I went to see the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the
World last night, and I must say I was impressed. As a long time
fan of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series I had
carefully kept my expectations low so as not to be disappointed. The
finished product is much better than I had hoped, and though there are any
number of absurdities I find myself rather more approving than not.

Spoiler warning: if you haven’t seen the movie or read the books, you
might not want to read further.

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Turns out I was mistaken; I’m not a Wiggly Worm at all. The entry I saw at the Truth-Laid Bear’s ecosystem was for the old version of my blog. I submitted my current blog address and I find that I’m a Flippery Fish!

Arts and Letters Daily lists a couple of articles related to the movie Master and Commander. The first one is about Patrick O’Brian and C.S. Forester and how they both fictionalized their pasts; it’s interesting though I wish it went into more detail.

The second is about all the things the movie gets wrong, and no, I’ve not read it.

Aaron Haspel has a rather testy post on Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias”. Be sure to check out the comments; he doesn’t get to have it all his own way.

I found this article thought provoking, though possibly because it caters to my prejudices. I’ve never been in therapy, nor intend to be.

I’ve not yet seen Master and Commander (I’m going on Thursday night) so I’ve been avoiding all of the blog posts about it that are floating around. But here’s a neat post about the warships of Jack Aubrey’s day.

In general, I like it.

If you’re a Mac nut, you’ve probably already read reviews and descriptions of Panther, so I won’t try to hit all of the details. I’ll just hit a few highlights.

First of all, the new appearance is nifty. Some folks really dislike the “brushed metal” look of the window frames, but I think it’s cool.

Second, “Expose” is too cool for words. Here’s the easy way to switch between the dozens of open windows on your desktop: press F9. Instantly, all of the open windows on your screen shrink and jostle about until all of them are completely visible. Click on the one you want; everything gets big again. That sounds awfully complicated, I suppose, but it’s fast. And it takes much less thought than mousing over to the dock to find the little icon for the window I want. Then there’s the F10 key. Press that and it’s just like F9 but only the windows belonging to the current application are affected. And finally, there’s F11. Press that, and all the windows scatter just past the edges of the desktop–leaving your whole desktop visible, so you can find that one important icon. It’s going to take me a while to get used to using Expose, but it’s a good habit to pick up.

X11 is nicer, too, in addition to being a 1.0 product instead of a Beta. It’s mostly like it was in the past, but has some new options: you can invoke X11 programs from the Finder, and minimize them on the Dock.

The other two programs I’ve played with so far are the Safari web browser (which is mostly unchanged) and Apple’s Mail application, which is mostly unchanged but has a few important additions. First, it’s faster, which is nice. Second, it now gives you a threaded view of your e-mail messages, which makes finding things easier…I think. You can turn it off if you don’t like it. And finally, it makes a nifty zooming sound when it sends an e-mail message.

They say Panther is faster than Jaguar, and that may be so; I’m not sure.

So, so far, so good!

This is the second of the two essays I promised, inspired by an e-mail exchange about Creationism vs. Evolution. The first is The Two Books.

In my first essay I talked about the relationship between the Book of
Spirit, the Bible, and the Book of Nature, the universe around us. Both,
I said, were created by God, and both reflect God’s character. Also,
both require interpretation. I explained a little about why I consider
the Bible to be authoritative; but I also said that I do not neglect the
Book of Nature.

In this essay I’ll talk explicitly about the problem of creation–just
how God created not only we human beings, but also the planet Earth
and the universe in which we live.

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Golly Gee!! You are NORMAN ROCKWELL.
You are a painter of simple, everyday happenings.
You tend to avoid the outrageous and stay well
within the guidelines of society. Your friends
count on you for your loyalty and level-
headedness.

Which famous artist most reflects your personality?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sure enough, once I installed the new Developer Tools and rebuilt X11 Emacs, it works just fine! So we are now good to go for future development work, and I can go to bed with a happy heart.

Total time spent installing Panther and related tools, plus recompiling Emacs: two and a half hours.

Most serious problem: boredom while waiting for the installers to finish.

Only glitch encountered: I had to ask Fink to recompile Emacs for me.

I’ll probably have a little more to say about Panther tomorrow. But for sure, Expose is way cool.