Spent too much time today trying to get mod_rewrite to behave. The problem was simple enough, but I just couldn’t get reliable behaviour out of it. Thought I needed it because straight Redirect doesn’t do regex. Then found RedirectMatch, which is exactly that - redirects with pattern matching. Is this httpd’s best-kept secret?

What I hate is that when you’re reading complicated docs and examples on something like mod_rewrite, nobody ever puts a line in there: “By the way, if you’re like 99% of people, you’ll probably find that RedirectMatch accomplishes the same thing but much more easily.” Nope. Nerds gotta do it the hard way or it doesn’t count.

Went to see Bill Clinton speak today. The J-School sponsored the event, but it was held in Zellerbach Hall. Cool to see Gray Davis, Orville Schell, and Bubba all onstage at once. Very inspiring. Listening to him really made me aware of how quickly we synopsize our feelings about leaders into a few summary thoughts. “Democrat. Two terms. Mixed track record. Kinda liked him, kinda not. Reputation tarnished by scandal.” It also made me aware of how our impressions of leaders are almost entirely governed by the sound bites and snippets the media choose to publish. But listening to him speak in complete thoughts, and without having to be on the campaign trail and sell himself, was fascinating. Lives of politicians are so complex, the issues so huge, the problems so multidimensional. The country was left with the impression of a kind of bumbler, and many people forgot just how intelligent he is. But his wit is so quick, his grasp of the big picture so vast.

His main talking point was globalization, and he had a lot to say on that. One of the most interesting things he pointed out was how we took the long view towards Japan and Germany, and poured resources into those countries to help shape the world for the future. If we had just won WWII and left it at that, our relationship to Germany and Japan today would be very different than it is. So what about Afghanistan? It’s not enough to bomb it further into oblivion, and it’s not enough to eliminate Al Qaeda (efforts he supports completely). Taking the long view, we have to pour resources into the Middle East to foster freedom of thought, education, etc. That kind of thing costs us peanuts, and has a huge pay-off for the future. But how much are we talking about that now?

He also made an unusual point about exhaustion. All of our senators and congresspeople, and in fact all the leaders of the world, live under such heavy workloads and under so much continual stress that the world is basically run by walking zombies. Scary thought.

I had felt non-committal about going to this thing, but was really glad I did.

Also got to hang out before the event with the founder and editor of Wired Digital. Had a very interesting conversation about what kind of media is successful today. Now that everything is so specialized - people have 100 TV channels and infinite web sites to choose from - the really successful publications are super specialized and all about lifestyle. Yoga magazine has a huge circ and is fat with ads. U.S. News and World Report is sinking out of view. Slashdot (tech specialized) is doing great, but Plastic (general topics) is struggling. Etc. etc. Interesting.

Amy and I met with a loan broker today and got pre-approved for a home loan. Meeting went well, but we’ve decided to pull back on our expectations a bit and not stretch ourselves too thin. Anyway, now we’re ready to strike at a moment’s notice when the time comes.

A and I went out for a walk and saw a giant pillar of smoke stretching up above Telegraph Ave. Walked up there and found the local liquor store / laundromat in an inferno. A dozen fire trucks, suds foaming on the street, hundreds of people gawking from behind police tape. We really like the old Chinese man who runs the liquor store, and felt bad for him. Couldn’t find him though. The air stunk. Took them hours to get it under control. Telegraph blocked off, so traffic being re-routed through all the side streets.

These are wonderful.

Amy and I went in for an ultrasound this morning. What an amazing experience - the first pictures of our little appleseed (that’s how big it is right now — 3.5 mm, with a heart the size of a poppyseed). Actually they weren’t sure whether we’d be able to catch the heartbeat at this early stage, but suddenly, there it was, fluttering like a hummingbird. A living being, sparking to life before our eyes. I’ve felt happy all along, but suddenly I felt pride for the first time.

First close-up, hanging out on the side of the egg sac. The sort of curved area at the top left is a “leg bud.” Which must mean the big area above the head on the right is its giant schnozz. ;)

The top image shows the size of the yolk sac compared to the embryo - the little guy is swimming in an ocean of food! The placenta has not yet developed - that will come at about 12 weeks. The bottom image shows the heartbeat along the bottom - just subtle dips here, but at one point we were able to see it really dramatically — not on the chart, but the embryo itself, fluttering with every beat. The vertical line along the right is the TCG - time compensation gain - it lets the sonographer compensate for imaging fluctuations due to depth / distance.

