Free OCR

(Warning: Geek post, little entertainment value) Once upon a time the Xerox Textbridge Classic computer program for doing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) worked for me. Even more than that it had worked recently, but it was finicky and this week I couldn't get it to work at all. It kept complaining about my C: drive being full. It wasn't. I had defragmented my C: drive recently. Maybe that was the culprit. Windows Explorer was also having issues: if I right clicked on the C drive and hit properties (e.g. to check how full the disk was), Explorer said it experienced a problem and had to close; and when it did it restarted the Windows desktop in order to recover. Swell. I did solve that problem, but it didn't help Textbridge. (When Explorer had its problem it offered to let me debug it, so I tried and that told me that there had been an access violation in neroshx.dll. I uninstalled the Nero CD burning software and that solved that -- I hadn't used Ahead Software's Nero in a good while anyway).

Textbridge had never worked that well, anyway.(For those who don't know OCR software can process a picture of some text and turn it into editable text for use in a program like Microsoft Word or Notepad. It's very handy if you only have a printout or old typewriter copy of something (and a scanner).) Textbridge tended to interpret things as all different fonts and very odd characters even when the digital image text was in one non-proportional font like Courier. But the last time I'd searched, several months ago, I hadn't found any freeware alternatives. That changed this time. I found Softi Software's FreeOCR on the ZDNet download site. It's based on the Tesseract OCR engine which is apparently Open Source (I think I found that last time I searched, but wasn't about to write my own application around the engine.). FreeOCR looks to have been posted in the last couple months. And the really good news is that it just works. At least on my old typewriter copies of text (see "The Little Wanderer" on The Chipster Zone web site).

Avocado Tips

I enjoy eating avocado on occasion. Generally I prefer it as it comes: just peel it and pit it as it is ripening -- not too hard, not too mushy. I like to slice it on sandwiches or chunk it on tacos, in wraps, etc. As you may know, however, leftover avocado has a bad habit of quickly turning brown making it a bit unsightly. It seems to be the exposure to air that is the culprit. So short of eating it all up, which is a bit gluttonous, I've found a couple things to be helpful. The first is to leave the peel on a portion of the avocodo. I just slice off as many rings as I think I'm likely to eat; leaving the pit in helps, too. But if you still have leftovers, you can put them in a rubbermaid-type container and add enough salsa to cover the avocado. This seems to prevent it from turning, at least for a day or two. Later you can just chunk up the leftovers and it becomes part of the salsa. Enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips. Yum.

Lunch Run with Eagle

Since it was only 72 degrees and overcast I decided to run outside at lunch. I started out about 50 yards ahead of a group of 3 guys – they caught me after about a quarter mile, but I chatted with them for a minute and then stayed about as close behind them as I do my wife a lot of the time, 20 feet or so back, for the first 15 minutes. They said they were going 6 or 8 miles. I said I wasn’t going that far, maybe 4 or 5. I stayed with them as far as Lady Anne Lake at the back of Edgewater – they went straight on the roads and I turned right to go around the lake. I thought I’d at least go across the dam and see what wildlife I could see – maybe a great blue heron or a water snake. I only saw the more common animals: turtles, fish and ducks (including a coot) until I crossed the second bridge. I was just noticing how really low the water was when I saw a head sticking up in the shallows that wasn’t quite a turtle. When I got closer I could see it was a snake about 3 feet long. It wasn’t a Banded Water Snake, which is what I usually think I see, because I could tell that the markings didn’t go all the way around in nice bands. I looked it up later on the internet, identifying it as a Midland Water Snake. A few yards later I was still memorizing the snake pattern as I started to bend right with the edge of the lake, in the corner of my left eye I caught something swooping toward the center of the lake, maybe 100 yards from me. It was a large bird of prey that dipped its feet in the water and then flew back up with lazy but powerful strokes of some very large wings. It wasn’t a heron – all the wrong build for that, although the wingspan was about right; it was too big for any hawk and with the white head and neck and pure white fan of tail feathers this was no turkey buzzard, not that they swoop over water anyway; it was a bald eagle. Its talons were empty but it kept rising and flew off northwards over the trees leaving me just hoping it would turn around and take another pass at the fish it missed. Uplifted by the sighting, I kept going on around the whole lake and ended up with almost 6 miles under my feet.

