Thursday, March 29, 2001
KDFC reports that an all female opera company is being formed in the U.K. Opera Femina may allow men in once the company is more established, but their goal is to provide opportunities for talented women in a male-dominated business. In the Bay Area we have the Women's Philharmonic which not only features female musicians, but also features works by women composers. You may not know that there were female relatives of famous composers who were just as musically talented. Fanny Mendelssohn, older sister of Felix, tried to be a devoted housewife, but suffered when she wasn't composing and eventually went against her family's wishes and published her works. Clara Schumann devoted herself to promoting her husband, Robert's, music, although she was trained and talented herself. A quote from her diary: "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea, women must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?"
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The Matrix sequel (project code name "Burly Man") began filming this week, and they started in Oakland, across the bay and up north from me. Neato keeno (Keanu?)! Of course I had to do 'net research to see if anyone saw anything interesting. The Matrix Online has some eyewitness accounts, including photos of a prop phone booth and AI labeled cars (If you are the type who wants to know as little as possible about a movie before you see it, you should avoid all these links. At this point I don't know how to identify a spoiler). A few local papers did writeups about the location shooting. The Merc mentions that extras may be needed though the publicist wouldn't confirm it. The Chronicle had an early report about the Oakland location, and a cute little blurb (third item down) about Keanu Reeves becoming a regular customer at the Nob Hill Cafe because they served him a meal after hours when he was shooting "Sweet November". A really rumor-ridden site has all sorts of dirt, if you like that sort of thing, about legal issues, Marcus Chong, cameras being confiscated, etc. Movie Headlines has a large collection of scoopage, including a report from Variety that the impending strike caused the shooting to begin with twelve weeks in Oakland instead of Australia. After the strike (which everyone is treating as a done deal), they'll commence down under.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Sigh. Mindspring is getting dragged to court by Gucci (yes, the luxury fashion logo people) because a site Mindspring hosted was using the Gucci logo without permission. There's a section of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that should protect ISPs from such issues. But another section limits the protection they may have for intellectual property violations, which is what the logo use falls under (trademark infringement). Mindspring may prevail in court, but the fact remains that ISPs could get named as accessories in all sorts of future litigation. Perhaps I should start using my telephone to transmit trademarked sounds.
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This Wired News story describes the automated storage and retrieval system at Sonoma State University's library that stores books and periodicals in random locations on metal racks. "Randomness is what makes the system so effective." How neat is that?! Because the books are not stored in a specific location, it is more efficient than having an ordered system. Of course if the computer loses its memory, they are up the creek without a Dewey Decimal in sight. I hope they do regular backups.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2001
A 112 year old clipping service is still going strong. The SF Chronicle's Rob Morse finds that not much has changed since 1888 when Mark Twain encouraged a nephew to start a clipping service so Twain could sell more of the clipping scrapbooks he had invented. Readers scan and mark newspapers, looking for various names and topics. Cutters slash out the articles and labels are attached. I suppose they must have extra copies for when different articles of interest appear on both sides of a page. Reading papers for clippings was a job that was glamorized for me when I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Francie takes a job at a clipping service and a paper lands on her desk one day with the six inch headline "WAR".
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As reported in a New Scientist "special report", the British company Co-operwrite has created a rocker switch mechanism called nScribe for entering text into a handheld device. You manipulate one rocking button in the shapes of the letters you want while the vertical and horizontal strokes are shown on the screen. It sounds somewhat like using a gamepad to simulate stylus strokes (of box letters). They claim it is faster, cheaper and more intuitive. Manufacturers can eliminate the cost of a touchscreen and users don't need to peck at tiny keys or train in handwriting recognition. The big advantage I see is the ability to do input with one hand, just like how you can dial your cell phone with one hand. Perhaps this will create even more dangerous drivers on the road. Augh!
