Still going after all these years.
We spent some time yesterday in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, which were more impressive than I would have believed. With a dedicated ground cover garden, a low-water-use garden, and a huge array of perennial flowers and trees, the gardens were gorgeous. I got a few pictures with my phonecam. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of Ciscoe, who was there prepping for a show and looking over the garden. Actually, it was probably just as well.
In a neat reversal of the government’s proposed Total Information Awareness scheme, MIT’s Media Lab has launched Open Government Information Awareness. As the FAQ notes:
The premise of GIA is that individual citizens have the right to know details about government, while government has the power to know details about citizens. Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form a sort of intelligence agency; gathering, sorting, and acting on information they gather about the government. Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government “by the people, and for the people.”
Anyone can submit information, and the system is designed to allow citizens to drill down into their specific areas of interest about government and see everything that’s going on about that particular level of government. Or at least it appears to be designed that way; the server has fallen over under heavy load right now. I look forward to seeing how it shapes up.
Thomas Jefferson is on my mind, as he is every July 4th (I wouldn’t be a good Wahoo otherwise, I suppose). I wonder whether today, looking out at the world, and at his own United States, he would still feel the same as he did in 1821, when he penned the following to John Adams:
The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
And there’s another optimistic note that seems to speak directly to today’s nation:
The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.
Given what they say about those who fail to learn from history, it should come as no surprise that Lisa and I decided to tackle boating on Lake Union again, almost two years after the last time we tried it. This time, things were a bit different. For one thing, we rented a kayak, not a canoe, so we were both facing the same direction when we paddled. This helped our overall direction immensely.
Also, this was a sea kayak, which apparently comes standard with a rudder. Which seems almost like cheating, really. (This time, instead of Moss Bay, we rented from Northwest Outdoor Center. I had meant to rent from Moss Bay, but couldn’t remember the name. You’d think I’d remember to check my own weblog, wouldn’t you? Not today, apparently.) Naturally, the foot controls for the rudder were confusing enough that we ended up running into a buoy shortly after leaving the slip. Fortunately we didn’t get pulled over by the police, who were keeping all boats away from the area beyond the buoys, in the center of which sat the fireworks barge for tomorrow night’s extravaganza.
So we paddled down around the south end of the cordoned off area, then came around to the north and east (past Ivar’s, which smelled like smoking alder planks), and around south—not into Lake Washington, but down along the houseboats in Portage Bay. Then back.
As before, my right arm experienced some difficulties paddling after a while. At a few points my fingers went numb and fell asleep. I’m probably looking at some potential RSI there, I’m afraid. The good news is that we got the kayak back after two hours, I went home and slept for an hour, and all appears to be OK.
There’s a new update for the Mothman Chronicles, the continuing saga of Jim Heaney’s through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. In today’s update, posted from Duncannon, PA, Jim has passed the halfway point at Harper’s Ferry and consumed a half gallon of some unspeakably hideous ice cream. Will this affect his trail stamina? Stay tuned…
When I was little and in the back of my parents’ station wagon, summertime was a happier time. Going back a long way, being allowed to run around in an overgrown field in the North Carolina mountains was almost worth having to have the tick removed afterwards. In the nearer past (say when I was 10 or so), summer was when the library opened its doors all the way and I started falling into the spaces inside. For a long time, summer days were lawn mowing in the morning, slow cooling off in the afternoon with a book and a glass of mint tea.
I thought about that this morning on the way in, reflecting on my more recent summers. This summer is all about work and the garden. Last summer I was free from my MBA program, trying to figure out which way was up, and about to start work. Two summers ago I was waxing philosophical about a lot of things and slowly learning to open my mind to my own feelings and emotions.
I think my task this summer is to recapture that earlier innocent state in which I could happily enjoy the heat and disappear into another world, while still engaging with my friends and family. One good thing that’s happened over the last 20 years is that I’ve started learning to be happier outside the confines of my own head. I like that trend. The trick will be in continuing it.
(Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I have so many librarians blogrolled. I don’t need any convincing that I should fall to my knees and worship a librarian. Librarians got me through a lot of long hot summers!)
Jake at 8-Bit Joystick writes about used CDs, and the fact that you can buy them—quite legally—without the RIAA ever seeing a red cent. Right on.
