This Old Blog

We (meaning the human family) have a new cat. Her name is Loki and she lives with my oldest daughter in Gainesville. I don't know how old Loki is, but I peg her age at around a year. She's an all black cat with a touch of white on her brisket. She's an extremely shy little creature, especially around humans she has no familiarity with, such as myself. Everything taken with the Olympus E-M5 and Panasonic Leica 25mm at f/1.8. Heavy flaring due to shooting directly into the sun coming in the window (Loki felt safer in that spot, so you go where the cat is). I also set the E-M5 to the gentle sepia (#9) art filter and took everything straight out of the camera, except for resizing. If you're wondering why she's named Loki, everybody thought she was a he before the vet told them different.

While slumming the Internets this morning I came across the wonderful editorial on the New York Times website, " Slaves of the Internet, Unite! ", written by Tim Kreider (someone I'll have to start paying more attention to). In his wonderful editorial I linked to, out pops this one jewel among many: Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge. I now contribute to some of the most prestigious online publications in the English-speaking world, for which I am paid the same amount as, if not less than, I was paid by my local alternative weekly when I sold my first piece of writing for print in 1989. More recently, I had the essay equivalent of a hit single — en...

Ubuntu Gnome (Gnome 3 + Ubuntu 13.10) Last night my copy of VMware Player 6 automatically updated itself to version 6.0.1. In the process the VMware Tools that are installed on the various virtual machines were also updated, in particular those for the latest Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 13.10. Under VMware Player 6 the shared directory kernel module failed to compile . Under 6.0.1 the module successfully compiled, installed, and executed, allowing my Share directory on the Windows 8.1 host side to be seen. And of course, as I reported earlier after repairing the version 6 installation , networking out of the VM into the outside world is working just fine. Gnome 3 showing some of its hidden capabilities As the picture captions note, this is Ubuntu Gnome , a distribution built up from Gnome 3.8 and Ubuntu 13.10 . This combination has resulted in a stable and pleasant distribution. I find it somewhat amusing that two of the more controversial desktops (Gnome 3 and Unity...

You're looking at a test shot taken where my wife and I went out for taco Tuesday (Lime Fresh Mexico Grill near my local Whole Foods, if you must know). On the way into the place, while I was carrying my GX1, I somehow fumbled it, and dropped it. Onto the hard asphalt of the parking lot. I had the Panasonic 14mm mounted on the body. When the whole assembly hit the pavement the battery cover popped open and the lens cover got knocked off. It picked up a series of little nicks on various corners and part of the metal frame was bent right at the back corner where the flash sits flush with the body. I've carried this camera all over, including up to Seattle. In all that time I've never had an accident like this until tonight. Before I took it out with me this evening I swapped the 14mm for the 20mm I normally keep on the body. I don't know what I would have done if the 20mm had taken any kind of damage. Maybe use the drop as an excuse to get the new all-metal, all-b...

Stopped by my local Whole Foods to pick up a few supper items; mushrooms, whole wheat pasta, red quinoa. Stuff that supposedly makes you healthier and superior to the folks who shop just down the road at the super Walmart. On the way out I spotted this odd combination of space kitsch and grocery cart with a red faux space shuttle that's big enough to keep a pair of small children, twins perhaps, imagining they're flying a real space shuttle around the isles while their parents try to fill the cart. And I flash back in time to when I sat on the upper bunk bed, with my younger brother in the lower bunk of the room we shared, watching on our black and white TV as Neil Armstrong slowly crawled down the ladder of the Eagle to the surface of the moon. And all the books Time published about space, and the beautiful illustrations of all those rockets we'd be building and flying in the very near future. And the first season of Star Trek, when William Shatner was reasonably res...

Over the weekend I upgraded to Windows 8.1, then discovered that networking for the virtual machines wouldn't work. Then I tried something incredibly simple and fixed the problem. Checking the system I noticed that three VMware Windows services weren't running; VMnetDHCP, VMUSBArbService, and VMwareNatService. VMware Player allows you to install, remove, or fix an existing installation. I chose to try fixing the installation, and that fixed the problem. The services were re-installed/restarted, and the virtual machines had networking again. Once network connectivity was established there was exactly one updated file for Ubuntu 13.10, a data file. This underscores how solid and finished the release was this time. Every other version of every other Linux installation I've ever dealt with has always been succeeded by boatloads of updates after the initial installation. But not this time. Everything is working properly on my notebook. All's right with the world.

The Fermi Paradox asks, essentially, if the Universe is as vast as it is, and has been in existence for as long as it appears to have been, with all chances for life to appear then statistically speaking why haven't we crossed paths with at least one alien culture? Where are they? That question, asked by Enrico Fermi  while at lunch with his friends Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the early 1950s, has never been adequately answered since. In spite of how we wish to believe, we've yet to discover any concrete evidence either in the universe or closer to home on any of the planets and moons we've explored. A number of theories have been advanced as to why we haven't found them yet (conspiracy theorists not withstanding). One of those theories is the it's dangerous to contact us. After reading today's news, and after watching the government shutdown and the idiots who have participated in it, I can see why...