The vet called back today with the results of Sebastian's bloodwork and fecal workup. As I predicted, she told us that he was amazingly healthy, especially for an older cat. She also said that he was the loudest cat he'd ever treated. Not bad for a cat who is basically a geriatric.

Also, tonight we beat the final boss in House of the Dead 3. Basically, you just keep shooting at him. The game's origins as an arcade game were certainly evident. Just keep shooting as you move through. And the zombies splurt green goo at you. Fun!

Originally published at Bloginomicon.
You can comment here or there.

I use a program called Subversion to keep all my documents syncronized between my various computers. And recently I copied all my documents onto an 8 GB USB drive that I picked up from Woot.com. After I did that I saw that I had more than six GB left. That means that my total repository was less than 2 GB in size. That means that my repository could fit onto this 2 GB MicroSD card that I bought to supplement my new phone:

Yeah, my close-up photography sucks. But the main takeaway message here is this: every story I've written, every novel, every document for work, every outline, every NaNoWriMo novel, every bit of artwork I've created (not many, granted), everything I've ever done on a computer since I started seriously using computers just over ten years ago (and longer, really, since I transcribed a bunch of stories I wrote before I even had a computer)... It all fits onto a chip smaller than a frakkin' penny.

That's kind of humbling. And kind of scary. I keep at least five repositories of all my files, two on remote computers, so if anything happens I won't lose much. I won't stick a copy of my repository on my phone's MicroSD card, though; it would be scary, sad, and quite surreal if I lost everything I'd ever written because it was on my frakkin' phone.

Originally published at Bloginomicon.
You can comment here or there.

From the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection comes what it possibly the coolest overlay for Google Earth ever: a collection of historical maps which you can overlay on Google Earth. Here's a screenshot from my own computer:

I'm not really a map geek myself, but I do have a fondness for historical maps and globes, so this is especially cool.

Originally published at Bloginomicon.

Originally published at Richard Crawford's World. You can comment here or there.

It's New Year's Eve! And it's my birthday! So I'm browsing through the introduction to a book of philosophy that my wife gave me for Christmas, and messing around with our new webhosting provider. The fun around here just never stops.

The book in question is The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless, which, as soon as it came out, I knew was for me so I stuck it into my wish list. But it's kind of eerie in a way (beyond the standard eeriness you'd get from books about the undead or about philosophy in general). A couple of weeks ago I was pondering the notion of a human being who, while acting intelligent and behaving normally, actually had no subjective experiences at all; this person would be the embodiment of Searle's "Chinese Box", a hypothetical construct used in discussions of artificial intelligence to model a system which appears to process input and generate appropriate output (in this case, taking in questions in Chinese and generating the appropriate answers) but actually having no understanding of the meaning. Stick a person in Searle's Chinese Box and give him a huge thick book of rules in English about how to draw particular Chinese characters when certain characters come in, and you have a system that, while admittedly very slow, appears to understand Chinese, yet doesn't. My idea of a person with no subjective experiences would be something like that.

I thought I was all original and shit, but it turns out philosophers have been messing about with this idea for years. There's even a term for it: "philosophical zombie". Enchanted as I am with the name, I'm a bit bummed that some schmuck at Cambridge beat me to it.

In other news, I have been in denial about the fact that since November, I have completely lost track of where I was going with Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster. I've been avoiding re-reading what I've got so far for fear of getting mired down in self doubt and overwhelmed with self criticisms, but today I broke down and printed out the text of the novel so far. I'm going to re-read it, with no eye to editing or critiquing at all, just to get an idea of what's going on, so that I can get back on track.

And as the New Year is mere hours away, I suppose it is time for reflection and renewal and all that jazz. Truth is, my life is a constant process of examination and re-examination and reflection and re-reflection and re-re-reflection all the time anyway -- it's a contributing factor to my depression, Dr. T tells me. So why should the new year be any different? As for renewal and resolutions, I realized long ago that when I make resolutions, I have to act on them right away or I'm going to either forget about them or lose steam by the time January 1 rolls around anyway. So I do my best to implement them right away. Having the Eye Toy Kinetic in our house has made it easier to keep up on my resolution to exercise 45 minutes a day, but I made that resolution back in November.

