rssOverhead, in contrast to the terrestrial stillness, the sky flowed steadily away, like one man's floating fragile life blows across the constant of life itself, to vanish into the unknown. - Ellis Peters
2006, December 02
More Macs in my Life
After the Classic, there have been more Macs in my life.
After I outgrew the Mac Classic in 1994, I upgraded to a refurbished LCIII, with a color monitor. This was a big step; I remembered a woman doing a MacDraw tutorial had said, you should always get a color monitor because it is so much easier on the eyes. I thought, Oh, no, I'm not a computer person, so I don't need to spend that kind of money. Well, here I was 3 and a half years later, a computer person. And she was right. On the LCIII I learned html and put up my first web page, the first version of jsbchorales.net, on March 31, 1996. I did not have storage for the ftp files so they were stored on a server at a college in Texas, thanks to Henry Howey. I covered a lot of territory on that little computer. My daughter used it while studying for her Masters degree, then it was given away.
Eventually I outgrew the LCIII after I had upgraded the RAMM, put in a new hard drive (750MB - so huge) and installed a floating point processor. This computer was connected by an AppleTalk network to a printer and another computer. I had phone lines running all over the place, mostly held in place over the doors with masking tape. Not so aesthetic, but effective.
In April 1997. I moved to a Very Large Computer, the PowerMac 9600, with a 4GB hard drive and 128MB of RAMM. This seemed so large I couldn't imagine that I would ever need another computer. I could run FrameMaker and any other program I wanted. I seemed to have arrived at the top of the world; I didn't yet appreciate how fast change happened in the computer world.
And of course, a new operating system was around the corner, OS X in March, 2001. So while I continued running my main programs on the 9600, in December 2001 I got a Mac iBook to start learning OS X and more about ethernet networking, web serving and databases.
Then in 2003 the new G5 PowerMac was introduced. I fell in love all over again and had to have one. So I gave away the 9600 which for all practical purposes I had stopped using and bought the G5.
Open, the G5 is as beautiful as the outside. It is easy to upgrade and easy to clean.
Three years ago this was the ultimate machine, with a 250GB hard drive and a GB of RAMM, and two 2Ghz processors. I expect to use it in some capacity the rest of my life. Here I make web pages, mess with MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Gallery, and work with music files.
2006, November 05
Winter and a Full Moon
Today is the beginning of meteorological winter and a Hunters' full moon.
Halfway between the Autumnal equinox and the Winter solstice, we are now at the beginning of the Celtic winter, now called meteorological winter. Already there has been snow, Loveland Colorado has 22 inches.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we have had a few days of rain, always welcome after the dry dormant season. So we begin our growing season while elsewhere the skiers buckle on their gear. Man-made snow has made it possible for some resorts to open early, hardware stores in the northeast are selling out of snow shovels, and people are changing to snow tires in the mid-west.
...our winter predictions are pointing towards widespread cold from coast to coast, especially for the western sections of the country,” shares Peter Geiger, Philom., Editor. Geiger continues, “The cold may not be as frigid as 30 or 40 years ago, but we do expect this to be the coldest winter we’ve seen for quite a few years.” And, after last year’s unusual warmth, this chill might make winter harder than usual.
The 2007 Farmers’ Almanac, released August 28, 2006, predicts the frigid temperatures, as much as 20 degrees below seasonal norms (and nearly 40 degrees colder than last winter), for Montana, the Dakotas and parts of Wyoming. For the Gulf Coast up through New England, unseasonably cold, or “shivery,” conditions are expected.
Snow, and lots of it, is also forecast for the nation’s midsection, parts of New England, and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. "The Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley may be the only area spared the extreme cold," reveals Sandi Duncan, Philom., Managing Editor, "but this is not to say this area won’t be without its cold spells and significant snowfalls."
November in the NorthEast
1st-3rd. Clearing, colder. 4th-7th. Unsettled. 8th-11th. Pleasant. 12th-15th. Major East Coast storm! Heavy showers, with a few thunderstorms. Gale-force winds Mid-Atlantic Coast. Snow possible New England. 16th-19th. Windy, cold. 20th-23rd. Unsettled, with some wet snow or rain. Bundle up and bring an umbrella if you’re attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. 24th-27th. Fair, then very unsettled, with squalls. 28th-30th. Clearing, colder.
November in California
1st-3rd. Chilly. 4th-7th. Mixed clouds and sun, with a few showers possible. 8th-11th. Fair, becoming stormy, with rain and (over the Sierra Nevadas) snow possible. 12th-15th. Unsettled. Light snow on southern plateaus. 16th-19th. Mostly fair. 20th-23rd. Fair. 24th-27th. Very unsettled, then slowly clearing. 28th-30th. Turning much colder.
2006, November 01
A Mac Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of my first Mac, a Classic.
In October 1991, I was assigned an essay for a bird study class at the University of Washington in Seattle. My daughter, who had been to college recently and knew about current trends on campus, asked me how I was going to write it. I told her, the way I always have, pen and paper then type it out.
She said, No, no. Lets go down to the computer lab and I will show you how to use the Mac.
Now, I had used a few computers before, at work, without feeling anything about them. But the minute I touched that Mac keyboard, I knew I had to have one. So on November 1, 1991, I walked out of the computer store in Ballard (Seattle) with a printer and a new Mac Classic. It had a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM (the maximum).
I did the paper, then went on to bigger and better things. I bought a modem and was able to hook into the University network, took free classes in Pine, the Unix mail program developed at the UW. By January I was on Compuserve and by June I was a member of the Berkeley Mac Users Group. I was learning about shareware, operating systems, and a lot about Microsoft Word 4, probably the best version they made. This meant learning about fonts, style sheets, layouts.
I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and start thinking about what I was working on and of course I had to get up and get going. Sleep went by the wayside for a long time.
Besides Word 4, I was learning Quicken, a small page layout program from Aldus (remember them?), Music Prose from Coda, FileMaker, the Mac operating system and odds and ends of shareware. All of this on a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM. It was amazing what that little computer could do.
I loved that little Mac, and how it changed my life. For the first time, I felt I was part of a community. Neither my family of origin or being married had ever given me that same sense of connection.
Here is a great little picture of the Classic with OS X running - sure, sure. Wouldn't that have been something?
2006, October 28
Bach's Organ Music by C. Herrick
Herrick with J.S. Bach's organ music
The Complete Organ Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
Christopher Herrick, Organ
Recorded 1975 to 1992, Metzler organs, Switzerland
Hyperion CDS44121/36 [16 CDs]
Christopher Herrick does a superlative job of presenting these difficult and complex works. His performance often serves as my reference for this music.
