Words’ End

It is 46 degrees F outside right now. That’s 8C. After sunset, in mid-December. The high to day was 13C (55F). Is this crazy?

Yes, it is, and a good time for a bike ride too. I went out to the East Bay Bike Path, on the other side of the Providence river and then along the bay. It takes a while just to get to the path, maybe forty minutes or so, maybe a bit less. From the ending point on that map, I went roughly 8.5 miiles each way, to Barrington, stopping for coffee and book reading.

20 miles or so, in four hours, including coffee break and strong wind on the way home. Bliss. Hopefully, though, next time I’ll remember to wear the bike shorts.

I’m trying to lose weight, by the way. Not stridently or anything, just by watching for a too-heavy reliance on convenient bread products – balancing them out with proteins, eating more veggies which is just not intuitive for me in the winter, being more conscious of whether I’m hungry or thirsty, as the latter sometimes seems like the former. Oh, and exercising somewhat (not as diligently as I’d like). Lately I’ve noticed a small budge toward the lighter side, but I feel better than I should for losing so little weight. Hopefully this means increased metabolism, and more healthy proportions of nutrients. Just in time to have some hot chocolate with Bailey’s!

Oh man, I do wish they hadn’t gone on permanent hiatus. Moxy Früvous is one of my favorite bands. They’re fun, they’re talented, they put on one hell of a live show.

Früvous started out busking on the streets of Toronto, and quickly gained fame in Canada with their “Independent Cassette” (a demo tape, sorta – you haven’t heard Green Eggs and Ham until you’ve heard them sing it) and their first album “Bargainville.” They got huuuge! And then they released “Wood,” which was very different from “Bargainville,” and many of their fans say, wtf? And Früvous said, bitch, we’re multifaceted!, and went touring in the States. Their fans, of whom I’m one, call themselves Fruheads and have driven ridiculous distances to see them. Yeah, I’m not kidding. This band, and the Fruhead phenomenon, were responsible for my meeting Colleen, who moved up to Boston from Florida in 1997 and never left, and who is one of my dearest friends.

And you can see a bunch of their videos on YouTube! Check out especially “King of Spain” (recorded, as far as I know, at their first busking spot, and easily their most famous song), “Fell in Love” and “Fly” – oh, and “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors”! – but there’s a lot of good stuff there. The video quality isn’t that hot, but I suspect the person who posted their actual videos (as opposed to fan videos) digitized them from the VHS tape of videos that they had at one point. I should have a copy of that somewhere… I think…

Nowadays they’re all doing their own thing. Jian Ghomeshi is into TV and producing and politics. The slightly outdated website for Dave Matheson, wizard man who can play ANYTHING including my heart strings, has a link for buying his self-titled solo album, which I highly recommend. Murray Foster has played bass with Great Big Sea, and appears to be playing with Tory Cassis (another Canadian musician I love) in a band called The Lesters. Mike Ford sings about Canada to school kids: here’s a CD of his on Amazon.ca. Oh, and just by the way, he is (his website says) “a contributing editor to McGraw-Hill’s new Secondary School textbook, Defining Canada.”

Ahh, Früvous.

(Edited to add:) Hey, if nothing else, see/hear the Gulf War Song.

Yaaaay Norway!

“The Norwegian solar energy adventure continues, with Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) announcing heavy investment in their facility in Telemark.

“REC said that they would be doubling their production capacity of silicon wafers, needed to manufacture solar cell panels, at their Herøya facility in Telemark County in southern Norway.”

I swoon, and once again want to live in that part of the world.

Not that I was ever inclined to go see Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto in the first place, but this Wired blog entry debunks some myths Gibson is trying to perpetuate in this movie with Cold Hard Facts… or history, it’s one of the two. In any case, a reasonably short and very satisfying read.

ETA: ok, I’m reading the many, many comments on that blog entry bashing the author and the review. Somehow, I’m still feeling that sense of satisfaction at Gibson-bashing. He’s been on my $hit-list for a while now. So judge for yourself whether it’s an accurate review, is what I’m saying. :)

Behold what I found googling around tonight: the Digby 23 project at Baylor University. From their home and “About” pages:

The Digby 23 Project is an electronic archive devoted to the study of Oxford Bodleian MS Digby 23. This codex contains two works, copied during the twelfth century and assembled at a later date: Plato’s Timaeus in the Latin translation by Calcidius, and the Old French Chanson de Roland.

