zen.org Communal Weblog

Hidden on the upper floor of the Blackrock Shopping Centre, it blends so perfectly you might never notice. An innocent kiosk, as plain and ordinary as any other. Not many people seem to use these Internet-on-wheels setups, but still they’re dropped into public shopping areas and airports. There’s an unknown truth in this box in Blackrock. You’d be so distracted by the shoes you need to buy that you wouldn’t think it odd. You just need to look at the Eircom broadband kiosk, look in its heart…

Across town in the basement of a church…
The team of Dell systems finished their turn. It was time.

“Hi, my name is Eircom.” Take a deep breath, he thought. He continued, his gaze looking down at the tiles on the floor. “And I’m a free Linux user.”

Many voices responded with compassion: “Hi, Eircom.” He looked up and glanced over at the Unison.ie Web server, who offered a kind smile.

Nervously, he gulped some coffee from his paper cup and began with barely a whisper. “This is the first time I’ve come to a Windows Anonymous meeting…”

Taking the Ecological Footprint Quiz, I would need 1.6 Earths if everybody lived like me. The problem is I went back and tried to change things that I though would make it better, but I only got more Earths. Maybe it just pops out a random number.

This morning driving to work, it was slow going on Princeton Pike. Then I saw it, on Princeton Battlefield State Park, the white ground hog! I was just for a few seconds, but I would not stop. Maybe tomorrow, when I’m not car pooling with my wife, I’ll visit and try to catch a photo of the elusive, sacred, animal. Hay, people don’t call some Native Americans crazy for thinking white buffalo’s are sacred.

I’ve done a normal Ubuntu upgrade on my Sony Vaio TX1XP laptop to the new Ubuntu “Feisty Fawn” release.  So far it’s going along really well, and in particular I went into System->Preferences->Power Management and made it Suspend when the lid was closed instead of Hibernate.  Worked like a champ with a very very fast wakeup.  One of my most common reasons to boot into W$ndows is gone (the ability to close it and go somewhere else then open it up without waiting a long boot time).

Pictures are so much fun.

Psalm 4:17 And the lord our God said, “Nay, thy sleep shall in the second hour of the first nap reach a full and happy end. Thus with great joy thee shall fill thy good diaper, and we shall all rejoice.”

We brought back a loaf to our local Centra (like the 7-11 in the US) because it just weirded us out. No, it wasn’t moldy or anything. There was just something not quite right about it.

Can you see what’s was wrong in the picture?

About ten days after I made my recent post, our friend Riko van der Grijn died. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer only three months ago. It’s now Sunday night; this past Friday, Elana and I had to go to his funeral. I really hope we won’t have to experience such a thing again for a really, really long time. We’re still trying to come to grips with the reality of it, finding our heads assaulted with all-encompassing memories seemingly out of nowhere.

Intermixed with the speeches from some family and friends, they played some of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and finally concluded with another song, also specifically chosen by Riko for the ceremony. Lou Reed’s Perfect Day guided the curtains closed in front of the casket, and then people got up to leave. We knew only a few of the 100+ people who had turned up.

Riko died much faster than most people expected; the only positive part was the final end to his intense pain and suffering. In that sense, I imagine the choice of song was fitting. ” Oh it’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you,” the song claimed. If I close my eyes now I can see Riko saying exactly that to us, the gleam in his eye reflecting his true strength.

We are more complete as people for having had the opportunity to know him.

I just discovered that I can listen to Howard Stern all the time, even from Ireland. Yay!! Finally Sirius has made it possible to subscribe to listen to their stuff via online streaming without requiring you to buy one of their physical radios.

I started listening to Howard about 18 years ago when he was broadcast in Philadelphia, then when he was airing on KOME in San Jose, California. When we moved to Ireland, I had to give up the habit.

In 2004 Howard moved to Sirius, so it seemed like a step closer—but still, no easy way to listen without paying for the silly radio.

Until now. 🙂

Over the weekend we got to watch a full movie with Patrick for the first time: Star Wars! In the past he hasn’t wanted to see them because at some point he came to the belief that all movies are scary. But someone from his class, I think, convinced him to want to see this.

And, finally, a movie sounded really good in our livingroom!

For a really long time now we’ve been using a Cambridge Soundworks DTT 3500 Digital 5.1 Surround Speaker System to make TV and movies sound better in our livingroom. It worked pretty well, overall, even making the sound from our MythTV PVR system go out through it.

When I had to replace our 8 year-old dead TV, I was hooking up everything and found the Cambridge Soundworks box wasn’t actually usable anymore. The new Samsung LE40R74BD television (absolutely gorgeous) had a single red/white pair of RCA plugs for audio out, and no way to feed sound via the optical or coax inputs needed for the surround sound system. Hmm.

So after a while I finally got a sound receiver to connect everything. The Sony STR-DG700 receiver can do everything. (Continuing a past habit with TVs, cars, and other things, we bought the floor demo model at a discount.) Well, it can do just about everything—the DVD input can only come in via digital coax, not optical. And, the Sony guy is ordering us the proper remote for it because they couldn’t find it anywhere.

I reused the Cambridge speakers for this receiver, since I felt they would work perfectly fine for what we need. The temptation for the expensive Bose speakers was there a little, and then there’s the uber-expensive Bowers & Wilkins speakers available up in Blackrock. But after the TV and then convincing myself to get the receiver, it’d sure be cool to not buy anything else.

The five little black Cambridge speakers did a fine job. The DVD player’s digital coax line went into the receiver and made the sounds of movies jump out at us. It was wonderful, even if there was a missing piece: the biggest part of the speaker set is the subwoofer which gives the happy thundering sounds and dramatic effect. But ours wasn’t working—the receiver has a Pre-Amp Out plug for the subwoofer, which a little reading helped me understand: the subwoofer’s supposed to have its own amp, its own way to take the sound and give it some oomf. Since I was no longer using the DTT3500’s black box of buttons and dials, there was no amp for the subwoofer anymore.

I asked around and looked at some sites and called some shops, but it seems like buying a single subwoofer isn’t a cheap exercise. They were hundreds of Euros, mostly. Not worth it to me for the single device. Natural thought progression tossed my brain back into the Bose-is-so-cool arena. But wait…

Maybe we can make the receiver give its output to the Cambridge box so it could do the work for the subwoofer? Yes!

I discovered that there is one optical output on the Sony receiver: MD/TAPE. I plugged an optical cable into that, and put the other end into the Cambridge box. Plugged its subwoofer into the subwoofer contacts, and played Star Wars.

Oh my. That’ll work for a while. 🙂