Software: Inkscape
Retired Addiction
Longer and less plot-heavy than the first series. Great for chilling out with some weights and stretches before bed.
A Different Hill
In my dreams there’s another Boston.
Where the Fenway and the E train should be there’s an expanse of rundown, uninteresting concrete buildings. Maybe there’s another line south of the E train.
Last night, after the flat concrete section came a neighborhood of steep hills with equally rundown platforms, roughly where Roxbury should have begun.
To the west, where Brookline should have been — or at least the no man’s land between the D train and Coolidge Corner — was a shabby, Allston-like, busy Y-shaped intersection. There was a place I needed to go which was on the far side, behind the intersection, and hard to reach.
To its west, the ground sloped steadily upward for a mile or more. At the top (very high up), looking down over the city, was an abandoned set of concentric concrete terraces, enormous, an expanse of disused parking around a building that wasn’t used anymore. Sumac and other fast-growing trees were taking hold heavily on the slope.
One night, there was a posh place above MassArt. The street sloped gently upward and broke at a compact building with a glass foyer. The main street curved to the right there. Another, smaller street broke off just before the curve, behind a wedge of brick brownstones, and continued up the same hill; it was much more neglected, and seemed to be where people lived. Maybe that hill was the same as the first. Maybe they were all the same hill.
Oprah Winfrey in Haiku
Scorn a man who says
Only what you want to hear
And now Doctor Phil
The Bestiary of Geekdom: Wikipedian
Added “Wikipedian” to the Bestiary of Geekdom.
Amazon.com’s MP3 Store
Overall I’m pleased with the Amazon mp3 store. Good interface. Good prices. Previewing tracks and albums is intuitive, the samples are high quality, and you don’t wind up with a desktop full of little .rm files after previewing them all.
The selection can be lean, even with slightly out of band tastes. I can only find one full VNV Nation album, while Rotersand turns up a remix album, and Seabound is MIA. That said, discovering new acts based on what you already know is easy and — dare I say it — fun, at least in the heavily incestuous world of electronica.
I didn’t enjoy having to install an application to download full albums. I also didn’t enjoy being forced to purchase using “one click” — why can’t I shop and then check out? I read through the terms of service, and there’s no mention of watermarking or inclusion of my account info in the files, but I wouldn’t call that conclusive. Will I get a nastygram from Amazon if someone swipes my SD card? Hopefully we won’t find out.
Once I’d made my purchase and installed the application, the downloads were quick. On my Mac, the Amazon application created an “Amazon MP3” folder in my music folder and generated subfolders for artist and album in the iTunes style. The tracks were automatically imported into iTunes, although I found it odd that the application didn’t create a playlist of the album. One question I haven’t found an answer to is whether, like in iTunes, I can purchase the remainder of an album for the (discounted) album price if I have already purchased tracks individually.
Bottom line, Barry Adamson’s “King of Nothing Hill” sounds great in iTunes, will play in TCPMP on my Palm Zire and can ride a thumb drive to my client onsites. At the same album price offered on the iTunes Store for a track that’s locked to play only in iTunes on my own machine, I’d call that a deal.
Retired Addiction
“Dead Dog” by Nicholas Ozment
Not a bad story. The language was very well used. I found the black dog myth and the narrator’s guiltless infidelity a bit hard to lash together thematically, and some of the descripive passages and long flashbacks made my attention wander.
But I have a request. Referencing the “mini generation gap” comment I made on “The Apple Tree Man,” could we hear a bit more from the under 40 crowd on future Pseudopods? I’m sure doing abhorrant things with a wife and kids at home is viscerally arresting once you have them, but trust me: down here, clawing our way into a dead and cynical global economy, there is horror aplenty.
DIY Coms
So let me get this straight. Now I get to watch…
- Shitty commercials
- Shitty commercials that look like they were made by amateurs
- Shitty commercials that were made by amateurs
Notes on the Matewan “Massacre”
From a description in Christopher M. Finan’s “From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America”
The Matewan “Massacre” would make an interesting, if challenging film. Starts out with a classic Western-style showdown. Escalates to open warfare.
“Passengers on the Norfolk and Western trains went through the battle zone crouching on the floors of the cars while glass crashed overhead.”
- Sid Hattfield (28). Police chief, former miner. Shot Albert C. & Lee Felts. Gunned down on courthouse steps.
- Albert C. Felts. Shot mayor Cabbell Testerman. PI for Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, deputized in neighboring town. Hired to evict fired miners.
- Cabbell Testerman. Mayor & town druggist. Authorized the arrest of the detectives for carrying arms within town limits.
- Miners. Payed in company scripp. Fired when they joined unions.
- Baldwin-Felts Agency Detectives. Seven killed by miners in initial gunfight, rest fled across river.
- President Warren G. Harding. Sent in Federal Troops.
OUTSIDE
- Rev. John Haynes Holmes. Eloquently denounced the violence on both sides.
- The ACLU. Only a few years old. Spoke out against the underlying causes.
- The courts. Widely abused injunctions to suppress meaningful picketing. Used sedition laws unevenly to ban violent pro-union publications while allowing employer publications to advocate violence openly.