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Monday, March 26, 2001
My favorite Oscar 2001 photos: two shots of Yo Yo Ma arriving with his cello. Here's one. Here's two. Was it the Montagnana cello or the Davidoff Stradivarius? (Further research reveals that he uses the Strad for baroque pieces, so I'll guess it was the other one. Same research reveals that he also owns two new cellos one by Moes and Moes and another by Mario Miralles. And that the Motagnana is named Petunia.)
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If you have any interest in the publishing world, you may want to read New York Magazine's profile of Ann Godoff, president of Random House. She rose up from the publishing ranks and has created huge successes, even after Bertelsmann purchased them in 1998. Writers compliment her treatment of them: "She's a publisher, fairy godmother, and shrink, like a mix between a sergeant major and the teacher at school who really believes in you." But she declined to be interviewed herself, preferring to remain actual size, rather than become one of those larger than life publishing celebrities. (p.s. GirlHacker's Random Log is in no way affiliated with Random House. But they are welcome to pay me to publish this. Or anything else.)
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I'm a sucker for a sappy musical and ABC is airing a new version of South Pacific tonight. With Glenn Close as Nellie Forbush, you won't be seeing the short-shorts of Mitzi Gaynor's potrayal, but Ms. Close does sing adequately. The NY Times review says that Harry Connick Jr. "seems right at home in the show's woozy romanticism". Prejudice underpins the plot of this late 1940's musical and it's a very good thing that many viewers (I hope) will find trouble relating to the discomfort the main characters feel towards interracial relationships. West Side Story (and, therefore, Romeo & Juliet) has, for me, a more universally recognizable rift that can apply to all sorts of socially mismatched relationships. Ideally, both musicals will become completely historical and hard to relate to for the next generations.
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Friday, March 23, 2001
After realizing that cafes were setting up wireless networks, I had been wondering if the following were possible. An SFGate article exposes the "wireless underground" of San Francisco's wireless networks. The claim, verified by a founder of the Bay Area Wireless User Group, is that you can gain wireless Internet access (and often access to private networks) almost anywhere in downtown San Francisco. Many companies and individuals setting up 802.11b networks so they can work without a wire are not paying attention to security. This is a great twist, though perhaps not as voyeuristic, to listening in on wireless phone conversations. And I bet you can pick up plenty of signals driving all over the Silicon Valley (depending on population density). Some people have intentionally publicized their wireless access as a favor to others, which is a wonderful community gesture. And some people are wondering if wireless access will become a public utility. I'm thinking wireless access at the mall may buy me some extra shopping time with the hubby-to-be.
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Thursday, March 22, 2001
Did I mention I was busy? Yes I did. That means it's time for "Viewer Mail" (now known as the "CBS Mailbag", and I should probably call it "Reader Mail"). Lots of people wrote in about waffles. Apparently lots of people love waffles. Reader Rash wrote in to say that deliberately denting pancakes seems like an implausible origin and referred me to this waffle page which says: "According to an old Betty Crocker cookbook, 'a crusader wearing his armor, accidentally sat in some freshly baked oat cakes, flattening them and leaving deep imprints of the steel links.'" It is a more romantic story. I actually thought it was less plausible than the deliberate denting, which I could see myself doing to get my syrup to stay on top. Vera wrote to let me know about stroopwafels, which she is quite fond of. I don't need to quote her yummy thoughts here since you can read them yourself at Your Pocket Guide to Sweetness and Light (that issue isn't archived yet, so if it's gone, check her archive page). And jp of the recently resurrected dumbmonkey wrote in with this food history waffle link. It quotes the respected Larousse Gastronomique which says that the Ancient Greeks cooked flat cakes between two hot metal plates. This cooking method resulted in waffles when a 13th century craftsman forged plates in a honeycomb pattern. And that's Viewer Mail for now. Time for me to get a lovely beverage.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2001
Busy busy busy. The log falls off the end of the priorities list. Whump! Here are some quicklinks, probably stolen from all sorts of excellent places that I can' t remember: A Sightseer's Guide to Engineering, find engineering related sights everywhere you go in the U.S. The Critic at Shockwave.com, The Critic (with Jon Lovitz) is one of my favorite "dead" animated series and now they've resurrected it in Shockwave. It's not as good as the original, but it's a nice start. Great Buildings Online "documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more."
