Amy has this old boyfriend, David, who has spent the last decade riding the rails and sleeping under bridges with hobos and tramps. He travels with a MiniDV camera and has shot 200 hours of footage of tramps in their natural habitat. He has spent enough time with them that he’s gained their trust and they’ve come to not even notice the camera, and are completely comfortable around him. The footage he has is amazing. He’s now in the process of editing this footage into a documentary called “Long Gone,” and has 15 indie film companies interested in the project. Tom Waits has given them the rights to use a bunch of unpublished train-related songs. Fantastic project. David passed through town yesterday and spent the day and night with us. Heard so many great stories… such a rich subject to work on. And so few film makers would have the kind of dedication and willingness to completely live that life that David has had. Awesome.

Went with David and Amy yesterday to SF MOMA, came home and ate pad thai and watched some of his rough cuts.

Why is that right-wingers often use the phrase “Educate yourself” when in arguments with left wingers, as if the right has some kind of grasp of the facts that the left does not. Everywhere in life, people come to different conclusions from the same set of facts. I think Rush Limbaugh started this meme. People call in with leftist ideas, he lays his version of the facts on them, doesn’t let them interject or respond, then says “Get informed” and hangs up. I’ve had this meme layed on me by right wingers about half a dozen times in the past year, and it’s getting tiresome. Then when I give them my version of the facts, they say “I never heard that” or “Prove it” or “Check your sources.” It’s so arrogant.

The latest issue of Fast ‘n’ Bulbuous music reviews came out today. Uncle Fester’s tastes and opinions on music are more consistently similar to my own than any reviewer I know.

This interview with Noam Chomsky is a very good — and important — read on recent events.

Sprinkle my ass… got the firewood in and the sky broke open. Lightning cracking right over the house, everything rumbling. TREMENDOUS! Amy was afraid that Plato got caught out there and was cowering somewhere, getting drenched. Then we found him in the closet, curled up. He never goes in there. Scared shitless, poor guy.

I miss the east coast sometimes. Miss the weather. Living in Australia, too - we had thunderstorms there like none I’ve experienced anywhere else.

Seldom see thunder and lightning around here, but we’re seeing it tonight.  Brought in firewood as it began to sprinkle. Saw a face in the clouds as big as 1/4 sky. It had one eye squinting shut and the other wide open, laughing at me.

Went with to SF to an “artisan audio” a.k.a. “dark lantern” demo and lecture/get-together. This is a branch of high-end audio that has different assumptions and expectations from audio equipment. Rather than focus on benchmarks and graphs, and terms like “accuracy,” it’s all about music and musicality. The equipment they use is often different - they create low-wattage amplifiers with single-ended triode tubes, paired with highly efficient speakers, often with horn, rather than cone designs. What I didn’t expect was that most of these guys (yes, almost 100% guys) are balding (I’m one to talk ;), 40-60 year old electrical engineering dweebs. What a bunch of out-of-shape duck-footed geeks. As baald said, “This gathering is a good argument for a life-long workout routine.” Indeed. Anyway, lots of electrical schematics on chalkboards, etc., all of that stuff is outside my realm of exposure, thus over my head. But damn, some beautiful sounding equipment…

I think that part of what really appeals to me about Bjork is that she is at once so precise and so wild and unchained. I can’t think of another contemporary artist that can do both of those things at once so well, or so uniquely.

I feel transformed after watching CNN’s “Behind the Veil” last night. I have spent words trying to point out that the U.S. is not blameless, and should re-evaluate its role. While that may still be true, it is also the case that nothing the U.S. has ever done can even remotely be compared to the incredible, seemingly bottomless evil of the Taliban. I’m surprised to hear myself say this, but the Taliban must be eliminated. That’s all there is to it. They simply cannot be allowed to continue their presence on the face of this earth. I can’t even put into words how profoundly disturbing that documentary was. Shot covertly by a female Afghani reporter working under cover, re-assembled into a documentary overseas from smuggled tapes. The world needs to see this documentary to understand. I complain about propaganda, but this documentary is not propaganda. It is the real thing, from the front lines of true and bottomless suffering.

