Menlo Park’s legendary Keplers Bookstore is no more. I spent a good chunk of money at Keplers over the years. It will be missed.
Archive for August, 2005
UPDATED:
Pur Sein’s Flickr photo set from the Robert Moog Memorial. Check out Wendy Carlos on the Moog family couch, flowers from Pur Sein and Keith Emerson, and Robert Moog’s car, judging from the age the same one mentioned in the gas station anecdote. (For your convenience I’ve reloaded the stream to the beginning of the set.)
The Opera Web browser has turned ten. And they’re throwing it a party. One of the party favors is free registration–for almost all platforms. If the ads in the “free” version of opera annoyed you, here’s your chance to work with it adfree. Feed them your email address, and you get the registration code for the following versions of Opera: Windows, Linux Intel, Linux PowerPC, Linux Sparc, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac (where’s the Palm, Zaurus and Symbian versions 
). I trust them with my email, they turn off the subscribe to all our newsletters by default, and I’ve fed them email before with no spam. Offer good till they run out of codes…and yes, they do generate a unique code for each email address. And check out the free music, and other goodies on the party page (mmmm, history of Opera…)
The RIO, the first commercial mp3 player is no more. Lots of reasons it failed, not the least of which was user interface design, lawsuits, terrible business decisions of the original company and multiple sales of the parent company.
(mightily abridged)
“I can’t make it in River North, people can’t even find the place, you tell them it’s in River North and they get lost, I can make it in Highland Park or on Oak Street, but I put my stuff in a gallery in River North and it doesn’t do shit–how much money is the city putting into Pilsen? How Much do they pay you to be here? What do you mean the City isn’t behind the Chicago Arts District? your very funny, you must do stand up. It says so right there, CHICAGO…”
So I followed a link from Macintouch to computer history website Braeburn. And had a good laugh at the errors and fabrications. Dr. Clark wasn’t an NCSA refugee, he was the founder of SGI. Apple didn’t develop WriteNow, nor do Apple’s programmers hold the rights to unreleased products. Taligent never shipped as an operating system. Apple in the late eighties wasn’t stagnant, and the Apple ][ family was still it’s cash cow. I have no idea what Sakoman may have seen at HP, but I know he knew about Apple’s Pocket Crystal project, which was spun off into a separate company (General Magic). All in all quite amusing for the expert, not for the layman looking to get an over view of the subject.
Cyberduck, the free, open source FTP and SFTP client for OS X has been updated to version 2.5. I’ve been happily using the betas for a while now. While no where near as polished, feature laden or scriptable as Panic’s amazing Transmit, it has Rendezvous/Bonjour and Keychain support, and kicks Fetch’s ass in performance and ease of use. If you are command line challenged, it’s the way to go (if your can handle the command line, it’s NCFTP all the way, and you probably know how to get and install it for OS X). If you need SCP support, get Fugu-slower, not quite as slick, SFTP and SCP, but no FTP.
So this couple walks into a gallery in Pilsen. The guy has an art tube under his arm. They ask if the gallery shows oil paintings. One of the gallery personnel explains that they are a photo gallery. The woman asks if they only have photography or if they “also have art here.” The rest of the assembled gallery personnel reach for their weapons, verbal and otherwise, The gallery person again replies that it’s a photo gallery and suggests they go visit 4ART or David Moscow if they are looking for paintings.
Various snappy comebacks were discussed after the incident, or thought up later. Favorites included, “Oh, your a republican!” “we don’t walk into your house and pee on the floor, don’t come into our gallery and insult our work,” “Made it all the way to the third grade, didn’t you?” and outright laughter.
No tourists were harmed in the incident. But they should have been.
Ah the power of blinkenlights (no, not the Blinkenlights Archeology Institute, those amazing retro computing FAQ masters, but real blinkenlights). Put them on a cardboard box and you have a computer. Ask any set designer. They thrill, they chill, they fascinate and you gotta touch them. Then the alarm goes off the halogen falls and you choke to death. Ok, i’m geting ahead of my self here. But nothing attracts newbies like blinkenlights, and nothing kills gadgetry faster then newbies.
So you gotta make signs, like this from Blinkenlights front page:
ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers!
Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken.Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights
.
A little Googling finds someone selling Cafepress items featuring a version from Stanford University, 1959.
Then I found what appeared to be the holy grail of blinkenlights on Synthfool’s site: a photo of the warning from the RCA Mk II synthesizer. The Mk II was a room filling analog beast that was programed and performed from a paper tape. It resided at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Lab. Early 50’s. Note the variations from the previous warnings. Check out the condition. Could this be the Ur blinkenlights sign?
Well before I posted this, the ultimate blinkenlight find, I checked the Jargon file. Your one stop source for hacker history and slang. Boy was I wrong: here’s it’s page on blinkenlights. It seems the blinklights warning sign originated in WWII defense plants. ESR includes a photo of one such sign.
Thus ends todays episode in digital archeology. There will a short quiz on this material monday.
Interview with cartoon genius Jim Woodring, where we discover among other things he designed the avatars for M$ ComicChat. I won’t hold it against him-Eno created the Windows 95 sound.