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Tuesday, March 20, 2001
I've started checking Yahoo's West U.S. Pollen map to see how my snifflies compare with the ratings. What I should be doing is inhaling NasalCrom before my symptoms start, but I have this strange idea that by knowing how bad things may get, I can feel better about taking drugs to stop it. I was brought up to not use medications until drastic symptoms occured. I never took aspirin for a headache or ibuprofin for a pain (I do at least think of doing so now, and sometimes take a pill). NasalCrom works the way I prefer drugs to work. Instead of trying to fix or mask the allergy symptoms, it goes to the root cause of the problem by preventing the mast cells in your nose from releasing histamines. Your symptoms don't get triggered. It has no bad side effects (that I know of), doesn't knock me out, is safe for kids, is not steroids, is not habit forming (medically, anyway), has no interactions with other drugs, and for me, it really works. (This was not a paid advertisement. A lot of money was put into advertising Claritin. The New York Times Magazine recently had a long article about the business of Claritin. "$80 for a drug that works only half the time?")
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The rolling blackout hit my office yesterday evening. I was getting ready to leave anyway, so the timing was fortunate. The entire block of buildings around us went dark, except for a couple of rooms in what I assume is a biotech firm next door. They had a generator running (hard to miss the noise) in the back, so all was prepared. A steady stream of cars came forth from all the parking lots as everyone decided to bag it for the day. At home, I checked my PG&E bill and could not find an outage block listed. So either it's cleverly hidden or I'm on a protected circuit.
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Monday, March 19, 2001
I was rollerblading along yesterday, thinking about network versus local storage again (my Nov 13 entry discussed this), but this time more specifically with cell phones. I can't remember phone numbers as easily now that I have them attached to speed-dials on my cell phone. But when I'm using someone else's phone, which does happen once in a while, I'm stuck. Today I was catching up on RobotWisdom and saw a news link about disposable cell phones. Telespree's product concept is completely network based. The phone handset is a "thin client" and the backend handles voice commands. Right now, I suspect most cell phone systems have functionality divided between the phone itself and the cellular service provider's servers. Ideally I would want my contact database stored on a server that is accessible from anywhere through any device I may need it from. Right now, my Yahoo account is synched to my home computer and work computer. My Palm is synched to my home computer. My phone talks to no one. Which way will the market go? Or will lots of systems compete? Will a standard emerge? It's exciting to watch these things evolve.
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An interesting little tidbit: Patty Hearst produced, hosts and narrates a Travel Channel special on Hearst Castle. The SF Gate review says "You expect, given the title, 'Secrets of San Simeon With Patricia Hearst,' to get some revelatory hidden gems, but outside of a few anecdotal and visual tidbits, much of the two-hour Travel Channel special is a standard tour of a wonderfully crafted castle." I've been down to Hearst Castle twice and enjoyed looking at the living areas more than the vast entertainment spaces. The view down to the coast is nice too, and sometimes you can spot the zebra(s?) running about with the horses on the ranch.
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Rolling blackouts are hitting us again. My office building's outage block is due up soon on the rotation, so if not today, one of the next few will bring us down. We're prepared with UPSes and general awareness, but I'm sure the disruption will be ... disruptive. It's not like we can use solar powered calculators or slide rules to do our jobs. I predict that a bunch of sales types will be running about with cell phones, though. It's getting towards the end of the quarter.