Anyway, the good times around here just don't stop.

Today I turn 39.

I'm freaking out.

In other, more random news, ( the Marabou stork is quite possibly the ugliest bird on earth )

Quick poll question of the day: What's your favorite prosimian?

Cross-posted to
Hello, I Must Be Going
on my website

Tomorrow I turn 39.

I’m freaking out.

In other, more random news, the Marabou stork, which hails from sub-Saharan Africa, is quite possibly the ugliest bird on God’s green earth.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Richard Crawford's World. You can comment here or there.

Most readers of my blog (and associated LJ) won't care about this, but maybe someday someone doing a Google search will need to know the answer to this issue, which took me a day to figure out.

The problem: attempting to install Xubuntu 6.10 on an old IBM thinkpad keeps failing. The install process gets midway through the filesystem discovery process and then hangs, seemingly forever. This happens no matter how many times I tried it.

The solution: realized that this laptop only has 64MB of RAM, and the standard Xubuntu 6.10 install CD requires 128MB of RAM. D'oh!

There are two ways to fix this that I found, one much more efficient than the other:

1. Download the Xubuntu 6.10 alt install iso which is suitable for machines with less than 128MB of memory (available on the standard Xubuntu download site); or,

2. Track down an old Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) install disc. Do a straight server install. Then open up /etc/apt/sources.list and replace every instance of "breezy" with "dapper" to upgrade to 6.06. Do apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade as normal. Then open up /etc/apt/sources.list again and replace every instance of "dapper" with "edgy" to upgrade to 6.10. Update and dist-upgrade once more. Then execute "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop". And you should be good to go.

Naturally, #1 is the preferred method. And #2 is certainly NOT recommended when you (a) have big software bugs at work to fix, and (b) are participating in National Novel Writing Month. Installing Linux over and over can be big fun but it is a time sink.

Cross-posted to
Hello, I Must Be Going
on my website

So, I've got a degree in Philosophy. Everyone to whom I've told that has asked me Why. "What did you think you were going to do with that?" they ask, incredulous. "Did you think you would do anything useful with a philosophy degree? Is what you're doing now at all philosophical?"

Usually, I tell people the truth. I majored in Philosophy because by the time I'd reached my sophomore year at UC Davis, I'd already gone through about a dozen different majors and couldn't make up my mind. I'd started out with a degree in Biological Sciences, fully intending to be a doctor specializing in prosthetics, but a disastrous quarter of Chemistry and Calculus quickly put to rest any illusions I might have had about making that work. Then in the spring quarter of my sophomore year I took a course called "The Philosophy of the Biological Sciences" with Dr. James Griesemer, noted philosopher and population geneticist, and I was hooked. I'd always had, as a kid, a passing interest in philosophy, and I enjoyed reading books by folks like Bertrand Russell, even if I didn't quite get them. So this course really set my brain on fire, and I happily filled out the paperwork to change my major officially, and spent the next few years taking philosophy and any other course that struck my fancy. As a philosophy student, I could do that; only 52 units in Philosophy were required for the degree, but I could take up to 225 units before they made me graduate.

Mostly I stuck with the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, symbolic predicate logic, and courses which related to those specialties. What I'm doing now, though, isn't particularly philosophical, although as a programmer the tools I learned studying logic are quite useful. Then again, as a writer I'm always influenced by the things I learned as a philosophy student. You may not think it when reading my short stories, but everything I write addresses a timeless, deep philosophical conundrum that has perplexed mankind through the centuries.

Or, maybe, you know, not.

Anyway, today my good friend jenfullmoon pointed me at this article in Newsweek: "I Think, Therefore I Am Misunderstood". It's an article written by a philosophy student who tries to answer the same questions I faced, and who does it quite succinctly. I wish I could have been that eloquent when I was a student. I particularly like his definition of what a philosopher does:

What I do, in a nutshell, is this: I find a question or puzzle that interests me. I try to figure out a solution, usually reading what others have had to say about it along the way. If I come up with anything good, I write it down and see if anyone is interested in publishing it.

That works really well for me.

