I just sent out the Evite for Frank’s memorial on July 5th. If you didn’t receive a copy and you’d like to go, let me know.

Next up, choose the poems and music. We may reprise some of those that I read at Toast­mas­ters. Certainly, we should read “How to Eat a Slug”.

Perhaps the most ir­refutable sign of middle age for me was getting pro­gres­sive lenses six months ago.

I had noticed for several months that I was having a little difficulty with smaller print, and a visit to the op­tometrist confirmed that I needed reading glasses. Now I’m near-sighted and far-sighted, all at the same time.

The new glasses took some getting used to. I had been accustomed to looking through any part of the lens. Now I had to tilt my head downwards rather than simply turn my eyes down, if I wanted to look at the floor, or I’d be looking through the short-distance reading portion.

These lenses are also noticeably heavier …continue.

Kubota Garden is a little-known gem in the Rainier Beach area of south Seattle. Twenty acres of hills and valleys in a Japanese style.

Emma and I met Lyndol down there this morning and rambled through the garden for two hours. It was a fine, overcast day, with tem­per­a­tures in the low 60s and occasional driz­zle—and a pleasant relief from the record heat of earlier this week. I had visited there before: it’s at the far end of the Chief Sealth bicycle trail. Lyn had too, but it was Emma’s first visit.

The gate was locked when we arrived at 10:30, though the sign proclaimed that it was open from 6am …continue.

ESR writes about Elo­cu­tion­ary Punc­tu­a­tion, dis­tin­guish­ing it from syntactic punc­tu­a­tion. The latter, says he, is the style taught in schools, where the punc­tu­a­tion cor­re­sponds to gram­mat­i­cal phrase structure. Elo­cu­tion­ary punc­tu­a­tion treats punc­tu­a­tion as markers of speech cadence and intonation.

I think I fall in this camp. I’m careful about my punc­tu­a­tion, though I can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly articulate why I choose one way over another. If it sounds right in my head, that’s the way I go. Even before I started doing staged readings, I paid attention to how my writing would sound, were it read aloud.

While I’m pon­tif­i­cat­ing on punc­tu­a­tion, let me say that I’m a firm proponent of the serial comma—the comma just before the final …continue.

Google finally released the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed Chrome preview for Mac and Linux yesterday. I’ve tried it on my OS 10.5 MacBook and my Ubuntu Jaunty Netbook Remix netbook.

Chrome works fairly well, so far. It seems slow at resolving hostnames, but otherwise downloads pages quickly. Rendering speed is good. Gmail comes up in an amazingly short time, as in Windows Chrome. It uses less CPU than Safari or Camino.

Favicons are not showing up in tabs on Mac. Fonts are not an­tialiased on Linux.

As a user, I’m happy to see that there is real com­pe­ti­tion between the browsers after the stagnation in the first half of this decade, when IE6 ruled. As a web developer, it’s a …continue.

We’ve had record heat in Seattle for the last two days. It hit 91°F today.

If I wanted to live in Arizona, I’d live in Arizona.

I just spent over an hour wrestling with the Address Book in Evite, trying to convince it to import a pile of freeform addresses, to no avail. I had to paste them in one-by-one, clicking Add for each one. Feh.

I succeeded in my bigger goal and that was to send out an Evite for our Bloomsday Reading. It’ll give us some idea of how many to expect at the reading.

I just posted this message to Frank’s favorite newsgroups, soc.motss and rec.arts.movies.past-films.

Frank Maloney was a longtime regular in this newsgroup. After a long illness, he died on January 6th, 2009 at his home.

Some of Frank’s friends are helping Lyndol, his partner of more than 30 years, to put together a memorial for Frank. It’ll be held near Seattle on the afternoon of July 5th.

Frank was a published poet and we’ll be reading some of his poems. But he also spent more than 20 years par­tic­i­pat­ing in newsgroups, posted thousands of articles, and made many online friends. It seems fitting for us to read some of his voluminous output.

We’d like your help. If …continue.

The Chief of State of the New Republic, Leia Solo, is kidnapped and taken to the remote, barren planet of Nam Chorios, whence the lethal Death Seed plague has been released across the sector. Luke made his own way there, seeking his lost girlfriend, Callista. Han and Chewie, Threepio and Artoo are separately trying to rescue Leia.

Your first reaction on seeing a Star Wars novel might be to sneer, as mine was. But I knew Barbara Hambly to be a competent writer of fantasies, science fiction, …continue.

Inspector Çetin İkmen is called to a remote village in Cappadocia when a 20-year-old mummified body is found. The case is tearing the village apart. Back in İstanbul, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman in­ves­ti­gates an in­creas­ing­ly violent series of male-on-male rapes.

Nadel clearly knows Turkey well, bringing to life characters from different social classes without pa­tron­iz­ing them, showing Turkey in its complexity. The story was well crafted, weaving the two strands together to highlight tension. Pace a pet peeve of mine, the two cases did not suddenly, magically become related by the end of the …continue.