vowell

2011-03-27T11:43:00

Just after finishing up my entries on our road trip across three states in order to see probably my favourite fiction author, I saw someone had posted to one of those communities that I had subscribed to years ago and forgotten about because nobody ever posted to them anymore, a note about Sarah Vowell's (probably my favourite non-fiction author) new book coming out this week, and my immediate two thoughts were:

I wonder if she's going to be on the Daily Show this week and
I wonder if her book tour will take her to Washington?

A book author will do all the media she can when releasing a book so I guess this is not surprising. Vowell mostly reads her own audio books and then gets a cast of famous vocal talent to read the quotes of historical figures and museum curators that she runs across, and there is almost always one or two people from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report in the cast, so there is obviously a bit of rapport going on there. The efforts she puts into her audio books is the reason that I listen to them instead of reading her books. It almost feels like I am still listening to her on This American Life.

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MS Notepad (not updated since windows 2k) has better unicode support than emacs v21.

2008-07-24T20:28:00

Today when I left the house I noticed it was raining. Then when I was in the train trying to dry off, I noticed it wasn’t raining. Then when I got to St. Leonards and was walking the last leg to work I noticed that it was raining again. I was feeling a bit like Truman when the rain cloud was following him.

I have sort of decided that I want to get an iPhone which makes me feel like a sell out because I think they are stupid. On the other hand I view it as a free iPod touch which would let me watch videos on the train, which currently I can’t do because although over powered, my notebook fails at video when it isn’t plugged into a wall why is that? I’ve noticed that since I started commuting from the Central Coast a lot of my thinking revolves around getting a train which will likely allow me to sit down, and what I am going to do when I get that seat.

Last Friday I went to see Assassins. We were prompted to go see it on account of everyone in my family is a fan of Sarah Vowell and she had a highly amusing anecdote about the musical in the introduction to her highly amusing and well researched Assassination Vacation. I sort of had a celebrity crush on her sometime back. The lighting was really badly done, and the sound was a little buzzy at parts, but several of the actors were actually pretty good. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth were good, but my favourite was the innately jovial Guiteau.

There is something about flawed somewhat incompetent villains that I find endearing. My favourite cartoon character has always been Starscream, the constantly scheming traitorous lieutenant to Megatron. In watching the new BBC Robin Hood series I immediately took a liking to the Sheriff because of the joy in which he employs his sarcastic wit and sadistic pleasures. Lately, however I am liking Gisborne more and more. His melancholy manner and the way he feels so uncomfortable in almost any situation (but especially when he is trying to Marion) is wonderful to watch. It is somewhat troubling that Guiteau is not a cartoon or legendary villain. He’s a murderer.

I started reading the highly entertaining Linux Hater's Blog. It was indirectly linked to from a /. story, and even though I love Linux as a development platform and for developing web sites, it sucks shit on the desktop, and this guy understands exactly why and explains in a concise but nuanced way, along with a whole lot of entertaining^[1] vitriol. The thing is Linux is never going to be a serious player on the Desktop, so it is all fairly academic. I can’t really stand any of the modern user interfaces for an extended period of time. My Mac seems like a relief after a long day using Winblows at work, and sometimes GNOME and KDE are even offer a welcome respite from either or both. So I am picky, that is probably my fault. What is distressing is that user interfaces are getting progressively worse. I spent a day or so using Vista in order to make sure an application at work I was finishing off worked there, and it was a really horrible experience. If I didn’t know better I’d say that they Microsoft was trying to convince me that XP wasn’t so bad after all.

if you are entertained by geeky computer stuff

The Twilight Report

vowell

MS Notepad (not updated since windows 2k) has better unicode support than emacs v21.