And, in a way, it really does apply to what I do as a writer; to what many people do as writers, really. We come up with questions and puzzles that intrigue us, that we think ought to be examined and pondered, and then come up with stories, characters, tales, and so on, that will help us explore those questions and just maybe come up with some answers (or help our readers find some of their own).

It's not true of every writer, of course. I won't name any names, but I can come up with at least one prolific fantasy writer who works a little bit of philosophy into each of his novels (he calls it "stealth philosophy") and at least one prolific fantasy writer who probably couldn't care a whit about that sort of thing. I don't know if one approach is better than the other, but I do know that I prefer the former's books to those of the latter.

What about my writer friends who peruse my blog? What do you all think?

Cross-posted to
Hello, I Must Be Going
on my website

Originally published at Hello, I Must Be Going. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t usually repost things that I find elsewhere on the web in my blog here, but in this case I’m making an exception. I am happily, and in the spirit of the theses themselves, reprinting this from the Science Addiction blog.  I don’t agree with all of them, but they’re all important points.
The 95 Theses of Geek Activism:

</p>
1. Reclaim the term ‘hacker’. If you tinker with electronics, you are a hacker. If you use things in more ways than intended by the manufacturer, you are a hacker. If you build things out of strange, unexpected parts, you are a hacker. Reclaim the term.
2. Violating a license agreement is not theft.
3. All corporations are not on your side.
4. Keep in touch with everyone you can vote for and make sure you know where they stand on the issues you care about.
5. More importantly, make sure they know where you stand on the issues you care about.
6. Everything will enter the public domain some day- even Mickey Mouse.
7. Read the original 95 theses. Yes, they are irrelevant to these causes. Yes, they are religious, and yes, they are 500 years old. But they do demonstrate how stating your beliefs clearly, effectively and publicly to challenge the status quo can change the world. Of course,
8. Use TOR for privacy and anonymity.
9. Trusted computers must not be trusted.
10. Democrats may seem to be on your side, but keep an eye on them. They may only be the lesser of two evils.
11. Republicans may seem to be the enemy, but that is only because they are in power now. The true enemy is a lack of accountability.
12. Read Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
13. Why do I have to jump through hoops just to get video off my own home movie DVDs?
14. Know the DMCA so you know what you are up against.
15. The true enemy is the line: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, what do you fear?” The problem with that line, as Schneier has said, is that it assumes that the desire for privacy implies wrong-doing.
16. Proprietary data formats must never store public information.
17. Some corporations are on your side- find them and reward them.
18. No one has ever told me where I could play my 45 RPMs. Why are my MP3s any different?
19. The analog hole is not a hole. The world is analog.
20. If you are in the US, let your Senator know what you feel.
21. Treating your customers like criminals- or potential criminals- will turn customers away.
22. This bears repeating, treating paying customers as potential criminals is a losing strategy.
23. Some corporations may seem to be on your side, but are not.
24. Fair use is a good thing.
25. Use multiple operating systems regularly so you truly understand interoperability.
26. Write to your local newspaper- they can shape the opinions of the people do not understand the issues we care about.
27. Do not follow the Electronic Frontier Foundation, participate in it.
28. Read of Thoreau’s words on civil disobedience.
29. Data mining will not stop terror.
30. Express your opinion in public.
31. Blog.
32. The GPL is not gospel, but it comes close.
33. Use multiple MP3/music players so you truly understand interoperability.
34. If you are in the US, let your house representative know how you feel.
35. Those in favor of suspending some liberties for security, answer this: “Who watches the watchers?”
36. Except for extreme cases, the government should not be in the business of parenting our children.
37. When arguing with people who disagree, be polite, but not condescending.
38. RFID is just a technology- its existence does not make us more secure.
39. Now and in the future, presence of encryption implies nothing. In fact, whatever it does imply is none of your business. Without any other probable cause, the user must not bear the burden of explaining reasons for use of encryption.
40. Flame wars help the other side.
41. New technologies to promote and develop media will prosper because of computers and the Internet, not inspite of it.
42. Security is a trade-off- what are you willing to give up?
43. Calling Microsoft evil buys you nothing- it only polarizes the argument.
44. Holding Google to its “Don’t do evil” mantra buys us a lot.
45. Read of Gandhi’s actions in civil disobedience. Discover Satyagraha.
