Oct 192004
 

On Sunday afternoon, I was on the subway heading towards Penn Station. At 14th Street (Union Square), a tall man in tight bright red short-shorts and a white t-shirt entered the car. He proceeded to stride towards the middle and opened up a newspaper in the largest possible manner. I thought this was very odd until I noticed that the back of his short-shorts had “Expose Bush!” printed in large block letters and his newspaper had a false front cover of “Kerry Wins!” Then I noticed that two people with video cameras had gotten on the car at the same time with another man with a large boombox. So I still thought it was odd, but at least I understood their motivation.

I looked around the rest of the car to see if other people had noticed the oddly dressed man, and then I realized that this was an organized protest. Four men and women dressed in tiny bright red short-shorts and white t-shirts had gotten on the car at once–one through each door. They all had the same newspaper and had all walked into the middle of the car and opened up their newspaper.

When I walked out of the subway at 34th Street (Herald Square), I was able to see that there were participants in several subway cars. It was an interesting event, and it is part of what makes it fun to live in New York City.

Later, thanks to the mighty power of Google, I was able to find out that the event was organized by Axis of Eve and Art Hijack. It was described as John Kerry Terpsichorean Ensemble: A Flash Dance Action Eve-nt.

Axis of Eve and Art Hijack protest

 Posted by at 1:42 pm
Oct 152004
 

This site now validates as XHTML 1.1. It is almost identical to the strict form of XHTML 1.0. As a general user, should you care? Probably not. As a techie, should you care? It remains to be seen. The default page for this site is served as text/html. You can see view this page as application/xhtml+xml if you are using a browser that supports application/xhtml+xml. I do not believe Internet Explorer has this support.

I’ve switched from using Mozilla as my primary mail reader and web browser to a combination of Thunderbird and Firefox. All three programs are from the same organization. Thunderbird and Firefox are their new standalone mail reader and standalone web browser. Both are not completely finished products, but they are fairly stable. Firefox is going to have it’s first general release shortly. It was worth switching to Firefox for its web developer toolbar alone. This tool is going to be very helpful for me at work. Thunderbird is worth using as a mail reader because it has a well-designed and implemented interface. The icons they designed are fantastic.

Finally, I will probably be moving this site from Verio to Dreamhost. Dreamhost had a deal last week for a year of hosting for $10. At Dreamhost’s regular rates, I still pay less per month than what I pay for Verio. And Verio’s pricing has not changed in ten years! If I were to create a new account at Verio, I would be paying four times more than my new account at Dreamhost! I don’t see any big differences in functionality between the two companies. If anything, I think Dreamhost may be a bit more responsive to small customers.

 Posted by at 8:35 pm
Oct 152004
 

Superfine had their third birthday yesterday. I was going to go early in the evening, but because of server problems, I didn’t even leave work until 11:30 pm. It was a pretty fun evening. The Hungry Marching Band performed. They were a lot of fun.

One of the partners sang a few song a capella and made a few speeches; another owner was a DJ later in the evening. I don’t know the third owner; I believe she is the chef. [Names of the owners to follow later.]

Superfine ownerSuperfine owner

The bar at Superfine

Pretty bar.

Disco ball

Disco ball.

 Posted by at 8:25 pm
Oct 152004
 

Sunday morning in DUMBO

There was a storybook quality to the landscape of Manhattan last Sunday. The sky was a rich blue color with vivid fluffy clouds. I was going to a restaurant that I talk about far too much, and the stark reality of DUMBO contrasted sharply with the opposite shore.

Bloody Mary

I wasn’t going to have a drink with breakfast, but the bartender really wanted to make one. It’s a bit funny really; Bloody Marys are a lot of work for the bartenders to make at Superfine. They don’t use a mix there, and every drink is from scratch! Regardless, it was a pretty drink for a pretty day.

 Posted by at 8:20 pm
Oct 092004
 

I now have high speed internet access from Time Warner Cable in my house. I purchased my own cable modem/wireless gateway/switch/firewall from J&R; a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit concerned that TWC wouldn’t add my cable modem to their systems. However, less than two hours after the installation guy came by, my setup started to work perfectly. It’s interesting that they insisted on sending a technician. The technician was in and out in under 15 minutes; all he did was a line check and activation.

The Linksys device I bought was the Wireless-G Cable Gateway. By law, you should be able to use this device with any cable provider that provides internet access. However, cable companies really don’t want you to use your own equipment. When I was ordering the service, I was asked many, many times if I was sure I wanted to use my own cable modem. On the bright side, when my access goes down for some reason, I can go into my box and see exactly what is causing the problem.

 Posted by at 1:03 pm
Oct 082004
 

Salon is reporting that President Bush used a radio earpiece during the first debate. If this is true, I find it simply appalling. At worst, this is frightening. Is the president incompetent? I don’t generally like calling the president stupid. I don’t feel it is productive, and I used to think it wasn’t totally accurate. However, this kind of story makes me reconsider.

Check out the Salon article. It is well worth sitting through the day pass.

[Original link courtesy of Electoral Vote Predictor 2004.]

 Posted by at 10:16 am
Oct 072004
 

Solaris 10 adds a really neat tool called DTrace. I wasn’t impressed at first, but I finally sat down and read a detailed explanation of the tool. It is very cool. Basically, DTrace allows you to stick a debugger on any process running on a Solaris box without impacting performance. It is a great feature, and I wish it were present in Windows. There are definitely times when we attempt to track down application stalls or excessive memory leaks; this kind of tool would allow us to pinpoint exactly what was causing the problem.

Bryan Cantrill from Sun wrote up an excellent description of using DTrace on his blog, The Observation Deck. I recommend reading the entire entry. It will take a while to work through the entire article, but it is fascinating.

 Posted by at 10:43 am
Sep 302004
 

On Saturday, one of the owners of Superfine, a terrific restaurant in DUMBO, turned 35. They had a large party that apparently ended mid-day on Sunday. It is amazing to me. 35 is not that far off for me, but I can’t really imagine owning a successful business in five years.

A 3 at SuperfineA 5 at Superfine

If you get a chance, stop by Superfine for lunch or dinner. The food is varied and tasty, the decor is constantly changing and interesting, and the wait staff is well trained and friendly. If you don’t like the food one day, go again another day–the menu changes every day.

 Posted by at 7:51 pm
Sep 302004
 

Milan was one of my favorite cities in Italy; Sienna was my favorite. A lot of people told me that I wouldn’t like Milan because it was all about industry and commerce. I listened a bit too much to them; I loved Milan. It reminded me a lot of New York City, but it was Italian. [Note to self: next time you travel somewhere, pay more attention to what Betsy tells me!]

The Duomo of Milan was pretty great. You could climb up steps and roam around the top of the cathedral. I enjoy climbing up steps and seeing far off locations. I think I like the fact that the heights scare me a little bit.

View of Milan from Duomo

View of Milan from Duomo

View of Milan from Duomo

I mentioned earlier that I think Italy had some great public art. A perfect example of this was a photo exhibit on the streets of Milan. Canon sponsored a photo exhibition of works by Yann Arthus-Bertrand called “Earth from Above.” The point of the exhibition was to provide discussion regarding the state of the world as it relates to people living in a sustainable manner. The exhibit was very beautiful. There were over 100 large prints mounted in small kiosks in the middle of a busy pedestrian thoroughfare.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand photo exhibit in Milan

There is a lot of information about Yann Arthus-Bertrand available on the web. He has several web sites set up; I think browsing his photos is a good way to get to know his work.

 Posted by at 7:36 pm