Cogs can think.

I got myself a new phone today! I extended my contract with two years, and hence the phone I wanted was free. It’s a Samsung SGH-D500, and it has all the things I missed on my already superb Sharp TM-100.

Cool stuff. I’m keeping up my don’t-keep-phone-longer-than-one-year-rule.

I was just reading this reply to a comment of Eugenia on the worst technology website on the web, Slashdot. Usually I avoid /. like the plague– its UI sucks, their commenting engine is unusable and extremely confusing, and they still use the old foot logo for GNOME stories. But anyway.

This guy says:

Since the Linux community has clearly not provided a system that matches your needs, I will again ask that you do not attempt to interfere in its development by advocating changes that could end up dumping binary drivers on us. We do not want them. We do not want what they will bring to our system.

He’ll be happy to know that the community is by far no longer driving the direction of the Linux kernel. He, and his geek friends, have absolutely no influence whatsoever as to what gets into the vanilla kernel and what doesn’t. Only the people on the engineering team do– I don’t see how that’s much different from how things go at Apple’s or Microsoft’s.

The people with the most influence over the kernel are the people that work at the big boys– Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and maybe Sun too. We, as users, have ZERO influence over Linux’ direction.

I have a total of 17071 email messsages stored on my Mac (excl. sent mails, and excl. spam– with sent mails it’s 17517, and my spam is automatically sorted and deleted). The oldest one is almost exactly one year old (it’s a Mandrake release announcement for MDK 10.1 for x86-64 from 10th Novemeber 2004). Now, how do I manage all those emails? Well, as you can see in the shot– the hard way.

I have this jungle of filters that sends each mail in the correct direcotory (30 in total). It is the thing I hate the most about re-installing ie. Linux: I need to manually re-do all the configuration. I haven’t found a way to export *all* the settings of Evolution and Kmail and import them when I’m done.

And that sucks ass.

Update:The French government has addmitted it has done too little in the past few decades to fight the poverty and racism in the poor suburbs. Maybe, now that the French government has seen the light, they can finally work on solving it. More updates related to this: this night, riots also broke out in Brussels and Berlin– it is not clear if those riots have connections with the riots in France. Remember that Berlin, in the heart of the DDR, is also very vulnerable to riots, since 15 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the situation of many people inside the DDR hasn’t improved at all; worse yet, it has degraded for many. The unemployment rate in the DDR is a lot higher than in the BDR. And I know what I’m talking about; I have many East-German friends and I go there almost every year.

—

Eugenia, be careful with what you say. Apparently, the news in the United States is again biased and it refuses to tell you the whole picture. It is much more complicated than a mere riot.

The rioters are mostly people who have parents or grandparents coming out of the French colonies (ie. Algeria), Africa, Eastern Europe, but also Portugal and Italy. These people are very well integrated into the French society, they do not feel ie. Algerian; they feel French, speak French, and want to be seen as French. Yet, the government does not see them as French.

These people have no jobs. They haven’t been having jobs for ages because the French government has done nothing to promote the acceptance of people with a foreign background in the job marketplace. Unemployment rate among Frenchmen between 18 and 25 is 50%, and for people with a foreign background as a whole it’s 23%, while the average unemployment rate in France is ‘only’ 11%.

They live in poor neighbourhoods, from which they cannot escape due to a lack of money. They have seen their older brothers finish school, and still they don’t have jobs. Also, you assume, probably influenced by the lack of decent media in the US, that these are all dropouts– they aren’t. They mostly have finished school, but are refused jobs because they have a foreign name or whatever. And as I said, the French government has done noting to speed up the acceptance of these people (other as in ie. my country where this process has been much more successful).

The rioters are attacking company buildings in their neighbourhoods from companies who are getting money from the gvt. to operate in these neighbourhoods- yet they do not use this money to employ people from that nieghbourhood ORE to improve the neighbourood. They are NOT randomly setting fires on random buildings.

The French government and police are fueling these riots with excessive violence and display of power. Instead of acknowledging the *huge* social problems that underly these riots, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French secretary of domestic affairs, entitled these people as ‘racaille’ (ask JBQ what it means, he is French, right?), and then he sends even more policemen at these people– and even suggested that al Quaida was behind the riots. Why does Sarkozy do that? Well– Sarkozy wants to become president of France. And, anti-foreign sentiments are huge in France, especially in the countryside. So, Sarkozy turned this into a matter of religion/race while trying to use brute force to suppress something (the social problems which lasted for decades) that you cannot supres with force, in order to gain more votes from anti-foreign sentiments. Populism at its worst. All that of course only fuels the whole thing, as this is not a riot for the sake of a riot; it’s a riot because these people have *no future*.

For you, from the comfort of a wealthy and sunny suburb in the Valley, it’s easy to entitle these people as racaille, but that is simply the path of least resistance. The bomb that has exploded in France was just a ticking timebomb; it wasn’t a matter of if, but when it would explode. And the fact that two Frenchmen with a foreign background got electrocuted in a minor power station, is just the thing that made the bomb explode; it wasn’t the thing that made the bomb.