46. Use Creative Commons.
47. Understand the difference between civil disobedience and breaking the law.
48. Can’t find anything to watch on network TV? Watch Democracy TV.
49. Frame the argument in terms of the average person, not the edge-case geek. These problems affect geeks first, but will affect everyone in the future.
50. Privacy, civil liberties and civil rights are a slippery slope. The reason we continuously fight for them is not that we all seek a utopian society where doves fly free- in fact, I seek a perpetual ‘tug-of-war’ where the rope gradually slips in the direction of my beliefs.
51. Users do not want the permission to use digital media; they want to own digital media. This means using them as they choose, where they choose, in the device of their choice without fear of litigation or sudden inactivity. These users are customers- treat them with respect.
52. Support the free, public domain archives of information.
53. Undermine censorship by publishing information censored in oppressive countries.
54. And then, there is the 12-step plan for the games industry.
55. Corporations and producers of digital media must trust their own consumers. Sales will reward trust.
56. Breaking the law because you disagree with the current law is not the way to solve the problem in a democratic society.
57. ID cards do not make us more secure.
58. Voicing your views in a Slashdot comment thread is good, in your own blog is better, but in places that non-geeks frequent is best.
59. DRM does not work because the customer/user has the key, cipher and ciphertext in the player. (thanks Cory Doctorow)
60. Bloggers have rights- be aware of them.
61. Find out why electronic voting machines are regulated less than casino gaming machines.
62. Find out about Spimes- they are in your future if things go well.
63. Have a global perspective in ideas of geek civil liberties, intellectual property rights and so forth. Do you like your country’s policies in this respect? Can you help people from another country?
64. Geek activism is not all about extreme positions. There is a gradient- find your position on it.
65. Read the PATRIOT ACT- know what you are really up against.
66. In the US, put a few technologists in power in Washington. Abroad, do the same for your own seat of government.
67. Write to mainstream media- they have more mindshare than they are given credit for.
68. Read what your founding fathers said before taking someone’s word for it. Quote the founding fathers back at them- there were so many of them, and they said and wrote so much, that you will find a quote for each situation. Try this one for starters, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin. Read more Bejamin Franklin. Read more cool quotes
69. Read more.
70. Mixed tapes are legal. Time-shifting TV is legal. Regardless of the media.
71. Decide what is offensive for yourself- don’t let the government decide it for you. If you do not, pretty soon, you may only see one side of every argument.
72. Music purchases should not be governed by determining which seller has the most clout among the player manufacturers.
73. We do not lock the door to our bedrooms or bathrooms because we have something to hide. We do not secure our networks, conversations, emails and files because we have something to hide.
74. Make sure that if a vendor locks you in, you lock them out.
75. 80% of games are not rated M.
76. You may agree with Richard Stallman, but make sure you understand the opposing point of view.
77. An email tax to certify that it is “legitimate” is an awful idea.
78. Know your rights and be prepared to defend them.
79. Open source is not free.
80. Free is open source.
81. The ESRB game rating system exists for a reason- so that parents can be parents and the government can get on with more important stuff.
82. Do not allow corporations to get away with assisting oppressive regimes. Let your voice be heard.
83. Linux is no longer a philosophy- it is a good piece of software. Use it if it fits your needs.
84. There are reasons based in mathematics that establish the NSA wiretaps and other similar brute data mining ideas do not work.
85. Multiple nag screens that warn us of possible insecurity do not make us more secure.
86. More information available to the most number of people is a good thing.
87. There are DRM free alternatives for music you can play anywhere.
88. Vote.
89. Free as in free lunch is good. Free as in a free people is even better. For software and for everything else.
90. Quoting Schneier’s blog: Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest—or just blackmail—with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies—whoever they happen to be at the time.
91. Read our modern geek philosophers- read Bruce Perens, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling and even Richard Stallman. Read Schneier to find practical reasons why stupid security mechanisms are stupid. Read them even if you disagree with them- it will help frame your point of view.
92. DRM only keeps an honest user honest.
93. You have the right to anonymity on the internet.
94. Be proud of being a geek, a gamer, a privacy advocate, promoter of free speech and an innovator without fear of litigation, of government or restrictions on liberties- a geek activist.
95. Most of all- have fun.

