My wife and I just finished watching the Maigret TV series on Britbox, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I did some research on the original Jules Maigret novels by Georges Simenon. Penguin began releasing updated translations of the novels in 2013, they are now up to book 55 (full available list from Penguin). The site Book Series in Order has a list of the original publication order. I have reserved the first one at the library – looking forward to it!
December 2018
Alternatives to the current Internet?
While reading a story about slow-tech (via Chris Aldrich), I came across several other interesting articles on alternative Internet solutions:
- Low Tech Magazine: Email in the 18th Century: The Optical Telegraph
- Low Tech Magazine: How to Build A Low-Tech Internet
- Wireless Networking in the Developing World: a free book about designing, implementing, and maintaining low-cost wireless networks
From 1962: “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”
Sights and sounds of the Christmas season
The choir at my church, Resurrection Catholic Parish in Tualatin, Oregon, sang last week at The Festival of Lights in Portland, Oregon, hosted at The Grotto, a religious community and gardens. We performed a half hour of sacred vocal music at the Grotto Chapel, and it was a wonderful performance!
During the Festival of Lights, the grounds of the Grotto are filled with Christmas lights:
Finally, the choir my wife and I sing in performed at the 5pm Mass on Christmas eve. It is a contemporary group, and I made a recording of one of the prelude songs (What Child is This) performed in a jazz style by a quartet. Enjoy!
Flight data shows bad sensor data kept forcing nose of aircraft down.
Looks like bad inputs to the software were a factor in this accident.
Leonard Bernstein at 100
Yesterday, I listened to a terrific episode of Radio Open Source, Christopher Lydon’s wide-ranging podcast, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. The show focused on his popular musical, West Side Story. I have played several arrangements of West Side Story and other Bernstein works in concert band and marching band, and they have been some of my favortite band pieces. The conversation between Lydon and Nigel Simeone is a fascinating analysis of many of the songs in the show and looking at the influences of classical, jazz, and Latin music on Bernstein’s creative process. Check it out!
Read: Java’s Forgotten Forbear
Java’s ability to run on many different kinds of computers grew out of much older software
An interesting history of an early Pascal development environment. Turbo Pascal was also an early success for PC software development.
A cool River5 trick to update subscription lists
Frank McPherson has created a wiki page on his usage of RSS, which includes River5. One aspect of using River5 is that the default setup is to have subscription lists within the folder where the app resides. On Frank’s wiki page, he gives a tip on how to use an OPML file to refer to another OPML file on a server to update the subscription list. Neat!
Read: For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain
A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019
Great article by Glenn Fleishman – the impact of corporations on copyright law has been quite significant, too bad that Lawrence Lessig’s work on copyright law was not successful in stemming the tide..