Monthly Archives: April 2001

Space Tourist

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Y’know, this is really starting to tick me off. This guy is not the first space tourist.

That title belongs to Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist who visited Mir in 1989. And in May 1991, a British chemist named Helen Sharman won a contest, the prize being a trip to Mir.

And let’s not forget Bill Nelson, the US Congressman who went up on the Columbia Shuttle in 1986. (Perhaps the ultimate Congressional junket?)

And, last but not least, let’s not exclude Christa MacAuliffe. Though she didn’t actually make it — she was killed in the Challenger explosion, a paean to bad engineering and worse management– she really had no business being in space.

Weeds, weeds, weeds

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I’ve got a pretty good population of weeds in my backyard garden. I’ve been trying to identify them so I would know how best to attack them. (My garden is strictly organic, so chemical answers are not an option.) This month’s Sunset has a lengthy article on common garden weeds along with some solutions to the problem. Unfortunately, the pictures are drawings rather than photos, which makes identification a little more difficult.

This database from Michigan State University Extension, has an invaluable set of weed identification keys, along with actual photos of the weeds themselves at various points in their growth.

This pretty little plant, purslane, is growing like crazy in my strawberry patch. Unfortunately, it wants to grow OVER the berries, thus sticking them to the ground where they’re eaten by bugs. So it’s got to go!

The whole Michican State University Extension web site is a treasure trove of useful gardening information.

Tales of the weird…

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A woman goes in for surgery to have excess flabby skin removed. Instead (actually, in addition) the surgeon moved some of the tissue to her breasts, thus performing an impromptu but apparently quite impressive breast augmentation. The woman sued and was awarded $1 million plus.

The interesting thing (besides the obvious weirdness factor) is that the appellate court threw out the $250k limit set by state law for medical malpractice claims, saying that the operation went beyond malpractice and was an act of battery.

The article does not state whether she had the augmentation removed.

First Gardenlog Entry

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It’s amazing what you can accomplish on rainy Saturday! As I’ve been threatening promising, here is the Gardenlog.

Here’s a picture of what I started with: The backyard, still looking north (Clicking on the photo will get you a larger version of it.)

As you can see, the previous owners apparently spent a lot of time not watering and spraying gallons of Roundup to keep the weeds away. I suspect that Roundup poisoning is what’s wrong with one of the avocado trees. Hopefully we had enough rain this winter to remove any remaining herbicides.

This photo was taken in early October 2000, shortly before I moved in. It looks a little different now, as you’ll see in tomorrow’s picture.

My Burpee order finally came this week. Sixty bucks worth of seeds to fill up that vast expanse of brown dirt there.

Bad Joke

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A US spy plane is flying in international airspace (just) hoping to pick up information about China’s nuclear testing facilities when two Chinese jets pull up alongside.

The pilots ask the plane to shift its course. The jet on the right pulls away and the US plane is urged to turn in that direction. The US pilot wrongly starts to move left. “No! Wang Wei! Wang Wei!” cries a voice just before the impact….

Apology, version II.

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[I think this originally came from the Washington Post, but I haven’t seen a link to the original. If anyone has the link, please add it in the comments. I stole it from Follow Me Here — fhic]

The following is a very early draft of the letter sent by United States Ambassador to China Joseph H. Prueher to Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Tang prior to the release of the crew of the American surveillance plane. The letter was obtained by Rough Draft from sources in an alternate universe.

Dear Mr. Minister:

We are sorry that our plane crashed on your island without obtaining the expressed written consent of your government at least 48 hours prior to the emergency.

We are very, very sorry that your brave pilot attempted suicide by flying his nimble fighter jet into our lumbering surveillance plane as it cruised through international airspace on autopilot.

We regret that aerodynamic principles required that we construct our plane out of metal, rather than out of cotton or silk or polyester or some other lightweight fabric that would have caused less damage in the collision your pilot instigated.

We are extremely sorry that this incident has strained the great friendship that has existed between our countries as a diplomatic fiction since the Nixon administration. We look forward to the resumption of the trust, good will and intensive espionage that is the historic foundation of our relationship. We are pleased that this unfortunate episode did not culminate in World War III, which we would have won easily.

We are a tiny bit sorry, but not really all that sorry, that we destroyed the electronic gear on our jet before allowing it to fall into your possession. We merely did not want you to feel sorrow yourself when you discovered that our military technology is not nearly as sophisticated as we claim it is in the written documents your spies have previously stolen. Do what you will with the Polaroid cameras, sketch pads, binoculars and opera glasses we left behind. Note: The 24 pairs of “X-ray vision” glasses on board were obtained from the back of a comic book, and do not work worth a dang.

We are very sorry that, in a moment of overreaction to the crisis, we transferred the giant pandas from the National Zoo to the Sing Sing prison in New York State. We assure you that the conditions in the prison laundry and the license-plate manufacturing plant were relatively humane.

