Archive for November, 2008

when things just work

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Yes, that is a photograph of me, sometime in 2004. Until very recently it was unavailable in any digital form. I am now though the owner of this printer/scanner. Which means that such memories are possible, even on the internet.

As I unpacked it though, because I run Ubuntu I found myself in an irrational “will this work, will it be a nightmare” frame of mind. Despite knowing that linux supports more devices than any other os.

It Just Worked.

Easier than the installation would be on pc/mac according to the documentation. No installation at all in fact. Just connect & go. Which is how things should work all the time.

The desire for this to be the case is just one of the reasons I contine to use Ubuntu. A mentality that sees the worth examining itself by these sorts of criteria:

There are still many people who think that the scariness of an operating system installation is a good place to ask people unnecessary questions about things they’ve never heard of. There are still many people who seriously think that “Gnome” and “KDE” and “XFCE” are acceptable terms to use when communicating with non-technical people.
Ubuntu and “desktop environments”

I should not have to perform sysadmin tasks in order to connect something to my computer. And now I don’t. Because people have put serious thought into designing a system that makes things easy for the user.

Love regards etc

P.S. you may notice a new link in the sidebar to “Love regards etc” which, in case you were wondering, is my brand new pipes powered blogroll

favourite things: the elephant’s five pound brain

Monday, November 10th, 2008

I was initially made aware of Milton Acorndue to the twin factors of his excellent name, and also the wikipedia claim that he

“lost his will to live after the death of a younger sister.”

[Milton Acorn Wikipedia]

http://www.primegallery.ca/dynamic/artist_artwork.asp?ArtistID=63&Count=0&categoryID=Photography

Milton Acorn

[Photo by @SheldonGrimson]

But more than just that, he was also an excellent poet whose work has a fragile brutality, dragged along by an absurdist sense of humour… Enjoyable:

In the elephant’s five-pound brain
Dwarves have an incredible vicious sincerity,
A persistent will to undo things. The beast cannot grasp
The convolutions of destruction, always his mind
Turns to other things – the vastness of green
And of frangibility of forest. If only once he could descend
To trivialities he’d sweep the whole earth clean of his tormentors
In one sneeze so mighty as to be observed from Mars.

In the elephant’s five-pound brain
Sun and moon are the pieces in a delightfully complex ballgame
That have to do with him…never does he doubt
The sky has opened and rain and thunder descend
For his special ministration. He dreams of mastodons
And mammoths and still his pride beats
Like the heart of the world, he knows he could reach
To the end of space if he stood still and imagined the effort.

[excerpt from The Natural History of Elephants]

Frankly, that should be enough for anyone to go and investigate further.

P.S. I was also recently made aware that Satan once lived in the White House, incarnated as the dog of the Second Lady Abigail Adams