Saturday Stew: A Little Bit of Everything

Note: In case you missed my posts earlier this week, I had one with a collection of articles related to why I decided to support Hillary Clinton; a collection of articles related to food and diet; and a summary of the shows that I’m planning to see at the upcoming Hollywood Fringe Festival. But now it is Saturday, and I’m staring at the list of links I’ve accumulated over the week… and realizing there’s not a coherent theme buried in there.  You know what that means — it is time to make News Chum Stew!

• Steve Julian. Steve Julian passed away this week, after a short but intense battle with brain cancer. I never met the man, but I listened to him on KPCC and saw his work in and on behalf of the LA Theatre community. A loss for the community at the young age of 57. 57. That’s one year older than me. This comes on the heels of the death of Hope Joffee Rankell, a middle-school friend who pancreatic cancer got at the same age, and on the heels of the death this week of Rick Wisotsky, a camp counselor of mine and all around good person, again from a brain tumor. It makes one think about one’s mortality when one’s contemporaries pass away. Luckily, all three expressed the same philosophy: embrace life, enjoy life, and love those around you while you can. Something worth remembering.
• Dress for Success. Mental Floss has a nice summary of 8 rules for dressing appropriately at work. This article basically takes those terms like “business professional”, “business casual”, and such, and breaks them down into what they really mean. Now if someone can just tell me how to dress to work on formal methods.
• Thunderbird. This week I had a set of battles with Firefox, and saw increasing news about Firefox losing market share. Just another step in the continuing transition from Netscape to Mozilla to Seamonkey to Firefox. The week also brought news about how Mozilla is trying to offload Thunderbird, their mail client. Mail clients are a pretty mature market, and with the exception of overlying end-to-end encryption (something I explored in my MS Thesis on the subject back in 1985 — yes, 1985), there’s not much innovation needed. It doesn’t bring income to Mozilla, but I hope they find a good home. I’m still a regular Thunderbird user.
• Cabrillo Music Theatre. There’s been a lot of publicity about Cabrillo Music Theatre being saved from death, but there is one piece of news that hasn’t been heavily reported: Lewis Wilkenfield is stepping down as Artistic Director after Little Mermaid. We’ve been there all 10 years with him, and we’ll miss his selections and good work. I hope Cabrillo finds an Artistic Director who can move them to bigger and better things, with large audiences and community support.
• Spritual Places. Here’s a list of 15 places that are intensely spiritual. Why am I posting this? Because Gindling Hilltop Camp — my summer camp — made the list. I’ll agree. I don’t find God in a sterile synagogue. I find God at camp.
• Puff, The Magic Dragon. In case you don’t believe Peter Yarrow (one of the song’s authors) that Puff is not about drugs, perhaps you’ll believe it from the guy that wrote the original poem. What’s neat here is that the guy who wrote Puff went on to invent those 3D glasses for movies.
• URL Shorteners and Risk. A big risk these days are URL shortners and email URL redirectors. You have no idea what the real link is behind a URL to know if it is malicious or not. Fear not. Here’s a site that will fetch the underlying URL behind a obfuscating link.
• 800 Numbers. Have you ever wondered why toll-free numbers start with 800? Perhaps you remember Zenith numbers. Here’s the scoop on toll-free numbers.
• Head Transplants. This is pretty unbelievable, and the stuff of science fiction movies. A doctor is ready to perform the first human head transplant, and the patient is willing to go along. If this works, I suggest he contact the GOP.
• Red Car Conspiracy. One of my hobbies is transportation and the Red Cars, so I hear the conspiracy theory about LA Transportation all the time. The problem is: it’s not true. Here’s a great summary of the debunking.
• ITunes Birthday. Apple’s iTunes turns 13 this week, and a lot of folks find it a pretty ugly teenager. I only use iTunes for my iPod Classic, and find it clunky. But I’m tied to its ecosystem because no one else can handle the ratings, play counts, and smart playlists. I’m also staying away from iTunes 12. iTunes 11 works fine for me.
• God Mode Risks. Many years ago, I wrote about how to turn on God Mode on a Windows PC. Alas, it turns out that attackers have figured out how to leverage God Mode to their advantage. Damn.
• Pershing Square. They are talking about redesigning Pershing Square downtown. Here are the four proposals. Which one do you like?
• Typeface History. Here are the stories behind a number of famous typefaces and how they came about. You can learn why Times New Roman is called “Times”, and the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman; the problem with the typeface in Titanic, and the lasting influence of Microsoft Bob.
• System Security Engineering. Lastly, a great article from the Air Force on the need for system security design.

 

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