2001-11-01»
Fri Nov 2 02:07:00 2001»
And back, and breathe… had a great time in the end: fattening dinners, late night walks down crowded streets, strange fevers and Anthrax casualties, sacred federal documents, sandwiches of turkey between slices of HTML source, Halloween balls on dredged-up tugboats, abandoned conferences, hot chocolate with gurus, bioinformatics, no gawking at ground zero, two day debian installs, jokes about 802.11, and laughing a lot with my very funny hostess. Don’t think the marzipan potatoes did it justice, in the end.
Comments Off on Fri Nov 2 02:07:00 2001
2001-10-24»
Thu Oct 25 06:03:00 2001»
In New York.
I miss my wife.
Comments Off on Thu Oct 25 06:03:00 2001
2001-10-01»
Mon Oct 1 19:12:00 2001»
I’ve just added
deb http://pandora.debian.org/~bali/debian unstable bali
…to my apt-get source.list so I can grab the NNTP patched version of mutt. Which means that I get to easily read newsgroups like rec.arts.sf.science
Which means I get to read mails about living on a braneworld.. Which means I get even less done.
Comments Off on Mon Oct 1 19:12:00 2001
2001-09-27»
Thu Sep 27 23:21:00 2001»
Ahhhhh hell, let’s make this more interesting.
I’m going to use this file to store my notes for this week’s NTK. If it goes well, I’ll do this every week.
Eek. Show’s over, I guess.
Comments Off on Thu Sep 27 23:21:00 2001
2001-09-23»
Mon Sep 24 05:47:00 2001»
Quantum mechanics and the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Comments Off on Mon Sep 24 05:47:00 2001
2001-09-17»
Mon Sep 17 20:46:00 2001»
Before you ask: I don’t have an opinion. Not yet.
Comments Off on Mon Sep 17 20:46:00 2001
2001-09-16»
Sun Sep 16 20:31:00 2001»
I am, as anyone who knows me will tell, almost pathologically suspicious of authority figures. I’m also a bit freaked by people who are too similar to me (one of the reasons why I held back from moving to SF for so long is walking into a bar where everyone looked like me, smoked like me, languidly slumped in their seats like me and talked forever about computers).
On the other hand, I do have heroes, lots of heroes. They’re generally people who are somewhat bit like me, but in some way … better. My plan in these cases is to monitor these people carefully, and see if I can’t assimilate their more noble characteristics as my own. I vaguely hope at the same time they get something good out of the trade too – certainly good enough for them to be friends with me.
I like this strategy: it means that I often end up friends with my heroes. I prefer heroes you can hang out with than heroes on stamps.
Anyway, my heroes right now are Zooko and Cory Doctorow. I’ve met both of them; when we met, we bumbled around, having fun in both cases. It’s not like either of them are Doc Savage in real life; I think you’d class all three of us in that “bright-looking, somewhat dazed info-feeders” category. But, man, does their work blow me away: it’s got that feel of the attainable goal, of just stepping outside of the tight loops of your daily life and trying to reach something just a bit further out. In both cases, they inspire you (or rather me) to sit down and do some hard thinking. Also, every time I read Zooko’s diary entries about his son Irby, I want to go out and buy a box load of toddlers. I’m not sure if that’s a noble goal or not. Zooko certainly makes it seem like one.
Comments Off on Sun Sep 16 20:31:00 2001
2001-09-09»
Sun Sep 9 23:11:00 2001»
Back from the desert, like every other Bay Area dork worthy of the name.
I sort of had fun. I was a bit quiet, the burns didn’t excite me much: living here for longer meant a lot of it was, well, a bit too contextualised for me. It didn’t seem as earth-shatteringly weird as previously. I tried to participate, but I’m too clumsy and this year, I didn’t have the social wherewithall to comply with whatever it is that Burning Man demands.
Next year, though…
Comments Off on Sun Sep 9 23:11:00 2001
2001-08-22»
Wed Aug 22 22:29:00 2001»
This time the West End run of Caught In The Net will have the cast I always dreamed of:
Comments Off on Wed Aug 22 22:29:00 2001
2001-08-20»
Tue Aug 21 00:14:00 2001»
On a small copper plaque on the El Camino Real freeway:
Battle of Santa Clara
On January 2, 1847, somewhere hereabouts was fought the last northern battle of the Mexican war. The official casualty report: “dead none, wounded none, missing but one on the American side and he came up shortly afterwards stating that he had been searching for his ramrod which in the excitement he had forgotten to draw from his gun and fired at the enemy”
Dedicated October 14 1978
Mountain Charlie Chapter No 1850
e clampus vitus
“right wrongs nobody”
Comments Off on Tue Aug 21 00:14:00 2001
