It’s been too long since I’ve recorded something, but this time here’s something different. This is H. H. Munro’s short story “Down Pens”, recorded in two voices. Hope you enjoy it.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
One Ring To Bind Them
My Best Beloved thinks in images, and so it was only natural that when I gave her an engagement ring with a particular significance, she wanted to give me a ring with embedded meanings. Of course, such a ring can’t be bought off the shelf of any jewelry store. Oh no. It must be crafted from raw materials and imbued with meaning. So it took a little longer.
It was worth waiting for.
Alas, no, I’m probably not going to tell you what all the embedded meanings are. At least not here.
Listening is cheating?
As I mentioned on a mailing list recently:
I grew up with people reading books to me. My parents read the Narnia books to me, as I sat near a fireplace. Mr. Bruce read The Hobbit to me, as I sat in a warm afternoon classroom with the doors wide open and the African sky beckoning us to come out and play. And more recently, I have read many books to my kids as they wind down before bed.
To claim that any of these are “cheating” implies a couple things. One is, that everyone is trying to work towards some particular goal, which is ludicrous. The other is that these experiences, which significantly formed my life, my love of literature, and my own writing, are somehow impure and less than valid, which is insulting.
When folks make remarks like this, it just makes me sad for them, because it means that nobody read to them when they were kids.
Right now, I’m listening to “The Life Of Pi” on my way to and from work. It works a lot better in an Indian voice than it would if I was reading it myself.
Flat tax
Bulgaria has adopted a flat tax rate. Wouldn’t it be great if the US would do this, eliminate the IRS, and taxes would become consumption-based? Maybe, someday, but in a society where consumption is the thing that defines us, I can’t see this getting much support in the Bud Light crowd.
Dernier Café au Lait
… and it was all over much too soon, and before we knew it, we were drinking that dernier café au lait …
Dernier Café Au Lait
July 14, 2007
Dernier café au lait,
sweet and bitter,
the sugar melting slowly away,
going, gone, and remembered,
the taste lingering on the tongue
long, long after the last drop
dries on the page.
John and Sam
While in the Newark airport, we walked past the Sam Adams restaurant, and the following was inspired:
John and Sam
July 15, 2007
While John Adams was off busy
forging a nation, and all that,
Sam, his brother, or cousin, or something –
who can remember? –
was pursuing a more practical trade.
Men will always need Sam’s trade –
indeed, John’s product will often
drive a man to Sam’s, even as
Sam’s will make a man think
he knows something of John’s
The Killjoy
Upon arriving at the Jardins du Luxembourg, we immediately noticed that nobody was sitting on the grass. Strangely, we didn’t assume, from this, that it was forbidden, but that they … um … didn’t want to? I’m not sure I gave it much thought. Perhaps I chose not to believe the obvious.
Anyways, we found a delightful manicured spot of grass, threw down our scarves as blankets, and lay down to read “The Silver Chair.”
We got through about a chapter when the gendarme came up and yelled at us about being on the grass, and how it was strictly forbidden. We reluctantly joined the other refugees perched on hard iron chairs on the walkways between the spots of beautiful welcoming grass to continue our reading. It seems a great shame to have such a gorgeous park and not allow it to be used in the obvious manner.
And apparently this was his whole job, for the rest of the time that we were there, we watched him chase off perhaps a dozen other people who were misled by the beauty into thinking that it was there for them to enjoy.
The Killjoy
July 13, 2007
Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris
Do you remember what it was like
to be young and in love,
to feel the soft grass on your bare feet,
to lie in the cool shade
and read to your lover
about another time and place?
Do you ever wish to kick off
your iron-soled boots,
and, with a quick glance about
for your fellow gendarmes,
toss aside your official hat
and coat, and sit, for a moment,
beneath the poplars you
so jealously guard?
PHPiCalendar and PHP 5.2
Upgraded PHP to 5.2, and phpicalendar promptly broke. Silently. That is, I was getting the White Page Of Death, but no error messages, even on E_ALL.
The short form of the story is that by increasing memory_limit (it was set to 11M) the problem was solved. When PHP encounters the memory_limit, it simply bails silently, without logging any kind of error message. That’s unfortunate.
So it appears that under 5.0, phpicalendar was able to run without problem in 11M, but with 5.2, suddenly it requires more than that. Exactly how much more than that, I don’t know, and didn’t experiment a whole lot. Perhaps that’s a task for another day.
Finding Jardins du Luxembourg
We came up out of the Metro at Notre-Dame des Champs and, upon consulting the map, headed off in the direction that seemed the most promising. We were, however, still rather unsure, and so resolved to ask a passing stranger which direction we should take. This went something like this:
Me: “Excusez moi, ou est les Jardins du Luxembourg?”
Passing stranger, turning around, and revealing that he was not only looking at a map, but at the same map, in the same book, that we’re looking at: “I dunno. I think it’s over this way.”
So much for getting directions from helpful natives.
OSCon 2007
OSCon starts on Monday. This is the first one that I’ve missed since 1996, but I really hadn’t thought about it until I saw something on someone’s blog about going. I have more important things to do. This is a bit of a revelation to me, since there was a time when I couldn’t imagine anything more important than OSCon. Life is good.