"Why Software Sucks..." Book Review

Just finished this and here's what I think.

Stardust Cuts Guessed Right

Back on August 13 in the Stardust Memories entry I said: "I wish the dead princes would have been used more as a greek chorus -- my guess is you can find a fair amount of that on the cutting room floor." And now Mr. Gaiman has confirmed it on his blog: "I'm sure there will be some stuff that was cut, but I have no idea what... (ghosts I hope. Lots of really funny ghost bits went away.)" (referring to the eventual DVD release of Stardust).

In Which Toads and Fairies Begin to Appear At Home

I made a quick trip to my parents over Labor Day, flying alone into Cleveland and driving a rental car to western New York. (For the second time in a row at CLE's Dollar Rental Car they were low on vehicles and I received an interesting car, above the class I'd reserved, this time a Jeep Liberty, again with Sirius satellite radio which is nice for the 2 1/2 hour drive). I flew up Saturday and back on Monday. I made the effort because my uncle and aunt were in from Arizona for a couple weeks and it had been too long since I spent any time with them. We had walks in the woods, chats by the vegetable garden, home-cooked meals and other fellowship.

Thinking back, once I arrived at the house the only excursion I made during the two days that went off property was the one to "Garden Image". They have great stepping stones and concrete lawn ornaments at unbelievable prices. Apparently they ship them, which is tough to imagine because they are (obviously) pretty heavy. I've looked a couple places here in north Alabama but so far haven't found anyplace with near the quality (or price); makes me think I should have tried to bring one of their lizards home on the plane . I would've liked to get one for my wife's birthday (I did get one for Mom's shrubbery garden). I settled for a life size painted toad with glass eyes and a couple terra-cotta fairies that are about 4 inches tall. I planted a purple pansy among some of our bushes a few days ago and let her know that it might attract toads and other small creatures; and then the toad appeared on her birthday. The fairies showed up over the weekend.

Twelve Years On the Internet Is Still Cool...

... and a force to be reckoned with:

Slashdot quotes Roger Whittaker: "The Internet still seems to regard censorship as damage and route around it."

Power to the People!

Singular Mind Reading

I hadn’t heard of these folks, The Singularity Institute before they held their recent “Summit” (Sept 8-9 in San Francisco), although I’ve seen other envelope-is-expanding indicators, such as the recent prediction that Man will create “wet artificial life” within the next 3 to 10 years.

Of course I read Colossus (1966, D. F. Jones) in my early teens, and it was a decade old then (two giant computers hook up, go sentient and try to control the world). And I read Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1986) several years after it was published, too (computer hackers meld hardware into their brains and otherwise technologically enhance their bodies and minds). These two science fiction books cover a couple of the future paths toward “the singularity” – and here is my chief complaint now that I’ve typed it. Ironically there isn’t just one “singularity”. A singularity is a type of a thing, like a pinnacle or a sphere. There isn’t just one, every mountain is (or has) a pinnacle. All playground balls are spheres; now maybe you could say that the Earth is the sphere; but I can make a heliocentric argument that our sun is the sphere. Saying that this topic comprises the singularity is dangerous hubris, and again with some irony, it’s cyclically indicative of why humans may not be so easily subjugated in terms of the universal intelligence rankings.

And I’m using a lot of fancy words, another thing that bothered me about the Singularity folks' manifesto. There isn’t nearly enough academia-speak. Sure there are some long words, but once you’re comfortable with “singularity” and “artificial intelligence” there aren’t many mind bending concepts. Even an introductory text to such an audacious topic should be rife with the pretentious use of multi-syllabic and obscure terms.

But back to my science fiction reading: these two books covered, respectively, “artificial intelligence” and “brain-computer interfaces”; apparently the primary technology pathways to the smarter-than-human singularity.

The Introduction does eventually get around to the question of what does it mean to be a smarter-than-human brain – but at this point they throw up their hands and say that we’re not smart enough to know – it’s the singularity, get it? And I half-expect someone to elbow me in the ribs, nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Why is this impossible to measure? We’ve devised all sorts of tests to measure our own intelligence, and those of animals. I’m not sure we’ve been particularly successful at it, but I don’t think we’d be particularly less successful at measuring something smarter than we are than we are at measuring beings less smart. I clearly understand what it means to run at 25 miles per hour. I can’t do it but I can measure it and observe it without blowing any neurons.

