Reasons it’s good to be a co-founder of Apple

Number one: free 65-watt power adapters. I think I speak for PowerBook owners everywhere when I say it’s too bad that this courtesy doesn’t extend to all PowerBook G3 and G4 owners; certainly my experience with the dreaded M7332 adapter suggests that many of us might have benefited, not just the Mighty Woz.

I don’t begrudge him his power adapters, though. Since every home computer that I’ve ever owned (//c, SE/30, 7200/90, Pismo, TiBook, MacBook Pro) and a few my friends had on which I learned computers (][e (and IIe platinum!), //gs, PowerBook 170) has benefited from his work (and in the case of my friend’s //gs, actually been signed by him!), he probably deserves free Apple hardware for life.

Baton Rouge, it’s Tuesday morning

No big travel events yesterday, fortunately. We flew to Baltimore, had a meeting in the Maryland suburbs, flew on to Memphis, caught a connection into Baton Rouge. All that took us until almost 9 am Central time. It’s amazing how what sounds like a relatively small amount of travel can really wear you down.

We did, however, arrive in time to check out Juban’s. Getting there was probably the most exciting travel of the day. I browsed to my blog on my phone to verify the name of the restaurant, then Googled it and found the phone number. As we were hopping on I-110, I called Juban’s, verified they were still open, and got directions. All was well and my colleagues were impressed—until we realized that I hadn’t got directions on which way to take I-10 when I-110 ended and we were winging our way across the Mississippi. We got turned around, found the restaurant (with some hesitation, as we drove down to the end of the strip mall that it sat in, and started to wonder if we had made a good choice), and stayed to close it down. I was pretty impressed—I had the Hallelujah Crab, which was pretty outstanding, and the smoked chicken, duck, and andouille gumbo, which was sublime.

Today: a few hours of work in the lobby of the hotel, an appointment downtown… then back on the plane to Austin.

Goin’ to Louisiana

I’ve got a business trip coming up this week, one of those three states in three days things. One of the days (and nights) will be spent in Baton Rouge, which I’m pretty excited about—both because I’ve never actually been to the Red Stick (though I did spend a few memorable days in New Orleans 14 years ago) and because I’m looking forward to contributing to the Louisiana economy while we’re there. I mean, with restaurants like Juban’s and Mike Anderson’s, I expect to be contributing rather a lot…

It’s a good thing that the next night is in San Antonio (where I haven’t been since the late ’90s) Austin or I would probably have a hard time tearing myself away.

Update: San Antonio? God only knows how that got stuck in my head but I’ve been saying it all day. Good thing I’m not flying the plane.

Friday Random 10: Why Can’t I Be Good edition

I’ll be out of town for the first three days of next week, and the work is piling up against that hulking wall in my schedule like sand on a seawall. Funny how most Fridays feel like that these days. The most frustrating thing about it is the feeling, in spite of GTD, that things are falling through the cracks, and that “to dos” are coming in faster than I can write them down—much less work the pile down.

Today’s Random 10:

  1. Violent Femmes, “Add It Up” (Add It Up (1981-1993))
  2. Lou Reed, “Why Can’t I Be Good” (Faraway So Close!)
  3. Sufjan Stevens, “Black Hawk War, or How To Demolish An Entire Civilization” (Illinoise)
  4. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “I Wish I Was a Mole In The Ground” (Anthology of American Folk Music)
  5. Uncle Tupelo, “New Madrid” (Anodyne)
  6. Vladimir Ashkenazy, “La Mer, I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer” (Debussy: La Mer, Nocturnes)
  7. Gemma Hayes, “4:35 a.m.” (4:35 a.m. EP)
  8. Jody Reynolds, “Endless Sleep” (the Peel Box)
  9. Suzanne Vega, “World Before Columbus” (Nine Objects of Desire)
  10. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Is This Love?” (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)

A long overdue hack: the CalTech cannon goes to MIT

brass rat on caltech cannon

Ever feel nostalgic for the good old days of MIT hacks, where devoted, slightly nutty students pulled off feats of engineering brilliance while evading the watchful eye of campus security? Well, mourn no more, Bunky, cause the MIT hackers are back with a vengeance. I think moving a Spanish-American War era cannon across the country through an inspired bit of social engineering qualifies as pretty impressive on its own, but adding the machined aluminum, gold plated Brass Rat (Brass Rat defined) to the cannon was absolutely inspired. Nice plaque too.