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Sunday, March 18, 2001
You would think that creating a gift registry would be easy and fun. You get to shop and not worry about spending lots of your own money. You get to pick out exactly what you want and not concern yourself about whether it is on sale. It should be the dream activity for someone like me who hates to pay full price for anything and often settles for something less than exactly what I want because something that will substitute just fine is on clearance. Well, I've found that it's not as dreamy as all that. For example, the sheet sets we want are not available in the colors and configurations we want at the places we want them to be at. Macy's online has them in the right configurations (separate listings for each item) but not in the right colors (though I can probably go to the actual store myself and ask them how to get the right colors listed, but that doesn't mean someone will be able to buy them online). Bed Bath & Beyond has them in the right colors but packages them up into sets that cost more than I expect someone to spend for a wedding gift. And because people are selling spring and summer things now, no one has a good selection of flannel sheets, or they are on clearance, which makes me wary that they won't be available by the time our wedding rolls around. So, there's muss and fuss to be dealt with in this activity. Since we already have plenty to fuss over, it's best that I just relax and do what I can with what's available. It's just that it's disappointing when the activities you've been looking forward to turn out to be less fun that you expected.
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Friday, March 16, 2001
Tomalak's Realm pointed to an IBM Developer Works article titled "Debunking the myths of UI design". I could probably write pages of agreement and disagreement on the myths and realities that are described. But a tangent topic caught my interest. The essay touches briefly on the fact that software development is a young, rapidly evolving industry. More mature industries have well established roles and guidelines for how products are created. To counter the myth that "Good user interface developers can both design and code the user interface", he writes: "In building construction, the division of labor between architect and contractor evolved as the industry matured." It's probably true that as software development matures, roles will be better established and accepted. However, I think there will always be startups, the small, swift teams, who cut the more bureaucratic & political corners, often for the better, and get decent quality software out the door. It is somewhat like what GM did with Saturn. They achieved the image, and perhaps the reality, of a new way of building cars that wasn't the tried and true way, but something fresh and happy. I do want UI design, and just good design, to get more mindshare in software development. But I'd hate to see the day that it becomes a boring, old time industry. Are the Microsofts and Oracles going to take over, with no hopes for the small teams getting a product sold?
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Yesterday the Palm wouldn't turn on. Today the Palm won't turn off. It's quite distressing. Obviously there's still water in it, making the "On" switch be always on. I've got it set to turn off after 30 seconds, and it does that, then it turns itself back on. I'm just waiting for the batteries to run out. And for more water to evaporate. sigh. This is what one looks like inside. (no, I'm not going to attempt that! Not for a million ... no wait, I'd do it for $500!)
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Thursday, March 15, 2001
RIP Morton Downey Jr. I can't remember why I watched the Morton Downey Jr. Show on WWOR in New York, but I did a few times. It was so unlike anything else on TV at the time, and he was so rude and loud, I guess it was like rubbernecking a car accident on the side of the road. He had a big pewter bowl that he used as a huge ashtray. In 1989, an MIT student faked his way onto the show with a very controversial topic. Downey battled lung cancer for many years, quit smoking and became an anti-smoking advocate. Even though I didn't care for his personality, I have to respect people with the guts to tell you things straight out and without apology.
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Review of the Palm V Special Edition Hard Case, which I already own. Why I am reading reviews now? To see this very important sentence I should've read before I paid big bucks for a fancy case: "it will not protect your Palm from water." My Palm Vx is now resting, drying, hoping that it will turn on tomorrow. I'm debating whether to turn a hair dryer on it. The case is glued shut, so I can't tear it open and see what's going on inside. It wasn't that much water (remember that water bottle I mentioned carrying in my purse?), but it was enough to make it not work. Cross fingers.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2001
I always like reading about the Westinghouse science award winners, except that now it's called the Intel Science Talent Search. But I'll always think of it as "the Westinghouse". This year someone from almost my hometown (OK, the town next door) won for a project titled "Conductance Quantization in Gold Nanocontacts." I want to hear more about the fifth place winner, who did a physics project: "Violin Bridge: Will the Stradivarius Legend Continue?" Michael Theprathan Hasper "tested the properties of 11 bridges that he made of wood, metal or other materials. He concluded that no single bridge created the best sound for each of the four violin strings." Hmmm, maybe he's got a website.
