Orca isn't just a killer whale anymore....

Since I run the Perl Mailing list Database I, on occasion, receive some pretty interesting submissions. Peter Prymmer sent in the orca-users list the other day which is a discussion list for Orca. I've spent the last few days tinkering with Orca since I use the SEToolkit on Solaris quite a lot and I've been having a blast. This is what open software should be like. The tarball has everything you need other than the SEToolkit and you just configure, make and go...it works right out of the box. I'm exceedingly impressed and I feel like buying something for him off of his Amazon Wishlist and note he has that spendy ORA P2P manual listed :) The comments are hilarious too as there are a couple of girly items listed and he has "For my Wife!!!" just so you don't think for a minute he's interested in fashion or anything like that :)

I know quite a few people have been complaining about the performance of search.cpan.org so I decided to put Orca and perlcollator on gargoyle since it is the one that is having the network trouble. After tuning the tcp stack there remains an abnormally high percentage of tcp rexmits which, to the end user, translates to sluggish performance. Since this is an EUltra1/170 with 64-bit Solaris it should be cranking through the packets with vigor instead of an anquished trickle. I just traded a few bits of hardware with a friend to obtain a spare, known working sbus hme card for the box should it come to that as there are really only 3 possibilities left; 1) tcp stack is munged...unlikely 2) hme is b0rked...more likely 3) network problem farther up the pipe...most likely. So, hopefully these performance graphs will help the network admin who hosts this box maybe look around and either confirm or deny this suspicion so we can then move on to replacing the network interface. It's not an easy thing to start picking on the free bandwidth unless you know there is a problem as generosity quickly fades once the warm fuzzy feedback runs dry and is replaced with whining.The rest of the server looks like it's in good shape to handle the load once the network aspect starts behaving.

And today I was reminded of a show that was playing on the Strand in London at the same time as YAPC::London, Puppetry of the Penis. Sadly, we didn't go to see it since Jarkko didn't really want to watch a couple of guys play with their twig 'n berries and I didn't want to seem too much of a perv by going alone and cackling in the back row. But, today, someone who shall remain nameless forwarded me an email:

"BUY PUPPETRY OF THE PENIS - THE UNIQUE AND OUTRAGEOUS HIT LIVE SHOW NOW OUT ON VIDEO AND DVD"

Excellent, now I can be a cackling perv in the privacy of my own home!

And...for all the people old enough to remember SCSI...:) Dr. Fun.

permalink Ω 30 November 2001, Helsinki

Once you go Mac, you never go back

This afternoon I was reading the Mac section on the ORA website and noticed a column mentioning how the number of iBooks and Ti Books at ORA conferences has significantly increased in the past year. The author notes that while most users have OS X at the conferences that he, a long-time mac user, sees a much lower percentage using OS X among long-time users of MacOS...and I find this to be an astute observation and distinction. I have OS X on an iMac but for my iBook, I am still happy with OS 9 since I have it configured the way I want and am not eager to upgrade all of my software. Jarkko, on the other hand, has much less of an investment in the platform and is running OS X without much fuss. I'll probably migrate late next year or when I'm forced to, whichever comes first.

It's nice to see Apple really making a push for the PC market with more competitive prices, products and an OS that really is pretty to look at and easy to operate. I think anyone can appreciate having a laptop that just works reliably. In addition to the design the new lower prices are a big driving force in Apple's new popularity since any mac user from the last 15 years can tell you that we always paid far more than our PC couterparts.

I remember when Pudge and I and a few other people brought our Airports to YAPC and TPC to get wireless working at the conferences which seems to be SOP now days. Apple really is tops in the wireless arena. You plug it in. It works. No shit. So, lower prices, more software, awesome design and trivial wireless networking/media applications are making Apple very popular again. I'm not sure, since OS X is still so new, if the Aqua/Darwin OS is that much of a factor since, if you want a Unix OS on your iBook you could run NetBSD which is a lot more pragmatic though without the Mac apps.

Recently, I caved and bought an iPod after years of stubbornly refusing to use my mac as my stereo. The box it came in was a work of industrial art to behold let alone the iPod itself. I plugged it into the iBook and 5 minutes later I had a fist full of music. I don't know if any other mp3 players are this beautiful or this easy to use but I couldn't be happier. Now I just need to buy a 200+GB firewire disk so I can rip all the music to mp3s to have an on-line catalogue of music to listen to and tinker with a few of the mp3 perl modules. Just don't ask Jarkko about his CD jewel cases.....:)

permalink Ω 27 November 2001, Helsinki

When you think you've seen everything...the net delivers

Whenever I think I've seen it all and am filled with ennui the net never fails to deliver something newly absurd. Today brought us 001 Coty, a new unisex scent guaranteed to draw geeks like a magnet. I would buy a large pizza instead since the perfume is a dazzling $100 USD for 41ml that the guy won't probably notice or, if he does, will start getting frisky with his laptop instead of you. The pizza is cheaper and has instant appeal....mmm...thick crust...pepperoni...mmmmeat. The ingredients of '001' are:

"The 001Coty fragrance is unique: the top note is almond blossom and marigold; the middle note is Tuscan magnolia with a "fresh electrostatic" accord; finally, 001Coty contains a dry note consisting of tonka, warm woods, licorice and praline."