In fact, how smart are we? I’ve learned that some researchers say that adult chimps are about as smart as the average human toddler. Of course I don’t know any toddlers that can survive on the African savannah, even without predators; but I guess that’s not the kind of smart they mean. How smart are people? Some are clearly more smart than others, by orders of magnitude. So does passing this singularity mean that something has to exist in our environment that is smarter than the smartest person ever? Or smarter than the smartest potential person, that is, one who knows how to use all of their brain (the Introduction discounts as an “urban legend” the widely held belief that we only effectively use a small portion of our brain; but I’ve been taught some of the research of people learning to use undamaged portions of their brain to replace damaged portions without further loss. The conclusion consistently is that portions of the brain were previously underutilized. The Introduction also makes a big deal out of brain size. Sure people have bigger brains than mammals of comparable size – but we don’t have really big brains in an absolute sense. Check out the brain size of elephants. Also brain size is not a good predictor of intelligence among other mammals, or animals at large. Are house cats smarter than squirrel monkeys? Their brains are considerably larger so they must be.

I’m going to contend that in the same way we could recognize the smartest guy in Algebra class in seventh grade, we can recognize something that is smarter than all people. But just like most of us can’t comprehend quantum physics, or gene therapy, we won’t grok the super-brain. Should we panic? These Singularity Summit folks seem to think it’s a good idea to get to that point; that it’s some grand adventure and inevitable so let’s find out what happens in that next chapter ASAP. I’m a bit more cautious. Peter Thiel thinks it’s an investment opportunity. I agree that if we hit the singularity and the bad thing happens that losing your life savings will be a secondary concern. We may be better served by pondering how one should go about swimming in that world before we dive into it.

So what allowed humans to dominate the current environment? I propose that there are 3 pillars, 3 strengths that, in fairly equal measure, have really allowed us to rise to the top (and I’m ignoring any religious angles here; it’s not too difficult to be propelled to the top of the heap if some omnipotent deity is pushing you).
Our brain. Okay, we’re comparatively smart. Most other animals just don’t measure up (neither do today’s computers); but there are a few animals who may, or have even been argued to be, smarter in some raw measure of brain power, speed and size. Dolphins spring to mind, elephants compete here too.
Our ability to communicate. A language with a large vocabulary is a fairly recent commodity for human kind, but we had pretty indicative grunts long before that. None of the animals seem to have quite our knack for self-expression. Sure whales, dolphins, chimps and insects in some odd hive/colony way are remarkably communicative.
Our dexterity. Remember that opposable thumb you have? Right; actually you’ve probably got 2 of them, most of us do. It’s a big deal. Dolphins fall out here, they can’t manipulate their environment and build tools the way we can. Apes and monkeys almost can. Evolutionists will tell you that we’re just better apes – this is a big way we’re better. Watch out for the elephants in this category though, its trunk has more than 40,000 muscles. If they had two of them we might still be living in caves watching Dumbo pave over our habitat.

So what about a smarter-than-human artificial mind? It trumps us on number one, by definition. Number two follows suit pretty well with the internet and cell phones and radio technology it wouldn’t have any trouble talking to its neighbors. Number three is a bit more dicey. As I recall that’s where Colossus fell down; people are just very maneuverable. And we can act autonomously or in concert as a huge mother-loving team. The wet-wear singularity might have us in trouble – I see that as farther off and less significant at least initially; a second singularity and an evolutionary one. The Bionic Woman is coming back to TV on September 26; I don’t see her, even if she were real, shattering our society. Not in our lifetime.

Of course the singularists spout off about the positive feedback loop that ensues after the singularity. An artificial intelligence may be self-improving, able to “rewrite its own source code”. And that’s intriguing (again though, see pillar #3 to retain some composure). Humans aren’t done yet, not even after this singularity, but we could become more akin to pets, or beasts of burden; simple slaves, and that is a scary contemplation. Or we may be able to harness smarter minds with weaker bodies the same way we used horses through the ages with their stronger bodies but weaker minds (and weaker communications). We already do it with computers with their faster number crunching and algorithmic abilities. Just the same I think I’m going to start storing my Roomba in the pantry, safely separated from my stationary computer from now on.