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From Wired/Reuters: "We humans owe our unique color vision to our primate ancestors." Scientists observed primates in Uganda and discovered that they use red and green vision to find the most nutritious leaves. Yellow/blue vision is used to choose the best fruit, but when fruits are out of season, leaves are an important source of nutrition. There are more color blind humans than monkeys, however, so we're no longer selecting out this particular trait.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I knew something must be going on at Handspring on Monday because their lot was overflowing and cars were parked up and down the street. So I figured the rumors must've been true and indeed they announced their Visor Edge. I don't like the "proving that thin is in" ad slogan, though. But I guess having to qualify your ad statements makes them lose their effectiveness. "Visor Edge, proving that thin is in for electronic items that you want to carry around with you (so if you're overweight please don't take this as a jab at your self esteem, OK?)" They must be quite pleased with their efforts because the place was rocking with loud music when I got out of work in the evening.
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Salon has a nice interview with Norton Juster, author of "The Phantom Tollbooth". He's 72 now and he talks about the creation of the story and character of Milo. And he realizes that some kids these days have never seen a tollbooth, though his original intent was that it was a common experience for most kids. He also discusses how children will read the book again as they get older and find more levels of understanding. And there are adult readers who discover new things. I love that concept of finding different layers of meaning, not because a thing has changed, but because you have. As you are altered by your continued experiences, your perception changes with you. (via Robot Wisdom)
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Monday, March 12, 2001
I keep asking my fiance, who has been through two economic downturns in "the valley", what we can expect. I confess to an over-eagerness to see housing prices come down so I can harbor realistic dreams of a big kitchen, front and back yards. I have no wish to continue to see friends lose their jobs and potentially their health insurance. I would love for traffic to get better. But I don't want the already struggling non-corporate bookstores to give up their last gasp. So, I guess I'm hoping the economy reaches a sane equilibrium. But everything depends on everything else, so the economy rises like a house of cards and falls like dominos.
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Dot-com in a nutshell: First day on the job, a guy gets laid off. It's not that interesting of a story, really, but it had that surreal ring to it. There are those who have put their heart and soul into companies. Then there are those who kinda thought they would kinda give it a try, everyone else is doing it. Sometimes you don't get out what you put in. As my father always told me, life isn't fair.
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Sunday, March 11, 2001
You know you live in Silicon Valley when... A coffee shop needs wireless 'net access to stay competitive.
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You know you live in Silicon Valley when... Your definition of a romantic evening is playing Diablo II with your S.O. -- by candlelight.
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You know you live in Silicon Valley when...
Your trackball doesn't support the latest greatest operating system running with dual CPUs and when you complain about it to your S.O., he/she offers to write a new driver for you.
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Friday, March 09, 2001
A posting at Larkfarm reminded me that I had wanted to do an online search for airline playing card collections. I inherited my first two sets of airline cards from a relative. One was from the old glory days of TWA and another one celebrated an anniversary of some sort for another airline. I can't remember which one exactly because, to my dismay, someone borrowed both sets on a Girl Scout camping trip and I never saw them again. I wish I hadn't been so careless with them, because I do consider them collector's items. Now all I have is a pack of different TWA cards I got on my first airplane flight in 1977, when we flew from JFK (or was it LGA?) to LAX for my brother's college graduation. Anyway, I found a site that sells old airline cards and other airline memorabilia like sets of silverware (just what you always wanted!). Here is someone's collection of airline cards. And the National Museum of Jewish History has some interesting El Al Airlines cards with biblical figures. AirlineCollectibles.com has an article on the ins and outs of collecting airline playing cards. I'll save my TWA pack for future generations. It may be a forgotten name one day.
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I like to reuse plastic water bottles. In fact, I think the one I've been carrying around in my purse qualifies for some kind of longevity award. When a succession of bottles I'd been leaving on my desk at work went missing, I figured out that the janitorial staff was a little too efficient. Apparently they are trained to throw away anything that looks like trash. So if my water bottle happened to be empty, they removed it. I can only hope they recycle it. Now I have to remember never to completely empty a water bottle and leave it on my desk overnight. Or I need to start using a drinking container that does not look like trash when it is empty. (And thus concludes another posting designed to remind you that REDUCE and REUSE come before recycle).