Happily, and in the spirit of the theses themselves, reprinting this from the Science Addiction blog. I don't agree with all of them, but they're all important points.

( The 95 Theses of Geek Activism )

Originally published at Hello, I Must Be Going. Please leave any comments there.

Charles Darwin’s tortoise dies - Top stories - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

Harriet was 176 years old.  Imagine that; imagine being a tortoise 176 years old.  This was the tortoise that Charles Darwin studied on that Galapagos.  She was around during the Civil War, and during both World Wars.  Nations have risen and fallen since Harriet was born.  Well, okay, maybe not that many nations, but still.  The British Empire fell.  And through it all, of course, Harriet was just a tortoise who had much more important things on her mind: like crunching leaves, eating sticks, and wondering how in the world to convince her human captors that she was, after all, female.

She lived a long, full, and occasionally confused life.  Godspeed, big turtle.

Charles Darwin's tortoise dies - Top stories - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

Harriet was 176 years old. Imagine that; imagine being a tortoise 176 years old. This was the tortoise that Charles Darwin studied on that Galapagos. She was around during the Civil War, and during both World Wars. Nations have risen and fallen since Harriet was born. Well, okay, maybe not that many nations, but still. The British Empire fell. And through it all, of course, Harriet was just a tortoise who had much more important things on her mind: like crunching leaves, eating sticks, and wondering how in the world to convince her human captors that she was, after all, female.

She lived a long, full, and occasionally confused life. Godspeed, big turtle.

Cross-posted to Hello, I Must Be Going

Originally published at Hello, I Must Be Going. Please leave any comments there.

The cold I picked up in Ireland appears to have mutated into some sort of annoying permanent viral respiratory infection which has knocked me on my ass for the past couple of weeks. I’m extremely fortunate in that I can work from home while sick, which means I can stay close to my nebulizer and all my other medicines, and also be close to my doctor just in case I need to see him at some point. I’d rather be in the office, because sitting at home tends to make me kind of stir crazy.

I have been using the opportunity these past two weeks, though, to catch up on a bunch of DVD’s that my parents gave to me for Christmas. Among these films is a collection of ultra-cheap discs including some Flash Gordon, some Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, and a disc full of giant lizard action (the silent version of The Lost World, The Giant Gila Monster, and a Superman cartoon featuring the Man of Steel fighting a Tyrannosaurus pulled from the Arctic ice). It’s been fun watching these old shows, comparing the narrative style of, say, Flash Gordon, to more modern stories. Make no mistake; these stories are more sophisticated than the modern viewer typically assumes. At least, it’s a way to keep my mind off my lungs.

Also among the DVD’s in my collection is the Silver Screen collection of five Marx Brothers films. This collection includes Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, Animal Crackers, and The Cocoanuts. A few months ago I watched Duck Soup and resisted the urge to compare the governorship of Rufus T. Firefly with the presidency of George Bush (I find it much easier to take Groucho seriously as a national leader than George Bush); the other day, I watched Horse Feathers. Right now I’m watching Monkey Business to lubricate my brain as I try to install PHP OCI8 extensions on our server.

One thing that has struck me in particular about these films is the role of Zeppo. Traditionally Zeppo is considered a minor player in the Marx Brothers movies (this is so much the conventional wisdom that an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, featuring Xander and exploring his less than central role in the stories, was called “The Zeppo”). It seems to me, though, that Zeppo has a comic persona just as developed, though more subtle, as those of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Groucho’s the wisecracking smart-alec, Chico’s the crazed Italian, Harpo’s the — well, he’s the Harpo. But what is Zeppo? Who is he supposed to be?

Zeppo, with his clean cut looks and tidy suit, appears to be a straight man; and he plays his roles mostly as a straight man. And yet there’s a certain insanity in Zeppo that isn’t hard to see; from the opening moments of Monkey Business, when he emerges from the barrel with that crazed yet moronic grin, he comes across as almost a surreal parody of the typical guy on the street. His mundane interactions with the women passengers on the ship are quite funny. There’s that scene where he promises, “Mary, I’ll never leave you”, whereupon he jumps up and runs off stage at top speed as the ship’s officers approach.