"California grower recalls salmonella- tainted spinach"

California grower recalls salmonella- tainted spinach - LOS ANGELES (Reuters) "It was a long, crinkly-leafed, robust and verdant varietal that grew heartily in the moist, loose loams of the western vale -- but it's gone now; harvested, you know; every bit of it just harvested and put on the truck," sighed the grower, reminiscently.

(Okay, everything after "(Reuters)" I made up.)

Exhausting

The light was out, the light was on; the light was out, the light was on. It was annoying. You've only read the cycle twice and I bet it's wearing on your nerves already. But finally, after almost three years of unpredicatability the light was out -- and wouldn't come back on. The light is in an exhaust fan in the ceiling in my master bathroom in my house in suburbia.

The fixture rattled intermittently; even after I had my builder come back and check it -- he just pushed it up a little so that the wedges on the edges gained some friction on the ceiling sheetrock. That lasted a few weeks. So we didn't use the fan much, but the light we used.

When it went out with no sign of coming back on I figured the bulb; a regular incandescent 60 watt light bulb, had blown. Testing it in my bedside lamp this proved to be the case. Replacing the bulb with a new one didn't help, though. The fan worked, the light didn't. (The fan and the light are separately switched.) Maybe the new bulb was bad, too? Okay, the exhaust fan is above the toilet -- a good place for it, except that you have to stand on the commode to reach the ceiling. It's a little short for comfort, but not bad the first time. But now it's the third time... (once to take the old bulb out, once to put the new bulb in and now a third time to take the new bulb out to test it someplace else, and of course that means a fourth time up in order to put the new bulb back in, assuming it works). Yes, it works; of course it works, it's a brand-spanking-new bulb fresh from GE. I put it back in the fan fixture: no dice.

Now what? Well, maybe the vibration of the fan loosened the wiring, or caused a short or something. So I broke out the step ladder, but it won't quite fit in the space where the toilet is, so it has to sit in front of the porcelain. A little better than standing on the toilet seat, but still an awkward reach. I removed the whole fixture, uncoupling the wire nuts and all -- but first I shut the circuit off at the fuse panel. Removing the fixture is a multi-step process: remove the plastic light cover, remove the light bulb, unscrew the cap nut from a bolt sticking down in the middle of the fixture (hey, the cap nut doesn't make the fixture fit snug against anything -- more on that later), then remove the fan grill and finally unwire the whole thing from the house. Oh, I had to go up into the attic to unwire the fan, couldn't reach it from the bathroom. So I had to crawl to the corner of the attic, careful not to hit my head on the nail points sticking down from through the roof, and reach across the open insulation and unscrew the fan wiring from its ground and wire nuts. Whew. (And just by the way, the "dryer duct" tubing on the back of the fan housing doesn't, as it should, vent over to the soffit under the eaves, it just exhausts the bathroom air up into the attic.... Oh, well.)

Conveniently, the light portion of the fixture actually plugs into the fan portion with a crude but standard sized plug. I put the bulb back in, plugged the light portion of the fixture into an extension cord and, voila, the light works fine. So it's something to do with the fan portion of the fixture -- or the wiring from the switches to the fixture, or....

So I break out my multi-tester and a spool of wire and start checking circuits. I open up the switch box and uncouple and recouple the switches, checking circuits as I go. I'm no electrician so I'm pretty grateful when I find that Lowe's has some nice online help for just my situation. I've got the "three wire with ground" case. But everything checks out. No electrical shorts, the switches close and open the circuits just like the diagrams say.

So maybe something was just loose. I guess I'll put it all back together and see what happens. Nada, that's what happens. Aaaargh. But I noticed, as I was screwing the fan fixture back into place that the bolt that the light portion screws onto, the one with the not snug cap nut, is just the shaft of a bolt, no head. This shaft is itself screwed into a piece of the fan housing. It's a set screw. Well, it may not have anything to do with my light problem (and it didn't, really), but at least the damn fan isn't going to rattle anymore. So I unscrewed the bulb, removed the cap nut, took down the light fixture (okay, I think I let it dangle by the cord plugged into the fan, so sue me) and adjusted the set screw so that the fixture was now snug against the ceiling and the cap nut was snug against the fixture.

