pleonasm:now

Blog update

So many changes, I hardly know where to begin ... Dooce (who famously lost her job because of her blog) is back, which is excellent news. She can write about anything, and make me laugh ... Asian Bastard came back after a hiatus, then vanished again just as quickly (and even briefly had an AvantGo version of his site - very cool, must investigate) ... Jonno, always an interesting, link-heavy read, is back ... Lost For Life has some great new illustrations ... Torrez is active again, and now you can view the last 100 files from his FilePile project at his site ... Rod, from the Bush of Shepherds, has a most amusing online diary ... and, finally, opacodex is quite beautifully designed. Inspiring, even.

Colander

I have a memory like a sieve, honestly I do. By that, I mean that it has holes in it and things tend to fall through the holes, not that it's made of wire mesh or is used to strain boiled vegetables. Far from it. You see, when I wrote my entry for last Sunday, and rambled on forever about all those open source applications, I completely forgot my main point, which was that I won't be able to finish my photography project Signs, as advertised on my splash page, until I've figured out how to use MySQL and integrate it with Perl. So now you know. It'll probably be months still. How embarrassing!

26 september 2002

Developing news

I have a rather hefty project at work right now: I and four other people are rebuilding the college website from the ground up. That wouldn't be so bad if it consisted merely of static HTML pages, but we're integrating many new features that require a veritable Babel of programming scripts and languages, most of which none of us know anything about. To this end, I've been trying to configure my trusty Mac iBook to run Perl, Apache, PHP, and MySQL. It's been an uphill battle. I wrestled with the Apache installation for several hours before realizing that it in fact ships with OS X. Oops! Perl's in there too, though I haven't tested it yet to see whether or not it actually works. PHP looks like it's installed, but I can't get it to work, so I may have to install it anyway, though my version of OS X, insanely, shipped without cc, a C compiler (essential for configuring and making UNIX binaries). And MySQL? Let's just say that, after reading the Apache documentation, which was clearly aimed at no one with an IQ less than 300, I'm scared to even look at that of PHP. No wonder so few people bother with any of this stuff.

Anyway, the upshot is that I'm going to have to buy the new version of OS X, Jaguar, just so that I can do something that any other UNIX computer can do, viz. compile a C binary. I know it's a good idea to upgrade anyway, but I am a total cheapskate, after all. Harrumph! Bah, humbug, etc.

Online help has been incredibly useful, though. In particular, I would like to give three thumbs up to O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter (their six-part tutorial Apache Web-Serving With Mac OS X is especially helpful), and to their ONLamp site, which covers the whole gamut of indispensable open source development tools (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl). This stuff is all free, and you can build an extremely powerful, dynamic, database-driven web enterprise with it. Now all I need is the time to learn it all ...

Sorry about all that. I get so into programming sometimes, and get carried away. Last night I still had an adrenaline rush at one in the morning from manually editing my Apache httpd.conf file and seeing it actually work afterwards.

Wow. Did I really write that? Why, put me in a tartan pantsuit and call me Geek McNerdy!

She knows her onions

On a less tedious note, the incredibly famous British TV cook Delia Smith now has her own website. She appears to be totally unheard-of in the US, which is a shame because she achieves the impossible: she gives British food a good name. You can say what you like about her allegedly bizarre personal belief system, but you can't deny she knocks out an amazing Roasted Tomato Soup with Purée of Basil and Olive Croutons and some mean Asparagus, Cheese and Egg Tartlets. Personally, I'm dying to get my taste buds on her plump Enchiladas, a dish I've made before, but which she deauthentifies (hmmm, new word there) by using crème fraîche instead of sour cream, and yet manages to make look better than the real thing. Bloody marvellous! Pity she's barmy.

22 september 2002

One from the vault

I had been eyeing the Sony Micro Vault for a longish while, and last week I finally broke down and got one (the 128MB version - I figured that if I was going to shell out that much, I may as well go the whole hog). And cause me to stumble slightly with a feather if it isn't joy-inducingly marvellous! It slips right into any nearby USB port (PC or Mac) and starts pumping out or sucking in data like nobody's business. Oddly enough, until last week I'd only ever seen one of the blighters in real life - we have one at work, and jolly useful it comes in too - and then all of a sudden everyone seems to have one. I saw two in one day yesterday. Before you know it, everyone will have one, and then it will all be ruined, like with cellphones and body piercings. Ah, me.

