Category: Grumbling and muttering

The pits

I spent much of the holiday weekend updating my computer’s operating system and dealing with the consequences. While banging my head against the wall, I reflected on how Macintosh computers have evolved over the years and what is likely in the future. If Apple continues naming its operating systems after places in California, I have suggestions.

Before Mavericks and Yosemite, Macintosh operating systems were named for big cats. When Apple exhausts geography, they might consider botany. Manchineel, Gympie-Gympie and Gifblaar would all be splendid names for products of contemporary software giants.

Memo to the blogosphere

If you write quotably, please proofread your prose before you click “publish.” Case in point, from John C. Wright:

Thirty years ago, I was in the newspaper business, and I saw then that the news was utterly corrupt and utterly dishonest, and was willing to loose money rather than cover stories that told the truth and gave both sides of any debate. It was like living in the Matrix. The news was fake, and I knew it, and could prove it, and could recite chapter and verse of the lies, propaganda and distortion — and no one believed me, no one cared, no one could be bothered to listen.

If I were to quote that for its content, I would either insert a “(sic)” after “loose,” or put “lose” in its place in brackets, indicating a substitution. Either course is ugly and clunky and weakens the impact of the statement.

Just wondering

(Via Borepatch.)

Is there anyone who thinks that daylight “savings” time is a good idea? I’ve never met any such person, yet twice a year every year I have to remember again how to set the time on my wristwatch.

There has been some talk about setting clocks a hour ahead permamently.1 Some people might find that advantageous, but for me it would be a pain. I keep an early schedule, waking up early in the morning and getting sleepy around the middle of the evening, independently of the clock. My mind is clearest when I first wake up, and the period between getting up and preparing to leave for the office is the best time to work on my current projects or do anything that requires care and concentration. DST robs me an hour of this valuable time. Plus, it seems that the more noise a neighbor generates, the more likely he keeps late hours, and DST encourages extending evening activities. While perpetual DST might be preferable to resetting clocks twice a year, standard time is best.

Picture this

Helmet, with inadvertent self-portrait

If Flickr decides that there has been suspicious activity involving your account, or if you want to access Flickr from a different browser or a different computer, you need to prove to them that you are indeed whoever it is that you are. It’s a simple matter. In my case, I need only respond to emails sent to either of two long-defunct addresses.2 This doesn’t quite make sense to me; I used a different address, which they have, to launch my account there. But the ways of IT are mysterious and not for ordinary mortals to comprehend.

At this time, I can log into Flickr only with one browser and only on one computer. It’s just a matter of time before I’m locked out of my account entirely. Therefore, I’ve started a weblog for my photography, here. I’ll occasionally post a picture or two on Zoopraxiscope, but the full galleries will be at the new site. You can see the rest of the pictures from yesterday’s visit to the Great Plains Renaissance Festival there, for instance.

Stay on the path

In years past one occasionally found such plants as argemone and corydalis in Wichita’s Sedgwick County Park. However, careful management has eliminated most of the pesky wildflowers, so that nothing distracts visitors from the splendid displays of Toxicodendron radicans throughout the park.

The same drive toward tidiness has also simplified the flora of the fields east of the park. Formerly, one would sometimes stumble across Mentzelia nuda, for instance, or Delphinium carolinianum, but gradually such conspicuous species disappeared. A few still remain, such as Oenothera rhombipetala and Dalea villosa, but if current trends continue, eventually the area will be just neat and tidy grass.

Today’s idiot

I haven’t posted much recently, partly because I’ve been busy, but mainly because most of what I would post would be complaints. Right now I am irritated with Apple computers, my website host, Native Instruments, lawn mowers, the financial industry, pathogenic bacteria and viruses, idiots with drivers’ licenses, kids running amok, oblivious parents, the human race in general. Each of these is worth a lengthy rant — the last a lifetime of invective3 — but I’ll spare you. Instead, I’ll just mention The New York Times, which has discovered Crunchyroll.

Writer Glenn Kenny may be the world’s outstanding authority on Droopy cartoons, but about anime he’s an ignoramus. In “Boomerang and Crunchyroll: Of Old Cartoons and Fresh Anime,” he name-checks the movies Akira and Ghost in the Shell, thereby gaining negligible credibility as an otaku. He plainly knows nothing about anime series, which comprise the vast majority of Crunchyroll’s offerings, and he can’t be bothered to do minimal research. Of all the series, excellent and lousy, that Crunchyroll streams, the only one he mentions is Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor, one I had dropped in less than five minutes. I would guess he picked that one because it is in the top row of the “simulcasts” directory and features a character named “Glenn.” He writes that the first episode

“… features a scene in which Glenn walks in on a roomful of his female students in their underwear, yells that he is not going to give in to the “cliché” that says he is now required to avert his eyes, takes a good, long stare and then is thrown back by an unseen force, blood spurting from his eyes.”

I have no desire whatsoever to watch the rest of the episode, but if you have, please tell me whether the blood spurts from his eyes, as Kenny says, or his nose. I have a hunch that our expert does not know the convention of anime nosebleeds.

The other Crunchyroll title Kenny mentions is Fist of the North Star, which he describes as “gruelingly violent.”

So, according to the alleged Newspaper of Record, anime, as represented by Crunchyroll, is fanservice and violence. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the irresponsible and wrongheaded Charles Solomon, but at least he knew something about Japanese animation.

Now you see it, redux

A recent message from the website host:

System Administration is currently migrating or will be migrating your account … to a newer server to better meet your needs. You should have no downtime during this move, and will be notified with your new server information once it completes. Please postpone changes until the move has been completed and DNS propagation completes.

This may be why my recent posts disappear and reappear and disappear again, and why Steven’s recent comment vanished overnight. You might find it annoying. I find it infuriating.