I mean, if this were a geek fragrance, wouldn't they have made it 000001 instead just for the amusement factor? And what in the heck is 'fresh electrostatic accord'? I could go into the lab and rub up against all of my beautiful, sexy Suns to get a little electrostatic joy if I wanted. I work with these things all day long and figure, who wants to smell like work? I can't wait for 010 which will hopefully be 'zorched monitor with solder zest' or maybe 'essence of RAID 5'...mmm....this is making me hot just thinking about it...or maybe it's the pizza. :)

n.b. - While watching AbFab I noted a commercial for a lightning scented speedstick deodorant to compliment your 'fresh electrostatic accord'. mmm...ozone...

permalink Ω 26 November 2001, Helsinki

Seamlessly Internettled

I snagged William Safire's new book Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella the other day and have found it to be an entertaining read as expected. However, he also reminded me of the Dictionary of American Regional English with it's soon to be published 4th volume. I didn't know that the lead editor, the deus machina behind DARE, Fred Cassidy had died last year leaving the project somewhat in turmoil but still moving 'on to Z'.

If you have a few bucks to burn, go up to AbeBooks and get a copy of vols. 1 - 3 and wallow in the pages of this utterly amazing dictionary or help identify a few terms or donate cold hard cash to DARE. You could also donate to The Dictionary Project which gives 3rd grade children a dictionary of their own since it would seem the US has billions to spend on bombs but not a similar amount to spend on teaching children to read and spell. One of the first presents I ever remember getting for Christmas was a Dictionary and an Encyclopaedia so this particular cause is near and dear. Nothing is quite as unimpressive as a computer nerd who can't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight much less spell or form a complex sentence with polysyllabic words.

You might also be amused to know that the word 'downsizing' has a surprising origin, especially considering the modern SUV:

"The word was born in a happy spirit. The United Auto Workers leader Leonard Woodcock was an early user, reported the quarterly American Speech, speaking of 'the down-sizing, as GM calls it' on Meet the Press on Sept. 5, 1976. A month later, an ad for Ford LTD's in Southern Living asked, 'Will down-sized cars have down-sized prices?' The raising of oil prices by the Shah of Iran in 1974 sped the need to reduce gas consumption, and Newsweek in 1978 reported "the rush to down-size cars to meet tougher fuel-efficiency standards.'"

Downsizing didn't make the lexicon of layoffs until 1990. :)

permalink Ω 26 November 2001, Helsinki

The canary is already dead

Last week there were a few articles discussing how the economy has effected the present and possibly future of Open Source. Today, The Silicon Valley Reporter has an article about Bioinformaticists being pushed to publish their code publicly since peer and public review theoretically tends to spur greater scrutiny. Sadly, it is being met with less enthusiasm now that Universities, like so many other educational institutions left in the shadow of the budget for bombs/defense, have sold their research to paying companies since research costs money. This is much like the present moaning about Microsoft after more than a decade of people continuing to purchase and deploy their products...the canary is long since dead.

Universities needed money to fund research and companies stepped in so now many major research centers are little more than extensions of corporate R&D departments and this has been going on for the last 20 years....so why is this just becoming a problem now? I remember working at Monsanto in the Frankenfood division when they were still collaborating with a few university labs and even a botanical garden and they regarded all of the research information as top secret. I was even escorted between buildings carrying FDA information just so they could be sure I wouldn't photocopy anything along the way. It didn't surprise me since I would get searched both on my way into the building and on my way out of the building but it certainly was uncomfortable and odd since I was used to the publish early and often mentality of scientific research.

I suppose the question to pose at this point is not the morality of closed vs. open source but whether or not either method has discernable benefits. For all of its fanfare in the last 5 years, has the 'open source revolution' really made vast improvements in computing or has it just popularised the same-old same-old? Has the privatization of academic scientific research really hindered the advance of technology amongst those who are equipped and able to advance it?