Coincidence

Very strange, this: the man who sold me the tickets to the Morrissey concert on Sunday replied to my review of the show on the web. And I replied, and he replied again ... but really, what are the chances of him figuring out who I was, out of all those people? Anyway, I'm still buzzing from the show. It was a totally euphoric experience, made even more incredible by the stunningly positive reaction of the crowd. Oh, the new song Irish Blood, English Heart is available for download at Ambitious Outsiders. It's one of the best songs of his solo career, I'd say. The next album should be a corker, and no erring!

17 september 2002

Yesterday was, like, Sunday

I know I said I wasn't sure whether I'd be going to Morrissey's San Diego concert or not, but when the time came, I couldn't resist. I headed to the venue with friends early yesterday evening, to see if there might still be tickets on sale. There weren't, but as if by magic, someone approached us looking to sell the extra tickets he had. There was no question; we forked over the bucks, and sprinted into the amphitheatre just a few minutes before the concert started. That was lucky, as Morrissey and his band went on stage first, for one night only, because they had to catch a plane to London immediately after their performance.

What can I say? Morrissey was stunningly good. Today, I'm still on a high from the show. It was exhilarating to see that, despite rumours to the contrary, he hasn't lost it at all. In fact, his voice is better than ever, he was upbeat and funny between songs, and he moved amazingly. I can't quite put it into words, so I'll just direct you to the review I posted on the web immediately after the show (well, after I had had dinner). And now I wish I could see him perform again, but that was the last show of this tour in the US. How much is a plane ticket to Australia?

16 september 2002

Plum

Once merely one of my favourite writers, the incomparable P. G. Wodehouse has firmly established himself as my absolute favourite. Why? Because I laugh at something on practically every page, and when I say laugh, I mean laugh out loud, which is something I don't do all that often. Chuckle inwardly or stifle a guffaw, yes; but not cause everyone for ten yards to turn and stare at me, wondering what on earth is going on, as I did just the other day as I read Carry On, Jeeves on a decidedly public bench. Take, for example, the following description from the short story Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest:

Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O. P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow's faculties.

Or this delightful exchange between Bertie Wooster and Madeline Bassett in The Code of the Woosters:

“... Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel.”
The name was new to me.
“Rudel?”
“The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blaye-en-Saintonge.”
I shook my head.
“Never met him, I'm afraid. Pal of yours?”
“He lived in the Middle Ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli.”
I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean.
“For years he loved her, and at last he could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore.”
“Not feeling so good?” I said, groping. “Rough crossing?”
“He was dying. Of love.”
“Oh, ah.”
“They bore him into the Lady Melisande's presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out and touch her hand. Then he died.”
She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued.
“Terrific,” I said, feeling I had to say something, though personally I didn't think the story a patch on the one about the travelling salesman and the farmer's daughter. Different, of course, if one had known the chap.

Or (and I promise I'll stop after this one) this gem between the same two characters:

“... Have you not sometimes felt in the past, Bertie, that, if Augustus had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little timid?”
I saw what she meant.
“Oh, ah, yes, of course, definitely.” I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. “A sensitive plant, what?”
“Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.”
“Oh, am I?”

Oddly enough, I noticed while perusing online stuffmonger Amazon yesterday that there is a soon-to-be-released DVD box set containing all 23 episodes of the British televisual dramatisation of Jeeves and Wooster, all for the bargain price of a smidgeon beneath $100. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, respectively, were absolutely spot-on for these rôles. Actually, they're both pretty much perfect in every rôle they adopt. Why, just this past weekend I saw (for the second time) last year's best film, Gosford Park, in which Fry turned in a stellar performance as the rather confused Inspector Thompson. Also wonderful were Kristin Scott Thomas and the always-amazing Maggie Smith, who herself would be perfect playing Bertie Wooster's acidic Aunt Agatha. It seems that everyone either adored or hated this film; I fall happily into the former camp, and am already planning a third viewing with great eagerness.

10 september 2002