I’m in Corvallis, at the Haucks’ new ranch. It’s very pretty here, and the blackberries are ripe.

Seeing Lois and Mark again and having it be a strange mix of new interactions and same-as-ever is making my head spin a little. But I’m happy to be here.

Interface type is used in ways that book type isn’t, and it’s interesting to see how you can play with things. I realized this morning that my terminal type wasn’t letting me distinguish commas from periods easily, so I switched to P22 Typewriter, and despite it being an effect typeface, it turns out to be rather legible for coding. I like the gritty texture, so I tried it for a bit as the Gnome application type:

I like it for the window titles and menu headings. The variation in the letters makes it easier to read in some ways — a bit more visual texture than the Myriad Web I was using before. I’m not sticking with it as application type, since the wide spacing doesn’t let me fit much on the screen, and that’s important to me when reading email, so back to Myriad Web (or maybe Minion Web) for that. The terminal gets to stay old and clunky looking though.

(Yes, that’s the Gnome default wallpaper challenge image in the background.)

$500 in billable hours in the last 2 days.

And enough time to cook honest meals and kick back and drink a beer a couple times in there.

Coyote Grace is playing in Grand Junction on the 23rd!

aredridel@polis:~$ ls web/2006/11/05\,\ early./ -l
total 2146568199
-rw-r--r-- 1 aredridel  users                   89181 2006-11-05 13:40 dscf0009.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 aredridel  users                  141842 2006-11-05 13:40 dscf0017 cropped.jpg
---srwS-wT 1 2065705264  151593738              69632 2031-11-25 10:10 dscf0026.jpg
-r-Sr-Sr-T 1 1701054729  677868898 651468475179691109 2024-12-27 01:46 dscf0027.jpg
---srwx-wt 1 1713645670 2065705257              73728 2029-02-01 02:29 dscf0031.jpg

Uh…

aredridel@polis:~$ ls /home/users/aredridel/web/2006/11/05\,\ early/ -l -h
total 2.0T
-rw-r--r-- 1 aredridel  users       88K 2006-11-05 13:40 dscf0009.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 aredridel  users      139K 2006-11-05 13:40 dscf0017 cropped.jpg
---srwS-wT 1 2065705264  151593738  68K 2031-11-25 10:10 dscf0026.jpg
-r-Sr-Sr-T 1 1701054729  677868898 579P 2024-12-27 01:46 dscf0027.jpg
---srwx-wt 1 1713645670 2065705257  72K 2029-02-01 02:29 dscf0031.jpg

Huh. Yay for sparse file support?

It’s really interesting to watch the news media pick up a story from beginning to end. A friend of mine has been working on voting machine security, and his group just released their report yesterday. I found a summary on the California Secretary of State’s site first, just before a press conference was called. From there, I saw it on Slashdot’s article which links to the SF Gate. A few minutes ago, it started hitting the progresive political mailing lists, Truthout first among them. It’s interesting to see how fresh each source of news is, and how they all follow each other.

I watched a similar thing with comment by the Mozilla Corporation CEO, saying they should probably focus on Firefox and jettison Thunderbird. News sources quoted accurately at first, but the second generation quotes quote it more like it’s a final plan, not just a comment made. It feels a bit like a game of telephone.

I just made a pot of borscht. I had forgotten how good it can be.

Antigrain research on font rasterization.

Seeing Yellow. Your color laser printer might be printing tracking information on each page.

I went to the doctor’s yesterday to see about getting medical supervision for my transition — I was expecting to have to strongly justify myself, and it turns out that she was more than willing to help, treat me with respect and talk to me like I knew what I was doing.

I have prescriptions! One’s more expensive than the cheap generic I was buying online by a bit, but the other’s about a third cheaper, and the supply is in town for one, and easily reordered for the other.

A numbered list for no particular reason:

1. Hot springs with Joyce and Sarah and baileyjordan, including a sauna
2. Getting DSL to a customer who has long been denied thanks to telco snafus.
3. Talking to my brother
4. Just chilling with Sarah while she steals a barrel of internet from me.
5. Realizing that the Firefly episode “The Train Job” made me think of the “Chemical Worker’s Song” and get it stuck in my head all day, entirely subconsciously.
6. Listening to the Scissor Sisters in the back of the truck on the way to the hot springs
7. Being complimented on my tits by Sarah
8. Finding $210 worth of DSL equipment at the thrift shop for $12.
9. And a sexy skirt
10. And a dressy shirt
11. Dodging water aimed at baileyjordan after he through a crouton at his boss
12. Ogling cute waitresses at the bar, and making plans for dinner with one.
13. Realizing that it’s only 3 days until I’ll likely have a prescription for hormones.
14. Realizing that Easytag can tag AAC files now, and sorting out the music stolen from anandabrat and spxoon last may

The Beauty of LaTeX. LaTeX vs Word. This is why I feel like stabbing myself in the eyeballs after helping people use Word. (Word processors are stupid and inefficient anyway.)

One day I’ll get to play with DJabberd, which is quite possibly the most flexible Jabber server out there.

For whetherwoman: What is Web 2.0?

Treetop, a packrat parsing library for Ruby. Rather impressive amount of code for a project with no releases and no webpage.

OpenMoko runs on actual phones now. The Neo1973 is out for orders. Mass market model in October.

Marina

Does anyone know of a good definition of web 2.0 somewhere? It seems like one of those vague things...

Sam

Most of the sites that talk about it engage in far too much pretentious wankery for me to accept their definitions

Aria

The concepts are "users contribute content" and "content from different sites can be merged". Also, "gradient backgrounds make us look cool" "Javascript is neeto" and "Kittens! OMGLOL!"

Trinidad’s Transgender Rockstar (Trinidad, Colorado, that is), about Marci Bowers. All in all, a good article. It was on the front page of the July 1 Sunday paper. Generally well written (though they made “transgender” a noun), and they get pronouns right. The photography is good (and they published one of two women kissing.)

Our culture’s changing. It’s interesting to see it happen.