From the Spooky Juxtaposition Department…
In Battlestar Galactica (1978), toward the end of The Living Legend, Part 1, Baltar gloats:
Yes… yes! Think of the impression upon the city of Gomorray when they learn that I, personally, led the final assault on Christmas! I mean, the humans!
Yes, okay, I embellished that a bit (though not much). Seriously, now; go check this out on Hulu while the episode is still available. The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? It’s like John Colicos studied the Grinch. Freaky.
With apologies to Dr. Seuss, without whom the lives of young children everywhere would be much more standard.
Normally I avoid “me too” posts. Sometimes, though, the ideas are so important to people and communities that I care about that I can’t let it pass by without mention.
If you know me, you are probably aware that I’ve been involved with relatively large open source development community for more than a decade. Unfortunately I’ve had to limit my more recent involvement for one fundamental reason: with somewhat regular predictability a small and fairly consistent group of people either incites or contributes greatly to a pointless, unproductive discussion. The concept of the bike shed is nothing particularly new; neither are the ways to deal with them, at least in concept. All we need is someone to adapt the general principle to our modern mode of distributed interaction – indeed, someone like Alex Payne:
Set emotion aside, and think how much we could accomplish if we had the humility and grace to learn from our peers.
… and so, without further adieu: Mending the Bitter Absence of Reasoned Technical Discussion
(Thanks to Faried for the link!)
He leaned back, took a long drag on his cigarette, then snuffed it under his heel on the stage. “If they only knew,” he thought. “If they only knew.” You see, what they didn’t know — couldn’t know — is that his once promising career as lounge singer was cut short. Tragically short. He sighed… best not to think about that right now. “So there’s this guy I know, a cabbie,” he continued.
The audience responded with a blank stare. In fact, it seemed as if the funnier his material was, the less they got it. It was funny material. It was good material. He’d saved it for just this kind of night.
When he finally stumbled off stage he knew he’d done this for the last time. “Scotch, neat. Better make it a double,” he told the bartender. The bartender mumbled something unintelligible. It might have been a question. “Yeah, whatever,” he responded. It was time for some serious thought.
What did he want to do when he was a grown up, he wondered? Who did he want to be? One would think that a 42 year old man would know this by now. And yet, he didn’t. Besides, if forty is the new thirty, then surely forty-two is the new thirty-three and one half. There was still time.
I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Chloe (from television’s 24) uses Apple hardware. You want to be cool just like her, don’t you?
The only question is whether she has an advance copy of Mac OS X 10.6. I’ll bet she does.
PS to Apple: “Snow Leopard”? Really?
Each 
winter, I am amazed by how warm a few degrees below the freezing point feels after a blast of Canadian Arctic air with temperatures around 0F (or about -18C, for my metric-ised friends). Unzip the jackets and take off the hats, it’s a regular heat wave!
I hope this is just my imagination:
We need a pre-pre-meeting to discuss the scope of the discussion around the agenda for the meeting. For example: Will we allow discussion about topics that do not directly related to the discussion of the agenda, on the off chance that someone might have a great idea of what to put on the agenda for the meeting? Should we discuss the tools and processes used to build the agenda, or will it be acceptable to avoid that topic altogether by specifying which COTS tools we will use in conjunction with the corporate Policy on Discussions of Agendas for Directed Discussions? Also, will it be necessary to create a pre-meeting glossary of acronyms to distribute together with the agenda?
Then again, maybe it’s not. sigh
And for post number two hundred, something fitting for the occasion. Two delicious upgrades this evening for your viewing pleasure:
1) I’ve removed Zend Optimizer and installed eaccelerator on my server. The site seems to be a fair bit more responsive now. In case you’re interested, the main reason for this change was to cache the compiled code; there’s not much point optimizing the code if you throw away the results each time you do it.
2) The WPtouch plugin has been installed for access from the iPhone/iPod Touch. If you don’t have one of these two charming little gadgets you won’t see a change; sorry about that. It’s very pretty, though, trust me on this.
Now all I need is to generate some content. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Here’s to another two hundred posts!
Dear iPhone,
Well, it’s been almost three weeks now, my dear friend. I upgraded you with what seemed would be one of your best software versions yet. Promises of third party applications, WPA Enterprise security for your WiFi and Microsoft Exchange support (swoon) were finally, tantalizingly within my grasp.
What happened? Why must you treat me so shabbily? Is it because I had the audacity to want the best for you — indeed, for us? I love how you’ve made me more productive… at least, when you’re not throwing your latest tantrum, that is. The unexpected restarts haven’t caused a problem, at least not so far. Not that I know of…? Sooner or later it’s bound to happen that you’ll reboot just when I really need you. And really, can I trust you not to get all piquish when I’m in the middle of a call? Can I, truly?
And tell me, what’s up with the battery life? I used to go a good, solid day between charges with you. Maybe more. We’ve had a lot of fun together, you and I, and you’ve been quite tolerant and understanding. These days it seems like I can’t even listen to music for more than a few hours and you’re looking like you’re gasping for electrons. I’ve done everything I can think of to salvage our relationship, even sought counsel from your Maker. After that things were a little better for a while, but now you feel cold and distant, again.
I do hope that a visit from Uncle Steve will bring you happiness, and soon. I love you and the things you do for me but I’m just not sure how much longer we can keep going like this. I’m afraid AppleCare won’t be able to help if we don’t do something about this sad, dreary situation we’ve found ourselves in. Know this, though, that if there is any way possible, I will find a way to help you.
I remain, as always, very sincerely yours.
-me-
You know things are a little askew when you’ve updated WordPress twice since your last post, and it’s begging you for a third update. Don’t feel bad, though, because I have been spending what little precious time I have with family, and occasionally tinkering with music or playing BZFlag. None of my various Internet-based endeavors have gotten a lot of attention.
The only real change recently is that I’ve finally signed up for Twitter. It’s been at least a year since I considered it. Still working out what it means…
Some pleasant surprises came with the Apple TV 2.0 update, which arrived yesterday…
- You can use the Apple TV as an AirTunes device.
- 1080p output is supported.
- Closed caption support is available (though, sadly, content with CC is currently quite limited).
- Though you have 24 hours to finish watching an iTunes rental from the time you start, I was able to successfully start a movie with 45 minutes left on the clock and still watch through to the end – even though this took me nearly 45 minutes over the limit. (Kudos to Apple for allowing this.)
- There are (optional) parental controls on all content downloaded from the Internet: movie and TV show previews, podcasts, photos, etc.
My kids and I picked out and started watching a movie within 15 minutes after running the new software. Given the fact that I wanted to keep the cost of our experiment down – in case it didn’t go so well – we chose a standard definition* (SD) movie. While not nearly as good as the network broadcast 720p content we’ve become accustomed to it did compare pretty favorably with a standard DVD. I’d still give the edge to upconverted DVD video; however, there were no glaring deficiencies in the downloaded video.
I’ll be exploring more in the next few weeks. I wonder, what other surprises await?
*Don’t confuse SD with standard (i.e. non-widescreen) picture. The movie was presented in a widescreen format just as in the theater; it just wasn’t encoded as HD.