What’s playing now:

The knower of the past, the present and future
Crowning even this, you’re knowledge itself
Oh merciful benevolence, eternal
You’re the trinity of knowledge, truth, and bliss
You are the source of truth, the one with infinite attributes
You are the ocean of love we sorely miss
- Pete Townsend

Heh… you know those Blue Man Group commercials for Intel? I just found out that their shows depend entirely on Macs ;)

Mentioned a while ago that Amy had a book release party for “Surrogate.” Finally got around to putting the images and essays from the book online today. As I was working with this stuff, was amazed all over again at how good she is, how much I love her work. I’m a lucky guy.

If you have comments on Amy’s photos, please leave them in the LiveJournal account I secretly set up for her : ;)

One of my favorite things about Thursdays has always been the Express, one of the three free weeklies we get in the Bay Area. But recently they “restructructured” and removed Cecil Adams (The Straight Dope), Gina Arnold (a music writer who has been with them for a decade) and Lynda Barry, my favorite cartoonist, whose stuff I’ve been in love with since the mid-80s (it used to be called Ernie Pook’s Comeek). The Express is now next to worthless, and Thursday lunches aren’t what they used to be.

Half a year ago Barry was offering to draw a panel “just for you!” for $25, so Amy and I took her up on it and she sent a panel of Marlys tip-toeing upstairs, and even sent a personal note. We gotta frame that one of these days. Fortunately Salon posts Barry’s strip online each week, so all is not lost.

Just noticed it’s 5:00 and it’s not dark out yet. That means winter is already half over. But hey, I haven’t gone snowboarding yet this year. Will have to rectify that.

Oh - welcome to . He and I go way back… my birdhouse and his enterzone were some of the earliests arts and literature sites on the web, and we hooked up in a private mailing list called antiweb that i’m still part of. Interesting that LJ kind of manifests some of the web’s collaborative possibilities that we used to get so fired up about on antiweb.

Whoo! Got offered a teaching gig today. I’ll be running a four-week class on database-backed web sites this April. It will be counted as part of my regular job, not as a separate job, but that’s okay - a terrific opportunity.

After two months, I finally got my hands on the jschool web server today and set up Apache, PHP, MySQL. Should go into production with it tomorrow. It’s hard to get used to how slowly things move in the university universe. I really wish we could have done this whole thing on OS X rather than 2K, but hey, at least it won’t be running IIS.

In other news, Amy is still pregnant ;) Hard to believe that in 3/4 of a year, our life will be all about sippy cups.

Number of friends who accompanied Amy and I to breakfast at Mama’s Royal Cafe’ : 2 (Mike and Chris)

Number of delicious cookies left in the container Chris gave for us for Christmas: 3

Number of houses Amy and I looked at today: 4

Number of houses we saw that we would actually want to live in: 0

Number of messages on our answering machine when we got back, offering congratulations on our pregnancy: 8

Number of miles Amy and I ran yesterday morning: 3

Number of days since Amy had her last cigarette: 3

Number of days I have left to quit smoking, per agreement: 24

Number of weeks until our friends Will and Sage birth their own little bubba: 2

Number of PowerMacs our landlord got dirt-cheap at a job site: 2

Number of landlord’s new PowerMacs capable of booting from CD: 0

Number of pounds per square inch of pressure I made sure was in the tires of our boring Toyota this afternoon: 33

Number of days before I pick up the now-fixed motorcycle I pranged up last June: 3

Number of people who have commented recently that my current LJ picture makes me look overly serious, or like an escaped prisoner: 3

I’ve been looking forward to making this post for a very long time. Amy and I have been trying to get pregnant since we got married. We’ve been through a lot of tests, and a lot of emotional rides. Amy had a laporoscopy recently, and then started acupuncture shortly therefater. Just when we were starting to think about in-vitro or adoption, it happened. All by itself. A little swimmer made the mark, and we’re pregnant!

No doubt about it, it’s for real. Out of the abstract and into reality. Suddenly everything changes. Have to clean out the office and make a baby room. Have to quit smoking. Have to get the turntable up high. All that stuff that other people do… I can’t even digest this. Wow.