So, watching Zeppo, it’s easy to forget that he can be just as crazed as Groucho; it’s just that he’s far more subtle about it.  He’s the crazed straight man, the guy on the street who looks perfectly normal but who has those eyes that dart back and forth, looking for a barrell to duck into — or to put over your head.
I recently learned that Zeppo also acted as an understudy to his brothers; rumor has it that he played Groucho even better than Groucho did.   More evidence of Zeppo’s comic abilities.  It’s a shame that he chose later on to leave show business and become a talent agent.  He was even given a larger role in the film Horse Feathers (which he did brilliantly) in the hopes that he would change his mind.  He didn’t.
Perhaps when Joss Whedon equated Xander to Zeppo in that episode, it was a deeper commentary on Xander’s role than it would seem superficially. I wouldn’t put that past Whedon, after all. He’s pretty clever that way.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just ruminating over a subject which has been beaten to death already in academia. Maybe there’s a pile of feathers where once a horse had been flogged to death. Or maybe the asthma is impacting my ability to think straight or write coherently.  But I think it’s an interesting question.

So, SBC somehow broke their DNS servers, so I can't get to my department's website from home. I can't reach it by FTP or by HTTP, which means I'm pretty much dead in the water. I can, however, reach the Linux server I set up in our office, and that computer CAN see our website; however, I can only reach that computer through port 22, the secure port which encrypts all traffic.

BUT: with the magic of port forwarding and SSH tunnelling, I can set up a couple of connections that will route my requests to localhost:xxxxx to the remote website. So, under this setup, I can go to http://localhost:10030 and browse to my department's website as if I were connected to it directly. I can use the same trick to get to the FTP port and the SSH port.

For the technologically curious, you can do this by executing the following command at a shell prompt:

$ ssh -f -N -L xxxx:yyyyy.yyy:zz uuuuu@rrrrrrrr.rrr

where:

xxxxx = the local port number you want to use
yyyyy.yyy = the remote host you need to connect to that you can't see
zz: the desired port on the remote host
rrrrrrr.rrr = the remote host you're using as your bridging connection
uuuuu = your user login on rrrrrrr.rrr.

Of course, that requires that port forwarding be enabled on rrrrrrr.rrr. I set that up some time ago for certain other nefarious purposes of mine.

The challenge, then, is to find a way to do this in Windows. Difficulty: no money to be spent on software (I use OpenSSH from the OpenBSD project) or operating systems (all three computers involved in my setup run *Nix variants).

Via ellipticcurve, this laugh riot about how Linux is a commiepinkoislamicantiamerican threat to the American software industry.

I'm about 90% sure this is a parody.

Well. Apparently 42 really IS the secret to life, the universe, and everything.

Well, maybe not the whole secret, but apparently it's very important to the understanding of "the moments of the Riemann zeta function", which has to do, it seems with the theory of prime numbers and how they're distributed. I think. Maybe aristopheles has a better insight than I do. Makes me wish I'd taken some classes in number theory while in college, even if I did flunk calculus (though I pulled solid A's in all my symbolic logic classes).

So. Quantum physics has something to teach mathematicians. Who woulda thunk?

Anyone remember the end of Carl Sagan's Contact? Not the movie, which was decent, but the book, which was infinitely better.

Over the past month or so, I've been sick with a persistent URI (though my doctor and I are working on a different theory now -- more on that some other time), and I've been taking advantage of the situation to rewatch all seven seasons of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Right now, I'm just over halfway through season six of Buffy. It is certainly different and darker than earlier seasons. I can see why many fans didn't care for this season very much, but I like it just as much as, say, first or third seasons. The demons are more representative of the dark side of reality, I think, and the metaphors are more explicit. I also like the deepened characterizations and the darkened themes. Life is hard at times, and everyone knows this. We all go through periods like this when we're adolescents, times when we feel like our friends are deserting us, when we aren't sure what's the right thing to do, when we have to take crap jobs just to keep our heads above water, and so on.