There is a lot of yammering on about IP and copyright these days which makes it difficult to find the critical issues and ponder whether or not the need for people to make money to feed themselves depends on copyright and if that is really the issue anyway. I suspect that Ego is a large part of the issue as well since it's not practical to build a pyramid in these modern times so one must find some way to make sure their mark is left behind for posterity ...and this is especially more tenuous as we become more digital where things are transient and disappear in years rather than centuries.

permalink Ω 25 November 2001, Helsinki

Satan is an anagram of Santa

Dave Cross's xmas season rant made me think of David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice, a wonderful collection of cynical and satirical christmas stories.

The first story is the classic Santaland Diaries which first debuted on NPR almost a decade ago and I laughed then and still laugh at it every year when they replay Sedaris himself narrating the story of his experience as an Elf at Macy's.

"In the afternoon we were given a tour of SantaLand, which really is something. It's beautiful, a real wonderland, with ten thousand sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, bridges, decorated trees, mechanical penguins and bears, and really tall candy canes. One enters and travels through a maze, a path which takes you from one festive environment to another. The path ends at the Magic Tree. The Tree is supposed to resemble a complex system of roots, but looks instead like a scale model of the human intestinal tract. Once you pass the Magic Tree, the light dims and an elf guides you to Santa's house. The houses are cozy and intimate, laden with toys. You exit Santa's house and are met with a line of cash registers.

We traveled the path a second time and were given the code for various posts such as "The Vomit Corner," a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree, where nauseous children tend to surrender the contents of their stomachs. When someone vomits, the nearest elf is supposed to yell "VAMOOSE," which is the name of the janitorial product used by the store. We were taken to the "Oh, My God, Corner," a position near the escalator. People arriving see the long line and say "Oh, my God!" and it is an elf's job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa."

The next story is a brilliant send up of those awful holiday family newsletters you get from family and friends titled Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!. He even has the appropriate overuse of the "!" throughout the story for a touch of realism.

Dinah, the Christmas Whore is a priceless tale of Sedaris' sister bringing a whore home for christmas.

"Up and down our street the houses were decorated with plywood angels and mangers framed in colored bulbs. Over on Coronado someone had lashed speakers to his trees, broadcasting carols over the candy-cane forest he'd planted beside his driveway. Our neighbors would rise early and visit the malls, snatching up gift-wrapped Dustbusters and the pom-pommed socks used to protect the heads of golf clubs. Christmas would arrive and we, the people of this country, would gather around identical trees, voicing our pleasure with worn cliches. Turkeys would roast to a hard shellacked finish. Hams would be crosshatched with x's and glazed with fruit -- and it was fine by me. Were I to receive a riding vacuum cleaner or even a wizened proboscis monkey, it wouldn't please me half as much as knowing we were the only family in the neighborhood with a prostitute in our kitchen. From this moment on, the phrase "Ho, ho, ho" would take on a whole different meaning; and I, along with the rest of my family, could appreciate it in our own clannish way. It suddenly occurred to me. Just like that."

He rips apart the christmas theatre by children tradition in Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol and gives the sermon to christmas capitalism in Based on a True Story then delivers the final twist of the knife with Christmas Means Giving a tale of suburbia.

If you aren't big on the holidays and haven't seen this book then it's time you did. :)

permalink Ω 24 November 2001, Helsinki

post-turkey coma

Well, Thanksgiving is over and I can still say I have zero casualties from my cooking. I was a bit disappointed that the tofurkey didn't arrive as planned only to have Veat in its stead. I love the name ...vegetable + meat = veat..but was really looking forward to trying the tofurkey. We have enough leftovers to feed a small country and the cranberry-apple pie has a magnetic appeal.

I just finished reading The Northern Lights an interesting and tragic story about a man whom time forgot, Kristian Birkeland. The book received a lukewarm review by the NYT but I think it was written primarily to revive the memory of Birkeland rather than be an exhaustive biography. He had such a fertile mind that a proper biography would be more than 1000 pages since not only did he study the Aurora Borealis and have revolutionary cosmological ideas, he also invented the rail gun and the first commercially viable method for producing ammonium nitrate [ saltpeter ] among a slew of others. He had an amazing passion for science and even worked to develop the fertilizer process in order to fund the research his university could no longer justify funding. He is the embodiment of the saying 'If you want something badly enough there is nothing that will get in your way.'

Another book I waded through, Perl for Web Site Management, is also well done. I read through it a few months ago for a tech review and found that most of my suggestions made it into the final product which is always a nice feeling to see that you've helped out in some small way. The author sticks to the pragmatic side of Perl instead of inserting things just to make himself look clever as so many tech books seem to be plagued with these days. The book is also mostly Unix-centric which is refreshing as well. The conversational tone and style makes it really easy to read. The layout, too, is easy to read since it would appear that troff has been forsaken in favour of better kerning, leading and type :) I still think the book should have introduced using mySQL or PostgreSQL with Perl for the web as static content is so 90s but maybe that can be a whole book on its own.

