November 2001

the Microsoft settlement

/ current events

It doesn’t take a judge to realize the Microsoft settlement with the DoJ is a big Christmas present to Bill Gates (evidently, in fact, it takes a non-judge to realize this). I, Cringely does a good job explaining just how bad it is.

Reverse 5-beat weave

/ fire

Got the reverse 5-beat weave today. Finally! This is one of those poi moves that just didn’t click for me until Jeff made the crucial observation “the chains follow your hands.”Now I’ve got it. I can’t quite do it without thinking about it yet, but I’ve got it pretty smooth.

Cuernavaca loop

/ cycling

Rode the Cuernavaca loop with Ram yesterday. That’s a fun ride, and it was Ram’s first time on it, so it was good to introduce him to a new route.

Netscape

/ technology

I want to like Netscape 6.2, really I do. And there are a lot of aspects of it that I do like. But it has all these annoying habits that slow me down:

  • When I open a new window, the cursor is not blinking in the URL field. Normally it should be. This drives me nuts.
  • Tabbing should toggle between the URL field and the body of the window. It doesn’t, at least not reliably. If there’s a page with links displayed, tabbing moves the focus from one link to the next. This is a Windows-y behavior that I’m not used to. I need to grab the mouse to get the cursor in the URL field.
  • Forms on web pages do not use standard Apple interface widgets, they use very Windows-y widgets. Not what I’m used to. I know Netscape is trying to use a common code base as much as possible, but it’s still annoying.
  • There’s a noticeable pause when opening a new window.
  • It helpfully can remember all your website passwords, but rather than hooking in to Apple’s keychain, it makes you enter a master password separately.
  • For reasons I’ll never understand, it renders some elements differently than previous versions of Netscape, or IE, or whatever. Dumb stuff. Like some pop-up menus, horizontal rules, that sort of thing. Why?
  • Oh, and this really bugs me: hitting escape or command-period used to stop animated GIFs, but no longer. Some animated GIFs I do want to watch; most I do not. Why this useful feature was dropped I can’t imagine.

I do like the fact that it’s really fast, it gives me basic keyboard controls for navigating text in editable fields (shame, IE, shame), I like its sidebar approach better than IE’s

Rumsfeld hot?

/ personal

Spoke with my sister Lissy tonight. She told me that she and a friend of hers both find Donald Rumsfeld to be (and I believe this is an exact quote) “totally hot.”I told her that as a single guy of about her age, I found this news to be less than encouraging, vis a vis my own dating prospects.

Last night was firenight, as

/ fire

Last night was firenight, as is every Tuesday, pretty much. I did two sets. Or was it three? I don’t remember. Tried out a new move, the “layback corkscrew,” for the first time with fire. That’ll take more practice.

I didn’t feel “on” for any of my sets. Admittedly, it’s pretty rare that I do feel on–maybe one out of ten. But I always feel odd after I complete a set where things just don’t quite come together and I get congratulated for it.

First post

/ personal

Oh yeah. This is my inaugural blog. Let’s see how it goes.

Victrola

/ music

Checked out a band that was on my “to check out” list last night. Victrola. They’ve got a regular Monday-night gig at the Empanada Parlour. They’re good. Early New Orleans style jazz, torch songs, that sort of thing.

On my way home, I snapped one of the brake cables on my bike. This has never happened to me before. Fixed that today, and replaced the other cable as a preventative measure. Also installed new brake pads, as long as I was in there. I hate installing new brake pads. Takes forever to get them adjusted, and I never get them quite right.