And as always the Slashdot commentary is helpful, for instance the note that the cannon belongs to a residential house at Caltech, not the university, and that “No one outside of Fleming House gives a rats ass about that cannon. (Actually, no one outside of Fleming House gives a rats ass about Fleming House),” is a masterpiece of humor, intracampus rivalry, and sour grapes all wrapped up in a brief comment.

And knowing that the cannon was previously stolen by CalTech neighbor Harvey Mudd, and that this theft occured on the 20th anniversary, and that the social engineering included a phony moving company called Howe & Ser (Howe Et Ser) Moving Company? Priceless.

Neko Case at the Roxy, April 5, 2006

What a great show. I’ve been on a Neko contact high all morning. It’s such a different experience to go to a small venue to see an artist who is genuine and unpretentious—plus has one of the biggest voices around.

Neko’s setlist was heavy on recent songs up front, with quite a few from her new album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and was rounded out by a few tracks from Blacklisted (including a superb “Deep Red Bells” and a haunting “I’ll Be Around”) and a handful of well chosen covers, including her version of “Wayfaring Stranger” (which appears on her live recording The Tigers Have Spoken) and a Buffy Ste. Marie cover whose title I didn’t quite catch. In between songs she and the band traded quips about life on the road (Neko: “I caught a whiff of myself just there and missed a chord. I don’t think I’ve ever smelled as bad in my whole life! I smell like … a salmon!”) and generally yucked it up onstage.

Points of improvement? Well, her band was competent and genuinely sparked in a few places, such as the encore numbers, but they’re no Calexico (with whose members Neko has cut the last few albums). An exception was the divine Kelly Hogan, a formidable singer in her own right, who backed up Neko on vocals. Another issue with the earlier part of the set was the nature of the songs on the new album. On record they feel like a driving collection of compressed vignettes that hang together wonderfully. On stage the songs felt short and detached from each other. The band was tight, maybe too tight—a little more room to play around with the structure of the songs and grow them a little would probably be a good thing.

But these are minor quibbles in what was ultimately a great evening. The opening act, Martha Wainright, was good too—quite funny, very salty, and another wonderful voice. Vocally she reminded me a little of Hope Sandoval, only with a broader range of high notes and with better pitch.

And that Neko contact high? I got to meet her after the show. As she signed my copy of her available-only-at-gigs Canadian Amp EP, I told her how much “Deep Red Bells” and Blacklisted in general had meant to me, and walked away happy as … a salmon, I suppose. She’s smaller in person than she looks on stage, but friendly and genuine even after playing a two hour set… and teching her own guitars on stage prior to the start of the show.

Other crap: snow snow snow, Neko, and thanks Tony

I was going to do a follow up to my 2003 post, “I’m a reasonable man, MacArthur, so I know this isn’t snow,” but was beaten to it by another Boston blogger. It’s been snowing here for about six hours already and the stuff was coming down in big postage-stamp-sized flakes at lunchtime. Guess it’s my fault: I put the snowblower away on Sunday.

Oh, and thanks to Tony Pierce for the link over on the BusBlog (check the left column, where I’m one of “tony’s specials” today).

Finally, I hope the snow lets up in time for the Neko Case show tonight. I’m not wearing boots to that show.

Anchors aweigh: a Wahoo first

It was announced today that Katie Couric would become the first Wahoo, and the first Lawnie, to anchor a major network evening newscast, moving to become the anchor on CBS Nightly News after 15 years on the Today show. Ms. Couric (College of Arts and Sciences ‘79) would also be the first woman (and the first Yorktown High School cheerleader and TriDelt) to be the solo anchor of a major network evening newscast.

