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Daynotes: Week of 11 - 17 Sept, MM
Daily notes and commentary -- Week 37
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* Updated: 17 Sept MM at 23:09 GMT+2.
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Three domains for the webmaster under the sky. ...
One domain to rule them all. One domain to find them.
One domain to bring them all and in the webspace bind them
In the Land of LeufNet, where the Wikis serve.
A remarkably productive day, despite spending a lunch hour sunning on the
patio. The air was actually still cool, but in a sheltered spot, one could
be forgiven for looking at the clear blue and thinking it was summer. The
sun however felt unusually intense, so one didn't want to stay unprotected
in its rays for long, the nagging thought was that the UV would mutate a
person sooner rather than later. Half-shade was about right.
The translation got finished and sent in, and a larger number of boxes unpacked.
Many things still unordered, but at least they're in the open (e.g. on shelves)
for later inspection. In particular, the kitchen has progressed beyond the
bare minimum utensils and can cope with guests (such as my mother, who arrived
this evening). I also carted some 20 or so empty moving boxes to the basement
storage, which provided needed space in the closet. In short, the move is
starting to feel completed, not just accomplished -- there's a
distinction.
Tomorrow, I think I'll start on clearing the desktop (real), which has since
the desk got assembled been a mess of all sorts of things that I needed to
keep from drifting off or getting misplaced. That time is past, and thus
I can return to some semblance of "workspace". Good thing too, since I've
been neglecting the day-to-day accounts and receipt tracking.
All in all, a good day. Even the cats liked me.
A fellow can't keep people from having a bad opinion of him,
but he can keep them from being right about it.
In a short interlude with my good friend Clas, we reconfigured my server
to be WAP compliant. Uploading a wml-page and testing on his mobile, we found
that it was all much easier and transparent than the sight of a 2 inch thick
WAP book would have you think. Our main question was the point of sending
bmp images to a mobile :)
Most of the day was gray and overcast, but not too bad. I therefore went
out walking with my mother, to and from the nearest mall -- which took a
while, but was a pleasant walk. About 40 minutes at the mall was spent at
the bank branch ensuring that the mailing address associated with our bank
accounts was correct. The banks have by now closed so many branches (which
the accounts used to belong to), shifted around or fired staff, and reassigned
responsibilities, so the end result is a vast and clueless confusion as soon
as one scratches the surface and wants to do anything non-routine. I kept
calm and patient, and eventually, after several calls to other branches and
authorities, we had muddled through 90%, leaving only a few unresolved mysteries.
The point of the entire exercise was of course that while the bank did get
notified about our new address, I needed to come in person to a (your) branch,
show your ID and personally announce the change.
Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never
cease to be amused.
My wife was feeling sick and out of sorts yesterday. Today is my turn. Most
plans are therefore shelved for the day, and given the rainy weather, just
as well. I got some product information from my normal IT-supplier, so I
guess I'll spend the day drooling over some of the items in that. Prices
have gone down on some of the droolables, but this is matched by
how my available funds have, so status quo is retained it would seem.
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified. --
Aesop
I've felt a bit better this evening, and we had a small birthday dinner,
rather delayed, for Edward. Edward's current favorite: Taco dinner. The apartment
is close to being presentable now, so we'll be having a proper party of some
sort soon.
A late night browse noted these articles of interest in the science domain...
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Mathematical
model shows humans, like other larger animals, may be close to extinction.
Large animals are dying out at a much higher rate than models predict, said
Professor Michael Boulter at the University of East London, who believes
that the human race would "soon" follow.
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The
race for Mars is on. NASA Athena vs ESA Beagle 2. Stay tuned in 2003.
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More
on Noah's Flood being based on catastrophic flooding of Black Sea area
7000 years ago. Archeologists find remains of settlements on sea floor.
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What's under the keys on your keyboard?
Shocking,
in fact revolting, detailed evidence uncovered in new study.
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British
ISPs reprimanded. People signing up for advertised as "free" Internet
services found they received bills for monthly subscriptions or had to pay
call charges while online.
I'm realizing more and more that traditional paper magazines are rapidly
becoming irrelevant if one has half-way decent connectivity. Some publishers
are fighting the flow and keeping at most a table of contents online, but
on the whole the pressure is intense to provide actual content, for free.
If nothing else, many news services provide much the same content for free.
The ideal solution for the magazines would be per-page mini-transactions,
but we're still not there with a ubiquitous and transparent e-wallet technology.
Anyway, I enjoy browsing current developments, although I still subscribe
to Scientific American because of the
consistently high quality of their articles.
