Author: Peter

Lemonade

Friday sucked.

Saturday didn’t. Sunday was pretty much the opposite of suckage. And almost all’s well since.

I wrote previously that perspective is a good thing, and Saturday proved it. Where on the day before I was ready to throw in the towel and just-finally-move-to-Albania-and-raise-goats-dammit, I decided Saturday to turn my little crisis into an opportunity. Perhaps I’ll post the core of the resulting manifesto here one of these days.

But the event that really inspired me was this: I met a writer on Sunday. Actually, I’d met her several times previously–as recently as a live-radio performance on Saturday night, in fact–but really had a chance to get to know her a bit better after we saw Bowling for Columbine with a mutual friend. She’s got a great attitude, a wicked sense of humour with timing to match, and she would very likely flay the first person to refer to her as sweet (which they’d do, ’cause she is… kinda). Naturally I lent her my copy of the torso-sized 35-year edition of The Essential Ellison (the paperback, but only because I haven’t finished the hardcover 50-year edition yet), not least of all because she gave an appropriately-horrified reaction to my friend when he dared to suggest that she might dog-ear the pages or break the spine.

Now if I could only find out her last name….

Perspective

In the past week I’ve been yelled at, told that my pet projects aren’t worthwhile, sick for three days, ignored repeatedly, and generally made to feel worthless, and I’ve realized that I sit on my ass eight to twelve hours a day making products that will–with any luck–encourage millions of others to sit on their asses more than they already do.

Tonight I saw Bowling for Columbine and was reminded that there are other people with worse problems.

This doesn’t make me feel better–quite the contrary–but it does add perspective.

Og words sound funny

It amazes me that (according to Google) no one has ever posted an article called The Secret World of Ogg about Xiph’s digital audio format, or The Secret World of Blog about the web-based journals (like this one) that have cropped up everywhere. Then again, Pierre Berton’s book was published ten years before I was born; the kids working on and writing about all this newfangled technology have probably never even heard of it, which is a shame.

Soviet Canuckistan

My brother sent me a note on a recent comment by a (failed) politician from the U.S.A. who calls the country we live in Soviet Canuckistan. I thought it was funny–yet another crackpot trying to get in the paper–but then I looked up the phrase on Google to see the various coverage.

I used to think Pat Buchanan was just a blowhard. I still do, but I’ve recently realized that he’s a dangerous blowhard… and that there are dangerous people in this country who not only don’t have a problem with him, but revere him as the unerring voice of sanity and rightness. I’ve looked at the websites: these people are just this side of skinheads, and will be angered most that this post doesn’t go so far as to actually put them in that category.

I’m not a political person–on the whole it’s a topic that doesn’t interest me in the slightest–but I’m ashamed to share a country, let alone a continent, with people like this.

First They Came

First they came for the Communists.
I was silent.
I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews.
I was silent.
I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists.
I was silent.
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me.

There was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller [adapted from various sources]

Arts blogging

Scott Andrew LePera writes: I was going to write something here about how more indie artists should keep weblogs, but I’ll save that for later. I’ll take that ball. I know of a few musicians (mostly indie, but with a few exceptions) who keep diaries, although only Emm Gryner actually writes in hers regularly. (I can’t speak for the timeliness of Dayna Manning‘s diary, because hers is inside a Flash 6 app that I can’t view.) Lenni Jabour actually keeps two (sort of), and if you’ve read either you’ve gotten a perfect insight into her performances and personality.

For the most part, though, I agree with Scott: more artists–of all kinds–should keep weblogs. My reasons are slightly different, though: they’re completely selfish. These people are interesting, and I want to know more about them; if someone else discovers them because of their online presence, it’s all the better (but it’s really just about me).

Ferinstance. Based on his e-mail, I’d love to read a blog by local playwright and actor Jayson McDonald; his cohort, Jeff Culbert, runs Theatre in London, and I’m sure he’d write a good one himself (and, better yet, be able to host a common blog area on his site). Any or all of the Sirens should, and Pete and Andrea of Double Whammy/Anderson Briefcase, and my sister’s boyfriend Chris (of Lost Relics).

Heck, even people I work with blog, or are thinking about doing so, and I read them too. (We’re not a particularly social company.) I’m probably (probably? ha!) the least interesting of the bunch, what with all of the tech stuff I post here that’s nominally work-related, but at least I make up for it in quantity.

Day of the Dead Frogs

Apparently today is All Saints’ Day. I’ve always known that Hallowe’en was an abbreviation of All Hallows’ Even, but understood the modern version to be essentially All Souls’ Eve, or the night before All Souls’ Day. As it turns out, All Souls’ Day is tomorrow. (My friend Murray Watson, former Reach for the Top teammate and current Catholic priest, would be so disappointed in me.)

How Stuff Works has lots of other interesting facts about this time of the year, although they don’t mention that All Souls’ Day is also known as the Day of the Dead.

An interesting tangent to this is the word calaveras, which refers to poetic living obituaries of jovial or satirical tone… making Calaveras County, California the perfect setting for Mark Twain’s first book.

Leaping off from there (sorry), it’s natural that Angels Camp, CA (aka Frogtown) would host an annual Jumping Frog Jubilee, but why does the local small town of Ailsa Craig, Ontario, have turtle races (and why are there no useful links for the town or the event)?

Clearing some backlog

I’ve had 16 tabs open in Phoenix for several days now, full of good links (mostly discovered through blogs) that I need to get around to reading. Tonight I finally made it to Joe Clark’s In-Valids, and the rest of his NUblog site. (Oddly, his editorial we doesn’t bother me as much as Zeldman’s does. Go figure. [I do like the new design of the Daily Report, and he’s always got interesting links… except, again oddly, recently while he’s been focused on the redesign.]) Still outstanding: the San Francisco Chronicle’s ChronicleWatch and The Pragmatic Programmers’ Software Entropy (both from a single site that I neglected to record), Web Nouveau’s CSS Tableless Sites (linked from various sources previously mentioned that I don’t want to list yet again), an SF Chronicle infographic showing why it’s clearly impossible to hit a baseball and (Michael) Palin’s Travels (both via Rebecca’s Pocket), and a bunch of others.

Also having trouble with AmphetaDesk which may be related to my web proxy–it doesn’t actually retrieve channels that are updated, even when I kill it and restart, so I have to physically delete its cache. After I dissed it (more than I intended, upon re-reading the post) and got a nice response to the post from Morbus Iff, I’m hoping to figure out the problem and contribute it back instead of just complaining. (Had it worked, though, I would have seen Mark’s post that a new version is available or the announcement itself. Ironic, no?)

Finally, yesterday I delivered 50 copies of a CD project that I’ve been working on for a few weeks to Sirens… and promptly discovered that it doesn’t work properly on Windows XP (even though it did on Windows 2000). As a quality assurance person by day, you’d think I might be smart enough to actually test the thing before burning tons of copies and releasing it into the wild. Sigh. Donna discovered the error while showing it to Amber, and we determined a workaround that they can tell people to use, but I’m more than a little embarrassed that it’s there in the first place.