Fair warning: I’m mostly down with a cold, so my lucidity is questionable. In particular, I’m noticing a tendency to leave out word here and there.

Last night, Jane and I were fortunate enough to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic play Ravel, Saint-Saens, and Francesconi at the new Walt Disney Hall. This was a bit of a fluke–we were given tickets–but it means that I can now weigh in on the whole Frank Gehry-isn’t-it-a-ridculous-building debate.

I’d previously only seen pictures of it, and as it was dark I didn’t get a really good look at the outside. But what I could see looked just plain silly. This is a truly foolish-looking building, and it reminds me of my brother’s rule about buying presents–if you can’t find anything good, buy them something strange.

Inside, the most notable elements were lobbies and corridors that twined about with no particular rhyme or reason, little signs with the names of rich donors everywhere (even the stairways were named after particular individuals), and lots and lots of exposed Douglas Fir. The columns in the lobby were meant to evoke trees; I know this because there were large notices on metal stands that told me so.

It’s interesting to contrast the entry area of Disney Hall with that of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which is just about as old as I am. It’s a tall, elegant building, with massive crystal chandeliers, rich carpeting, and lots and lots of marble–symbols anyone would understand. Everything about it speaks of luxury, wealth, and the establishment. I’m not sure what the entry area of Disney Hall is trying to say, but I find it interesting that it was felt necessary to post signs to let us in on the secret.

We found our way to the Concert Hall Cafe, where we ate a couple of delightful little chocolate tortes, and then investigated the L.A. Philharmonic Store, and then went up to our seats.

Whoa.

The auditorium more than makes up for the foolishness of the rest of the ball. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, a fascinating, curving, swooping space of Douglas Fir with banks of seats on all four sides. It’s a far more intimate space than the Dorothy Chandler, and the acoustics seemed to me (I’m no judge) to be just fine.

The seats are a little narrow, and there is no leg room whatsoever–if you had to leave in a hurry, everyone between you and the aisle would have to stand up.

But other than that, I have no complaints. As a concert hall, it was a fabulous place to sit and listen to music.

Well, mostly. The first piece on the program was a new piece called “Cobalt, Scarlet” by a contemporary Italian composer named Francesconi. This was the U.S. premiere, and the composer was in attendance. It was 24 minutes of sound that reminded me of two things: labor and delivery, in that it was long, drawn out, and painful, with occasional moments of excitement; and (sporadically) the opening moments of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd”–you know, where all the steam pipes go off at once?

I suppose that artistically it was pretty much the equivalent of Disney Hall’s exterior–a product of great skill and attention to detail, a wonderful example of the chaos that results when all rules and standards have been swept aside.

Late in June of 2002, I began work on Notebook, my personal notebook application. I was using it daily by the second of July, but it continued to grow and evolve, and by the twelfth of August it had begun to get unmanageable–or, at least, annoyingly complex. Now, the second or third time I run into a software problem I like to find a way for the computer to solve it for me. I needed help structuring my code, and the result was Snit, an object framework for the Tcl language.

My goal, of course, was to implement Snit, and then update Notebook to use it, and then begin to clean-up and extend Notebook. Instead, Snit took most of my attention for the next month–and then in mid-August I went to the 9th annual Tcl conference, where I made a short impromptu presentation about Snit at an open “Works in Progress” session. There was a certain amount of interest, and a host of suggestions, and what with one thing and another Snit occupied my time for quite some time thereafter. Every time I thought I was done with the darn thing, someone would make another suggestion, or point out another problem to be solved. And that’s continued off and on right up until the present.

During the past year I’d managed to work on bits and pieces of Notebook, and even managed to release a new version some while back…but not until this morning did I manage to convert the largest and most complex piece of code, Notebook’s beating heart, into Snit–over fifteen months after the first line of Snit was written.

And they say men can’t commit.

But seriously, this is where the fun starts. I’ve got a long list of changes and features I’d like to do, and almost every one them involves changes to that largest and most complex piece of code–and now that that piece of code is implemented using a clean framework I can start refactoring its design and setting its house in order. All the old cruft is cleaned out of the way, and there are clear skies ahead.

Seriously, this is very cool.

(Have you looked at Notebook yet? It’s very cool too….and it’s constantly getting cooller.)

Ian Hamet has seen it, and liked it; Terry Teachout saw it as well, and had this to say:

No, Master and Commander doesn’t reproduce the essence of Patrick O’Brian’s books, which is the inner life of Stephen Maturin. It’s a completely exteriorized view of the Aubrey-Maturin novels. But what a view!

Which is exactly right, and I wish I had said it.

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.

Continue reading →

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!