2020 Hindsight

miscellaney

I'm back in town after a trip away ..also away from the net.

Today I played a Quidditch card game with the son of my college sophomore roommate. The player whose birthday is closest to Harry Potter's gets to be Gryffindor. Turns out that today is Harry Potter's birthday.

One kinda cookie you can get from the web that makes you feel better. :D

A set of screen shots of computer features that should *really* be in software (and hardware).

Oral History The UCLA Oral History Resources. Saturday I went to hear Steven Isoardi speak at Vroman's writer's workshop series. His specialty: Oral History. (I'm interested in the subject because I've done some family oral history.) He interviewed all manner of Jazz musicians in Los Angeles and, together with some of them, put together a book of interviews of the LA Jazz scene from the 20s through the 50s on Central Avenue in L.A. ( Central Avenue Sound: Jazz in Los Angeles) I've been reading it; it's absolutely riveting!

Featured interviewees: Marshal Royal, Lee Young, Fletcher Smith, Coney Woodman, William "Brother" Woodman, Jr., Britt Woodman, Buddy Collette, David Bryant, Cecil "Big Jay" McNeely, Jack Kelson, William Douglass, Melba Liston, Art Farmer, Horace Tapscott, Gerald Wighgins, Gerald Wilson, Clora Byant, William Green, Marl Young. But these folks discuss *everyone*: Ellington, Basie, Bird, Dizzy, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum, Lady Day, Dexter Gordon, Lester Young, Charlie Parker.... the list goes on.

the bridge to nowhere

(this week I've been in the midst of a quiet, non-posting streak... by the time I wanted to end it, weblogger.com was doing a bit of site maintenance and transition and I couldn't post. But it appears as though I'm back! :D)

The Bridge to Nowhere Earlier this week, I got away from the net, away from my at-the-base-of-the-foothills home, drove through slightly hazy skies to a trailhead in the San Gabriel mountains that led, eventually, to a structure called the bridge to nowhere.

Goodbye, civilization! Goodbye haze. Hello, brilliant blue sky! Hello, east fork of the San Gabriel river. Hello and again, hello, hello, hello San Gabriel River. The trail crosses the river many times. But this is no mere stepping stone and balance on a tree-trunk log suspended over the river. Noooo! Far more times the crossings were the splash-splash-wade-wade type. Water running over rocks with a reddish cast. At one mid-river point I pulled a rock from the riverbed to see what gave it its rusty appearance. Turns out the red is from a moss. Here and there, the water was deeper, and the reddish bottom deepens to aqua shades. A couple of swimming holes beckon me, saying, "next time, next time!"

So what is this bridge to nowhere? Back in the 30s, one of the tasks of the public works program was to build a road extending from Azusa up to the highway that runs along the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains. (I drove up that same crest highway not too long ago when I went up to Mount Wilson, overlooking L.A.) Roads were started, but weren't completed; the mountain enthusiastically hugged the roads with rubble. Of the three or so road starts in the region, this particular trail runs parallel to some old, graded asphalt. It's either been eroded away, covered by landslides, or overgrown by yucca plants and other brush. Five miles up the canyon, there is a narrow bridge, engraved with the date, 1936. Apparently back when there was a wild, torrential flood, and only the extreme height of this bridge over the river saved it from being washed away. Now, apart from the humble trail leading up to the bridge, and the teentsy trail continuing beyond it, this bridge stands alone in the middle of nothing. It doesn't connect one thing to another. It shows no sign of wear or use. (Well, okay, it's a favorite weekend bungee jumping spot, but I went on a weekday). So the name, The Bridge to Nowhere.

I love the underlying meaning: all this work leads to nowhere! I spend a lot of energy hiking five miles uphill, repeatedly wading through a small river, shoes squish-squishing after each crossing, cool crossings and shady trees, then a bit farther away from the river, walking through hot dry chaparral, avoiding yucca spines. All this effort to get..... nowhere. No, not to get nowhere, but to get to the bridge to nowhere.