This time as I screwed the bulb back in I paid more attention to the fact that the bulb was hitting the cap nut when it got nearly screwed in. I'd noticed this before but since the nut is metal there was no fire danger, but it was putting pressure on the bulb as I tightened it down. No different from before, but with my new knowledge of fans, wiring and set screws I think I had learned to learn about electrical fixtures. Anyway, even though a light bulb still didn't go on over my head, I had an idea: could the bulb just not be getting properly seated in the socket? Let's try a smaller bulb, shall we? I happened to have a couple dozen appliance size light bulbs (A15 size, I think they are) that I had ordered off the Internet. I stuck one of these puppies in the fan/light fixture in the ceiling in my bathroom in my house in suburbia and, ta-da, there was light. Yeah!

Now I'm wondering if the previous bulb had been an A19 and the new one I tried was an A21 or whether someone had just jammed the old one in enough to make good contact or what. I don't care enough to open the fixture back up and figure it out. I've got plenty of smaller bulbs, and I plan to use them.

TDISMDFTG Reviewed, And it's not even Friday

I finally figured out why I'd had trouble finding The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish at our local library and it wasn't because the children's picture book section tends to be a mess, even though it does. It was because "TDISMDFTG" was shelved, or rather hanged (too much gallows imagery, make that:), or rather hung, in a bag with the audio CD of the writer, Neil Gaimain, reading the book. I just now listened and read along. It's a good, new children's book (2003), with enough repetition and things happening that you don't quite know about at first (like Nathan's little sister saying "Mumf" a few times before we know that she has been tied and gagged (by Nathan)). And engaging pictures drawn by Dave McKean. Be sure to read the "Afterword" if you're at all curious about how authorship happens (maybe you're an aspiring writer yourself), or if you've ever been to Galveston, Texas (I have). I think you'll find it interesting.

Stardust Memories

I'd like to say it was a real cross-over, mainstream kind of crowd that sat with us at the early-evening, opening night showing of Stardust on Friday, but even in this geek-tilted town where rocket scientists and their sons and daughters abound, I'm afraid there was a disproportionate lot of cerebral and slightly socially fringed attendees. And more daughters than sons. Not that I really think Stardust is a chick-flick, I just think that Neil Gaiman's fan base turned out in strength here. Groups of girls from their teens to their thirties dominated the theater, some with a couple of male companions, the kind of young men that are especially glad to be hanging out with women, any women (not that these were unattractive girls, just ones with a separate sense of fashion).

At any rate, either Neil's fan base is bigger than thought or more than his fans turned out across the country since Reuters pegged a 4th place box office pull for Stardust, not bad at all.

Early in the film I had misgivings, thinking the treatment seemed very matter-of-fact, if well staged; but by the second half of the film, as the threads began to pull together and seeds planted in the early dialogue blossomed into cause and effect, I started to identify with the characters. It was my mistake to listen to the comparisons with The Princess Bride, that caused expectations for farcical wit. While a suitably broad genre may encompass both TPB and Stardust, Stardust takes itself a bit more seriously, even if its world is a bit more fantastical. There are unicorns here but no badly animated Rodents of Unusual Size, and not many one-liners. Only Claire Danes deadpan heroine performance matches Robin Wright's Princess Buttercup, other parallels don't exist. For example, Robert De Niro's Captain Shakespeare is no Dread Pirate Roberts. De Niro does nearly steal the show, but the strength of the rest of the ensemble cast holds together and Tristran's transformation (largely at the hand's of Shakespeare's shears) is both quaint and powerful. Michelle Pfeiffer well plays scary and evil; I wish the dead princes would have been used more as a greek chorus -- my guess you can find a fair amount of that on the cutting room floor. Imperfections aside (and there aren't any more here than in any movie where you've already read the book), it's a beautifully-shot feel- good film.

Kid Prep

This one is for the teachers I know on this TGIF (and the parents, and the business leaders, and...):

Check out Dan Pink’s Quote of the Week.

All I ever wanted...