So.

Carpet bombing is not going to work. Ground forces are going to be lost in droves, if history is any lesson. But there is this rising meme floating around: “Bomb ‘em with butter.” In other words, fight this war culturally. Give strength to Afghanis to resist against the Taliban, and to align themselves with the Northern Alliance. Send in food, medicine, shelter. Build beautiful mosques for them to pray in. Restore their right to listen to music (that’s right, the Taliban made music illegal), to watch movies (ditto), to read newspapers (ditto again). Protect their 12 year old girls from rape by Taliban soldiers. Give them information, a full belly, a good night’s sleep. Give them a taste of what life could be. Fight this war with culture and solidarity. Create an uprising so large that the Taliban will be squished into irrelevance. Then gather up what’s left of them and throw them into a pit with hungry lions.

It sounds almost strange, but I actually think we’re going to end up doing something like this. It may be the only way.

Please, please watch this documentary. It’s airing again tonight on CNN.

There’s a light on the dashboard of our car that just won’t go out no matter how many times we visit the mechanic. Last night Amy dreamed that a new light suddenly came on. The one that alerts the driver that the body of the car has become detached from the chassis and is hurtling forward off its axles.

My five-year-old, 8-inch plecostamus died recently. I put it in the freezer so Amy could photograph it if she gets a wild hair. Yesterday bought a new one, a young one, just three inches. Will grow it up from a “pup.” This will be the last fish I buy from the old Chinese lady at the dank, smelly aquarium shop across the street. She’s going out of business and retiring. Most of her tanks were empty when I went in yesterday. It’s the worst aquarium shop ever, but I like going there because it’s fun trying to communicate about fish with someone who speaks almost no English at all. Goodbye, old pleco. Goodbye, dank, smelly aquarium lady.

Amy said:

“If we go to war I’ll take pictures of it. Then I’ll have something to focus on besides my navel lint.”

Doesn’t that kind of sum it up? Suddenly everything has focus. After how many years of peace time, we have grown complacent. Sitcoms, books, music, all ending up with nothing to say, recycling the same old tropes endlessly, and it’s all been spreading out into brownian motion, losing focus, intensity fading. Now suddenly there’s nothing but focus. It may be coming from the spirit of revenge, it may be less justified than people think (given the degree of our hypocrisy), but it’s undeniable that the country is feeling united more than most people alive today can remember. Everyone has something to think about now. Whether that thinking will amount to anything, whether people will come to realize just how responsible the U.S. is for world anger, is another question.

It is all about anger disguised as righteousness. Think about the last time you had a real knock-down drag-out fight with someone, how your ability to see clearly became clouded. How winning became the only important thing — more important even than being correct. The entire fucking human race is now standing face to face in exactly that kind of argument. One of us is going to have to sleep on the couch.

Forgot to say… took John and Jamie to the East Bay Vivarium on a lark and while we were there they fed a live, full-grown rabbit to a 30-foot python. The second it was in the cage that sleeping snake pounced, subsumed the whole rabbit head into its jaws, and wrapped its snake body around rabbit body. The rabbit squirmed and kicked for about five minutes before it was dead. They my phone rang and I talked to the DSL tech while watching the python detach its jaw, get end-to-end with the rabbit, and just engulf the rabbit’s body with its own. It was an awesome and disturbing thing to witness. The whole episode was about 18″ away from us behind the glass.

Just watched a 20/20 piece on biological warfare and anthrax. They say it’s about as easy to make as moonshine. I almost couldn’t finish dinner. For years, bio warfare has been my greatest fear. Now the news media is legitimizing that fear. It’s not just me being paranoid. I’m really scared. They say gas masks are already sold out in all the stores. Cant’ believe I’m writing these words.

Was digging through an ancient “misc docs” dir and came across this “found poem” I’ve been saving for years. Taken from the side of a “Warm ‘n Tender” doll box, circa 1993:

Fill me with warm water
I’ll fill you with love.