Currently, I'm watching the episode called "Normal Again", in which Buffy is infected by a demon's venom which makes her believe she's in a mental hospital, and the whole Sunnydale experience has been an hallucination. One of the most telling scenes, I think, which encapsulates the entire season in a few brilliant seconds, is when Buffy has the chance to drink the antidote, but after a chewing out by Spike, she just dumps the antidote into a nearby trash can. During those dark times of our lives, we all probably entertain the happy idea that everything we're going through is just a dream or a mind trip; I know that there have certainly have been times when I've wished that everything that's happened to me since 7th grade was just a dream. This one scene represents a moment when Buffy chooses the fantasy over the painful reality, even if the fantasy itself is painful. The reality of her situation, of the poverty, of the wage slave job, of the friendships imploding, of her relationship with Spike, all of that is just too painful; she chooses to believe instead that everything she's experienced has just been a dream in a psych ward. One of the most poignant scenes in this episode is a flashback to the mental hospital when Joyce, Buffy's dead mother, tells her that "the world looks like a hard place", giving her a pep talk to bring her back to "reality". They are the words of a loving mother. And then Buffy chooses the Sunnydale life again over the mental ward. She affirms reality and her role in it, affirming herself. I think this really marks the beginning of Buffy's recovery from the trauma of being brought back to life at the beginning of the season; and this recovery of her confidence and her self affirmation are essential to setting up the final season of the series.

Of course, there's also that little scene at the end of the episode back in the mental hospital with the catatonic Buffy and the doctor saying, "I'm afraid we've lost her." It's a nifty little mindfuck, and I'm always up for one of those. But it also reasserts the episode's theme, and, I think, one of the central themes of the entire season (and possibly the series): coming to terms with yourself, even if the alternative seems more pleasant. As we've seen throughout the entire series, Buffy's always wanted to be just a normal girl, and not have the duties and responsibilities of being the Slayer; yet, when given the opportunity, she chooses Slayer-hood over a potentially different existence which seemed, at least for just a moment, more pleasant.

So, yeah, this season isn't as purely entertaining in a "gosh wow yippee ha ha ha" sort of way as the earlier seasons were. But for me, the deeper characterizations and explorations of darker themes makes it more enjoyable for me.

This is a controversial position, I know. But then I also really enjoyed the season finale of BSG, and I thought the series finale for Angel was brilliant.

In other news: I've been busy with work, and with personal IT projects. I got it into my head to upgrade my desktop workstation to the latest beta release of Kubuntu, otherwise known as "Dapper Drake". I upgraded to "Flight 5", which is still a beta release, and thus inherently unstable. This required two reinstalls, since the first time I made a critical error which resulted in the removal of nearly two dozen key libraries, making KDE -- and X, really -- unusable. I learned my lesson there. But after two days of tinkering and messing around I've got my system back to a stable place, though I'm still not happy with how some GTK applications, like Firefox, are presented in KDE. And Konqueror is a touch unstable still. And I haven't been successful in setting up file associations to launch the proper applications when I click on a link to a file on my desktop. Kind of annoying. Oh, and setting up udev so that newly connected USB devices work properly took a few hours of tinkering and research, and I almost gave up and reverted when I just couldn't get MP3's to play. Turns out the new core system along with the latest beta release of Amarok required eight new libraries to decode MP3's, instead of the two that were required before.

I've also been working on a web-based submissions tracker for my writing. That's been fun.

And, of course, I've been sick, and I've also been really busy with work. Hence my non-communicativeness over the past couple of weeks.

All of this, of course, is basically a way of saying that I've been avoiding revising Fred, Again. ;)

Originally published at Hello, I Must Be Going. Please leave any comments there.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been sick with a persistent URI (though my doctor and I are working on a different theory now — more on that some other time), and I’ve been taking advantage of the situation to rewatch all seven seasons of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel.  Of course I’m working while doing this; the DVD’s play on my laptop computer next to my desktop computer, unless my desktop is disabled for some reason (see below).
Right now, I’m just over halfway through season six of Buffy. It is certainly different and darker than earlier seasons. I can see why many fans didn’t care for this season very much, but I like it just as much as, say, first or third seasons. The demons are more representative of the dark side of reality, I think, and the metaphors are more explicit. I also like the deepened characterizations and the darkened themes. Life is hard at times, and everyone knows this. We all go through periods like this when we’re adolescents, times when we feel like our friends are deserting us, when we aren’t sure what’s the right thing to do, when we have to take crap jobs just to keep our heads above water, and so on.

