Wednesday
January 8, 2003

As curious as George.

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

A hint of blue lies behind the veiled sky, below labors Attila. At first, he thought it was his starter motor. After returning with the parts, he discovered the starter motor mount had disintegrated, requiring a completely different sort of repair. He is happy and busy with his bits and pieces, and will soon have it all put to rights.

Myself, I am busy with pears. We are the happy recipients of a half-bushel of pears. Beautiful, ripe and golden when they first arrived, brown spots are now appearing here and there. I think chutney would work well. I am on the prowl for recipes, on the Internet of course.

On the desk sits a stack of unpaid bills. Redundant business cards, and other flotsam-and-jetsam from 2002, wait patiently to be put to rest. Slowly the piles shrink, very slowly.

Determined to reduce clutter in my office, I have been making myself discard one item each day. Today's sacrifice is a printed map showing the location of Luna's first house, where she no longer lives, the original file is archived on a CD. It feels leaner in here already.

As I write, the MacWorld Expo is in full swing. Although I cannot attend, I do enjoy the excitement of new software to play with and hardware upon which to dream. Today I am giving Safari, the new Apple web browser, a run. In addition, I am in the process of downloading OpenOffice OSX (Beta) and OSX11 (Beta), just to see how they run. If the beta quality of Safari is any indication, OSX11 will install easily and then just work. Using it effectively is another "kettle of fish" entirely.

OpenOffice OSX is a program from the UNIX X11 environment. I anticipate having problems getting this up and running. It is a problem of logic, as I see it.

The logic set for using a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and a command line interface is very different. As far as I can tell, X11 is a GUI for the UNIX environment and is oriented for use by those who are first fluent in command line interfaces. The nature of the X11 GUI will reflect the underlying knowledge and orientation of its intended user base. The assumed skill set for using X11 effectively is probably far beyond anything I could pick up in an afternoon.

To date, I have encountered no successful crossbreed logic sets, or humans. The command line people are friendly, and impatient with the GUI-only user's "apparent" lack of willingness to "pay their dues", and learn the basic logic and power of the command line. The GUI user is accustomed to seeing basic, often used functions available in an easy to understand, easy to use graphical format. GUI users are frequently stunned by the complexity of the advice given to questions regarding the use of software originally developed for the command line logic base.

Apple has gone a long way towards marrying these two worlds. My own curiosity takes me beyond the safety of what I download from the Apple web site.

Whatever the result, the process of exploration is pleasurable, and as always, there is a lot to be learned by merely making the effort.



Top of Page
RECIPES :: Cast

Worldly Distractions

Golden Yellow Pears
Ready and Waiting



By the Easy Chair
Ravenshoe
by Henry Kingsley
(1862)
(1949 Edition)



Weather
17:01 EST
Temp: 3`C
Humidity: 81%
Wind: SW 13 km/h
Barometric:99.3 kPa

Sunrise 7:55 AM EST
Sunset 5:07 PM EST
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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