The Smithsonian Magazine December issue features and article titled Cold Comfort which has some stunning photos of the Ice Hotel that is high on my list of places I want to visit when we move to Helsinki.

And I'm hoping to finish updating the Perl history update since I updated the CPAN FAQ a few days ago before I slip into a soporific coma here on the couch after eating more turkey and pie.

permalink Ω 24 November 2001, Helsinki

The Artist must be a Perl Monger

Memepool had an absolutely brilliant link to handy party tips and I suspect that this person has been to Perl Monger socials or TPC. I'm still snickering :)

permalink Ω 21 November 2001, Helsinki

Get a job, slacker

A couple of months ago I had a chance to talk to Brad Kuhn about the effect of the economic downturn on open source since I've been of the opinion that much of the open source 'revolution' came on the back of economic prosperity. Today, both ZDNet and Yahoo! had articles on the topic of people either burning out or having to work for a living at places that frown upon OS development on the job. Even Nokia requested that Jarkko not work on Perl recently as everyone is concentrating on the bottom-line. No surprise there. So, when you have 8 or so hours a day for work, 8 hours for sleep [ theoretically ], 1 hour for getting to and from work, and 2 hours for other various things, it doesn't leave much time for other things during the week. So, unless you have a sugardaddy, working sucks but eating and the comforts money can buy are good.

One of the most important changes in the landscape of free software since 1990 is academia changing from a relatively uninhibited research environment to being extensions of corporate R&D labs. This change, combined with businesses tightening the focus for employees leaves little room for open source development on paid time. Raphael Manfriedi is a most recent example of this trend of people who have less time to give to open source projects and have opted to spend it on having a life instead. There are quite a few around the Perl community who have just silently drifted away in the last year or two as well.

I don't think this means dire consequences for open source software but it will mean a shift in how it gets developed and by whom. Of course, smart open source advocates would look at this trend and attempt to find a way to bring the two poles of software polarity to a more equatorial region but as long as one side has the economic power and the other side has nothing but greasy long hair and lofty ideals there isn't much hope for that ever coming to fruition.

permalink Ω 20 November 2001, Helsinki

Who says size doesn't count?

Over the last 15 years of being on the internet I've never once gotten a bit of spam for breast enlargement or a fruit flavoured dildo. I have, however, gotten countless spam for Viagra, hair loss products, 'sexual performance enhancers' and today I received an invitation to enlarge my penis. Mind, I have often thought I have penis envy for the convenience of urination while standing without the hassle but...well, the note tells me it is an 'opt-in' mailing so maybe I have a tiny penis and this is my big opportunity to enlarge it beyond my wildest dreams!

"We are a serious company, offering a program that will enhance your sex life, and enlarge your penis in a totally natural way. Please DO NOT mistake this with other offers !!!

We realize many men -and their women- are unhappy with their penis size. The truth is that size matters, not only it affects many men's performance, but their self-esteem as well.

Penis enlargement is POSSIBLE; just as you can exercise almost any part of your body, you CAN exercise your penis.

Our program is totally PROVEN and GUARANTEED !!!

Our company has the techniques! Totally NATURAL techniques; no gadgets, no pumps, no surgery!

[....]

This IS NOT UNSOLICITED; you appear in an opt-in list, if in error, please remove yourself. Please let those who suffer from erectile dysfunction, other ailments or small penis size receive this information!"

In recent years the demographic of users on the internet has grown much more diverse than it was in the mid-to-late 80s when it was mostly just a bunch of nerdy guys and a few women. These days women account for almost half of the on-line population and there has been some research into the gender gap. There is some speculation that women find the maleness alienating but, gee, I think getting penis enlargement spam is kinda funny really even if it does tell me that there is still too little of an estrogen bearing presence on-line. I'm tempted to respond to the spam and ask if they can really help me and my tiny 5cm penis. :)

One interesting article I found is Women On-line: Cultural and Relational Aspects of Women's Communication in On-line Discussion Groups . They are very astute in some of their observations as I see the communication patterns every day, even here, even among those who say they are 'liberated' and those who emphatically insist that they believe woman are equal.

Researchers would have a field day with some of the Perl newsgroups and mailing lists since they would get a chance to study neanderthal man using a computer in the wild....and with a new, improved and naturally enlarged penis!

permalink Ω 20 November 2001, Helsinki

I bet you thought WTO stood for something else

Since I recently bonded with my toilet by replacing the tank valve, finding out that Singapore is hosting the World Toilet Summit held by the World Toilet Organisation caught my attention. Their logo, complete with a little blue toilet seat, still has me giggling. I had no idea people were so serious about toilets! There's even an exhibit on the history of the toilet, Flushed with Pride and a debunking of Thos. Crapper as the father of the modern toilet.