You don't make a left turn in North Jersey when you want to turn left, not off a main thoroughfare at any rate. Instead you bear right onto a little one way piece of road and that makes a little "U" turn or "T's" into a side street that you can turn left on and then you go straight across the thoroughfare that you were on thus completing a left turn, capiche? This is a bit confusing when you haven't done it lately, and I hadn't (done it lately, that is) a couple weeks ago when we were spending a Friday night in northern New Jersey prior to hitting New York City on the weekend. How-some-ever, it turned out to be a fortunate happenstance when I semi-panicked and made my right-to-turn-left one ramp too soon...

We'd driven down from upstate New York and arrived at our hotel-with-heated-pool in the late afternoon. The pool was a hit and we swam until past dinnertime and then had to scramble for someplace open past 9:00 PM, we were hoping for local Italian fare but were hungry enough not to be picky when I made my too-early right-left; we looped across an overpass and came face-to-face with a little Italian establishment -- with the lights still on.

The door said 10:00 PM was closing time and as it was coming up on 9:40 we entered a bit haltingly in case the kitchen was already cleaning up, but they welcomed us enthusiastically and ushered us into the small dining room. We were the only diners at first but as we ate a large table in the corner slowly filled up with staff and family of the restaurant. A large man conversed loudly with everyone in an authoritative voice. He didn't look like Tony Soprano, but he called people "paisan" and had a roll of greenbacks as big as my fist. He peeled off a couple and handed them out as staff left for the evening. The service was excellent, my manicotti was very nice and we all ate plenty.

Brisk and early Saturday morning found us down-slope from the Staten Island Zoo, visiting the final resting place of my in-laws. The sun shined, the breeze blew and the peacocks hollered on a gorgeous 70 degree morning. Our rented Dodge Magnum would certainly have been mistaken for a hearse had it been black instead of white. It was serene and somber; maybe a bit surreal. We reflected and then fled for breakfast (bagels and strawberries) at Island Girl's pad: very hip, very Web 2.0. The beaded doorways, the narrow kitchen with scavenged school desk, all accommodated us because we were family and the place was filled with grace and spunk.

Off again, we parked next on a residential block of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn where my college friend, his wife and young son are doing their part to gentrify the neighborhood. They've bought a row house there. Walking toward their place my 10 year old suburbanite daughter intoned: "This is insane!". She was incredulous that anyone lived like that, where were the yards, the mailboxes, the driveways, the garages? The houses were close enough on Staten Island to touch your neighbors house with a broom stick held out a side window, but here the houses actually touch each other? Pretty cool, huh, my girl? She didn't think so -- but she warmed up when on the inside it was a real house, even if an old and rather ornate one.

We walked through Prospect Park, another amazing sight for the unitiated: real streets but no cars, only walkers, joggers, bicycles and the occasional rollerblader, and plenty of trees and softball fields, right there in the middle of so much city. We walked through to Park Slope for brunch where we had to wait outside for a table at Dizzy's Coffee Shop but the host offered us gratis iced coffees and the extra time offered us a look down below the streets at the F-train stop. The walk back was just as pleasant and the talk back at the house was too short. It felt comfortably intellectual to sit in Brooklyn with shelves full of literature and modern music and my friends, and to meet their son after too long; but they were off to Long Island for the evening and we were headed up to Croton-on-Hudson for a cookout.

Our drive through Queens and the Bronx, mostly on the BQE (a misnomer where the "E" stands for "expressway") was not as bad as such drives can be. We were only nearly squashed a couple times and came to a parking lot stop on elevated highway only a few more times than that. Besides, we got a nice view of Manhattan and of Yankee Stadium. Mark's house up-the-Hudson is a great old Tudor with a slate roof, but at the moment about half the slate is missing -- seems they got hit by a microburst during a thunderstorm and 5 or 6 of his grand old trees lost their tops right onto his house and patio furniture. The cookout was cool though, they concocted some kind of grilled chicken/shrimp/vegetable and feta cheese on grilled pizza crust stuff that was delicious.