I used to buy quite a few CDs used from Plan 9 in Charlottesville, but have had only spotty luck finding a good place to shop since then—with one notable exception, a store in Vienna, VA, whose name I can’t remember but which provided me with a copy of the CD single of Lamb’s “Gorécki.” I still think my favorite used cd story, though, is the time that I sold a stack of sad selections at the end of a semester to Plan 9—for gas money so I could go home to see my parents. Yes, this was well before business school, but even then I could see the irony of my having invested in an asset that depreciated by 66%.
I finished HPATOOTP last night, having started it when Lisa finished it on Saturday. It’s quite a read: no pretending it’s a children’s book any more, not with the themes of responsibility, death, rage and grief that are wound through the narrative.
Perspective on recent “crises” in my life is around me everywhere I look. Dave writes that Dave Jacobs needs a kidney to survive, suffering from the same degenerative kidney disease that killed his brother two years ago. Katherine Hepburn, the class act of class acts, is gone. So is Robert McCloskey of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal. And so is Esta’s friend’s father, killed in a motorcycle accident by an asinine SUV.
For all that, it’s a time of new starts for me. My company’s fiscal year ended yesterday, our group just re-orged, and I have the opportunity to use some of my organizational and strategic skills to help shape our new direction. I like a challenge the first day of a new month; it feels like opportunity.
Part 1: Greg writes an article that compares the Howard Dean candidacy and its fundraising prowess (and grab of a plurality, though not a majority, of the MoveOn primary) to a Smart Mob a la Howard Rheingold’s seminal work. The next day, he points to an article (via Doc Searls) that points out that it took the Dean campaign 84 days to raise $3.2 million, and since then it’s almost doubled the amount, with more than $2 million coming in over the Internet. And counting. People putting their money where their mouths are?
Part 2: Larry Lessig and the folks at eldred.cc have been fighting to get a bill introduced into Congress that would tip some of the balance of the copyrighted works back into the public domain—by making owners of works that have been in copyright for more than fifty and less than 75 years pay a $1 renewal fee each year. If the fee is not paid, the copyright lapses and the work falls into the public domain. This would help to unlock works that have no significant commercial potential, but cultural significance into the public domain.
On June 24 Lessig posted that he had found sponsors for this, the Public Domain Enhancement Act, in the form of Lofgren and Doolittle, Democrat and Republican (respectively) Representatives from California. The bill has since been introduced. We can only hope…
So last night Lisa and I went to see Lou Reed at the Moore Theatre. Amazing theater, almost 100 years old and (except for some peeling paint, and chairs that remind me of middle school) a perfect performance space.
Lou came out about 7:50 leading his band: Mike Rathke on second guitar, the amazing Fernando Saunders on bass, synth drums, and vocals, Jane Scarpantoni on cello (!), and Anthony on backing and lead vocals. (Much has been made, at least in Lou’s web stuff, about Anthony, Lou’s countertenor discovery, and I have to admit that for much of the show I wasn’t impressed. Of course, that could have been because he was blocked by the tower speaker on our side, and I couldn’t see him.
The opening of the show: Lou played three chords: E A G. The crowd went nuts. He paused, then repeated the progression, then stopped. “You know how hard it is to keep playing the same three chords all these years? Well, the secret is it’s actually four chords…” and he played it again: E A G Bm A. Then he launched into “Sweet Jane.” He had to stop again in a second though, and said, “Could you please not take flash pictures? Now I can’t see.” A few more chords and—“Look, I’m not kidding. I tried the nice way, don’t make me try the hard way. If I can’t see, I can’t read the Teleprompter!” Fortunately there were no further interruptions.
After that a brilliant turn on “Small Town,” reimagined as a sort of driving funk tune during which Mike Rathke played a synthed up guitar that sounded like a piano, and which Lou stopped towards the end to ask, “So out of curiosity: Seattle? Small town?” Some cheers. “Big town?” More cheers. “I dunno…” (making an equivocal shrug before playing the final notes). Then “Tell It To Your Heart,” with Antony and Fernando taking vocal duties on some of the verses. I don’t remember the rest of the set list order, but he played “Dirty Blvd,” “How Do You Think It Feels?,” “Vanishing Act,” “The Day John Kennedy Died,” “Ecstasy,” “Call on Me,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “Venus in Furs,” featuring an extended cello solo from Scarpantoni during which it sounded, particularly in some overtone passages, as though she was chasing away John Cale’s viola with a handful of rocks.
