Risen From The Ashes

When the Registry in a computer is corrupted, it is time for a new one of these:

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Then it only takes a few minutes with a screwdriver and quite a few hours of reinstalling software and files and life is good again.

The Computer formerly know as the Ice Cube rose like a phoenix from the ashes. It now has a glistening new installation of Windows XP (formerly Windows 2000) and sports double the RAM and double the hard drive space.

It not only came back, it is much improved, basically rebuilt.

Thank you, William – what would I do without my own personal in-house IT Director? Weep? Probably.

Don't Believe Your Eyes

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I had this image kicking around on my computer for quite a while and today I came across it again. It is just an overhead shot through a skylight (I was experimenting taking the same shots of harsh lighting contrasts with and without a flash).

When one looks more closely, the image changes – suddenly one sees an ottoman, made out of beige and blue suede, sitting on a black floor. Why and how that happens one can read up on here: Figure-Ground (perception).

So I managed to create an optical illusion.

That’s another first in my life.

In Praise Of Laziness

Sometimes one wakes up on a Sunday morning to decide: today I am going to be lazy. That does not necessarily mean that one stays in bed all day. It is just that one does nothing “productive.” The usual rules of everyday life do not apply. One gives oneself a present of timelessness, so to speak.

A day drifting by is delicious. Time not only slows down, it becomes unimportant, does not exist any longer.

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Has a minute ticked by or an hour? It doesn’t matter – it is a lazy day. A favorite book becomes even more of a favorite because one does not have to put it down to attend to other, more pressing, matters. The sun shines even brighter, seems even warmer, because one does not have to move. Thoughts drift off into areas where one can pick up a subject matter and ponder long on it, without having to come to a conclusion. One does nothing that one does not want to do, or does nothing. Period.

Can anything so wonderful be a bad thing?

Certainly not.

It is a holiday for body and soul.

Something To Talk About – Update

Unfortunately we broke the record – the season 2006/2007 was the driest for L.A. since rainfall records began 130 years ago.

The total rainfall was 4 inches (10 centimeter). That’s less than a quarter of normal.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the snowpack in the Eastern Sierra Mountains, from where Los Angeles gets about 50 % of its water supply, also marked its second lowest level on record this year.

Officials are hinting that this might force the city into full drought mode this summer, with a much higher occurence of brush fires than normal. The first two major brush fires in May alone (Griffith Park and on Catalina Island) might have been only the first ones of many.

I can’t even think of something funny to say about all of this – it is plain scary.

Another One Bites The Dust

I can hardly remember the times when I did not work with computers. PCs, mind you; the Apple machines were and are something I love for their excellent design, but for me there are several reasons why I can not use them in my line of work.

I can very well remember the endless quest for the perfect keyboard. It began back in those times I hardly remember any longer. Was it too much to ask for a keyboard with clean lines, all functions at your fingertips, the perfect “feel” of resistance when hitting a key? Certainly not, one would think.

Anyway, the search came to an end last summer when by happy coincidence I came across an Apple keyboard. My, such a pretty little thing, not at all like the cockpit panel in a bad sci-fi movie. I hit a few keys at random and was sold. A quick trip to the Apple store later I was the owner of the keyboard of my dreams, because yes, one can run them with a PC.

This, however

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is a dead Apple keyboard. # 3 since last summer. The cause of death was not sheer exhaustion from being pounded on too much. No, it drowned, like #1 and #2 before. A quick spill of a drink, and #1, #2 and #3 were dead as dormice.

Therefore I would suggest one further improvement to an already near to perfect keyboard: liquid-proofing it.

That would bring me as near to perfect bliss as possible while on this Earth (computer keyboard-wise).

Something To Talk About

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What’s that to talk about, one might say. It is just a photo of some plants and a tree, dripping with rain. Some might even say – hey, there’s nothing dripping there, that are just wet leaves, come here and we’ll show you what rain is.

Well, for us here in Los Angeles, this is all we seem to be getting this year. Rainfall is always measured from July 1st to June 30th, with the rains concentrating on the time from December to February. According to the records, this season might end up to be the longest dry spell in 130 years of recorded weather. Contrary to the usual 13.94″ (34,4 cm) of rain during the rainy season we have clocked up 2.47″ (6,27 cm) as per April 02, 2007. There is some hope that more rain might drift in by the end of April… but we all know what to think about weather forecasts. Good try, but we’ll see the rain when we get it. Or not.

There is after all a record to break, the season of 2001-2002, with all of 4.42″ (11,22cm) of rain. From July 1st 2001 to June 30th 2002.

Somehow I hope we won’t break this particular record.