I wonder if anyone at the summit is giving a talk on topics such as "Who you have to screw to get a plumber to return your calls" or "To bidet or not to bidet, that is the gripping question" or "What really happened to the Tidy-Bowl Man?".

permalink Ω 20 November 2001, Helsinki

Like a Luddite at COMDEX

Today I escaped work for a little while and went by SoftPro Books in Burlington to see what might be new in the world of technical books and chat with the staff who, over the years, have become practically family. Sadly, they are feeling the same lull in business everyone else is and the store was pretty quiet. After getting the lowdown on what has been popular and the usual gossip I noticed that the author of the Ugliest Perl Book has a new title Perl to Python Migration. I looked at it a while and wasn't that impressed. I guess it won't sell that well just because if people have production Perl code that they probably aren't going to 'migrate' it and just do new stuff in Python and eventually get around to reimplementing the Perl stuff later. This guy makes up for low sales by writing in volume though. There was also another book, The Procmail Companion that looked promising both in it's brevity [ 300 or so pages ] and by its content. Nothing else was really all that new or exciting in the world of books. I did see a few that would make excellent doorstops though. :)

After work I decided to brave the grocery stores so I could 'beat the rush' on Wednesday for the annual American Thanksgiving Holiday Feast. Everytime I go to the grocery store I feel like a luddite at COMDEX. Everything is big, shiny and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing there or what I'm supposed to buy. Women with carts full of stuff and kids go by me and give me that knowing look of 'you're a stranger here' while I'm standing in the middle of the produce section dazed and confuzed. In my 20s, my fridge used to be a shrine to minimalism; coke, cigarettes and take-away boxes from eating out the night before...is there some magical transformation that is supposed to happen when you hit your 30s to infuse you with this vital grocery knowledge?

I had to trek to not one, not two, but three stores to find everything I needed which is almost legendary. I even found myself shopping at Bread & Circus, a 'whole foods store' where everything, and I do mean everything, is organic. I just want a pound of butter, not 6 different choices of damn organic salted sweet creamery butter. You know, butter, it just shouldn't be this hard. It's enough to make you homicidal by the time you check out and they ask you innocently enough, "paper or plastic?". I looked at the woman tonight and said, "Don't you mean toxic or organic grocery bag?" . Fortunately, she got the dry sarcasm. I asked for the hand-milled paper bags. :)

After I made it safely home unscathed I sifted through the mail to find that Martha Stewart must be reading my journal with her latest special issue At Home with Technology that includes a section on how to make your own laptop tote, how the supermarket checkout works, shopping on-line, 'tucking in technology', computer crafts and an "Ask Martha" column with such tough questions on cleaning your computer and if it is safe to leave the computer on all day. Wahoo. And, to add insult to injury, I find that Tiffany has decided that, after years of sending me a catalogue, that now that I have a husband he should receive a catalogue instead of me since, I guess , no married woman buys her own jewelery these days. When we bought our wedding rings I'll never forget the women in Tiffany's telling me, with a wink to Jarkko, that should I ever find that my rock is too small that I could 'upgrade' my rock by trading in the old rock for a bigger one. Well, sexist jerks or not, they do make some lovely things and I'm a sucker for their beautiful south pacific pearlnecklaces.

Guh, now I feel like I need to watch the Man Show, drink a few beers, scratch myself and find a football game on TV to shake off all this girly crap. Hmm, pass the beef jerky and the pr0n will you?

permalink Ω 19 November 2001, Helsinki

Holy Cosmic Leonids, Batman!

I wanted to stay awake for the Leonid meteor shower early this morning but I just couldn't do it after mowing, mulching, a hoovering the leaves from the lawn yesterday. It was less spectacular than the predicted 4000 an hour but a few intrepid souls stayed up and took some nice photos of the event. I have Starry Night Pro for the Mac which is the neatest software if you are into astronomy at all. The same company also recently released Deep Space Explorer which looks just as interesting and as well done as Starry Night.

permalink Ω 18 November 2001, Helsinki

The Royal Tenenbaums

Coming 14 December in NYC, 21 December everywhere else to a theatre in the US near you is The Royal Tenenbaums which looks to be the funniest movie of the year and has the bonus of Gene Hackman and Anjelica Houston.

permalink Ω 15 November 2001, Helsinki

Now with Wishstixs™!