[...]

Upon completion, the Digby 23 Project will include:

(1) Detailed XML transcriptions of the Latin and Old French texts (including all marginalia and scribal notes)

[...]

(4) A database for the study of the language, themes, and poetics of the Old French Roland: by adopting a compatible format with the Charrette Project, scholars will be able to explore the similarities and differences between eleventh-century epic and twelfth-century romance;

(5) A detailed critical apparatus for the study of the manuscript.

Please, just try to imagine my glee right now. I just sent an email to the project’s general editor, with a Roland-related question and introduction. We’ll see if she responds; but man, the project is just starting out, and they’re doing (semantically encoded, I’m assuming) themes! I’d love to talk to these folks about Roland, and what themes they see fit to encode.

Ohboyohboyohboy. I feel about ten years old now.

Good morning.

Scary Mary. Hide your children!

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, which hosts a series of informal Digital Dialogues, has put up podcasts of the talks that have already taken place this semester. One of them’s my November talk about the Virtual Humanities Lab.

“Depressed? Think faster thoughts, and your mood may improve.”

Hunh! Simple, elegant, worth a try. I guess it’s very similar to “Depressed? Try doing some physical activity.” That works too: people work out, for example, to lift their mood; or clean house like a whirlwind. Still, thinking faster. I’d never thought of that.

Just saw this in Wired: “The Last of a Dying Breed.” The caption is, “What is being lost as technology kills off the Renaissance man? Our souls, perhaps?”

The author-commentator Tony Long sings praises of his friend John, who just passed away (RIP).

John was a dabbler, a sort of Renaissance man, if you will. And you just don’t see a whole lot those around anymore, not in this age of narrowly defined interests. He [had driven a cab, was an artist/painter/sculptor/poet, played guitar and piano, scuba dived, swam competitively, travelled a lot, spoke some languages, was married a bunch].

But he never learned how to use a computer. What’s more, he never had any interest in learning. For John, life existed “out there,” not on a screen. He never owned a cell phone, or any phone, for that matter. Didn’t have a TV. Probably never heard of an iPod. But he was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known.

I think what made John so interesting, beyond the adventures he had and the great stories he loved to tell, was that there was always momentum to his life. He could make a lot out of a little. His days were full and I’ll wager that, after Viagra came along, his nights were pretty busy, too. He personified the active over the passive.

So, Tony Long isn’t anti-technology, and neither was John, if Viagra came into use.

He was a doer, not a watcher. Which is probably the biggest reason John didn’t care about computers. Yes, they’re efficient and good for business, if business is what you care about. But sitting at a computer when you don’t have to is to be cripplingly passive, even if you’re playing the bloodiest, most maniacal shooter game ever. Sorry, podnah, but that doesn’t make you Billy the Kid. You’re just a couch potato with twitchy fingers.

Er, computers have also changed the nature of our social life, our view of the other side of the world as a bit more accessible, and the kind of information we can get in five minutes’ time to help us pursue our hobbies, whether they be scuba diving, model planes or rock climbing. Networked computing makes things like Burning Man and the Skin project much easier, and allows more people to participate. How’s this killing the Renaissance man?

Society hasn’t changed into a buncha couch potatoes, not any more than it already has been (and I’m talking before TVs, too). Those who want to do, do. And perhaps do more now that they have access to a lot more information.

I’m a bit surprised that this is in Wired. They of all people should know better. Computer != first-person-shooter! Not by anyone’s definition, except, it seems, Tony Long’s.

You know what I’d like? I’d like a piece of OS X software that will pull a black veil over, black out, everything on my screen that’s not the window (of whatever software) I’m looking at. No cluttered desktop, no other windows, nothing. Like WriteRoom but letting me use, say, TextEdit.

And while we’re at it, I’d love the use of a Mac that can run Classic and has it installed.* For a full day, if possible. Anyone reasonably local (Boston-Providence) have access to such and a kind heart? :)

*I’d thought it stopped shipping with OS 10.4, but mindlace says it’s 10.3. So pre-10.3, I guess?