Fill my tummy
with warm water
oooh…ahhh.

Squooshy, Mooshy
Wiggly, Warm
Hug.

Something that’s coming out of my discussion with Aunt Geri, regarding me being so critical of our country.

As a technology journalist, one of my most important jobs is not to let companies get away with crap. When a company releases a product with bugs, I make it known in the press. When they have unfair licensing agreements, I let the world know about it. That is the value of the media. That’s what Consumer Reports is based on. Keeping people informed about their options, about who is being fair and who isn’t.

I think that being critical of one’s government (no matter what country you’re in) is not just a right, but an *obligation* of the citizenry. If people accept what their governments and media machines spoon-feed them, they’re sunk. Without being critical, the greedy and power-hungry will get away with murder. I applaud anyone who is critical of corporations and critical of their governemt. In fact, I’m *proud* (yes, there’s something I’m proud of ;) to be critical of my government. I feel that it is my civic duty.

Hold the bastards’ feet to the fire!

Just heard that congress is putting together a “down payment” of $20 billion to put U.S. armed services on highest readiness. The goal will probably be to eliminate entire states (countries) that have provided harbor to terrorists. This may mean total elimination of Afghanistan and/or other countries that stand in the way or show hints of harboring.

We are not going to seek out a few terrorists and kill them. We are going to destroy millions of innocent lives. We are not just going to sink below their level. We are going to sink far below it.

I am sick to my stomach about what lies ahead.

My thoughts from yesterday can be summarized like this:

Someone sent a postcard as big as our souls directly to the heart of America, and we haven’t even bothered to read what’s written on the back.

The issues I had installing logjam, and my correspondences with its developer resulted in a pretty interesting discussion about SSL assumptions / mistakes Mandrake made with 8.0, and the related issue of how much security is desirable for a public service like LJ. Read it here.

Trying to use gcombust to burn CDs in Linux last night… never made so many coasters in my life. Couldn’t figure out why, finally pulled the SCSI card and moved it to the Win machine, only to be beset by a ton of configuration and writing problems there as well (using Nero). Finally figured those out, but there are a dozen wasted CD blanks in the trash now. I don’t think I’ve ever made a blank in BeOS. Damn, Be got so much so right, made so much so easy.

Today found out that you pretty much have to change the priority level of the cd burning app in linux. One guy claims that

nice –15 gcombust &

will do the trick. That makes a certain amount of sense, but I’m not sure how to interpret this. Does it mean that:

A) The Linux scheduler is really dumb and can’t figure out anything for itself.

B) Linux is very coarsely multithreaded.

C) This is somehow “desired or expected behavior” and that a user so clueless that he didn’t know he had to do that to begin with has no business using Linux.

Amy suggested i do something relaxing, so made this:

(more…)

Breakthrough - finally punched out of RPM hell and got the exact combination of library versions of openssl, curl, and libcrypto symlinks to re-enable my Samba network (which I broke while trying to get logjam installed) and for the logjam installer itself to work.

It’s funny how there are so many things that are ridiculously difficult in Linux, and it’s easy to curse them for it because they shouldn’t be difficult, but that’s also what’s attractive about it - the problem solving and the education that comes with that.

But it’s funny - Amy said I only seem to swear at the computer when I’m using Linux, so why am I getting more into it? Good question.

Just returned from a Linux user’s group mtg. Small group, about seven people. But very fiery. Despite all of my complaints about Linux and the weaknesses of the OSS development model (to which few zealots will admit), I have to admit that it’s very contagious. The thing is, there is FIRE in the Linux world now. The last year of BeOS has been almost nothing but depression. People begging for breadcrumbs, grateful for any scrap thrown our way. Linux is very much still in the process of self-creation. The love and the lunacy is still there. I thrive on that. Everyone thrives on that.

The kitties were so cute today. They were sitting around smoking weed and listenting to Rush 2112. Then Plato wouldn’t budge from the couch and was bogarting the Cheetos bag. Louise was running around acting like she had just made a deal with the devil. It just kills me when they do that.

