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Tuesday, August 27, 2002
In less than 24 hours, 4 emails with viruses were intercepted by postini. Wonder what people do who don't have a filter? Speaking of 24 hours, all of last year's episodes of 24 are being released on DVD on Sept. 17. And, if you didn't catch the series, you can watch the Labor Day marathon on the FX network. (0) comments (0) comments (0) comments
Survived the Reston Century again this year. It's about the 20th year I've ridden the century; I'll know when I'm getting old when I can no longer complete the ride. This year's ride was very hilly, but we were lucky that it was relatively cool, overcast, and there was not much air pollution. After riding to and from the event, the total mileage for the day was around 110 miles. (0) comments Monday, August 26, 2002
There were a couple of reviews of what look like interesting books in Book World this week. Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life, Advice for Writers And Other Dreamers, advice for novel writing wanna-bes, and My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time by Sven Birkerts, about growing up in the 60's. (0) comments
I like the looks of the T-mobile Sidekick. It's a PDA, web browser, email machine, cell phone, etc. Coming real soon now. Jonathan Yardley sums up my thoughts about the upcoming baseball strike very well in his column today, Take Your Ball and Go Home. I haven't cared about baseball in a long time, but used to really enjoy going to the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Maybe it's time for a startup league like the WNBA, with minimal salaries and enthusiastic players. Having spent the years 1964-67 in London, I'm anxious to read 'Ready, Steady, Go!: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London' by Shawn Levy, despite the not so good review in the Post. It was a great time to be an immature adolescent who lived a few tube stops from some great downtown clubs and pubs. (0) comments Saturday, August 24, 2002
Newsweek has a good article on blogging by Steven Levy. Couldn't resist the $8 CD sale at Tower Records: U2's Boy, Sonic Youth's Dirty, and John Coltrane's Coltrane for Lovers. (0) comments Friday, August 23, 2002
Had a great time watching the Washington Mystics kick some New York Liberty butt last night at the MCI Center. The crowd was pumped, and I nearly lost my voice from screaming so much. The venue is in a great location, near the heart of DC, close to the subway. Since the center opened, the once neglected neighborhood has come to life, with restaurants, hotels, and the new International Spy Museum. Unfortunately all the struggling artists who lived in the old museum building were all kicked out, but that's one of the few downsides to the transformation. (0) comments Thursday, August 22, 2002
I'm not the only one who doesn't like the word Homeland. In the July 1, 2002 New Yorker, The Talk of the Town: "Homeland...sounds frightened, creepy, and un-American, with unfortunate overtones of Kinder, Kirche, Küche." (0) comments
Here's my letter to the Washington Post on bicycle commuting. Unfortunately the Post has seen fit to force it's users to face a questionnaire before seeing the article. This type of in your face marketing is getting more common all the time. (0) comments Tuesday, August 20, 2002
"Right Of Way is a group of activists dedicated to asserting the rights of car-free street users -- including pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters -- and fighting back against car violence." They put together a report entitled Killed by Automobile, an analysis of pedestrian and cyclist deaths in New York City. Contrary to what most police think and say, most of the deaths were the fault of the driver. (0) comments Monday, August 19, 2002
Infoworld has a good article on Sun's Linux strategy. They plan on outselling Dell and others by giving away the Office clone, StarOffice, the free database, MySQL, and other tools that most vendors have to license from Microsoft and others. Linux has still got a long way to go before it replaces any Windows OS, but I'm glad to see someone trying. (0) comments
Here's an article at News.com about the notebook of the future, with a reference to the OQO palm-sized computer. (0) comments Friday, August 16, 2002
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Interesting article on how Saddam will fight the war. I can't imagine any good coming from a preemtive attack on Iraq. Most of our allies are against it, it will cost a fortune, and I've not heard any reasonable suggestions for what we do afterwards. (0) comments Thursday, August 15, 2002
Best Buy is offering free shipping; get it while it lasts. Reminds me of the good old days of the tech boom when everything seemed to be free or deeply discounted. Pre-ordered Coldplay's new CD, and the Six Part Seven disc I've been trying to find for a while. I loved it recently when I saw a clip of an interview with Coldplay in which one of them said how tacky it was for Sting to sell out to Jaguar. It's refreshing to hear someone with a little integrity for a change. And yes, I still believe it's wrong to use Rock n' Roll to sell gas hog cars. It was really sad to hear The Clash's London Calling in another Jaguar commercial. (0) comments Tuesday, August 13, 2002