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the
answers. -- James Thurber
Today is last day of my mother's visit. The weather shifted to sunshine and
almost-summer for the occasion, so in the afternoon (after kids' school)
we all went for a longer walk in the city's botanical gardens. A good time
was had by all, ending at a simple Greek restaurant for dinner.
In short, a family day, not a productive one. (Well, we did get some more
stuff unpacked and placed in appropriate locations.) It's late and I must
be up at 6 AM in the morning, so this will have to be a short posting.
Looking quickly at the political messes at home and abroad, a quote comes
to mind...
The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the
stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
It's becoming an intriguing question where the escalating and spreading protests
about excessive tax/duties on fuel will end. Despite the announced formal
end to disruptions to supply in the UK, many truckers seemed to be continuing
in other parts of the country, the situation still chaotic in Belgium, and
protest actions were spreading to Germany and Spain. There are aspects to
this which bring to mind wildfires getting totally out of control. People
have been simmering about many things for a long time, and the fuel prices
seem merely to be a trigger to a deeper resentment at national governments.
I am reminded about the escalating protests in East Germany which brought
an end to the Wall, and ultimately the entire Soviet block. No-one at the
time would have credited such a development from the early public protests
in a few East German cities. Even when thousands were liberating themselves
Westward across whatever borders that did not remain sealed, the collapse
of Communism did not seem imminent. The worry was more what outrageous acts
the repressive regime would commit to put the lid back on. However, the process
was irreversable and the rest was history.
Saw my mother off in the morning. The rest of the day's planning got scrapped
as I ended up discussing away the day with a good friend at his place. Ah
well, one needs days like that too.
Sydney Olympics opened. Nice pictures, awful (local) commentators.
Useful tip of the week:
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come
to yours.
We spent 5 hours in the parks and woods today. It was a radiantly beautiful
day for walking and chatting, so that's what the family decided to do. It's
one of the reasons we wanted to move back here: the city is so well suited
to this kind of activity.
On the computing front, MS Windows ME is now shipping in numerous language
versions at not too indecent prices, new or upgrade. Informed opinion is
however that this is really nothing more than Win98SE enhanced with a new
Media Player (available as separate download) and the "PC Health" system
for managing DLL-hell -- in effect Win98 Third Edition. If you get it
pre-installed or for free, fine. If not, don't bother.
Interestingly, Microsoft has done a roll-back on the "double-licensing" position
for "ghosted" installations.
Quote
:
"Based on both customer and analyst feedback, Microsoft has changed
its licensing policies to allow Select and Enterprise Agreement customers
to reimage Microsoft software products licensed via a finished goods channel
without buying a volume license."
Why upgrade from NT4 to Win2000? Well, MS gives these
ten
reasons .
Hmm, that's the best they can do? Interesting is the statistic quoted apropos
reliability: "the average system uptime of Windows 2000 Professional
was over 50 times that of Windows 98 and 17 times that of Windows NT Workstation
4.0". In itself, given the notorious unreliability of Win9x and dependency
of NT reliability on many and obscure factors, this does not say much for
reliability in absolute terms. However, it's true that Win2000 does feel
more solid in its core. I am surprised that MS still takes up the speed factor
in this way though: "running the most popular business applications,
with 64 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was 32 percent faster than Windows 95 and
27 percent faster than Windows 98. It is also significantly faster than Windows
NT 4.0 on configurations with 32 MB". Now exactly who is
going to run Win2000 in only 32 MB RAM?? So why take it up at all?
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for
our wits to grow sharper.
Another good-weather day, though not perhaps as warm as yesterday. Still,
I could sit out on the patio a while with my daughter this afternoon and
soak up some warmth.
Hooray! I found the oil along with the rest of my tools, and could finally
do something about a set of squeaky hinges. More things unpacked, but we're
also getting to the difficult-placement part. Some things are simply going
to need to be stored while others go into a place-and-shift routine as we
determine best places for other things that were only placed "for now" to
get unpacked. This includes some of the furniture. Once that's taken care
of, then we can put things on the walls.
Shall I be optimistic and assume that I'll be more or less back into a
writing/editing routine this coming week? I need to get back into the book
to prepare for the post-TR pass before submission, and check out a few changes
I had considered on my own. We're half-way through September and I can't
keep postponing this by simply excusing myself and the disorder by saying
that "there's been a move y'know" -- time to go on. (It was apparently
a common excuse in Britain well into the 50s whenever someone (non-Brit)
commented the lack of this or the other to say with some indignation: "there's
been a war on, you know old chap".)
In fact, I still have a whole stack of bothersome "official" things that
must be taken care of before the end of the month. Not much fun to contemplate,
since several are certain to be time-sinks.
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace
the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup. --
Boris Pasternak
Have a good beginning of the new week!
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