READIN

Friday, October 5th, 2007

🦋 Linkrot

So here's what I did, see: There are thousands of links all over the internets pointing to my blog, with the address http://www.readin.com/blog/blog.asp. Well I wanted to write the site in PHP; but what to do about all those old links? As it turns out I just kept the same url and told my http server to send .asp files to php:

AddHandler php5-script asp

I'm pretty sure the new script is able to handle all the parameters the old script was, and to give back quite similar results for nearly any set of parameters. So hopefully all those old links are going to continue to work.

posted evening of October 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about The site

🦋 And, we're live!

Hi everybody, this is my new blog. I realize it looks largely the same as my old blog, if not indistinguishable. But it's quite different under the interface, and I have got lotsa plans for ways to enhance it and improve your user experience. (Hopefully they will come to fruition sooner than the plans expressed in the last paragraph here.)

posted evening of October 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Programming Projects

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

🦋 A day well spent?

Hm. All morning I'm feeling like there's something I ought to be doing but I can't work out what it is. I finished and installed the bench -- will post a picture of it later, when Ellen brings the camera home -- and a piece of fence I was working on -- I could not find my bottle of linseed oil so I went over to Home Depot this morning and bought a can of Watco Teak Oil, which seems like it ought to work pretty well -- it gave the oak bench a nice color. Swept the patio, walked the dogs, tidied the kitchen.

Well, for want of knowing what to do I think I will sit out on my new bench with some coffee and read more Snow. (I'm enjoying the pace at which I'm reading it, which I think would feel too slow with a lot of books.)

Update:Here's the pictures of the bench.

posted afternoon of August 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Garden bench

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

🦋 A day well spent

This morning I finished up a woodworking project that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so -- it is an oaken bench that will go in my front yard next to the garden -- tomorrow I will take it outside and put linseed oil on it.

Bob and Greg came over in the afternoon and we played some music, including a very nice version of "House of the Rising Sun" -- I have finally persuaded Bob to play it in 4/4 time (like Dylan) instead of (I think) 6/8, like The Animals, which sounds corny to my ear, at least when done by somebody who is not The Animals.

posted evening of August 4th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Friday, June first, 2007

🦋 Games for May

Last night I downloaded and listened to Robyn Hitchcock's Games for May concert from last week -- the first set was a recreation of Pink Floyd's Games for May concert of 40 years ago, the second set was mostly Syd Barrett's solo tunes. It blew my mind. The opening number "Matilda Mother" was a little weak and unsure, but the band quickly got it together. Nearly every song is a keeper. You can download it from archive.org -- bear in mind that the FTP download, using Filezilla or some such client, is much faster than using your browser or media player to get the songs.

My own favorite from the first set is probably "Arnold Layne" and from the second set (and the concert as a whole) the combination of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Lucifer Sam" was just transcendentally beautiful. But -- I liked the Barrett solo tunes from the second set a lot too. "Terrapin" was great. It was really interesting listening to "Love You" and hearing Robyn and the female vocalist (who does not appear to be credited?) get their shit together after flailing for a verse or two. By the end of the song they were really in the groove. Hitchcock's between-song patter was as always, "eccentric" and "quirky", but more than that, fun and frequently insightful.

posted morning of June first, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Games for May

Monday, April 9th, 2007

🦋 What a show

If you have a couple of hours free and want to listen to a Robyn Hitchcock concert, listen to this one. Highlights:

• "I Got the Hots for You" (track 4) is a great performance of a great song, and the patter leading into it (which is actually at the end of track 3) very funny. All of the inter-song patter throughout the show is great.
• "Lictus House" (track 5) knocked me over.
• Deni Bonet plays violin on the final 6 songs, she is marvelous. "Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)", the second-to-last track, particularly stands out, as does the violin part in it.

Some annoying audience noise but oh well.

posted evening of April 9th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Gig Notes

Sunday, April first, 2007

🦋 Live Hitchcock, Live Dead

How exciting, an archive of Robyn Hitchcock shows! At Internet Archive of course. Also there are nearly 3,000 Grateful Dead shows and studio dates, earliest from 1965.

posted afternoon of April first, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

🦋 Home fries

A recipe I've been playing around with for a couple of months in various combinations bore fruit last night, when Ed and Nina came over for dinner. I cooked something I'm calling "home fries" for want of a better word, even though it's not particularly descriptive, and it was one of the nicest potato dishes I have ever made.

• 4 or 5 smallish yellow onions, chopped roughly
• about 1 T. fennel seed
• several cloves of garlic, minced
• one pear or apple
• 1 ½ lbs. red potatoes or Yukon gold potatoes in moderate-size dice

In a skillet, heat a couple of T. olive oil and the fennel seed. Cook the onions and garlic with salt over low heat about half an hour, adding the fruit midway through. When onions are deep golden, add the potatoes and stir to mix. Cover the skillet and allow to steam for about half an hour, until potatoes are quite soft. Stir occasionally, scraping the bottom of the skillet when you do. Serve with roast chicken.

posted evening of March 11th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Food

🦋 Interval

Here is a bash script to determine the interval between two date/times. Parameters are two dates, specified using any format the date utility can recognize; if the second parameter is omitted, "now" is assumed. Output is the number of seconds between the two, followed by "d h:m:s" format.

 #!/bin/bash
 
 if [ $# -eq 0 ]
 then
         echo Usage: `basename $0` \ \[\\ default \"now\"\] >&2
         exit -1
 fi
 
 start=`date +%s -d "$1"`
 if [ $# -eq 1 ]
 then
         fin=`date +%s`
 else
         fin=`date +%s -d "$2"`
 fi
 
 res=`expr $fin - $start`
 if [ $res -lt 0 ]
 then
         res=`expr 0 - $res`
 fi
 
 echo $res sec
 d=`expr $res / 86400`
 t=`expr $res % 86400`
 h=`expr $t / 3600`
 ms=`expr $t % 3600`
 m=`expr $ms / 60`
 s=`expr $ms % 60`
 if [ $d -gt 0 ]
 then
         echo -n $d day
         if [ $d -gt 1 ]
         then
                 echo -n s
         fi
         echo  -n \
 fi
 if [ $t -gt 0 ]
 then
         echo -n $h\:
         if [ $m -lt 10 ]
         then
                 echo -n 0
         fi
         echo -n $m
         if [ $s -gt 0 ]
         then
                 echo -n \:
                 if [ $s -lt 10 ]
                 then
                         echo -n 0
                 fi
                 echo -n $s
         fi
 fi
 echo
  

posted evening of March 11th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Programming

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

🦋 Trout and cabbage

I wouldn't have thought of this combination off the top of my head or anything; but that's what was in the fridge. And it came out pretty tasty.

• 1 yellow onion cut in thin slices
• Several cloves of garlic chopped fine
• About ¼ head red cabbage, chopped thin
• 2 filets trout

Cook the onion and garlic with olive oil and salt in a skillet over medium-low heat, until the onion is golden. Add the cabbage and continue cooking about 5 or 10 more minutes, until the cabbage is soft and hot through. Remove to a bowl, put some more olive oil in the pan, and cook the trout. I served this with soup and some goat cheese. I think, though I did not do this, that you could make a pretty good sauce by deglazing the skillet with beer and cooking the beer for a minute or two.

posted evening of March 7th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Recipes

Previous posts about Projects
Archives