This may, perhaps, be old news in bear circles, but I only read it ten days ago on the plane over, in Robert Hughes’ quirky Barcelona the Great En­chantress. The founder of Catalunyan/Catalonian/Catalan national in­de­pen­dence a thousand years’ ago was the Visigoth known as Wilfred the Hairy. History does not record with any clarity how Guifré el Pilós earned that name.

I haven’t visited the Iberian peninsula since the 1970s when the well-founded stereotype was that Spanish men had mustaches. That seems to have gone out of style: almost all men, young or old, were clean­shaven. And after having seen countless women wearing tanktops in the heat, I can say that the …continue.

The Prometheans are a secret society sworn to protect England and Elizabeth I. Kit Marley (Christo­pher Marlowe), playmaker, poet, and in­tel­li­gencer, has been killed by a dagger in the eye, at the behest of a rogue faction in the Prometheans. Another talented polemicist is required and Will Shake­speare is recruited. But Kit is not dead. He has been spirited to Faerie, where now he must serve their two queens. He becomes the lover of one, Morgan le Fay, and her son, Murchaud. Kit can return to the land of the …continue.

Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades. This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona. Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food. He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino, Catalunya’s founding as an in­de­pen­dent nation a thousand years ago by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy, up through the Olympics in 1992. This is no com­pre­hen­sive survey: he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol than on the Spanish Civil War.

Well-written …continue.

Kvothe—the infamous, legendary Kvothe—has been living under an assumed name when the Chronicler tracks him down and asks him for his life story. Kvothe relates the story of his early years: his precocious talents for music and arcanism (magic); the happy childhood that ends when his parents and their troupe are murdered by an ancient evil; his years as a feral street child; and his early entrance into the University to study the Arcanum, where his brilliance makes him a star and his reck­less­ness brings him much grief.

Discursive …continue.

My eight-month experiment in daily blogging will go on hiatus for a few days. We fly out tonight and I will have only in­ter­mit­tent Internet access for the next three weeks in Spain and Ireland.

It’s possible that I’ll write a daily post, but I often won’t be able to post im­me­di­ate­ly.

We’re off to Spain and Ireland tomorrow evening, so lots of last-minute prepa­ra­tions tonight. I laid out my clothes on the spare bed on Sunday; Emma picked out hers this evening. I’ve just paid some bills and I’m trans­fer­ring files onto the netbook that I’m bringing.

I still have to whittle down the large pile of books that are under con­sid­er­a­tion. I don’t want to run out before we get to Ireland, but I don’t want to take too many. Depending on what else is going on, I’ll get through a book in a day or two when I’m on vacation. Maybe two books on those long plane flights.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I was putting together a group of people to see Greenstage‘s production of Shake­speare’s Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Am­phithe­ater. Six of us braved the rain last night, ate our picnic, and enjoyed an hour and a half of ribald slapstick.

Almost all of the cast cross-dressed. The main male parts, the two sets of identical twin brothers, were played by women, The wife, her sister, and the courtesan were played by ugly men in the best panto dame tradition.

The play, like so many of Shake­speare’s comedies, requires an endless series of confused identities, which could be cleared up in moments if only someone paused …continue.

Two picnics this weekend.

Today we held the tenth annual BiNet Seattle picnic for the bisexual community, which I once again organized, with some help from Emma. Almost all of the preceding ones were held at Ravenna Park. Even though I booked the picnic back in March, Ravenna Park was un­avail­able this weekend, which was the only weekend that really suited me. We went to Golden Gardens Beach instead. It’s a nice park, but parking is atrocious on a busy weekend, which may explain the poor turnout. There were only 10 people, down from 20–30 for the last few years. Three new faces; the rest were regulars. As usual, Emma and I brought …continue.

For weeks, Lyn has been telling us about the musical talk that he was going to give today at his UU con­gre­ga­tion about Billy Strayhorn, a little-known but talented composer, who col­lab­o­rat­ed for decades with Duke Ellington. Strayhorn was openly gay in the homophobic decades before Stonewall. That, coupled with his apparent liking for remaining in Ellington’s shadow, probably con­tributed to his obscurity.

Lyn talked about Billy Strayhorn and his life and music for half an hour. He also ac­com­pa­nied Shirley singing some Strayhorn songs on piano, as Linda and Marion played the clarinet and cello. He said that Strayhorn’s life gives rise to two questions, Do you know who you really …continue.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I had just repaved my work dev box and installed the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 RC. Nine or ten years after I first ported parts of IIS to Win64, I am finally running my main desktop on 64-bit Windows. With one exception, it’s been painless. Programs have just worked, devices have just worked. There are relatively few native x64 ap­pli­ca­tions, but for the most part it doesn’t matter. The cases where it does matter—e.g., shell extensions such as Tor­tois­eSVN—are available as 64-bit binaries.

I briefly flirted with using the 64-bit build of Python, but realized that I would have to recompile several eggs as 64-bit …continue.