Set up a home Samba network for the first time. Hair-pulling experience at first. Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding one little key, then the whole things busts open…

Thanks to for pointing out this excellent piece: The Failure of Tech Journalism. It addressess so much of what I have come to see as bogus about the field in which I’ve placed myself, but doesn’t mention the one thing that’s bothered me the most over the years: The fact that tech pubs disavow any responsibility for their hand in the manufacturing of reality. Not to harp on the BeOS thing, but using that as an example… if you ask any tech pub why they didn’t do more BeOS coverage, they would answer “We report on what’s popular and in use.” But they will not acknowledge that what’s popular and in use is partially so because of the role tech pubs play in making that thing or product popular to begin with.

It’s the same with the non-tech news as well of course. People think about and talk about what’s in the headlines. Is yet another little girl stuck in a well, or this week’s homerun hero, really as important as the Chinese occupation of Tibet? Nobody would say that it is. But surprisingly few Americans even know what goes on in Tibet because we’re too obsessed with Gary Condit et al. And we’re obsessed with Condit because that’s the diet we’re currently being fed.

Not being able to cover the things that I felt were most interesting, not just most popular, is the factor that drove me away from ZD to begin with. I think this whole phenomenon is central - that media does as much to create the popular mindset as it does to reflect it. But the tech media almost never acknowledges this role.

Someone called my cell phone at 6:30 with a wrong number (I hate that). Was at ’s house by 10 with to help apply racing stripes to Chris’ Miata. Quite a tedious job, but kind of meditative. Way more difficult than it looks. The vinyl bubbles and buckles and you have to work out all the glitches with sponges and sewing needles.

Left there at 3:00 to meet up with Josh for a planned hike w/dog Stella in the Berkeley hills, to connect up, sweat in the afternoon sun, toss a frisbee to a joyous canine expressing her dog-hood through the bark and the sniff. Josh didn’t know what a Miata is. I asked, “What universe do you live in?” He answered, “You know what universe I live in. The one inhabited by bodhisattvas and free jazz musicians.” Sometimes I forget. It’s weird, Josh and I used to be so close, and he still lives right next door, but we’ve drifted in recent years, our interests so far apart in many ways. Yet we still share a bond, an understanding that goes beyond everything else.
My universe used to be inhabited by free jazz musicians and freaks on the weird-ass literary fringes. Now it’s all digital everything. Or mostly. Sometimes I forget that I’m unbalanced. Josh helps me remember in the kindest ways.
`
Off to the Edinburgh Castle in SF to meet with Andrew Orlowski, a journalist from The Register and Henry Kingman, an old friend from ZD, who later ran all the Linux stuff for CNET but who has just lost his job there (same story everywhere you turn these days). This pub does a trivia contest - the questions were harder than expected. Another of their friends, Robin Bandy, is part of the CLIQ collective, who do all kinds of programming and web hosting. They also offer DSL, and I’ve been shopping. Cool. Looks like I’ll be getting DSL from a tatooed geek collective in my own backyard. Reasonable deals, lots of freedom, good politics.

Great to get to know Andrew and Henry too. Henry had a good job suggestion: SSC, who run Linux Journal, and who almost published The BeOS Journal, which I labored my heart out on a couple of years ago. Hmm… very promising possibility. Andrew told me all about the internal workings of The Register, which I have always admired. What I like about them is that it’s sort of gonzo technology journalism, very different from the usual copycat mainstream tech journalism style. I think they have a great chance of ultimately succeeding because they come from anarchy, are growing organically, not the brainchild of some MBA with a bunch of startup funds and a product no one wants.

Somehow I feel a bit more connected to knowing what I want do next after this night out. Know that I want/need to hook up with something I believe in, something I can rally behind and not just work at for the sake of having a job. Not sure yet what that thing will be, but I don’t think I can go work for a big conglomerate monolith. But neither am I willing to go back to working for a dinky underdog with no hope and no future. Something in between. Increasingly, it’s seeming that Linux provides that perfect middle ground, and that I just need to find the right niche for myself in that world.