It has been a long busy week dealing with a particularly high maintainence user who likes to shoulder surf around me and who thinks everything is a critical emergency. His group uses a product named Continuus and they just bought a nice 4-way 420R as the old 2-way E450 didn't seem to be performing well enough for them.

They don't really need the extra horsepower really, but they can't afford any downtime and the guy who masqueraded as a Unix admin prior to me should be taken out and beaten for crimes against system administration as putting a database on Sun DiskSuite partitions at raid 5 is just insanity...ah well. Well, once they get migrated to the new box by next week, I'll get to reinstall the old E450 from scratch and they'll have lots of extra cycles and faster disks.

I've spent much of my week working with the Solaris kstat utility and the SE Toolkit which is an indispensible suite of tools when coupled with Solaris Internals book and the Sun Performance and Tuning bible by Adrian Cockcroft. Thank you Alan Burlison for kstat :) Now, can I ask for a self-tuning kernel?! :)

Other than mangling solaris kernels and resisting the urge to harm annoying users this week I replaced the tank valve on the toilet. It's odd how pedantic you can be about computers then put up with a cantankerous toilet for months. Finding a plumber around here requires getting a convent of nuns to say a novena so I just decided to fix the bloody thing myself. I understand why plumbers charge so much as it isn't difficult work but plumbing is never in a convenient and easy to reach place. After an hour of grunting and cussing I now have a toilet tank that fills *and* shuts off once the water level is reached. Oh, the luxury! Yes, it's sad, I'm turning into my parents...

And I'm preparing for a big Thanksgiving dinner at home for a small crowd. One of the people coming is a vegetarian so his wife mentioned they'll be bringing a Tofurkey which is described as:

Tofurky™ is a pre-cooked vegetarian feast designed to be the delicious centerpiece of your holiday or everyday meal.

They even have 'Wishstixs™' made out of Tofurky Jurkey [of course] to fill the nostalgia for wishbones of a real turkey:

To begin your feast, we have included 2 Tofurky WishStixs™ in every box of Tofurky! Made from our new, Tofurky Jurky, these stixs are meant to add a little bit of fun to your meal. Gather 2 to 4 folks, have everyone take an end, make a wish and pull! With Tofurky WishStixs, everyone has already won because no animal was sacrificed in the making of this product.

No animal may have been sacrificed but a few dictionaries were I think...stixs? :) I should dig out the postcard I have that shows a butcher from the waist down slicing up a side of beef with the caption "Screw vegetarians! Let's eat meat!" and put it on the fridge for amusement value.

Minnesota Public Radio interviewed the company to get to the bottom of the enigma of the Tofurkey. Personally, I think the radio personality just liked saying Tofurkey. They claim that while no Tofurkey has been seen in the wild they know it has four legs since it has four drumettes. :) Hmm...I think my recipe for Maple-glazed Turkey with Dijon Gravy and Country-bread stuffing with parmesan, raisins, and pine nuts sounds more...meaty, but I may just have to try it for the novelty of it. MPR also had a piece on the meat version turkey taste test by Cooks Illustrated who also have the very helpful Turkey Help site for stricken meat bird bakers for any occasion.

I'm looking forward to staying at home next weekend after the holiday to catch up on a few projects and maybe even read a few books stacked up on a chair who even now mock me from where I sit.

permalink Ω 15 November 2001, Helsinki

The Final Upgrade

Today during lunch I decided to clean the fishtank on my desk since I needed something mindless to do after a long trying week. I have 3 orange mickey mouse platysnamed sed, awk and cat. I find that the fish are good company as they are often peering out of the tank at me, especially when I'm eating my lunch or listening to music. I think we bonded when I found they liked The Style Council and Paul Weller unlike my top-40 coworkers.

The funny thing about the Mac Aquarium though is that it draws people into my cube as they ask about the fish, their names, what they eat, what kind are they, etc. Even today when I was cleaning the tank, people would stop and ask where the fish were, how often I have to clean the tank, and comment on how relaxing the fish must be.

A while back I bought an original Mac Plus keyboard from someone on eBay to add a more authentic touch and have successfully tricked a few people into thinking I had one heck of a realistic screensaver on the Mac :) I often miss the flying toasters, the fishtank and lunatic fringe game [ which continues to inspire even now ] screensavers of After Dark and even the original Pyro! It is a pity that the age of the screensaver is gone leaving nothing quite as exciting in its wake. I think the MacAquarium is a lovely tribute to such an underappreciated part of the history of personal computing. I think it would be cool to research the history and development of the screensaver and After Dark....

I was thinking, too, that maybe geek guys who are looking for a way to talk to women might consider getting a MacAquarium for their cube to have some late night company on maint windows/coding jags and to lure the female of the species into their cube. There is even an iMac model available now. :)

permalink Ω 10 November 2001, Helsinki

HTML, how do I despise thee?

