A co-worker was researching glass harmonicas (invented by Benjamin Franklin) and discovered the website for an actual manufacturer of the instrument. “In Europe?” I asked. No, to my surprise, they are in Waltham, Massachusetts. G. Finkenbeiner Inc. specializes in scientific glassblowing (lab equipment), but also makes glass harmonicas. You may have “played” on wine glass rims yourself. It’s harder to do on the cheap stuff you get at your everyday restaurant (and probably very bad etiquette when you are at nice restaurants with the expensive crystal). But you can often get a decent glass to “ring” with the right amount of pressure. An odd sidenote: the founder, Gerhard Finkenbeiner, has been missing since May 1999. His Piper Arrow is presumed to have crashed and they have yet to find the remains.

The Invisible Library catalogues books that have been referenced inside of books. Indexed by real author, real title, fictitous author and fictitous title, there is an eclectic mix of sources. The Harry Potter series is of course referenced with all of his schoolbook titles. Also, there’s the lovely self-referential “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

Via MediaNews, the Chicago Tribune’s restaurant critic writes about keeping his identity safeguarded so he can dine anonymously. He goes over the tricks: using credit cards with his dog’s name, making reservations on a phone without recognizable Caller ID, making sure the baby sitter can still reach you when you’re dining under an assumed name. Ruth Reichl, the former NY Times critic, gave a Salon interview a few years ago that goes into even more detail on what life is like for a high profile restaurant critic. “I change my credit cards every six weeks or so. But, you know, they fax the names of the credit cards around to each other.”

I have fond memories of gleefully reading Byte Magazine‘s April Fools jokes way back in the ’80s. But the only specific one I could remember actually was not a joke. It was a real product that people assumed was a joke. The MacCharlie, reported on by Byte in 1985, was a device that you plugged onto your Apple Macintosh (now you have to picture one of those old boxy Macs, not the new fruity ones) in order to run IBM-PC applications (well, DOS actually). Externally it looked like a set of two 5.25″ floppy drives that plugged onto the Mac box and a keyboard extender that sat around the Mac keyboard to provide function keys and a numeric keypad. Internally, it had that good ol’ 8088 processor. I don’t know how well it worked, but it certainly was a creative concept for the time. Some actual Byte April Fool’s products that I’ve hunted up were the MacKnifer, a knife-sharpener that fit into the Mac hard disk drive, edible floppy disks made out of soybeans (sensitive data? eat it), and a 5MB hard disk for the Timex/Sinclair 1000. Yes, 5MB was considered a very big joke back then.

Oh my goodness, there’s finally an image file on this site. Whatever possessed me to do that? Seems that when I have no time for them, the creative urges strike. And when I’m (rarely) unoccupied, I can never think of anything to do, or the lists I have of things to do don’t appeal. By the way, though I did write it, that’s not my actual handwriting. Oh, and there are now only 14 days worth of posts on the main page.

Iridium Satellite, LLC relaunched phone service on Friday. Old handsets will still work and new phones and features are available. An interesting fact from the press release, there are 7 in-orbit spares for the 66 satellites, and they plan to launch 7 more next year. As I reported in December, the Pentagon is getting the best deal in saving Iridium from crash & burn: $3 million a month for unlimited airtime for 20,000 users.

One of my favorite albums is The Juliet Letters which is a collaboration between Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet, a classical string quartet. I had always wondered if/when sheet music for it would be released and it looks like Schirmer has obliged. That makes me wish I was still in college so I could easily grab a few friends and a practice room and have at it (not that it is completely impossible for me to get a quartet + vocalist together now, but the logistics and timing are significantly more challenging). Via Robot Wisdom, the Irish Times has an article on Elvis’ latest collaboration with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter. They’ve released an album called For The Stars.

If you had problems accessing this site (or sending me email), it’s because “the box” was sitting on a Northpoint DSL line (thanks to some very nice friends). Northpoint had filed for bankruptcy in January and pulled the plug on Thursday, taking many by surprise. Since then, the state has told Northpoint that since they are a utility, they have to give customers 30 days notice (Mercury News article), but I doubt they can quickly and smoothly manage getting everything back up. “The box” has been moved (well, strictly speaking, the contents of the box have been copied to a nicer box in a different location, which had kinda been the plan anyway, so the timing was almost right) and when everything propogates I hopefully will be completely back in business. Thanks to all my nice friends!

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?”

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.