The Kinks - Sleepwalker, 1977

One of my favorite songs from the Kinks



Oh yeah! Oh yeah!

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

A beautiful voice sings no more!



The Ultimate Whitney Houston Playlist

News: "Pa. groundhog 'predicts' 6 more weeks of winter"

Pa. groundhog 'predicts' 6 more weeks of winter!

Well it's been a mild winter with lower than average snowfall so we cannot really complain.

Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2) The Dream Theatre rendition

DREAM THEATER takes on King Crimson's illustrative Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2)

God bless David Bowie

The Guardian on David Bowie

Bowie was an early adopter of the internet, but he didn't really fit with the notion of a star in the 21st century, an era when the manufacturing of pop music has been laid bare on the TV and where stars are perpetually available on Twitter and Tumblr. Rock music currently exists in a world of 360 degree connectivity that's supposed to bring the artist and the fan closer and reveal the real person behind the myth. But as the best of his umpteen biographers David Buckley pointed out, with Bowie, revealing the real person behind the myth is missing the point: "the myth has far greater resonance and is far more intriguing than stolid attempts to identify a 'true' essence … his appeal has lain in the generation of myths." Those myths look likely to remain intact forever, which seems perfectly fitting

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens, crafter of essays

Not one to be lied to. Among the best writers of his age, Christopher Hitchens held you with his prose, in part because he was wrong a quarter of the time and in part because the words were always in the right place. The battle cry is still.

My choice for best essay of 2011

There are shades of disagreement with Andy Crouch's brilliant tribute to Steve Jobs, the Secular Prophet  in the Wall Street Journal, but it is, in my humble opinion, the best essay I have read in 2011.

Getting Ubuntu to work on Amtrak's wireless connection

Today was my first experience with using WiFi on Amtrak. Riding business class on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I expected some difficulty hooking up to Amtrak's serviceable wireless connection. That's because my laptop is a very-dependable Dell Inspiron 1150 with about 2 GB of memory running single-boot Ubuntu 10.04, the very agreeable Lucid Lynx version. For the record, I'm an occasional Ubuntu enthusiast who tries to keep on top of the latest developments in the Linux world. And I do pay attention. I'm a very faithful user of Ubuntu's wonderful update manager so my Dell is current with the latest OS and software patches. By the way, Ubuntu's Update Manager is far superior to Windows' automated utility.

It would be a safe bet to say that I probably was the only laptop user running Linux on the train to Boston. Apple notebooks were everywhere. My son's Windows 7 machine identified the "AmtrakConnectAcela" signal immediately. Logging on was a breeze. Not so with Ubuntu. My machine's adapter could see and then not see the wireless Amtrak signal but I couldn't make an immediate connection. I tried rebooting the machine several times before I stumbled upon a solution. The solution required a simple disabling and re-enabling (unchecking and re-checking) of the wireless network by right-clicking on the wireless icon on the top panel of the desktop. (My icon appears in the upper right hand side). That did the trick. Thereafter I found the network's performance was slow but acceptable and dropped only once which forced me to log on again.

My guess is that this glitch has something to do with the firewall web page that serves as a gateway to the connection. It popped up easily enough in Windows and ultimately did in Firefox on my Ubuntu machine. But the wireless connection appeared to need some kind of acknowledgment that Ubuntu could not provide on the initial bootup of my machine. At its WiFi FAQ, Amtrak says "You will be able to use AmtrakConnect through any laptop or other portable device that is Wi-Fi enabled." That proved to be true but not as seamlessly as I would like. Whether this is done for security reasons I don't know but it would be nice if Amtrak took Linux users into account.

We love Acela too!

It was 33 years ago... the Rolling Stones performing Beast of Burden in 1978

A classic!

Wakefield's New World War II Memorial

A masterpiece: King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part IV

Live from the Eyes Wide Open Tour of 2003

Not so smooth: Peanut butter prices rise

It's going to cost more to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

A peanut shortage in the south means prices for some brands like Jiff and Peter Pan will rise by nearly 40%, making it harder for grocery stores to keep prices low.

Aphorism of the day

We may understand our knowing, but we can't know our understanding.

Tarek Fatah Talk at ideacity 2011 on ideacity

A Canadian, one of many, speaks the truth.

ideacity on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Tarek Fatah Talk at ideacity 2011o

Worth a listen...