Stopping in the Catonsville Post Office this morning to mail off my LL Bean watch for a new battery, I spied a plaque describing the WPA murals on the walls, painted in 1942 by a man named Avery Johnson. Google is flooded with entries for an NBA star of the same name, but I found another entry for this artist (3rd row from the right, 5th image down) on a Java-tacular site put together by the University of Central Arkansas. More information as I get it.
Spaceman Spiff, Where Are You?!? The Cleveland Scene ran a story about Bill Watterson, the reclusive man behind Calvin & Hobbes. The story has no real new information, mostly speculation, but raises the question Why quit? Having dreamed of being able to create some kind of marketable artistic story for years, I have to say I’d probably try to do what he did and go out on top, instead of beating a dead horse for cash. Why does anyone have to make T-shirts and coffee mugs if they’re already rich? My guess is that his books still do a brisk business on Amazon to this day; how much money is enough? Interestingly enough, Berke Breathed has just started running Opus in the weekend comics pages again, and in a Salon interview he pokes at comics-as-licensing juggernaut, saving most of his jabs for Tom Davis, better known as Mr. Garfield—who hasn’t drawn his own strips for years. For Breathed, though, you get the sense that he has something to say again, instead of trying to cash in one last time—recent world events bring to mind the dark days of the early 80’s, when he was just hitting his stride.
My personal connection to this story: Back in ’87 or so, I attended my cousin’s wedding in Ohio and was fortunate enough to meet a thin, kind man in a yellow coat and glasses, who sat down and talked to me about cartooning. (Unsurprisingly, he looks a lot like the father in the C&H strips.) As it turned out, Bill Watterson lived across the street from my aunt and uncle, and used to hang out with my cousin. That Christmas I was given a signed copy of Calvin And Hobbes, which I still treasure, as I was told that he didn’t like to sign books too much. I have a lot of respect for him, because he had a clear shot at millions in revenue, and took the high road to creative expression instead.
Technology Giving Me The Finger. Last night I formatted the iMac and loaded Panther on the drive; upon reboot the hard drive has dissappeared completely, so I have to crack the case to figure out what’s going on. The PCMCIA adapter card for my CompactFlash media seems to be corrupting data—I lost all the pictures I took of Jen’s family visit last weekend as well as some other shots. I was able to retrieve the other stuff after plugging in the SanDisk USB adapter. And Office X for the Mac refused to run on this machine. It got to the end of the “optimizing font menu performance” thing—yeah, right—and then crashed. When I upgraded the version and plugged in my serial, it refused to accept the old number.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Word still sucks ass.
Class went well again last night, although one guy didn’t show and another is sick; I also bumped into Whitney and she introduced me to Jose Villarrubia, whose name I recognized but couldn’t place until I Googled him. Nice guy.
Dangit. Turns out I missed A Charlie Brown Christmas Again this year. Thanks for promoting that so well, CBS.
Looks like the Ford is beginning to do its happy overheating dance again…I got stopped in traffic a few miles below the 83 onramp, and the temp light began to climb. I noticed some steam or smoke rising from around the edge of the hood, and immediately turned the heater on. I was able to limp into work and put oil and coolant in, but I’m going to be eyeing the gauge from now on, waiting for the inevitable.
My attempt to fix the Apple Pro Mouse worked; following these directions I was able to pull the unit apart and repair the busted connections at the beginning of the cord. The directions were helpful but not without their flaws (the pictures are useful but not clear, and there are a few missing details which would have really helped.) I have to pick up some electrical tape and clean up the connections before I reseal the mouse, and then it’s good as new.
In some fun design news, the 2003 Christmas card is coming out pretty well so far; Jen and I have a pretty humorous idea for it, and I’m trying to build a lot of it this week so we can get it out the door.
sage and his mama (this looks light on a Mac, I swear), 11.14.03
I’m Feeling Much Better Now, Thanks. I woke up at seven this morning (OK, 7:15) and made Jen some breakfast; after she left I put on my kneepads and started staining the floors. By 9:15 I had three rooms done and sealed the upstairs in plastic like a hermetic bubble. I made it into work and told Todd that when I pass out and begin twitching under my desk to inform the paramedics that I’ve been huffing glue all morning.