“All Tomorrow’s Parties” and the set’s penultimate number, “The Raven,” were punctuated by Lou’s tai chi master, Master Ren, performing exercises in the corner of the stage in a shiny red gi, which was a bit distracting. Lou’s take on “The Raven” was pretty straight except for a few four letter words, nothing like what I reported some fans imagined during his last Seattle performance.
And I skipped a tune: “Street Hassle,” which with both Scarpartoni and Fernando playing bowed lines, moved along like a brand new song rather than the dusty 25-year-old junkie street poem that it was. The last part, during which a young Bruce Springsteen mumbles something in a fake Southern accent on the record, was redone with traded shouts of “sha la la la la” over a rising extended vamp.
And who would have figured two songs from Berlin? “Men of Good Fortune” early in the set, “The Bed” later, which was bloodchillingly stark.
Missteps were few: I thought Fernando’s song “Reviens Chérie” was okay but out of place, and some of Antony’s vocal turns were forced.
And then “Set the Twilight Reeling,” which comes across on record as a quiet apologia for being an aging rock and roller that tries to become a loud roar, but here struggled to get out of gear, especially during Antony’s verses. (It’s difficult to hear a countertenor warble the line “As the drums beats he finds himself growing hard” without giggling.) But the crescendo at the end, egged on by Jane’s cello, driven higher by both guitars playing like they were possessed, was the key—I suddenly understood everything. Now I’ve forgotten it, of course, but for a second the whole year made sense.
We had to go at this point, the end of the set, since Lisa had a 5 am call this morning. Which means I probably missed the only chance I’ll ever have to see Lou play “Heroin” live. But since I’m grateful Lisa went at all, I can’t complain too much.
I won’t be around tonight; I’ll be hanging with Lou Reed. Blog amongst yourselves.
Later… Ooops. I’ll be waiting for the Man another day; forgot the concert was Sunday, not Saturday.
As I promised a few weeks ago, I’ve spent a little more time working on AmazonHandler. The biggest problems people have had with it are that
Number one is fairly trivial: you can either put the supporting script, SOAPXMLRPCHandler.scpt, in the standard location, which is in the computer’s /Library/Scripts directory—the one for all users, not your local version, though it should probably check both—or you can edit the InitSOAP subroutine to tell it to look for the script elsewhere.
Number two is harder, and I spent some time working through it last night. The trick is in knowing that various parts of the return have to be explicitly transformed either to lists or records before their parameters can be read. Once you do that, it’s fairly simple to parse the output.
I’ve hacked a quick demo script that is actually somewhat useful. Until I work out all the bugs, it will be available as a separate download; after that, I’ll probably bundle it with AmazonHandler. The script, Look Up Current Track in Amazon, talks to iTunes to get information about the currently playing track, then looks up the track’s album (or artist, if no album title is available) at Amazon, tells you what Amazon’s current price is, and offers you the option to go to Amazon’s page for the product should you wish to consider the option of purchasing it. So (buzzword version) this script integrates iTunes and Amazon using SOAP-based web services.
The script is available for download on my Scripts page.
As everyone has noticed, the national telemarketing “do not call” registry became open yesterday at donotcall.org. This MSNBC article says that the website stayed up, but the problem is mail. Every single phone number registered requires a confirmation email to be sent. Let’s see, 370,000 customers by noon, so figure about a million customers, each generating between one and three pieces of mail. Yeah, that would look like spam if I were operating a mail server.
So I’m not surprised that, although I registered our phones yesterday, I still don’t have my confirmation emails. I just I hope I get them within the 72-hour window.
More reaction to the dialog about Echo yesterday:
Phil (over at Blogcount) has come up with a preliminary estimate of the size of the blogosphere using published counts and estimates of Blogger, LiveJournal, and DiaryLand usage. With a fudge factor, he estimates the size at between 2.4 and 2.9 million.
In this game everything is guesses and approximations, since (a) not everyone is on a centralized site, and (b) not everyone uses centralized tools like Weblogs.com. But I think the next logical step is to benchmark this number using a different technique, like the number of sites registered in Technorati, Blogdex, or even Blogshares, or a longitudinal study of Weblogs.com that looks for repeat pings and calculates a unique number of pingers.