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Thursday, March 08, 2001
Perhaps the next big thing in low-calorie sweeteners: the stevia plant. A NY Times article says it "sounds too good to be true: it is a natural substance that is 300 times sweeter than sugar and yet contains no calories." But the FDA has not approved it as a food additive, despite two petitions, and so it is sold as a "dietary supplement" instead. But the word is spreading and sales are rising. People grow the plants or buy the powders. Will it hit the mainstream or continue along as a "supplement"? As with most things, the dollar signs will have to be there.
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Discovery is scheduled to launch this morning. I'm watching preparations on NASA-TV right now. Here's a random collection of Space Shuttle linkage: Pamela Melroy, who was a pilot on Discovery's October 2000 flight, was born in Palo Alto (near where I live now), went to Wellesley College (my alma mater; here's their press release and her 1998 commencement address), and her husband is from my hometown. Neat! Nabbed from Lake Effect, here's a super photo of Columbia being ferried back to Florida. And lastly, I'm bummed that the shuttle flight that was penciled in for August has been removed. We were thinking just maybe if it was right after the wedding, we could spend our honeymoon in Florida, hoping to see the sight of a lifetime. But there's a big gap between July and October in the schedule now.
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Wednesday, March 07, 2001
We are knee-deep in wedding poetry/prose/readings/vows books and we found an adorable E.E. Cummings poem. It won't work for a ceremony (most Cummings is too visual for a reading), but it is just so darn cute I want to use it somewhere (So, it goes in the weblog for now. Enjoy.) By the way, there have been essays written on the correct usage of E.E. Cummings (vs the popular lowercase version). (Additional note: the lawyers have been out and about, so many of the web pages with Cummings' poetry have been removed. The one I linked to may be next.)
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Those of you who have perused my About/FAQ know that when I think of "hacking" I am often thinking of the physical, practical joke kind of hacking, which is practically an art form at MIT. Thus, it was with sadness that I found a Slashdot posting about the closing of the MIT Museum's Hall of Hacks. Prior to shuttering the exhibit, the museum held an Ultimate Hack Week. I have a feeling that the old hacks will be given a display area somewhere else on campus. They are too much of the school's history to be gathering dust in storage. Of course, the most interesting hacks are fresh, live ones. I'm not sure what has happened recently at the 'tute, since the online Hacks gallery seems also to be gathering dust. Either that or the students are concentrating on other things these days.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2001
Peer to peer (P2P for the oh so savvy) is the next Internet bandwagon and Barksdale and Andreesen are jumping on before it takes off, working with Zodiac Networks, still in stealth mode. KnowNow, co-founded by a high-school classmate of mine (I still remember his "modern hero" paper), has revealed what they are up to in the P2P space. And of course Napster left the station a long time ago, and it or something just like it will return in some incarnation. "Push" instead of "pull" was the Big Thing in the "early days" of the Internet (I worked in "push" at Milktruck/WebEx). Peer-to-peer should be the best of "push and pull", transcending it to offer true real-time applications. (Been there and done that with the pushme-pullyu jokes, btw.)
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I've been trying to learn (on the web, of course because I've forgotten how to do research using books -- just kidding) more about the origins of waffles. Yes, waffles, those yummy, dented pieces of cooked batter. Who thought of that? Every time I go to the ice cream or frozen yogurt shop they try to sell me a waffle cone or bowl. Which is interesting since the ice cream cone itself was probably first created out of a waffle or waffle-like pastry, so we've come full circle on that one. But how did the waffle itself come about? It's not like someone had a waffle iron sitting around and decided to pour some batter into it. It's a very specialized kitchen appliance -- you can't use it to cook anything else I can think of. I can't find any definitive information on the origin of waffles. They came to the U.S. with the Europeans and Britannica.com says they are mentioned in 12th century French poems. The leading theory is that someone took pancakes, which have been around forever, and started denting them so that sauce or syrup would stay in the holes. That evolved into the waffle. This saved slashdot posting is probably the strangest waffle-related page I came across. Apparently the waffle continues to evolve and, um, inspire.