I’m getting some pretty good visuals here.
Tonight I hope to have a package on the back porch from FedEx which will complete the research phase of my MICA class; I’m reserving any comment on it until I have it in my hands, because of the heightened paranoia security in place around governmental agencies. I’m sure my name is on a list somewhere because of my inquiries into this particular item.
Day two of life with the iPod, and I’m finding out that there’s yet another stumbling block with digital nirvana. I have limited space on the Powerbook here, and it is currently the only machine we own with a FireWire port and OSX. The iMac has 120GB (don’t believe the manufacturer’s ‘claimed’ drive space estimates) but only a USB port. The PC has 120GB but no FireWire port; I could buy an add-on card and then use a service such as ephpod to manage from that machine. But that’s not the answer I was hoping for. Sigh.
Other than that, I’m in love. It’s a beautiful, intuitive machine, and it handles all three of the functions I used to use my Palm for—contacts, calendars, and notes. Plus, it’s a backup hard drive (carrying a current version of my Library folder for a quick restore) and library. Nice job, Apple.
Notes on Popular Culture, The Short List.
- Memo to the Little Debbie People: In the real world, any child caught singing to his or her snack cake during lunch period at an American school would be totally destroyed.
- Memo to the Smart family, RE your daughter’s upcoming TV movie: You are media whores. You look pretty rich to me. You have enough money to own horses and live in Utah. Why do you need to exploit your daughter’s abduction on the Today show and Oprah?
- Memo to the Lynch family RE Your daughter’s upcoming TV movie: Why did you agree to this crap?
- Memo to CBS: You are so spineless, it makes me laugh.
Love, Bill.
Whoops. Turns out our appointment at the Brass Elephant last night was supposed to have been rescheduled, but we didn’t get the word. So they gave us cocktails and some hors d’oeuvres on the house, and we relaxed in their swank upstairs bar. Then we walked next door to Mughal Garden for a tasty Indian dinner.
pumpkin, 10/31
Jen just called to say that the wedding expedition has been postponed another week, on account of cold. Which is probably for the best.
Boo. Yesterday we had the employees’ kids come through the office for candy and sugary goodness; I put my graduation robe on and took pictures of Elvis as he handed out candy. Jen’s in bed sick this morning—she woke up and coughed for about fifteen minutes straight at the top of the stairs before curling up in the bed in front of cable TV this morning. Luckily there’s a Buffy marathon on today, so she has plenty of company (and with five cats, I think she’ll have plenty of company.)
Wish her luck, because (theoretically) she’s still going to be looking at wedding dresses with her Mom tomorrow. As if being sick wasn’t enough. I need to hit the store for some hard liquor tomorrow, because she’s going to need it, sick or not.
Finally. I ordered a 30GB iPod from Small Dog Electronics yesterday, and it should be here by Monday. I’ve been waiting for one of these since they were released, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be getting one. The price couldn’t be beat, and refurbished with a one-year warranty for $20 less than a new 20GB is a deal. So take note, Fambly: there will be iPod accessories on my Christmas list this year! (UPDATE: the links above actually work now, as WebObjects caches the links from the Apple Store for only a short time.)
The other bonus is that we’re most likely not going to be able to afford a DJ or musicians at the wedding (besides the piper) unless we wheel and deal, so my plan was to set up a party playlist on the iPod and wire it into the stereo system on shuffle, so that we can spin our own tunes and not worry about having some dork with the portable microphone play “the chicken dance“.
following a link on the MacNN site, I found iCal-mail, a handy little helper for all us folks who don’t or can’t use Mail.app as our default client. I use Eudora because it supports APOP, and I’ve always wanted to take advantage of the email alarm feature in iCal—now I can. After a quick install, I tested out the alarm feature and it worked flawlessly. Thanks, Mike.
Colors. Check this link out: it’s a color scheme selector. Very slick.
Huh. Elliott Smith is dead. That sucks.
You Can Leave The City, But You Can’t Leave The Jerks. Somebody broke into (well, opened the door I left unlocked—sorry) Jen’s car last night; they went through her change cup and left the door open. That didn’t make me feel good.
