BPB Grafitti for week thru September 12, 1999

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Books of the Month, August retrospective. Aside from the magazines, papers and whatnot, I managed to finish two books last month, and enjoyed both. First was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Sort of Gibson meets Michener, with the peculiarly lucid descriptive style which I have only found with Stephenson. My first experience was with The Diamond Age, but when I read the first paragraph of Snowcrash, I was hooked on this author for good. Cryptonomicon requires a little more in the way of concentration than your average SF novel, and reads slowly through the first third or so, until the intertwining themes start to reveal their connections. A good read, and worth the hard cover price, as I will be picking this one up again.

The second book of the month for August was Jerry Pournelle's Starswarm. Classified as a "juvenile", Pournelle himself notes (to paraphrase) that it means he put less sex (well, none, actually) and far more science in the work than an "adult" market book would tolerate. Tightly plotted, with good characters well fleshed out, I enjoyed this book immensely. It is nice to have a work in Pournelle solo- style, as much as I appreciate his work with Niven (and Barnes). Now I have to go spelunk through the Pournelle section of my libraries (shelved and boxed) to see what else I want to reread :) .

September readings currently include (but are not limited to) Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear, this is the second book in the "The Second Foundation Trilogy", following Foundation's Fear by Gregory Benford (which I liked well enough to buy Bear's). Also on the list is Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier, since Cryptonomicon piqued my interest, and Schneier wrote the appendix in Stephenson's work.

On the personal front, life is wonderful as usual. Marcia and I are new aunt & uncle as of September 2, when my sister brought Robert Michael Ellison into the world. 8#12oz and 20.5" long. Welcome to the end of the millenium, Rob. Marcia and I will be going camping in the Big Sur area of the central California coast at the beginning of October, and between now and then fishing once or twice, I think.

To steal from Robert Thompson , "Microsoft delenda est". More and more each day, I am thankful to be out from under the MS umbrella of products. Some of them are easy to use, and many are "good enough", but you can only get your data in, rarely out (except to other MS products). I use NT at work, and administer a MS network, but my home machine runs Linux, and Linux apps. Some things are hard to do, but I am LEARNING again. What a joy. Thanks, Linus.

After a late breakfast of sausage and scrambled (I really like sleeping in on holidays), Marcia & I headed out to the driving range. The day has developed into a mid-80's kind of day (temperature wise), and we did well going at about 10 am. I still suck. Oh, well.

Today is day one of a new class at ZDU (now called element K?) I take classes there to learn things I have forgotten or never knew, to help myself and help others (since teaching is a wonderful way of cementing what I have learned firmly into the little grey cells). This class is called C++ Programming, Part 3, and leads into the high-end beginner area of C++ coding (I know, reads kind of like "Jumbo Shrimp," huh?). Following this course and another on C++ and OOAD, the progression leads into MFC-land, where I do not tread, since I have made the transition to Linux. I will probably start assisting (in very minor, obscure and hopefully not too troublesome ways) in some open source project. KOffice is one such.

StarOffice 5.1, now from Sun, is a taking a full-gonzo Don Quixote tilt at the MS windmill. Sun bought the company that produced StarOffice, and has released it for "free," pending further developments and/or updates. I was prompted to this by Tom Syroid. an O'Reilly author, and one of the "daynotes" crowd, along with Pournelle and Thompson. Tom has converted one of his computers away from the Dark Side, and is beginning to experiment with StarOffice himself. I thought I would give this a shot myself...

First impressions are often wrong. I hope so in the case of StarOffice. I want to like this package. It is a swiss-army software tool, with the following functions built into the package :

Text Editor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, HTML, Mail, FrameSet, "Global Document," Database, Diagram, Image, Formula, Newsreader and Browser (which doubles as the "standard view," near as I can tell).

StarOffice Update - an article by Bruce Perens... you should read this.

A point of style for me is that I will use anybody's material - anybody's - (where appropriate and NOT illegal) but will happily give credit where due... In this case, Herb Caen, the king of Three Dot Journalism. Herb Caen worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for better than 50 years, and followed the style of Walter Winchell. I often took the Chronicle as my morning paper just for the Caen column. Herb Caen died February 1, 1997. But you can find out more about him here. This journal doesn't have a common thread, nor does it have any (necessary) rhyme or reason to it. When I re-read what I wrote for each day, making sure there are no gross errors of omission or commision, I am reminded of Mr. Caen, and thought I would bring him to the attention of the two or three poor souls who hadn't heard of him.

No Update Today.

Wednesdays. I never could get the hang of Wednesdays. (Arthur Dent, on the other hand, had a problem with Tuesdays, I think). A day spent getting lots done, with time absolutely flying past, as in I finished my morning coffee, started a new drawing, a revision on an existing artwork, three PC software problems ... suddenly my stomach lets me know I've missed lunch (again!). Then off on errands in the afternoon - a vendor survey (and more, see below) and material pickup at Hill Manufacturing in Santa Clara. Good company does high quality sheetmetal. Then a pickup of a negative film at Peninsula Blueprint in Mountain View. That would have cost 4x if we sent the art to the other coast and let them generate film.

Looking for clients as always, I was talking to Tony at Hill about their IT and web needs. They are looking at transitioning to a new access/hosting package, and bringing their business presence online. I have begun development of a site for them - you can find it off of my index page.

GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is currently withstanding an onslaught of Political Correctness. FEH!!! If you are offended by a word in the English Language, use your dictionary, look up that word, and think on some of the OTHER definitions that apply.

It is how-to night on my PBS station, KTEH. I am offa here.

Today was almost fully a web day. I spent a whole day doing final revisions, link checking, artwork tuning, etc for the new ETS Online site, which should go live beta tomorrow, 09/10/1999 (disclaimer - I am currently in the employ of ETS, and Webmaster is one of the hats I wear there).

Did a remodel on the local index page as well, with a little instruction applied to the search, for the following reasons:

• There just isn't that much content.
• What there is and shall be, will be fairly focused.
• Finally, there just isn't that much content.

If I ever get around to finishing a couple of my short stories, they will post here, as well as chunks of the novel, when I work on that again. Lastly, I find myself fully away from wysiwyg(a) html editors, since they invariably gunk up the code more than they help. The Netscape Composer is more than good enough for rapid prototyping, but for fine control, gimme that ol' time religion. (Nah, not emacs or vi - I am using Bluefish, as previously stated, on L-Cow here at home. At work, on the NT box, I use CoolCat)

Well, the best thing that can be said about this week is that it is over. ETS Online (the Third Incarnation) is online here. I worked hard to get the site up this week. Now my eyes are crossed. Feels like my grandfather's descriptions of walking to school barefoot through chest high snow. I never had the heart to tell him that he was much shorter then.

KFOG, the radio station of choice (or that choice radio station, your choice ;>) does a charity CD once a year, around the holidays, called Live from the Archives. All of the [net] proceeds go to local food banks. Last year over $300K went out to the needy. Way cool. KFOG solicits cover art for the CD from the listener community. If you are interested, go to their website (linked at the beginning of this paragraph). I might even take a swing at it myself. Results posted on the OrbArt page when available.

Happy Birthday RAB. Some of us know who, or how many, but we ain't talkin'. No way. Unless we're bribed with chocolate, really good coffee, or a good set of downloads from .... ^H^H^H^H^H We AIN'T talkin'. That's all there is to it.

No Update Today.

No Update Today.