All Virginia-centric spin aside, congrats to Katie, who, if she wasn’t already a Seven, must certainly now be on the list for induction.

(Aside to Aven Tsai, Paul Stancil, Jim Heaney, Scott Norris, and Tyler Magill: if one of you is reading this and have that photo from Monticello with Ms. Couric in the VMHLB cap in 1993, now would be a good time to scan it and send me a copy.)

Hell freezes over, again: Windows on Macs, with Apple’s help

NY Times: Apple Allows Windows On Its Machines. Apparently Apple pays attention to its user community. Following the hack contest to get Windows running on the new Intel Macs that ended with a $13,000 prize and a successful hack, Apple has announced beta availability of Boot Camp, a free download that enables installing Windows XP on Mac OS X and switch-booting.

Looking at the Boot Camp page, it’s a little bit fiddlier than the average grandmother would want to mess with, but still really straightforward for a utility of this kind. The utility helps you to partition the hard disk (which is required for this kind of switch boot) and burns a CD with Windows drivers for the appropriate Mac hardware. Interesting note, though, that the Windows XP install might not find the right partition and could accidentally delete your Mac partition… After that, the switch-boot mechanism appears to be exactly the same one that enabled booting into OS X or OS 9 back in the early days of Mac OS X Public Beta and 10.0: hold down the option key at start time and choose the appropriate partition.

And I think it will perform the same function for new Mac OS X users: it will provide them with a safety net so they can gradually transition off Windows and onto their new machines. The question is, will it be good for Microsoft, good for Apple, or good for both? For Microsoft, it probably means that Virtual PC will never be ported to Intel Macs—though running multiple virtual machines is a very different usage scenario from switch booting, it may not be a common enough scenario to justify the investment. But Microsoft may get a lift in Windows XP license sales. And Apple should see a few more Windows users buying their hardware, lured by the prospect of totally cool, totally compatible hardware.

Ding, dong, DeLay

New York Times: DeLay Decides to End Career in Congress. That’s one of those “fair and balanced” headlines. The reality is probably closer to the spin in the email today from Howard Dean to the Democratic faithful: “This comes after Friday’s news that a key former DeLay aide pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the ongoing federal investigation of DeLay’s money-for-influence machine.”

Someday someone will write the story of Tom DeLay’s fall from power, from the money laundering indictments and the insane steps that the House Republicans took to keep him in power then (including the passage of the DeLay Rule, which allowed indicted Congressional leaders to continue to hold their posts), and concluding with the Jack Abramoff saga. And they won’t be able to write about it without using the word blog more times than in any political biography ever written—with the possible exception of Trent Lott’s.

My favorite quotation from the article: “‘Our party will continue to succeed, because we are the party of ideas,’ Mr. Bush said” (emphasis added). No comment.

Who wants another DVD format anyway?

That’s the question I asked when the PSP came out, with movie capabilities — provided you bought the movies in the new, incompatible UMD format. A post at the end of last week on Wired indicated one of the business challenges such a format switch provides: getting the retailers to stock the disks. If Wal-Mart doesn’t see the value in carrying your product, it’s a pretty clear indication that you might want to head back to the drawing board.

The comments thread on the story suggests additional problems, such as lack of any UMD burners or home UMD players on the market. The last time we had multiple content formats coexisting on the market, each had a clear place—records lived at home, cassettes went with you in the car or a Walkman—and more importantly you could copy from one to the other. Ever since then, every new technology that was marketed as an “alongside” format, rather than an out-and-out replacement, has gone by the wayside (see: MiniDisc and DAT, which only survive as recording media rather than content sales).

Random 10s: Stuck in JFK Edition

The plus side of being stuck in the JetBlue terminal at JFK on a layover between Buffalo and Boston is free wifi. The downside, of course, is being stuck in JFK.