Tasty. Last night Jen and I drove into the city for one of our first catering tastings, at Sascha’s. New to this whole thing, we sat down and went over the menu with our helpful planner Tara, sipped cocktails and sampled a plate of hors d’oveurs. We also met Sascha, who popped in the room with one foot in a cast and the other in a leopard-print boot; apparently she had a slight dancing accident with a cute extra on the latest John Waters movie. We left with a menu selection, a contract, and a pleasant buzz. Next up is the Brass Elephant, scheduled for next week.
Sweet.On other fronts, Apple just announced new G4 iBooks. The fastest model (1Ghz) with Airport and a 60GB drive is a little under $1,500. What a steal. Especially considering this 3-year-old G3 Powerbook (400Mhz), in the configuration it’s at right now, is fetching around $7-800 used on eBay.
I’m jamming on some crap that needs to be done by tomorrow at 10, which was assigned to me yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, the iTunes release for Windows is out this afternoon. I was able to snag a copy and I’m currently streaming some Mogwai from my PC to the Mac. (there seems to be some issue with the PC loading the Mac’s library, although I can see the Mac library in the iTunes window.) Right the hell on.
Art History. The Art Speigelman lecture last night was fantastic; after waiting through two boring introductions by the UB folks, he lit up a Camel Light and began talking about everything from comics history to the Jewish experience in America to his personal experience at Groud Zero on September 11 (his daughter’s school was at the base of the WTC). He showed slides from an iBook and stepped through his current work, explaining his reasons for leaving The New Yorker and embarking on a new series of work dealing with his post September 11 experiences. Unfortunately they weren’t allowing autographs, so I couldn’t get Maus signed, but he talked for two hours and answered numerous questions with a quick wit and passion for his craft. Jen and I left feeling energized, inspired, and educated.
Angry. To the nice lady who tried to pull the Baltimore Merge (when somebody drives up the median past all the folks waiting patiently in line and then tries to bull in at the front) on me yesterday in the middle of Catonsville: honking the horn of your Rendezvous and flipping me the bird for two solid minutes doesn’t faze me. Take a Lithium or something before you have a coronary, dumbass.
Time was when my girl would email me from work each day. Not excessive amounts of email, mind you, but a quick hello, sometimes a question or concern, sometimes a funny story she was passing along. Nothing the ordinary modern-day employee doesn’t do each day while at work. Apparently there is some sort of ban on any kind of email at her job, where some dude is sitting in an office reading other folks’ email all day, ready to narc them out for talking about what to eat for dinner or who’s coming over next weekend. Don’t companies realize this makes their employees feel mistrusted and paranoid? Sounds like a fine way to improve productivity to me.
Small Dog Electronics has 15″ iMacs for $999 with a combo drive. Must….resist….. They also have refurbished 30GB ’03 iPods for $379. Resolve….growing…weaker…
Progress… So last night I took about 20 minutes during a period of insomnia to try to enable WebDAV services on the iMac (and let me just tell you how nice it is to have a development box to play with, as opposed to breaking the Powerbook here); this involved setting up a root acount, logging in through ssh, farting around in httpd.conf (ahh, I remember the days on MKLinux…) to enable the services and set up the passwords. Restarting Apache this morning was unsuccessful though; somewhere the password functions I wrote were wonky. More research to come on this front.
Do Not Call. This morning I got a call from somebody at “Atlantic Home Security” who wanted to try to sell me something. As soon as I mentioned the Do Not Call list, she hung up. Dammit. I wanted to get their information and have them fined.
There’s news that Apple will be releasing a version of iTunes for Windows, which might mean we can postpone a hard drive upgrade for the iMac. I hope the functionality is as robust as the Mac version…if it means we can host the music on the server and stream the library to the Powerbooks, that would be fantastic.