We are very happy to reflect that our countries share many similarities, such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when our professors lectured naked before marijuana-addled long-hairs, and your professors were exiled to “re-education” camps in a spasm of totalitarian horror. We are very, very sorry that you had that little problem with the Gang of Four. We’ve had some characters on our side, too.

We are pleased to report that, as a cultural gesture, Mao’s Little Red Book will finally be published in our country in Large Print Format.

We sympathize with your need to translate any and all portions of this letter as you see fit, even if it means turning the phrase “we did nothing wrong and wish you weren’t so paranoid” into “we prostrate ourselves before your mightiness and beseech your forgiveness.”

We are very, very, very sorry that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did not win Best Picture.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Joseph H. Prueher

Kylix, Borland, and the calendar

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Or, “Borland misses another release date.”

Those of us who have been programming for many years have developed a love/hate relationship with Borland. On the one hand, they have come up with some incredibly useful and long-lived tools; I’ve been using Borland languages for, quite literally, decades. Delphi is my development environment of choice for Windows. And whatever they may be, Borland isn’t the Evil Empire of Microsoft. But on the the other hand, they’ve gone through some tough times– in an attempt to become profitable, they sold off most of their product line and nearly went under. They reorganized, renamed themselves to “Inprise” and came back from the brink. Recently they’ve reorganized again, and gone back to the original Borland name.

A couple of years ago, they announced their latest product, Kylix, which is a native development environment for Linux; basically, Delphi for Linux. It was publicly demoed, with much fanfare, and it was to ship in mid-2000. No one really expected that, and in July 2000, at the BorCon here in San Diego, Mike Swindell (the Kylix product manager) told me personally that the it would be shipping “before the end of the year.”

Towards the end of the year, it became obvious that they wouldn’t make that release date either, and extended the timeline to “release in first quarter 2001.” However, at that time, rumblings in the newsgroups were that there were still some very significant flaws. One of the beta testers who shall remain nameless (the NDA is pretty draconian) told me personally that he hadn’t been able to compile any apps that run reliably. This has been a problem all along– a very simple app that Mike demoed in San Diego locked up. (Talk about embarrassing moments!)

Now first quarter 2001 has come and gone, and you still can’t buy the thing. This has me terrifically bummed. Kylix, if it ever works and gets released, has the potential to change the Linux world overnight. Public perception of Linux is that it’s only for nerds and techies. To some extent, that’s true. But if even 10% of the Delphi apps out there get compiled and distributed in Kylix, it will outnumber all the apps that have ever been released for Linux in all other languages combined.

And every kid and college programmer out there who hacks on Delphi in Windows can hack on Kylix in Linux instead. That could be the boost the Linux really needs to move it from a niche operating system out into the mainstream.

But it can’t happen until they release the product.

Just some random photos

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Just a few random photos of the garden…

My veggie patch. Various salad greens in the near foreground, beans to the right of them.Look! Stuff is growing! Another smaller patch of greens to the right of that, and a very small patch of onions at the far right side of the photo.

Further back, close to the fence, surrounded by 2x4s (to keep the snails out) is a small strawberry patch. (I ate the first one yesterday. It was wonderful.) To the right of that is a small patch of spinach and broccoli. The spinach is doing well and is thriving despite being heavily picked. The broccoli is not doing at all well– it’s growing leaves very nicely, but no florets are forming.

Against the fence is a patch of California poppies, with various herbs to their right. The speed composter is visible at the very left edge of the photo.

One of my sunflowers. This is the first crop, being grown to attract birds and beneficial insects. Look! Stuff is growing! The main garden has a patch of cultivated Paul Bunyan hybrids which I’m growing for the edible seeds.

There’s also a small patch of experimental sunflower cutting mix growing at the other end of the garden. Burpee sent it to me as a freebie along with the rest of my order.

Apropos of nothing… some orange blossoms. They make the backyard smell great.Look! Stuff is growing! The smell brings back one of earliest memories of California… when I was very young, maybe eight or nine, my family came out from our home in New Jersey to visit Disneyland. It was the middle of winter, and winter is a cold, dreadful time in NJ.

As we flew drove south on the 5 freeway, I remember smelling the most wonderful smell. It was decades later that I realized it was orange blossoms.

When I first moved to California (1982) you could smell the orange blossoms as you drove along the 5 through Orange County. Alas, they’re gone now. But my memories come to life again every time I walk through my backyard.

A photo for Gary

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Especially for Gary: a photo of Son of Termite Shed. Son of Termite Shed The area to the left where you once admired the Sink that Never Was is soon to be a small (8 x 10) raised deck, perfect for a couple of people to sit and hoist a few cold ones while watching the garden grow and admiring the construction in the distance.

The area to the right is a potting shed. The potting table there now is only temporary. A replacement is under construction in the garage.

Not to worry; SoTS still looks like it belongs in East County. It’s just that now I don’t have to worry about it falling down on my head if I bump into the corner post.