...and, at the end of my hike to and from the bridge to nowhere, I lost my sole! Oh what my shoes went through to reach this point! All those squish-squish-squish steps as I emerged from the stream blew watery air bubbles out of those tiny shoeholes. In the end, it was too much, and the right sole of my old tennies peeled away from the shoe.

A bridge to nowhere. I lost my sole in the process.

What a perfect day!

I didn't take my camera on this hike. But someone on the net did. Alas, this person's got a streaky scanner, but you can get the idea....

Bridge to Nowhere links

• From SoCalHikers.org, a story with pictures of The Bridge to Nowhere.

• Google: bridge to nowhere san gabriel

• City of Azusa posts article from Backpacker magazine

• Yow! Members of the Pasadena Mountain Biking Club rode up to the Bridge, hand-carrying bikes through the water.

• Pictures and description of California State Route 39, that falls a few miles short of the Bridge to Nowhere, and news that Caltrans will begin construction on the closed section of the route. <gasp!> Can it be?

. . . .

Be afraid, be very afraid David of Time's Shadow on fear.

testing

if I cannot edit a page right now, can I create a new posting?

common sense

On Common Sense.... what is it that makes this sense "common," and why (after encountering glaring lacks of common sense) oh why does common sense seem so rare?

Wednesday

Today's the last day to advance register for Siggraph LA.

the Siggraph schedule

Speakin' of conferences.. Flippin' through the Internet World conference program to see what the offerings are. As part of the e-business track, there's this one: Celebrity CFOs (they share their war stories and offer advice to their peers). Oh boy! Sign me up! My interpretation? We haven't yet seen the dot-bomb bottom.

Good Advice

Another Saturday, another writer's workshop at Vroman's in Pasadena. Today, we heard from Rosalind Miles, who's written a trilogy on Guenevere and the Arthurian legend. Wonderful speaker! She also wrote a book I wanted to buy and have her sign (alas! they were all nabbed before I got to the book table); it's called Who Cooked the Last Supper? (The women's history of the world). She closed her presentation with this advice, from Samuel Becket:

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Voldemort or Microsoft?

Too Damn Close I looked out the window from the place I was sitting... were we getting cloud cover on this sunny July day? I saw dark clouds.. nope, not a sign of rain, but of fire... big gray smoke plumes... These are too close... when I was driving home earlier, I gulped... it looked as though the smoke was coming from my neighborhood. Nope... from a place the next city over. Whew. All's well here.

You-Know-Who Today Dave W refers to the Redmond Behemoth as You-Know-Who. It reminds me of all the references to the Dark Lord, Voldemort, in the Harry Potter books. This is the stuff of dark mythology. What's in a name? Juliet said that a rose by any other name still smells as sweet. There are the cultures where only the most trusted of your associates know Your True Name; otherwise you're referred to with a common nickname. But it's not Your True Name. Someone who knows your true name can exercise power over you. There's an ongoing debate among different characters in the Harry Potter books about whether calling You-Know-Who by his real name (Voldemort) makes him more fearful or less fearful.

I see the potential for inserting lots of Microsoft references into some of this culture's stories and myths. Yesterday's reference to the Fiction contest science fiction first sentence winner was one good one.

Okay, okay, I'll quote it here. It's by Mike Rottmann of

Reno, Nevada... Mike, wherever you are, congratulations!:

Kirk's mind raced as he quickly assessed his situation: the shields were down, the warp drive and impulse engines were dead, life support was failing fast, and the Enterprise was plummeting out of control toward the surface of Epsilon VI and, as Scotty and Spock searched frantically through the manuals trying to find a way to save them all, Kirk vowed, as he stared at the solid blue image filling the main view screen, that never again would he allow a Microsoft operating system to control his ship.

What of others?

