joe ferrare's blog

OK, so it’s not exactly a party yet, but hey, it was only 6:15 p.m. when I took the shot. Anyway, this is the gathering party on the kurpark, which is right outside my window. I’ll post more later, if I find time.

You can see the start of the pedestrain zone in the background. I took this shot with my wife’s excellent Canon EOS 20D. Took a bit of steadying by leaning on the balcony, but it seemed to work OK. The lower scaffolding (or whatever it is) is just a few feet from the balcony.

Happy New Year, if I don’t get back on tonight.

I wonder how many people are blogging new year’s? I have the Garmisch, Germany party right off the balcony — and right outside the baby’s window, unfortunately. I’ll post a few pics, unless things are too interesting with the company we’re expecting.

Got the city biathlon today. The turn-around point (if memory serves from last year) is right outside my door. Well, off the balcony, is more precise. We live in the middle of town, and a lot goes one right outside our house. As this photo shows, they’ve fenced off the center of about half of the pedestrian zone and are going to use it for the biathlon.

Hey, biathlon. Doesn’t that involve shooting? I probably won’t be standing on the balcony watching. You never know.

I may in fact shoot some photos this evening, though it gets dark before 5 p.m., so I’m not sure what I’ll get.

I wrote an article about Linux that was published yesterday on OSNews. It’s a review of Zenwalk Linux 2.0.1, so it’s nothing Earth-shaking. I like trying out different Linux distros, and this one is a version of Slackware, which is what I mainly use. I actually liked Zenwalk’s speed enough that I wiped Ubuntu off my laptop and installed Zenwalk. It took more work than Ubuntu, because Zenwalk is a minimalist distro and my centrino-based laptop requires special drivers. Ubuntu installed those automatically, but Ubuntu isn’t as fast as Zenwalk. That normally wouldn’t make that big a difference, because the laptop is a 1.6 Ghz Pentium M, which means (I’ve read) it’s roughly equivalent of a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4. The thing is, centrinos slow down your processor to save battery life (and reduce heat) when you’re not doing anything that taxes your CPU. So it runs at 600 Mhz most of the time. At 1.6 Ghz the difference between Ubuntu and Zenwalk is not worth bothering about. At 600 Mhz, it is.

A couple of people commented that all these Linux distros is a bad thing and the fact there are hundreds of different versions confuses people and maybe scares them off. I disagree, because most people don’t even know what one Linux is. I think those that do look into either have somebody explaining things to them (the classic two-step flow of communication), or they just pick a popular, highly recommended option and give it a whirl. Plus there are live CDs that you don’t even have to install onto your hard drive, so it’s pretty risk-free.

Anyway, I wrote the article because I like to write non-work stuff once in a while. I should write more. I like OSNews because it’s a pretty relaxed site. I’m usually a stickler on grammar and spelling and so forth, and OSNews hasn’t always been the best in that regard. But they publish interesting things and have an interesting community of people who comment on things. That’s one thing about geek sites like OSNews and the big kahuna, Slashdot: you often find out more neat stuff in the comments than you do in the articles.

Well, that about wraps up my self-promotion. I’m off today. Sue is off skiing with friends, so it’s just me and the girl. I was going to walk her into day care, but it’s 1 degree Farenheit out there. It takes me a good 20 minutes to walk in, and with her it’s more like 45. I don’t think she’s up for 45 minutes of walking in 1 degree weather. Not sure I am.

So I’ll probably be blogging more today than usual.

Went to see King Kong today. I know several million people beat me (and Sue, of course) to it, but that’s hardly surprising. See, the closest English movie theater is in Munich, which is, oh, 50-odd miles away. So we’ve got to have an hour driving time in good weather to get there, a babysitter for a minimum of the movie length plus driving time (plus cafe or dinner time, if we’re squeezing that in) and the hour driving back.

Today was not good weather. We got the chance to go without paying a babysitter thanks to a friend’s largess, so we took advantage of it. But the weather was not great. It was snowing lightly, then pretty heavy, then not so much, but the damage (to the roads) was done. So we missed the first 5 or 10 minutes of the movie. If you’re familiar with it at all, you know that’s probably not such a big deal. There’s a lot there to see. Three hours and nine minutes, to be exact. So we missed a little Jack Black (we walked in while he was being grilled by the people financing his movie).

Speaking of Jack Black, Kong is the best work he’s ever done (that I’ve seen). He should do more drama, or maybe more work under Peter Jackson’s direction, as something about this movie tended to tone down his usual over-the-top personality. He was very good. The smirk snuck in there a few times, of course, but overall, the best I’ve ever seen him do.