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Monday, March 05, 2001
Dan (Brainlog) and Lisa (Bird on a Wire) are also engaged! Congrats! (I'm glad it's a GOOD trend spreading around!)
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A followup to my Seattle earthquake comment about a glass studio: The SJ Mercury News printed an article on the many valuable glassworks that were destroyed by the quake. "Chihuly lost 10 pieces from his private collection" and a few of his pieces on public display are probably sitting in a trash heap now (though, I think someone should really do something else artsy with the shards). Josi Callan, who used to run the San Jose Museum of Art, carries "quake hold" wax in her purse, and often sticks pieces down when she sees unsecured art. Callan is opening a Museum of Glass and International Center for Contemporary Art in Tacoma next year. Gotta get to that one.
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My alumnae magazine had an article on ZipCar (founded by an alum, of course). Car sharing is a proven concept in Europe, but is not widely used on this side of the pond. Zipcar lets you reserve a car for pickup at various parking lots in the Boston/Cambridge area. You pay a yearly membership fee, security deposit, an hourly rate and mileage rate. They give you a gas card to pay for gas, which is nice (and a good way for them to make sure the cars are kept fed). You also do not need your own insurance. They have a fleet of VW cars (new Beetles, Passats, Golfs, Jettas). Other cities have similar programs, both for profit and not (co-ops). San Francisco has City CarShare and Seattle has Flexcar.
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Friday, March 02, 2001
A Celebration of Women Writers came to me via a mailing list I'm on (which also noted that its creator, Mary Mark specializes in AI). The site has complete books (some even with scans of illustrations) including classics such as Louisa May Alcott's Little Men. I found The Enchanted April, which was made into a gorgeous film and Helen Keller's The Story of My Life. I'm sure there are plenty of treasures unknown to me hidden in these links.
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Time to stock up on video tapes. Nickelodeon (more accurately, Nick-at-Nite) is going to show a bunch of Square Pegs episodes on March 9th. Square Pegs, with a theme song by the Waitresses, was my favorite eighties show. OK, it doesn't beat Moonlighting, so we'll call it my favorite early 80's show. It concentrated on the "out" crowd who tried to figure out the "in" crowd. Sarah Jessica Parker looks suitably geeky (hard to believe), Amy Linker wore some padding to fit into her character's "I'm too fat" role, "most popular" Tracy Nelson looks nothing like the nun she later played in Father Dowling, and Merritt Butrick is just too cool as the "new wave, not punk" guy whose vision is going bad because he wears sunglasses all the time. Butrick was Captain Kirk's son in the Star Trek movies, and guest starred in a Next Generation episode a year or so before he died of AIDS in 1989. RIP Johnny Slash, my pre-teen hero.
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Thursday, March 01, 2001
The most vivid image for me from the Seattle area earthquake coverage today was video of an art glass studio in the aftermath. Beautiful, colorful pieces of glass were scattered, shattered across the floor. Some pieces were still on the shelves, but the floor was completely covered with destroyed works of art. (I found the URL of the store when I saw the newsfeed: Avalon Glassworks.)
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Radio Shack is planning to open stores inside Blockbuster locations. Their "highly trained sales associates will manage the stores within Blockbuster". I've been really spoiled by Silicon Valley. Granted, I still think of going to "the shack" when I need sundry things, like a stereo connector or an endless loop tape cassette. But usually some engineer friend will have a box full of whatever I need (or a box with whatever I need hidden in the mess of wires and old modem cards), and they will certainly know more about the electronics than the poor guy at the store. Come to think of it, this area must be a terrible place to work as a Radio Shack associate. In a backwards 'burb, you can be king of the electronics world, but here, a lot of your customers are not going to say anything to you except "no, you can not have my address for your database." Anyway, it will be interesting to see if they put kiosks in the local Blockbusters. They'll be selling consumer electronics, though, not soldering equipment and wire cutters.
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