhino Records Christmas compilation Blue Yule. Great solution if you have to play some holiday music but can't stand the usual fare.
Saw Moulin Rouge last night on DVD. About a third of the way through I was thinking it was the best movie I had ever seen. Of course I'm prone to hyperbolic thinking in the moment. By two thirds through I thought it was running a little long. By the end I was completely bored. Visually stunning. Very clever use of songs. I just wish there had been a little more to the plot.
OK, now I'm even more happy. My least favorite thing about the OSX desktop is the look of finder (file system) windows. Each one has a toolbar across the top with helpful one click navigational icons that point to often used system resources. That's nice. But the icons are ugly. Or worse. That heart for favorites? Come on. And the faux 'A' with the paintbrush and pencil and ruler for 'Applications' is not much better. These images alone would have kept my graphic design friends from switching. Here's a detail from a screenshot.
But of course it's all customizable. I knew it would be, but I wasn't looking in the right place. And not only is it customizable, but you can get rid of the icons all together in favor of just text. Right on. As they say: a picture is worth a thousand words, unless it's a picture of a word. I almost always find this true. 'Home' is plenty descriptive enough (it will take me to my home directory.) I don't need a little cartoon rendering of a house. Thanks.
Anyway, you can change it all to text through 'Customize toolbar...' in the view menu (while in the finder with a finder window open.) Plus you can select what links you want in the toolbar. Here's the same detail of the toolbar after customization. And here's a blurry shot of the whole desktop. I keep the dock on the right, set to not hide, with no magnification, and no genie effect. I might put it at the bottom if I had a bigger monitor. Magnification looks sort of cool (the icons magnify as you mouse over them) but it makes the trash a moving target. Similarly, the genie effect looks cool, but that wears off pretty quick. It still takes some getting used to if you are an old hand at classic Mac OS, but I think you can change it enough to satisfy almost anyone. The biggest thing missing if you're coming from an older Mac OS is springloaded folders, and they are set to return in 10.2.
An amazing security hole found in Windows XP. Arguably the largest security hole in an OS ever. Merely connecting to the internet puts your entire computer and all its contents at risk. But I no longer see the point in mentioning these stories. It really isn't news. Now if Microsoft ever made a secure product - that might be news. But until that happens I'm not going to mention these reports any more.
OSX 10.1.2 is out. Mozilla 0.9.7 is out.
I've noticed (at least in 10.1.1, we'll see if .2 fixes it) that when I try to connect to other machines on the appletalk LAN in the office, 10.1.1 won't see any machines that are asleep! That's not very convenient. In 9.x (and 8.x) you could hear all the machines wake up automatically when you look for available machines in the chooser. This isn't so bad for me since all the machines are physically close. I can just walk over and wake up the desired machine from its keyboard, but still...