Tonight we call the parents. Booyah!

Spent the day at MacWorld Expo, just did the exhibit halls. Got a kick out of AppleSkinz — they make plastic G4 case overlays like tribal tatoos, American flags, licking flames, etc. Would be an okay idea, but most of the designs look like they come straight out of the Harley scene. The appearance of the people behind the booth would tend to verify that gross, and very unfair generalization. They’ll do custom ones out of EPS files too.

Saw the new iMacs - in person pretty much what you would expect after seeing the pix and videos. Still feel torn about that design. They’re extremely functional - gotta hand it to Apple on this one - they actually put function over form for once. I’m sure a lot of people love the design, but it reminds me too much of the furniture we all had in the early 70s, all that molded white plastic curved stuff out of Kubrick.

Hunted down and found a good deal on a combo USB/FireWire external drive enclosure. $99. Going to format it FAT32 for PnP compatibility b/w macs and win machines, carting MP3s around, backups, etc.

Went to see David Pogue (”OSX: The Missing Manual”) speak. He was pretty good and I learned a few tricks, but he seemed like an Apple schill, too obviously skirting problems in OS X and talking only about the good stuff. The clincher was during the Q&A. I axed him about his personal OSX wish list for future releases. He claimed he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to see improved. Riiiiiigggghhhhttttt.

Stopped at the Omni Group booth and thanked them for OmniWeb’s great cookie viewer, which was invaluable debugging php cookie problems the other day. Got a demo of Graffle - great app, but can’t think of a personal need for it. Bought a boxed copy of OmniWeb at educational show discount.

Bumped into an old work mate from the Adamation crew. Made me feel kind of nostalgiac, but not really.

Just occurred to me — how long before people start decorating their new iMacs up like Wilson the volleyball from Cast Away?

The J-School is hosting a seminar on multimedia reporting for the Maynard Institute. I’m standing by for technical assistance, and will be teaching an HTML class on Wednesday morning. So far it’s going like clockwork. Assisted some students today getting familiar with a DV camera - took them out into the field…. MacWorld was going on so we accosted some Mac users in a cafe to get opinions. Well, not everyone you talk to has opinions on this sort of thing.

Will attend MacWorld on Thursday. Some pretty big announcements today, but it looks like Apple grossly overhyped the whole thing. Or rather, all of the announcements were for the consumer market - the pro market didn’t really hear anything exciting.

Played with iPhoto tonight. Fairly impressive image database, though in its current form it won’t replace ImageRodeo, ACDSee, or Photoshop for me, so I don’t see myself using it all that much.

She doesn’t have any. I looked really hard too, and not once throughout the film could I even see the edge of Audrey Tatou’s pupils. Spooky. Loved the movie.

Switched from Mail.app to Entourage today. The built-in junk detection is worth the switch alone. Birdhouse is up to 80% spam these days. kissthisguy is well over 95% spam. It’s enough to make me want to ditch birdhouse.org for a year until I’m wiped out of all those databases, but I can’t because family members and friends have birdhouse addresses too. I swear to god spam is the scourge of the 21st century.

Sick again. Thought I had it licked, but sore throat and cramped sinuses, low energy came back with a vengeance last night. Not entirely sure these symptoms aren’t coming from mildew and cleaning chemicals in my office at UCB — fallout from flooding a few weeks ago. I knew it didn’t feel right sitting in that smell all day. But I just can’t be sure if I’m sick from that or whether it’s just coinicidental.

There are about a million ways to set and parse cookies, and every browser handles them differently. Spent all day doing PHP cookie tricks for user authorization for our intranet. Think I finally nailed it for all browsers. Days like this, you want to pull out your hair (or pull *some*one’s hair anyway). Then when you’re done there’s this great satisfaction.

I break horses… ( - smog )

Forgot to post the other day what a trip it was that none of my nieces had ever seen a turntable or LPs. I was replacing a belt on Amy’s parent’s old Dual and the girls all gathered around. What’s that? You put a disc in there? I think they were unclear on the concept because I came back later and the platter was on the floor (they had seen me remove the platter to replace the belt). But we had a good dance party. They had never played air guitar before either.

The later you’re born, the more history you have to work with.