Mash-up. Pitchfork Media did a review of a recompiled track called Sly Beyonce Walks Like A Nerd, which is a remix of a Sly Stone, Beyonce, Bangles and NERD track on top of each other. Todd had turned me on to mash-ups last year when he played an MP3 of an Eminem rap over Zeppelin’s The Wanton Wanted Song. There’s a guy in the UK who works under the name Go Home Productions who has a whole catalog of stuff that I’d love to get my hands on. This stuff is brilliant—there’s Madonna singing Ray Of Light over the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant (it sounds like it wouldn’t work, but it really does), and Morcheeba’s World Looking In over a remixed drum track of Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. (which goes to prove that you can take any Zeppelin track, mix out the vocals, drop something completely different on top, and have yourself another hit record. Try that, Creed.) I wish there were more MP3’s available but he obviously had to take most of them down for copyright reasons. Right on.
I started looking into some way I can get two separate calendars linked up in one place so that Jen and I can keep our schedules together. I’d love to do it through iCal, as Jen will hopefully have a Mac on her work desk sometime next year. I’ve been trying to figure out how to sync two calendars up without spending $99 on Apple’s .Mac service, especially since I’m running a webserver at home. After looking around at a bunch of dead links, I was able to find a good primer on enabling WebDAV service built in to OSX. Of course, I’m putting the cart in front of the horse because I still haven’t worked out the issues with dyndns and tunneling through my router. Arrggh.
I’m also starting to look at updating the design on my weblog/website; I’d like to move over to a CSS-based layout (at least for the log pages) and modify the other pages, as the design is now about two years old. Some of the things I’d like to keep on the main site are:
- The update and photo on the home page.
- The basic page layout, but move to a stepped-page portfolio listing.
- The white background/gray highlights/Univers typeface.
Some things I don’t like are the leftover Garamond from my circa-1993 identity (let’s just get that out behind the barn and shoot it), the green/gray horizontal lines (they’re falling apart, and they don’t transfer to my print collateral at all), the dead space on the right of the Design section, and the fact that the Scout and Log sections don’t live well with the other sections.
Seems the prodigal Ford is repaired…well, it wasn’t even broke in the first place. The hose clamp on the radiator let go, and when that happened it vented coolant all over the engine. My mechanic says that this model Ford has an issue with adding coolant to the point where the engine is happy, and my continued overheating issues were due to that fact. Whatever it was, it’s hopefully fixed now.
Interesting. By chance, I checked out the Supon website today to see if they’ve updated it—they have. Looks like they must have been swallowed up by another firm, one with a craptacular website.
Not that I actually buy physical CD’s anymore, but if you happen to buy one published by the BMG Music Group, and you can’t seem to get past the copy protection to rip it to your hard drive, simply hold down the Shift key. Brilliant!
I Was Once Misinformed About Your Intentions. I may have let the cat out of the bag with Todd’s new blog, but I’m still happy to welcome him to the fold.
Today I’m reading with interest about Panther, the new upgrade to OSX. It looks like there’s a bunch of juicy new features throughout, and that will be great for future monkeying. I’m still waiting to get paid so’s I can buy a large drive for the iMac, and install Jaguar on that machine. I also need to find a cheap Firewire enclosure for Rob’s donated drive, which seems to have some issues with bad blocks at the beginning of the platter, making it unusable with OSX.
We didn’t get anything new done with the house last night, but I figure another quick hour with the cut-in brush, a good mop job, and a coat of white paint in the closet, and the cream room will be ready for Jen’s twin bed. Renie is coming down this weekend (we’re very excited about that), and we have a couple of jobs lined up for her to help us with:
- Painting the Anxious room white. I exchanged the
whitebrown paint for White Tint Base, which is actually white. Having two rooms painted will make a huge difference upstairs. - Painting three of the four walls in the Pink room. I may be able to pick up drywall today at the Home Despot and get that mudded in by Saturday. If so, that will be three rooms painted, which means we can tear up carpeting and make way for the floor sander.
- Planting bulbs. Since last year’s fall sales, Jen and I have bought about a zillion different bulbs of different colors, types, and sizes; starting with a box of 70 blue gladiolus bulbs I got at the Sam’s Club, we’ve added white tulips, pastel tulips, fuzzy white and red tulips, and crocuses. We’re going to have more bulbs in the ground than the country of Holland. That is, if the assorted chipmunks, squirrels, and other backyard creatures don’t dig them all up and have a kegger while we’re at work.
Depending on how productive I feel tonight, I may also try to build another fire for practice this evening. I’d love to be able to use that fireplace a lot this winter.