The rest of the movie was freakin’ awesome. The dinosaur scenes were excellent. I was counting teeth and looking at how they fit in the mouth and didn’t realize at all that I was watching cgi. Same for the big gorilla. He’s utterly lifelike. The only thing that dinged the mood was the stretch during which he’s running with her in his hand. That borders on cheesy at times, but what can you expect? With all that movement and so forth it must have been hell to do, and it’s a couple minutes out of the 189.

Anyway, Andy Serkis deserves credit for that. And apparently, he’s getting it.

Anyway, the creepiest scene was the bug-slug scene, during which the rescue party is further decimated by rampaging bugs and giant toothy slugs. Sue was squeezing my hand and making noises the whole time. I believe it was here that Serkis, in his other role (the cook) buys the farm. A bunch of toothy slugs eat him up. Yum.

Overall, I definitely recommend the movie. I don’t know that I’d put it at the top of any of any list of best movies ever, or even this year, but it’s fine entertainment and well worth the money and the numb-butt syndrome that sets in. I think I’ll start a “worth driving to Munich for” recommendation. Kong gets the nod, as did Serenity, which few people saw, I know. We drove to Munich to see it and I got the DVD for Christmas, so I’m happy.

I’m glad Kong was worth it, too, because the drive back was crappy. I normally drive between 100-110 MPH on the autobahn when Alexandra isn’t with us, but I was happy to be hitting 60 MPH at times today. Several times we were under 30 MPH (either by choice or because of traffic) today. Along the way we decided to spring for snow tires. We’ve got nice tires on the Outback, and it is an all-wheel drive, but we live in a ski resort. Gotta go the extra nickel (or 500-600 euros).

Finally got a little billing matter figured out with our web hosting company (they like to call credit card users to avoid fraud, and I’m not sure the number I put in the form would actually get them to our phone in Germany), so I’m setting up Sue’s new blog site: gijasue.com.

Anyway, I’m setting up wordpress on that site. So not a lot to blog about this morning.

Oh, we did get a supplemental Christmas delivery. A box arrived from Sue’s sister and family. I scored some serious tea, which may sound funny but is greatly appreciated. Sue got a scarf/hat set (to supplement an earlier gift) and the baby scored more books. She’ll be happy about that, and happy to have more things to unwrap.

Files are uploading, so I do have one thing to mention. In this Slashdot article they talk about ISPs perhaps starting to quarantine people based on their hardware or software configuration. I’m of two minds about this (as I usually am about most things). I mean, it would be good for all if some of those heedless Windows uers who have had their computers taken over and used as spambots could be forced to deal with their machines. On the other hand, I’ve always used off-the-mainstream hardware and software — first the Mac and now a home-built computer running Linux. Too many times I’ve seen people denied things just because the people on the other end weren’t familiar with what they were using, or they were part of a market that was too small to expend man-hours catering to.

More on this later. Work calls.

I’m still setting up this page. I was going to do more — put names to those generic menu tags, for instance, but I was called away to an emergency session of Dora the Explorer Bingo, immediately followed (perhaps inevitably, if you have a 4-year-old) by a session of Dora the Explorer, the board (in this case mat) game. So all I’ve done is get the database and WordPress working, and swap out the photo that came with this theme.

Actually, I’m almost certainly going to upload some different themes from this theme browser. But this one, called Jakarta, is very nice. I especially like the little icons on the upper right that allow you to increase the font size. I also like how they’ve done the archive calendar, and the overall color scheme is nice. I think I’m going to have to kill the flag (headline, whatever) and put the name of the blog in the photo. It just looks kind of odd to me. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

I guess I should post something about Christmas, even though I haven’t told anyone we’re blogging this site yet. Today’s the first day back to work after a four-day holiday, and the tree is looking a touch shabby. Seems natural to post a summary of the holiday.

It’s all about the girl, of course. She got about 20 presents, large and small, and that’s not counting her main present, this doll, which WalMart and the U.S. Postal Service chose to take their time getting to Germany.

Of course, according to these guys, and these guys, too, we’re better off without one. Personally, I think Alexandra has more imagination than the authors of either of those two articles, so I’m not worried. Plus, with all the crap she’s got, the doll will be just one toy in her mighty arsenal.

As for Sue and I, we did the procrastination thing. We went out to get a few little things on Christmas Eve, then basically let ourselves buy something for ourselves in each other’s name (if that makes any sense). Sue got a new ski jacket on the way, and I’ve got a backordered set of computer speakers. From Christmas Eve she got a ring and earring set (more or less), and I got some cologne (which I needed after breaking my cologne bottle while TDY to Skopje, Macedonia earlier this month). We also got gifts from her parents, of course. I got a nice cashmere sweater and a very nice journal. Sue also got me the new Beck and Offspring CDs. I’ve yet to listen to them, but I’ve heard a couple of the singles.

So this is Christmas…