I went to the north country. Trekking alone at night, I looked up into the dark sky and saw the Aurora Billy-alis. It was worse than the Blue Screen of Death. More fierce. More awesome. Fear Bill, my friends. Fear Bill.

. . . .

Now... how about the Odyssey? There's a story of a hero, a great man who is prevented by the gods from getting home to his wife and family and household. I re-read it recently. All I can say is that the gods are capricious. Now, what would it look like?

Odysseus prays to the god of the underworld, Bill, who's pissed that Odysseus killed his son-with-One-eye (the giant Operating System that was installed on a Giant Computer). Please don't send me any more storms...Please, no more blue screens of death! And who is the other god in this story, the one who helps Odysseus along in his journey? Is it the Open Source God? Is it the Let The Web Be Free God?

or... maybe Bill and Bill's minions are back at home, hanging out daily at the house of Odysseus, trying to win the hand of Penelope, and eating through all of the animals, and making a laughing stock of Telemachus, the just-grown son of Odysseus.

: )

This mythology and making all this browser war into stories of epic proportions is kinda fun.

Of course, we need another myth, a myth where the powerful one is cast down and made powerless. Anyone care to take that one on? If I think of anything, I'll post it here.

. . . . .

The Charity Ballmer, er... Bill... After reading Craig's Microsoft Postings today, I dunno. Bill may be singlehandedly contributing untold millions into malaria research, but his minions are taking a really hard line about licensing fees for charitable use. You know you're dealing with a monopoly when you get these kinds of letters: "You have acknowledged that your practices ... of hard-loading the software on to PCs is an infringement of Microsoft's copyright ... Microsoft must insist that you find some other source of software ..." Pray tell, what are the alternatives? (Okay, Linux..)

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Reviewing Books Wanna Write pointed to this article on The Incredible Vanishing Book Review

But in their frenzy to gain a mass readership, pump up ad revenues and keep shareholders happy, newspapers end up dissing their most sympathetic audience. You have to admit that seems a little soft in the head. Cutting book reviews from newspapers is like Porsche saying, "Our customers really love to drive, so let's install lousy shocks in the chassis and make the engine sputter at high rpm."

Klingons on the Starboard Bow

Dan Gillmor excerpted one of the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest ("a whimsical literary competitionthat challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels"). His example, winner in the Science Fiction category, is a beaut of beast describing what happens when there's a technical glitch on the Star Ship Enterprise. It's as good as, or better than, Scotty's calling the Macintosh mouse "quaint" (the Star Trek and the Whales movie, forgot which number it was.)

.....speaking of space things and underwater, well, not creatures, but vehicles......

Solar Sail to be launched from a submarine to go into orbit The Planetary Society 5:30 pm today, California time: launch of the Cosmos 1 for a test flight. "Cosmos 1, the first solar sail, is sponsored by Cosmos Studios and A&E Network. The project is privately funded, has scientific and commercial objectives, and involves the cooperation of Russian space and defense organizations through a contract with The Planetary Society."

I just so happened to talk to someone at the Planetary Society (located in Pasadena) who told me that this was goin' down... er.... goin' up. The person told me that CNN is broadcasting about it every couple of hours. (Read updates from project director Louis Friedman. See Artist Images depicting the launch and the solar sail in space.)

Weblogs in Education: Bright Future for Weblogs "Both myself and my class have evaluated our weblogging adventure and I am now more convinced than ever that the future of weblogs in education is bright."

Hour of the Pearl

In either Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck wrote about the twilight hour, calling it "The Hour of the Pearl."

Yesterday I revisited a favorite rollerblading haunt in Santa Barbara during the hour of the pearl. I happened to have my camera along.

(I suppose that the Santa Barbara Convention and Visitor's Bureau will be grateful to me for posting these pictures; they show off some of the best things about Santa Barbara.)

The dark halo is the shadow of the sun, after the sun slipped behind the ridge.

a demo of how easily pictures can be posted

visiting friends old and new in Santa Barbara. This message is a demo of Manila's capabilities with photos......