The September Wired contains a very thought provoking article on artificial vision. Initially I thought the photo of the wires going into the person's head was fake, but apparently not. The article on the new Vespa is also good. The manufacturer invented a new 4-stroke engine to overcome the pollution generated by their old 2-stroke engine. This is mostly in response to California's tighter air pollution standards. Who said a single state can't make a difference. (0) comments (0) comments
Finally got my scanner to work, so I've updated my Artwork section to include some recent pencil landscape sketches. These are from old black and white photos that I rescued from the trash. They have a mysterious quality about them (the photos) that I've tried to capture in the sketches. I thought the scanner only worked with a USB connection, and since NT 4.0 doesn't support USB I figured I was out of luck. Come to find out, I only needed to purchase a male/female 25-pin cable and all is well. It did require downloading the 50+MB HP driver. The driver includes some decent character recognition software. I remember when the OCR software along cost a fortune. (0) comments Monday, August 12, 2002
Megnut has written a provocative article on Blogging for Dollars. Why not pay someone to write about the latest developments within a company or agency. It would be a quick, informal way to let people know what is happening on a day to day basis. She mentions Sauté Wednesday, and how much better it could be if the author were paid to produce more content. Which brings me to tonight's dinner. I was going to mention the great risotto that I made, but then the first line of Sauté Wednesday mentions someone's awful risotto recipe: "We think it is a disaster." Anyway, my risotto was very tasty. Recipe to follow... (0) comments Sunday, August 11, 2002
Saw the movie Signs last night. It's an OK movie if all you want to do is escape for a couple of hours. Almost every known trick in the scary movie director's book was used by Shyamalan, who also directed the Sixth Sense. I jumped along with everyone else, but mostly because the digital speakers were so loud. I'm one of those people who stay until the last credit has rolled. To me, the movie isn't complete until then. I usually want to know what locations were used for the film, and there is usually something humorous in the credits. We're always the last ones to leave the theater, so I predict that it won't be long before the credits are reduced to a few seconds. My sense that rock and roll was in good shape seems to be reflected in the fact that more hip-hop groups are turning to rock and roll. (0) comments Saturday, August 10, 2002
I'm much more encouraged about the state of music these days. I've discovered some excellent CD's lately by Coldplay, Wilco, Elbow, and others. (0) comments
Enjoyed seeing the movie Tadpole last night. It's a relatively low budget film despite the star-studded cast (Sigourney Weaver and John Ritter), and some of the acting was not quite up to par, but it was much better than most Hollywood fare. Too bad there are so few theaters these days that show independent films. I suppose it could be a business opportunity. (0) comments
Now this is they way to handle bicycle accidents, to make drivers responsible for ALL automobile/bicycle accidents. Here's another article on the proposed European law. Maybe motorists will think twice before mowing us down. (0) comments Friday, August 09, 2002
I guess that probably was a rattlesnake that I saw the last time we rode through Shenandoah National Park. According to this article on rattlesnakes in the Post, they're all over the place up there. I'll be a little more careful next time I hike there. (0) comments
I was surprised to see an article in the Washington Post about the new movie documenting the making of the Wilco CD that I bought yesterday. It sounds like a good movie. I know almost nothing about Wilco other than hearing a few passing references to their interpretations of Woody Guthrie songs. According to the Post, "Wilco has made the best album of the new century with 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'". (0) comments Thursday, August 08, 2002
After mentioning the group Six Parts Seven a while back I decided to pick up their CD today. I couldn't remember their exact name, so went to the bins and looked for Six. I found a CD by Six by Seven (how many groups could have a name that starts with six and ends with seven) and bought it. Oops. The CD is OK, but not what I wanted. Wonder if CD stores accept returns these days. Also picked up the latest CD by Wilco; the seductive power of listening stations. (0) comments
Megnut has a great looking recipe for Tuscan Panzanella, a bread salad made with fresh tomatoes. I just ate, but the recipe makes me hungry. (0) comments