Another high school friend and family dropped by to share and so did Mark's doctoral-student-tenant, Julie. Mark and Tina have 3 kids of their own and on this Saturday night a handful of Tina's nephews were staying, too. The house is a rambler and well lived in (not only by the family, but by 1 dog, 2 cats, 3 rats, a hamster and 2 aquariums full of aquatic life forms). There are innumerable remodeling projects in process; one that has been successfully completed is the insertion of a spiral staircase at the end of the hall which now grants a second access to the upstairs, and to the loft that has a shuttered window down to the family room. Again I felt very comfortable hanging out with the nooks and crannies and our hosts' lack of formality. In the morning Mark, Julie, my wife and I ran across the nearby aqueduct and rounded back to the neighborhood through a long stretch of woods, about a 4 mile loop.

Tina shares my love of fine dark chocolate and gifted me with a box of Gustaux French Chocolate Truffles, which were delectable -- coated with baking cocoa powder they are smooth and strong. (I think that is the right brand -- I had to ditch the box when I packed for the airplane, not realizing that the inner foil had no brand information!) After breakfasting on the rest of Island Girl's bagels, plenty of OJ, some Trix and a truffle, I piled the family and a couple of the old slate shingles into the Magnum and headed west under the late morning sun.

Another Character Name

Another Character Name: "Auburn Bill"

Review: trashy, brashy boldness

Today I reviewed "I'll Take Manhattan", the audio book, read by Adrienne Barbeau. It didn't fare well.

DR's Best Music of 2006

While not as prolific writing about music since leaving WHRW as Will Hermes, my good friend David Rawson has been making lists of the best songs each year for over 20 years, and I've posted the latest lists of the top 40 albums, top 100 songs and top 10 EPs of 2006.

As usual, many of the entries are unfamiliar to me (read: I never heard of the artist, much less the song or album), but others are better known. In any case there's quite a mix, but usually heavier on the guitars and male vocals than my primary tastes. Besides, I'm mostly exposed to middle-America radio so I have to make an effort to hear anything farther afield than "Hips Don't Lie" or "How to Save a Life"; I do come across the odd-ball cover occassionally, like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as a lounge song by Ragnar Bjarnason.

Sonic Boom at the Drive-in

It was a lot more fun than Burger King's free fries day back on Jan. 2, 1998: Yesterday evening, after table tennis club, after some pizza, a friend and his son and me and my son stopped by our local Sonic Drive-in. It was about 10:45 pm but there was an uncrowded party going on. Balloons and banners and festively costumed waitri on roller skates with trays full of fresh free Root Beer Floats (yep, that's "free as in beer"). We'd hardly turned the engines off when a waitress rolled up and offered us each a free float, no strings attached. We enjoyed them at an outdoor table on an evening still warm from a day in the 90's. We chatted and hung out and watched the community college kids cavort. Good times.

Escaped Pansy

In mid-May, before the rabbits got ravenous (and so thirsty), before the sun was so high and before this was declared our driest Spring ever; one of our pansies "took a walk". It made it about 10 inches before putting down roots where it met it's fate under the blade, I'm afraid, cropped with the grass. But it was pretty and out of place -- just so slightly. See the photo.

Jicama, Can You?

I recently attended a convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville. It's pretty plush, with it's 9 acres of indoor gardens and all; and the convention was swell. But my best off-topic takeaway was Wednesday's lunch salad. The lunch had a southwestern theme from mexican rice with chayote squash to cilantro basted chicken enchiladas. Also of note was their ability to feed well over 1,000 people almost instantly -- they had about 6 double sided buffet lines plus separate areas for soup and dessert. One more aside before we get back to the salad: another neat idea was tented placards placed on the round 10-seater lunch tables indicating a sub-area of conventioneers that should congregate at that table. If you paid attention to them you ended up sitting with other folks that you might not know but that you had something pretty specific in common with; not exactly Dave Winer's "unconference", but a good chance for ad hoc networking.

Remembering the Southwest theme and keeping an open mind, here's the salad, which I found surprisingly pleasing. I'm guessing at the proportions -- I made a batch yesterday and it came out pretty good:

Jicama Salad

10 parts julienned jicama (about 1 medium jicama)
3 parts tomatoes, sliced and quartered (about 2 medium tomatoes)
1 part sweet onion strips (1/3 of a medium Vidalia onion)
1 part mixed pepper pieces (canned chilis, jalepeno rings, green pepper strips)

Add oil and vinegar dressing, chill and marinate.

Pretty good, pretty healthy.