410 Gone

It’s time for me to find a new hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve angle brackets. Or computers. Or electricity.

It’s time for me to find a new hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve angle brackets. Or computers. Or electricity.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I hear those guys at Google are pretty smart, and gots lots of computers. I’m betting they could… establish a common protocol where anything wrapped in a certain tag/id/class (like the whole list of comments) would have no URL’s indexed by the Googlebot. [emphasis mine]

Hmm, that sounds familiar. Why hasn’t some enterprising Googler made use of her/his 20% time to do something like this? The idea’s been around for a while now, not only, and not first, in my post–in fact, the second quote is from GoogleGuy. Seems doubly puzzling given that in a matter of months, working on my own, [one is] able to go from a lunch table conversation to launching a new service.

Strange robot patterns

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Lycos and Google were in cahoots. From my webserver logs yesterday:

209.202.221.139 - - [10/Dec/2004:02:41:35 -0800] "HEAD /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/Perhaps%20Perhaps%20Perhaps.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 0 "-" "Lycos-News-Xml-Fetcher"
66.249.66.100 - - [10/Dec/2004:02:41:38 -0800] "GET /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/Perhaps%20Perhaps%20Perhaps.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 91810 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1"
66.249.66.100 - - [10/Dec/2004:02:41:39 -0800] "GET /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/Perhaps%20Perhaps%20Perhaps.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 491649 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1"
61.11.93.167 - - [10/Dec/2004:02:41:52 -0800] "GET /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/Perhaps%20Perhaps%20Perhaps.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 445050 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)"

And a little later:

209.202.221.139 - - [10/Dec/2004:10:00:15 -0800] "HEAD /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/La%20Chanson%20Triste.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 0 "-" "Lycos-News-Xml-Fetcher"
66.249.66.100 - - [10/Dec/2004:10:00:23 -0800] "GET /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/La%20Chanson%20Triste.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 2568777 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1"
195.68.12.162 - - [10/Dec/2004:10:00:43 -0800] "GET /LenniFan/Discography/Audio/tensongslive/La%20Chanson%20Triste.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 623058 "-" "NSPlayer/8.0.0.4487"

Strangest of all is that every time they appear, those paired hits are followed closely by a single request from an unrelated IP address using a different browser. I’m certain that they’re related, because there are no surrounding page hits and those files aren’t something that one would just stumble upon.

This has been going on for at least a week, with each crawler retrieving only MP3 files. If nothing else, Lycos’s so-called “News XML Fetcher” is way out of its league.

LP

We start out as
Free and colour blind
Then we’re taught to fear
Those who’re not our tribe.

If there’s any justice in the world, Lisa Patterson‘s new CD, Roam, will be huge. Certainly her live show—featuring Alex McMaster on cello, Adam Messinger on bass and piano, and Morgan Doctor on percussion—is something to experience, as I was fortunate to do last night at Call the Office.

Lesser Mac

When I got my Macintosh in July, I half expected that it would become my primary workstation, as I’d seen detailed by a number of (often surprised!) bloggers like Tim Bray and James Duncan Davidson. Despite my initial bad experience, once it resolved itself I was gung-ho to use OS X–I even impressed myself by fixing a problem to which even Google couldn’t find a solution.

The more I used the Mac over the next several days, though, the more I found myself wanting… something. I’m still not sure exactly what it was–I tried all of the built-in applications and liked features of them, particularly Mail’s ability to combine IMAP accounts–but I found myself using the X server and terminal window to connect to my Linux box more and more often. (It didn’t help that Mac’s X server doesn’t antialias fonts.) Finally I gave up: I reconnected the monitor to the Linux host and Switched back.

I still use the Mac from time to time when I want to check websites in Safari and IE5/Mac, but mostly it’s just a CD ripper for my iPod. It’s not even as good at that as my Linux machine: the iPod seems to choke on some iTunes-generated MP3s, even with error correction enabled and having the encoded files “optimized for Velocity Engine”, but I haven’t had a hiccup playing back the files I ripped and encoded in Linux.

One final irony–much to John’s chagrin–is that because I don’t use the Mac as my desktop, my primary means of using its UI is through a virtual display running on X under GNOME. It’s just easier that way.

Prediction

Based on his bets from the last few games and the odd scheduling of this month’s college championship, I predict that on tomorrow’s broadcast of Jeopardy! Ken Jennings will win just under $39,000, giving him a total of $2.5 million in winnings… and then announce his retirement from the show.

Ramadan in Jerusalem

My high-school friend Murray is currently studying in Jerusalem, and occasionally sends back missives about his studies, life in Israel, and so forth. Something about this one said post me, and with his blessing (so to speak) I’m doing so here.

I’m just gotten in from a walk up the street. For the last hour or so, I’ve been hearing the sound of loud chanting, and so I thought I would just wander down the block, to see what was happening. As you can imagine, emotions are running very high here–it is the last night of Ramadan, and everyone here is very conscious of the imminence of an announcement about Arafat’s death–some are predicting a funeral as soon as tomorrow, or perhaps on Friday (in Egypt?), despite all of the assertions that he is stable. Anyhow, as I arrived at the end of the street, I encountered a large parade (several hundred people) marching down the street toward the Damascus Gate, all shouting Arafat’s name, carrying large posters of him, candles and Palestinian flags. They all moved down toward the Damascus Gate, where a large crowd had already gathered, and which seems to be a vigil-demonstration of sorts–candles, chanting, at least some tears that I could see. It’s a very strange scene–all the local shops are open late for the last night of Ramadan, and there are strings of holiday lights strung across the Damascus Gate plaza, with people selling coffee and sweets. There are also lots of posters of Arafat everywhere. As I walked back to the Ecole, I met several dozen people, all moving in the direction of the Damascus Gate. There is a real electricity in the air, as if something big is about to happen very soon–whether that will turn out to be the news of Arafat’s death remains to be seen. There is also a very strong police presence around the Damascus Gate.

It’s getting late, and I’ll be heading off to bed shortly, but there is a definite sense of expectation (of the inevitable?), and I wouldn’t be surprised if tonight (or early tomorrow our time) brings the long-expected news that Arafat has died in Paris. It will be interesting to see what reaction that news will provoke here in East Jerusalem. I continue to pray for peace and a smooth transition to a new leadership–please keep this situation in your prayers as well, and if anything should change, I’ll let you know.

Stay safe, Murray. Our thoughts are with you as always.

It was twenty years ago today…

I recently discovered that cellist extraordinaire and long-time Lenni Jabour cohort Alex McMaster is part of a group called Classic Albums Live. In a nutshell, the group performs live, note-for-note renditions of albums like The Wall, Sticky Fingers, Who’s Next, Born to Run, and Hotel California. This weekend in Windsor they’re doing one I can’t miss again (unbeknownst to me, it premiered in Toronto a few weeks ago): Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Can’t wait to hear A Day in the Life!

With Emm Gryner playing a hometown show in Sarnia on Friday, Alex et al in Windsor on Saturday, and Lenni on Tuesday, this is shaping up to be an amazing week.