Archive for January, 2007

Oscar pool over at Jack’s site + Don Quixote update

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Our friend Jack, proprietor of hyperLunk.com, is running an Oscar pool with a giant-sized bag of Twizzlers as the prize. I’ve already sent in my picks. You should too.
Life’s too busy for a play-by-play, but I wanted you to know that I’m making slow progress through Don Quixote. It’s actually [...]

Adobe DRM, Part II

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

My troubles with Adobe DRM continue. This PDF had worked fine up until today, when I was unable to open it. I’m about to start siding entirely with the “Information wants to be free” crowd.
My dad used to say “Locks keep the honest people out; a thief will get in.” [...]

Happy birthday, Muhammad Ali

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

Little-known-fact about me: I love boxing. I grew up watching Ali box and I was fascinated with him. That fascination has only grown as I’ve come to learn more about him. The excellent 3QuarksDaily has an appreciation with video links. “The Greatest” tuns 65 today.

Don Quixote, Prologue, Chapters 1 and 2

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

I’ve been enjoying Matt’s blog posts (

Drupal 5 is out

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

Drupal 5 is out the door. Drupal powers my community site, bassplaying.com. It’s a great CMS for most anything. I was thinking of upgrading to 4.7. Maybe I’ll take the additional step and get rolling with 5.0. It’ll really depend upon how many of the modules have been updated for [...]

A purely hypothetical situation

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

I’m not an expert on Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the various arguments for and against it. I can certainly understand the anxiety that the net causes copyright holders of various sorts. But I do get frustrated when their (lame, weak, easily circumventable) efforts at protecting their content cause me trouble in those [...]

An Inconvenient Truth

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

I like documentaries, but I’ve had Davis Guggenheim’s documentary about Al Gore’s presentation about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (see also the Wikipedia entry), sitting beside my TV for quite a few days now. It arrived from Netflix and I didn’t think I was in the mood for anything quite so serious. I [...]

QOTD #2

Friday, January 12th, 2007

“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise” — Bertrand Russell.

Interview with Chuck Rainey at Bassplaying.com

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

I just published An Interview with Chuck Rainey at bassplaying.com. Chuck is one of the most famous sessions bassists from the late 60s through the mid-80s. He’s worked with Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Quincy Jones, and is probably most famous for his work with Steely Dan on their Aja album, and others. [...]

QOTD

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

I added The Quotations Page’s Quotes of the Day to my list of start up tabs in Firefox. Here’s a gem from today’s batch, by Gore Vidal: “Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.”

personal weblog of James “Wheatbread” Martin