The children are right.  It is not an indictment; it is reconciliation.

The academics are right, albeit inadvertently so:  German is beautiful; the fault lies in those to whom its legacy is bestowed.

(D)er schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deustschland.

Recently, it seems that I’ve been bitten by the writing bug once more - not that you’d know from the dearth of posts or the cliched metaphor in this very sentence.  Be that as it may, I find myself writing once more, and often prefer a computer to pen and paper as I am given to editing in place.   It’s just my way.

I’ve been looking at editors geared to little distraction for a while and considered the obvious - the obvious to me - such as lyx and vim but neither seemed to turn my Ubuntu running EeePC 701into the full screen editor / typewriter emulator I was looking for.  I remembered a recent Slashdot thread - recent being almost a year ago(!) - inspired by a New York Times article discussing this very problem.  Amongst the recommendations was a program called Writeroom, a stripped down full screen editor presented in green on black glory. Writeroom, however, is an OS/X program, which meant I was still without a solution.

Apparently, in the time between that story and my latest bout of scrivenery inclinations, an enterprising and kind soul released an open source Python based clone: PyRoom.  Even better, they maintain Fedora and Ubuntu repositories, sparing me from the annoying maintanence involved with tarballed binaries.  I’m just putting the program through its paces, but it looks to be precicely what I was looking for - a simple full screen keyboard oriented writing implement designed to minimize  distractions and maximize writing.

If you have been looking for a solution to the same problem, it is worth the few minutes it takes to add the repo and install.

When a Math/Compsci Professor comes to your apartment, peeks his head around a corner and exclaims

- with sarcasm, suprise, and a hint of disgust -

“Oh look. Another computer.”

The UAL story - as a parable - is too good to be true. (As fact, it seems patently unfair to UAL.)

As a cautionary tale, it got even better - expanding on the chaotic complexity of interacting state machines:

Single Web Hit Led to UAL Glitch, Tribune Says - WSJ.com

Missed Last HOPE? Wanted to hear the OpenSSL lecture but couldn’t get into Turing?

The ridiculously overpriced DVDs ($20 per talk, $100 for ten) of the lectures are being ripped and tracked here.

Note that the video quality issues (poor color and contrast) are DVD issues, not a consequence of the ripping.

But I wanted to finally close this tab.

Bedspread line named ‘Nazi Collection’ outrages Indian Jews - CNN.com

At least they weren’t planning to include lampshades and soap in their home furnishings line.

As an aside, I wonder what basis the Jewish community has to sue / seek an injunction (as mentioned in the article). I wouldn’t be surprised, given its history, that India has laws prohibiting the defamation of religion or some such.

Haven’t posted in ages, mostly cause I’ve been having too much fun biking around the city on my new bike.  I’ll post pics when I’m done adding/swapping parts to my liking.

See what they’re doing to your ‘hood, while you’re away:

StreetFilms » Take a Virtual Tour of NYC’s First Chartreuse Bike Lane

You know, I was tempted  to entitle this post “Supergood,” but that would have been too much the cliche - whether or not it has been used to describe Superbad, which I just saw.  Somehow it smacks of the trite wordplay I expect from the Post or the Daily News, neither of which I care to emulate.  Moreover, it’s just not true -  the movie was good, better than expected of its genre, but still, it dragged at times.  It did have me laughing out loud at moments, but not nearly as much as I expected from the trailers.

Incidentally, I have to get mp4s working under Debian more reliably.   More on that later, in another post.

Back to the flick.  Worth seeing.  Serious kudos are owed for a film which makes all three of its objets d’lust brunettes.  In doing so, it avoided an idiotic cliche; not all men prefer blondes, yet still prefer women.

But I can’t, nor can I be bothered to figure out how to do so. Let me point out one simple fact… If that character defines the set of people who find you acceptable, likable - or rather, you believe this to be so - you carry the small, small soul of a politician, and must deal with the simple fact that I am the backwards E that is bringing your shit down.

Moreover, if you did not understand the above paragraph, nor did you engage in the five minutes of consultation with Google or Wikipedia, or lord forgive us, a book, that might cure you of ignorance - ignorance not being a crime, sin, or disease, but the total inability to remedy it being all three - if you did not understand, than you are simply the type that I care to offend, the burden on goodness which allows me to say, “Well Lord, I am not much, but at least I am not that.”

More on this later.

For now, a mere thought that has been bothering me. Many people write. Some even have some skill. A select few are truly good. Whether I belong to the ultimate or penultimate class, I care enough to edit, to read aloud, to avoid reuse - you know, the basic artisanry of writing. So why is it, that the bulk of personal writing that even I am willing to put out into the world, is the horrid, horrid, shit that fills many a tower of blog? Yes, I apologize - this blog’s content is tepid, the prose unedited - and not in a good (i.e. avoid the NC-17) way. Isn’t it odd that I am not unique in that; of all the things we commit to paper or Word format or HTML, why is it that we choose the least of it to disseminate to the world?

That the answer is clear makes it no less disheartening.

A last point: some TV shows are really good enough to make me consider going outside, buying a pack of smokes, and relighting the habit. Californication seems to be one of those shows - I can’t remember laughing so hard, naturally. It deserves some time and a chance.