Currently, I’m watching the episode called “Normal Again”, in which Buffy is infected by a demon’s venom which makes her believe she’s in a mental hospital, and the whole Sunnydale experience has been an hallucination. One of the most telling scenes, I think, which encapsulates the entire season in a few brilliant seconds, is when Buffy has the chance to drink the antidote, but after a chewing out by Spike, she just dumps the antidote into a nearby trash can. During those dark times of our lives, we all probably entertain the happy idea that everything we’re going through is just a dream or a mind trip; I know that there have certainly have been times when I’ve wished that everything that’s happened to me since 7th grade was just a dream. This one scene represents a moment when Buffy chooses the fantasy over the painful reality, even if the fantasy itself is painful. The reality of her situation, of the poverty, of the wage slave job, of the friendships imploding, of her relationship with Spike, all of that is just too painful; she chooses to believe instead that everything she’s experienced has just been a dream in a psych ward. One of the most poignant scenes in this episode is a flashback to the mental hospital when Joyce, Buffy’s dead mother, tells her that “the world looks like a hard place”, giving her a pep talk to bring her back to “reality”. They are the words of a loving mother. And then Buffy chooses the Sunnydale life again over the mental ward. She affirms reality and her role in it, affirming herself. I think this really marks the beginning of Buffy’s recovery from the trauma of being brought back to life at the beginning of the season; and this recovery of her confidence and her self affirmation are essential to setting up the final season of the series.

Of course, there’s also that little scene at the end of the episode back in the mental hospital with the catatonic Buffy and the doctor saying, “I’m afraid we’ve lost her.” It’s a nifty little mindfuck, and I’m always up for one of those. But it also reasserts the episode’s theme, and, I think, one of the central themes of the entire season (and possibly the series): coming to terms with yourself, even if the alternative seems more pleasant. As we’ve seen throughout the entire series, Buffy’s always wanted to be just a normal girl, and not have the duties and responsibilities of being the Slayer; yet, when given the opportunity, she chooses Slayer-hood over a potentially different existence which seemed, at least for just a moment, more pleasant.

So, yeah, this season isn’t as purely entertaining in a “gosh wow yippee ha ha ha” sort of way as the earlier seasons were. But for me, the deeper characterizations and explorations of darker themes makes it more enjoyable for me.

This is a controversial position, I know. But then I also really enjoyed the season finale of BSG, and I thought the series finale for Angel was brilliant.

In other news: I’ve been busy with work, and with personal IT projects. I got it into my head to upgrade my desktop workstation to the latest beta release of Kubuntu, otherwise known as “Dapper Drake”. I upgraded to “Flight 5″, which is still a beta release, and thus inherently unstable. This required two reinstalls, since the first time I made a critical error which resulted in the removal of nearly two dozen key libraries, making KDE — and X, really — unusable. I learned my lesson there. But after two days of tinkering and messing around I’ve got my system back to a stable place, though I’m still not happy with how some GTK applications, like Firefox, are presented in KDE. And Konqueror is a touch unstable still. And I haven’t been successful in setting up file associations to launch the proper applications when I click on a link to a file on my desktop. Kind of annoying. Oh, and setting up udev so that newly connected USB devices work properly took a few hours of tinkering and research, and I almost gave up and reverted when I just couldn’t get MP3’s to play. Turns out the new core system along with the latest beta release of Amarok required eight new libraries to decode MP3’s, instead of the two that were required before.

I’ve also been working on a web-based submissions tracker for my writing. That’s been fun.

And, of course, I’ve been sick, and I’ve also been really busy with work. Hence my non-communicativeness over the past couple of weeks.

All of this, of course, is basically a way of saying that I’ve been avoiding revising Fred, Again.