I really despise HTML. Really, really, really despise it. HTML rarely, even when it is fully 'valid', looks the same in two different browsers unless all it has is a tagset for plain text. I become obsessive and cranky when dealing with making HTML valid and look the way it should. It's a good thing that I am not a 'webdev' as I'd never leave my office and start shouting things at my computer much to the dismay of others in the office.

So, I don't know what possessed me this week...perhaps it was the millionth complaint about sucky horrible icky HTML but armed with BBEdit and a wee bit of patience, I coerced the search.cpan.org HTML into 4.01 Transitional compliance. Now people will have to find something else to complain about. :)

BBEdit is the best thing since baked bread and they even have support for Perl. I bought a second copy this week for my iMac and they wrote me back saying that I already have a copy and didn't I just want an upgrade. I love these people as when was the last time any company did that for you?

permalink Ω 9 November 2001, Helsinki

There's life out there....

CPAN is joining the quest for intelligent life in the universe and now has a CPAN SETI Team so that we can use SETI::Stats, read Beyond Contact and hope the aliens we find aren't like the martians in Mars Attacks!

So, put those spare cycles to good use and come help Perl find intelligent life in the universe :)

permalink Ω 7 November 2001, Helsinki

Perils d'amour

The demographic on the #perl IRC channel is rather interesting as most over 25 years of age are married and often have kids whereas the under 25 crowd are single angst-ridden guys who often talk about how much they dislike women or girls or, more often, bitches. This makes me wonder what miraculous transformation happens between early teenage years and 25 to mend this rift.

Well, I have found the perfect Christmas gift for young boy geeks of all persuasions, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating & Sex the third book from the Worst-Case Scenario people who give us such valuable information such as How to survive Ebola and Anthrax exposure. Yes, now you, too, can learn how to:

• Determine if your date is an axe murderer - The bad news is that most of the characteristics describe a bunch of Mongers I know :)
• Determine the gender of your date - One would hope you had this covered long before the date but...
• Escape from a bad date - My mother always said to carry enough money for a phonecall and a cab home but I guess breaking glass in the restroom and climbing out windows is all the rage these days.
• Spot fake boobies and hair. Now, you can tell this was written for guys as they say "If a woman is over thirty and has strikingly full breasts that sit very high on her chest, you have reason to be suspicious". Hey guy, never heard of the Wonderbra?! And they don't mention how to look at a guys feet and hands to decide whether his bulge is real or just a tube sock.
• Deal with body odour and bad breath - I guess breathmints and SpeedStick are passe.
• Survive excessive gas - the illustration of the 'fart position' alone is worth the price of the book.
• Survive if you are stopped by the police. - I once had a date with a guy who I finally agreed to go out with after he pestered me for months. As we were driving to dinner we get pulled over and it turned out that he had a bench warrant from the city for having expired registration on his car. I bailed him out much later that evening but, needless to say, it was his first and last date with me :)
• Remove difficult clothing - includes a step-by-step how-to on removing the bra with one hand.
• Fake an orgasm and spot a real orgasm - again, the illustrations here are priceless.
• Have sex in an airplane lavatory - You know, they have The Mile High Club but sex in a loo that usually has barely enough room for me to pee in doesn't really sound enjoyable. I mean, I'm 5'7" and 130pounds or so...what do people of, er, ample body mass do?
• How to survive snoring - I have a St. Bernard who snores loudly enough to be heard upstairs at night...somehow 'rolling him onto his side or stomach' isn't going to be an option.
• Survive if you wake up next to someone whose name you don't remember - Again, this must have been written by guys "Do not guess at her name. Acceptable terms of endearment are: Honey/Sweetie/Cutie/Darling/Baby/Sugar/Beautiful/Handsome/Gorgeous". Right. Just hope you don't get the girl with the baseball bat next to the bed with a sharp aversion to patronising 'terms of endearment'.
• Have an affair and not get caught - You either have a woman that is psychic or one that won't ever notice, either way this whole section won't be of much help.
• Stop a wedding - The fire alarm and feigning seizure are the most creative.
• End a relationship - includes a list of useful excuses and an 'it's not you, it's me' letter that is absolutely priceless....obviously the authors never dated someone of more than average persistence.
• A list of pick up lines to avoid - and boy do they have some winners in there like "So, are you legal?".

So no more will geek boys need to take Sex tips from ESR and they'll be prepared for anything, including fear and loathing, on the dating scene. I wonder if I should pitch a "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: female computer geek" with such important skills like 'what to do when cornered by a guy who is telling you his life story at a LUG meeting', 'how to tell the 16 year old pre-pubescent ego transport to fuck off without really trying' and 'how to write your name in the snow because that's what it's really all about.'