It's on days like today, another beautiful cool day, that I realize why I have lived here for over 20 years. If only it would last. The life of a volunteer trail coordinator - Spent lots of time on trail issues today: VDOT, the Virginia transportation department, closed a major trail so they could do some bridge repair. There were no detours and only one sign, ROAD CLOSED. It's at a critical location where there are few alternatives. Made phone calls and sent email but doubt that much will change. A few days ago an older man, riding a bike on the W&OD Trail, was hit by a car while in a crosswalk. The investigating police officer said it was the cyclist's fault: "It's always the fault of the bicyclist when there is an accident." said the officer, not once but twice. There were witnesses who said the motorist was speeding but the officer had seen all he needed to see and didn't take their statements. It's the second time a cyclist has been hit at this crosswalk, in almost exactly the same place. It's at the bottom of a hill, and nearly everyone is speeding at the crosswalk. The officer said the motorist was going 30 in a 35 mph zone, despite the 35 feet of skid marks. It's time to take to the streets... Later rode 20 miles round trip to attend a trail meeting. Another developer is trying to avoid building a needed trail by filing a trail waiver. Now we have to document why he needs to build it. Almost got hit by a bus that pulled out in front of me on the ride home. That was just before the woman turned in front of me while I was trying to make a left turn. (0) comments Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Janis Ian has written an interesting article on why the record industry should embrace music downloading instead of trying to prevent their customers from doing it. After the suffocating heat and Code Red days, today's cool, clear weather was a pleasant relief. Instead of riding home after work I kept on going out the W&OD Trail to Ashburn and back. It felt good to finally get some exercise without feeling like I've smoked a pack of cigarettes. (0) comments Monday, August 05, 2002
Today was another Code Red day. It really felt like it when I rode out to look at a trail sight around midday. I thought I would ride really slow, but I was gasping for breath in no time, and could feel the dirty air penetrating my body. Maybe what I need is an air filter face mask. While in China, it seemed like half the people were wearing similar masks. (0) comments
Looks like the oqo mini/micro computer has some competition. Antelope Technologies is developing a similar pocket-sized computer, and once the slashdot effect wears off, I'll try to read about it. (0) comments Sunday, August 04, 2002
A while ago I recovered some old, black and white photos that were being discarded. Over the past few days I've been doing pencil drawings from them. After trying to work in color for years, using watercolor, oils, and colored pencil, I find that simple graphite drawings give me the most satisfaction. I sense a new hobby coming on, collecting old, anonymous photos and drawing from them. (0) comments
Watched most of the New York Criterium live on OLN TV. It was typical of most American races, a short course with many tight turns. Lance was there mostly because of a prior commitment and was able to survive without crashing. In fact, it was one of the few races I've ever seen without a crash. At times, while watching a particularly accident-laden race, I feel a little like a NASCAR fan, wondering about the latest crashes. Ivan Dominguez from the Saturn team won the sprint finish. (0) comments
Guess I'm getting soft in old age. Didn't venture out into the heat much today until after 4pm. Had a good, relatively cool (low 90's) ride along some quite, shady roads nearby. It's surprising that these pockets of rural-like areas survive in this area. (0) comments Saturday, August 03, 2002
Salon has a funny article on expired dot com names. I was just wondering about this after hearing an advertising executive say that domain names of most regular words that could be used for company names are gone, having been purchased by those hoping to cash in by selling the domains. Guess some are now available, some, such as used-pens.com, will probably be available for longer than others. (0) comments Friday, August 02, 2002
It's another Code Red air quality day in DC. I've become the neighborhood nag, getting after the inconsiderate people who leave their cars running while sitting in the parking lot. Dirty looks sometimes work, but usually it takes a few words to get the message across. (0) comments Thursday, August 01, 2002
The local papers are finally discussing pedestrian safety, with this editorial on pedestrian safety, and what little Fairfax County is doing. At the public hearing, one of the supervisors said that according to the police, we don't have a pedestrian safety problem, and when we do, it's the fault of the pedestrians and they're drunk. The Police are overworked, but need to get a better attitude about the problem. A little enforcement of the pedestrian rights laws would help. In the same edition of the paper is this article on pedestrian safety. (0) comments
Save the lungs and pack on the pounds. With the recent code orange and red days, I've been taking it easy with the bike riding, but have noticed that I've gained a few pounds. I guess it's worth it in the long run, but I really resent the fact that it's unhealthy to live a so-called "healthy" lifestyle around here in the summer time. Lance will be in Germany with Floyd Landis participating in a 72km two-man time trial on Saturday Aug. 3. You wouldn't know it from the traditional sports news outlets, but Lance won the 19th Profronde van Stiphout 100km time trial on Aug. 30. (0) comments |
