I got my new wax seal from DesignStation, and it’s pretty cool, in the form of the logo from RCBowen.com. I tried to take some pictures of it, but the did not turn out very well. It’s hard to take a decent picture of something that small. So if you really want to see it, then I suppose you’ll have to persuade me to write a letter to you.
All posts by rbowen
More spam stats
As I was watching the mail logs this morning, I realized that a substantial portion of the spam I receive gets dumped by the MTA before it even has a chance to reach my spam filters. Now, I’m not sure if this can really rightly be called spam, but perhaps attempted spam. So, I added these numbers to my spam stats, and it added at least another 20% to the figure. Seems that about 63% of all the email that my mail server receives is rejected. Most of this (apparently about 40%) is dropped specifically because the content identifies it as spam. The remainder is sent to bogus or no-longer-valid email addresses, or is sent from faked addresses. And, even after that, I still get a significant number of junk messages in my inbox every time I check my mail. When will this nonsense end?
Quotes
If you’ve seen my book, or if you’ve looked at this site much, you know I have a thing about quotes.
I’ve started working on a site that will talk about some of the quotes in my book, where they are from, why I chose, them, and so on. No, this does not in any way contribute to the usefulness of my book, but I had very little else to do today, so I started on this. And, just maybe it will encourage someone to buy the book. But I doubt it.
Just can’t please everyone
Today on #apache, a charming individual got /kickbanned for calling me a dickhead. I earned this moniker for answering his question not once, but three times. Apparently he was irritated that I did not know what his various TLAs and ETLAs were supposed to mean, and asked him to speak in full words.
Shortly after this, a non-participant lurker contacted me in private message, lecturing me about not being polite enough on the channel. Apparently he thinks that I don’t make beginners feel comfortable with their ignorance. Or something like that.
So perhaps I’m getting just a little too self-righteous, or something like that, but it seems to me that when I offer what amounts to unlimited free technical support, that it behooves them, not me, to be grovelingly polite. If folks feel perfectly comfortable insulting me after I give my time to help them solve their problems, it would not seem that anyone would be justified to lecture me about how polite I am.
I found both of these incidents to be so completely unwarranted, I was really quite taken aback. I realize that volunteering my time to help these folks does not make me any kind of saint, but I do expect to be treated with a little bit of respect for it. Perhaps this is an unjustified expectation – I don’t know – but I certainly don’t expect to be insulted or lectured for it either.
I guess you just can’t please everyone.
Wok this way
the wok shop: selling woks for 30 years
I’ve wanted a big-ass wok for a while, and all the ones I have looked at have been absurdly expensive. The foodies on #apache directed me to this site.
I suppose I could have asked on the FoodWine mailing list, but, as hard as I try, I just can’t keep up with the volume on that list, so I feel weird asking questions, as I never really contribute any more.
Fra Angelico
Having read a number of references to Fra Angelico in a number of books (ok, mostly Ann Rice books, but it seems like he was mentioned elsewhere, too) I finally decided he must be a real painter. I’ve read references that basically said that he was one of the finest painters ever, and that his paintings are deeply moving, particularly his Annunciation, of which I have seen a number of different versions.
Evidentally, much of his work was in monastaries, in the cells of the monks, and so was not actually seen by more than a handful of people for centuries. I have not been able to find out if that is literary license, but it does seem clear that he did in fact paint a lot of frescoes in monastaries, so it could very well be true.
Dickens and Wine
I found something yesterday that would make the ideal gift (for me, that is), combining two of my passions. I was out at Chrisman Mills Winery, and they had a number of new items there. One of them was a wine bottle case, designed in the form of a stack of very large books. A Tale of Two Cities was on the spine of one of the books, and Oliver Twist on the other. Unlatching the top of the books reveals a container for two bottles of wine.
Wine and games, followup
Just a followup on playing games under wine. Reader Rabbit plays flawlessly under wine. No complaints at all.
It seems that a lot of kids games these days are written in shockwave or flash, and so there is really no difficulty running them natively under Linux if you can get to the actual .swf file. However, many of them are embedded in .exe files, and so you have to go through the wine layer to get to them.
Anyways, that’s the next thing to try with some of these games that are resisting my efforts.
Shopping
Having received my first check from my agent, I took a small percentage of it and went wine shopping.
Rosemont Grenache/Shiraz – a constant favorite
Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon
Ca’ del Solo Big House White
Parducci Petite Sirah – never had it, but their selection of Petite was kinda lame, so I went with a well-known name, with which I’ve always had good results in other varietals
And a Mourvedre from some producer I don’t remember. I suppose I could go look, but I’m just too lazy.
… in the available light
play of light
a photograph
the way I used to be
some half-forgotten stranger
doesn’t mean that much to me
trick of light
moving picture
moments caught in flight
make the shadows darker
or the colors shine too bright
(Rush – Available Light – Presto – 1989)