Dating sucks and while I don't know that the survival handbook will be of much help it certainly is very amusing. A 'good sense of humour' always ranks in the 'top 3 ideal qualities in a man' surveys Cosmo does every year. :)

permalink Ω 5 November 2001, Helsinki

These days it should be "Open Spores"

For some unknown reason tonight I just decided to try http://www.opensores.org and http://www.opensores.net with my browser. Sadly, there was no opensores.com to amuse me and frankly I was a bit disappointed there were no festering pustulent sores at .org or .net. I wonder how long it will be before someone registers an openspores.* domain and adorns it with a Hello Kitty in a biohazard suit and a journal about their monkey.

permalink Ω 3 November 2001, Helsinki

Good Things™

I have this dirty little secret: I subscribe to, read and actually like Martha Stewart Magazine. I know, I think it's rather odd too but I like her simple tastes even if I don't have a staff of 50 in the house to make my home look like hers. I sent in a suggestion for them to do an article on the 'brightening up the basement server farm' and 'wireless networking in the home and base station camoflage techniques' but haven't heard back from them just yet.

Two years ago I bought one of her Noah's Ark cookie cutter sets as it had a camel and made christmas tree ornaments last year. This year Martha has a 3rd set which include a Llama, owl and monkey. I think ORA and Martha should get together and release an ORA animal menagerie set of cookie cutters so that geeks can bake cookies and such in all their favourite animal shapes :)

permalink Ω 2 November 2001, Helsinki

Words of the Times

The English language never fails to rise to the occasion when needed and now is no exception. There are numerous slang dictionaries and other more formal dictionaries filled with modern words invented to fill a gap in the lexicon. Salon had an amusing article, Words no longer fail us containing a few such specimens of our linguistic flexibility;

• Fatuwa - n. Anything fatuous or profoundly silly declared as a religious directive.
• Gaytriotism - n. Improbable devotion of gays in the military who know full well that, if they're lucky enough to survive the war, the reward for their service may be a dishonorable discharge. It is not known -- since no one is telling -- whether this is bravery or just a form of denial.
• Patrioteering - n. Shameless, legal exploitation of national flag fervor for corporate gain. Generally free of direct reference to charitable causes, and may include the words "easy payments" or "postage and handling." As if you want more mail now.
• S.U.V. - abbr. For "Suddenly Undesirable Vehicle." What your SUV will become after hastening the arrival of the next oil shortage.

Now, what I want to know is what is so 'sudden' in the S.U.V.? I think it should be Seriously Undesireable Vehicle :)

permalink Ω 2 November 2001, Helsinki

The land beyond the sea

A few weeks ago I spied an unusual looking book at Barnes & Noble; The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, the World's Greatest Traveller. Since I studied medieval and Renaissance literature in addition to Chem. E. in college, I was familiar with The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, one of the most popular travelogues in history, so I decided to buy the book and it turned out to be a very interesting read.

One of my English professors was Dr. Helen Mandeville who was a flamboyant ex-nun, full of life and possessing a collection of hats that only she and the Queen Mum could get away with. She mentioned once that she was related to the legendary knight and that the family believed much of the diary was blasphemous at the time it was written. We studied the book mostly for historical context rather than its actual content but Giles Milton diligently studies the content to confirm and explore Mandeville's story.

Milton succeeds in restoring some credibility to Mandeville's tales of traveilling through Turkey, Armenia, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Chaldea, Ethiopia, Amazonia and India as well as confirming that he was, indeed, an Englishman from St. Albans. Here was a man who set out in 1322, travelled for the next 34 years and, when he returned, wrote the most readable account ever published. It quickly became very popular being translated into a dozen or more languages within 20 years. At the time it was published, The Church discounted anything that didn't fit into its biblical view of the Earth which added a forbidden appeal. The book has been said to have been a great influence and inspiration to Columbus since it spoke not only of the reality of circumnavigating the Earth but that other lands were habitable.

I often wonder what it would have been like to embark on such a journey. These days we book a plane ticket, read the Rough Guide on our destination, and find a hotel room where, upon arrival, we can generally be sure to find most of the same trappings of our home. I find this takes much of the adventure out of travel and have wanted to trek through Nepal on horseback and the Sahara by Camel in an attempt to find that sense of rare exploration. However, there is little uncharted territory left on Earth in the 22nd Century unlike when Mandeville set out to explore the world and it is fun to vicariously discover and experience the strange new people and lands through his eyes.

permalink Ω 2 November 2001, Helsinki