With that, this week’s random 10:

  1. Pulp, “Like a Friend” (This is Hardcore)
  2. Prince, “Goodbye” (Crystal Ball)
  3. Eva Osinska, “Polonaise brilliante in C major, Op. 3: Introduction (Chopin: Trio, Polonaise)
  4. Dntel, “Why I’m So Unhappy” (Life is Full of Possibilities)
  5. Elliott Smith, “In the Lost and Found (Hanky Bach)” (Figure 8)
  6. M.I.A., “Sunshowers” (Arular)
  7. Beth Orton, “Conceived” (Comfort of Strangers)
  8. Radiohead, “Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky)” (Hail to the Thief)
  9. Drive-By Truckers, “Puttin’ People on the Moon” (The Dirty South)
  10. Sigur Rós, “Takk…” (Takk…)

My Life with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

my life in the bush of ghosts

Sez here that, following on the heels of the Talking Heads reissues (which have been spectacular, btw, at least the first four albums), another early ’80s David Byrne masterpiece is getting loving reissue treatment, with a twist. Byrne’s collaboration with Brian Eno, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was a significant milestone, if not an out and out first, for all sorts of practices that are in wide use today, including sampling, found vocals, and crosses between world music and guitar pop. But the album and the extra tracks (though no “Qu’ran”) are only part of the coolness: As part of the reissue, downloadable multitrack masters will be made available for two of the songs and licensed under Creative Commons for remixing purposes.

The remix site isn’t live yet, so it’s anyone’s guess for what will go up there. I’m hoping for “Help Me Somebody” and “Moonlight in Glory,” though I’d be very very happy to get a chance to remix “The Jezebel Spirit.” Hopefully they’ll have the remix site up before the 11th, when the album officially drops.

Via BoingBoing, who link to a bootleg of the missing track “Qu’ran” (which I downloaded in the good bad old days of Napster and which I would gladly pay money to get in a higher bitrate version).

(Oh: my life with this album? Got it a few months after graduating and got hooked. It made its way onto one of the best mix tapes I ever made, and I was so hooked on it that I was prone to quoting some of the found words while I was out with friends, who then of course looked at me like I was nuts. Which I was. I was in the Bush of Ghosts. I still haven’t found anything quite like it. Moby’s Play, while not without its good points, is a pale shadow by comparison.)

Bad Internet, good Internet

I’m on the road again, and ran into two Internet service concepts for travelers that I haven’t seen before. The first: JetBlue’s free WiFi at JFK. Now this is an airline that knows how to inspire loyalty. I only had 20 minutes before my connection boarded, and normally I would hate to buy WiFi just to start downloading my email and then get on the plane. Being able to do that for free? Brilliant.

Second, the wired high-speed service in my hotel room (a Hyatt). The service is paid (boo!) but they allow you to have a fixed IP address without NAT (yay!), which is pretty cool. The service is by GuestTek, whom I hadn’t heard of before but who certainly have the right message for their institutional customers: “Attract more guests and increase customer loyalty with high-speed Internet access.” Now, if they could just get across the part where it shouldn’t have to cost the customer $9.95 a night…

You’ve got a Funny Face

I wrote a few days ago about why I love our nearby big city—but our own little burb isn’t without its charms. For instance: how many towns can claim an Australian expat as a local celebrity—one who has been living on the streets for a month? The Arlington Advocate published a story today about Funny Face, an Australian “labradoodle” (lab-poodle cross) who escaped her new owners within two hours of arriving in the country and led the entire population of several neighborhoods, including mine, in a chase that took the better part of the month before her eventual capture.

The best part of it, other than the occasional white streak with a red sweater going down the street, was the commentary on the local email list. Quotations posted from the List in the article included a designation of Funny Face as “the canine equivalent of Moby Dick,” as well as daily updates of where the dog was in the neighborhood.

So add this to the values of online community: sometimes your neighbors can help you find lost friends—or at least help you laugh about them.