The danger now lies in the fact that even though the situation is less severe in other European countries (like my own), it can still spread out among the members of the EU.

—

Now, Sarkozy could send in the army, as you suggest. But I can guarantee you– it will lead to civil war. Be careful with what you say, Eugenia, the world isn’t black and white. You live in the US now, the media there aren’t giving you the whole picture. Read French, German, Dutch, Spanish and British media to get the whole picture. CNN won’t give you that.

—

The real solution lies in other matters. Let the subway and public transport go to the poor neighbourhoods too; not only to the wealthy parts of town. Introduce anonymous job applying, so that companies will not turn down people merely because they have a non-French name. State laws like we Dutch have where companies which employ these people get tax cuts and such; this has proven to work very effectively. This is a social problem, and must be dealt with as such.

Now, I’m not quite happy with KDE and GNOME, or Linux DEs in particular. They are one big collection of loose ends, rough edges and sharp corners. They don’t feel coherent.

Just a few moments ago, I encountered the prime example of why DEs suck on Linux (this video was shot in KDE, but it applies to any other DE; it’s just that I’m in a KDE period right now).

WATCH THIS VIDEO

Why is this a prime example? Well, KDE did not give me *any* feedback as to why I couldn’t enter the advanced permissions dialog. I fcuking hate that. Of course I could run Konqi from the terminal and watch the output as I click, or enter debug-land, and then file a bug report; but it’s simply not worth the trouble– if I were to list every loose end, every rough edge, every sharp corner, I wouldn’t have a life left to live.

Oh and to you fcukers saying I’m not allowed to complain because it’s free software– FCUK YOU. If people are allowed to bitch and moan like whores about my so-called GNOME/Windows/OSX/whatever bias, then sure in HELL I am allowed to complain about this when I want to.

PS: the video was shot using my new 5.0 mp, 3x optical zoom, SD-based Pentax Optio 50 digital camera I just bought today for €199,-.

Yesterday eve, after work, my parents passed on an at first sight insignificant message. “A package came for you, honey, I think it’s a CD or something.” Obviously I immediately knew what this was about. I started making indeterminable sounds of joy, and tore the white envelope off of the CD. Inside it was exactly that which I expected to be inside: Fiona Apple’s new album, “Extraordinary Machine”.

An album that took 6 years to reach me. I’ve never waited that long for an album.

I ordered the special DualDisc version, since I’m a sucker for limited editions. I ran up the stairs, mumbled some words that could be understood as a greeting, and threw the CD in my iBook (my iBook happened to be connected to my iTrigue speaker set). Of course, I completely misunderstood the method of determining which side was the plain audio side, so my damned-in-damnation iBook started playing the DVD side. After feeling really stupid for a moment, I flipped over the disc (not surprisingly, I took a short but firm look at my stack of 180 LPs), and iTunes popped up and started playing the album.

And that was when all the fun started.

I was really afraid as to how much of her style had changed. Six years is a very long time, and inside the musical part of my brain (say, 90% of my neocortex) was this nagging fear of Fiona losing her sharp and rough edges. Would that fear be justified?

No. Not at all. Really. NO.

Miss. Apple’s 3rd album kicks of with Extraordinary Machine, the track that lend the album’s title. It was a moment of instant recognition, but, revelation at the same time. I immediately knew– no, I felt, I was listening to Fiona. On the other hand it was a revelation because it didn’t feel old. It felt all fresh and new, without losing touch with her past music. Revolution? No. Evolution? No. I’d say an evolutionary revolution. Or Revolutionary evolution. The chorus:

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine

The music of the song is typically a fruit of the combination between Apple and producer Jon Brion. The song brings back the awesome memories of Fiona’s 2nd album, “When the pawn…” (the actual name is quite a bit longer, it’s the longest album title ever). A style that is out-of-this-world, a style that creates mental excursions to “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” (the real one, not the Disney version). Just– great.

The 2nd song, Get Him Back, is a song that shows off the lyrical greatness that is Fiona Apple. The constructions of the lyrics vaguely remind me of her lyrical masterpiece, Never Is A Promise, from her 1st album (”Tidal”). In the song she tells about the men that disappointed her, but at the last verse, she sings:

But the last one I had who was getting my hopes up
I might’ve been a little fast to dismiss
I think he let me down, when he didn’t disappoint me
He didn’t always guess right, but he usually got my gist

Just such a lyrically odd construction that only Fiona Apple can write and sing. The music of this song, and the one that follows, is ‘fuller’ than what one comes to expect from Fiona. On the previous albums, she didn’t use the entire audio spectrum, but in these two songs, she does. It took me a short while to get used to, but I like it.

The next song worth a quote is “Better Version Of Me”. Musically, this song is again typically Apple. The song is sung at a fast pace, something she’s really good at. In the song it becomes clear that she’s not happy with who she is– at that moment, I guess.

I’m a frightened, fickle person;
Fighting, crying, kicking, cursing
What can I do

[…]

Can’t take a good day
Without a bad one

[…]

I got a plan; a demand, and it just began
And if you’re right, you’ll agree

Here’s coming a better version of me
Here it comes, a better version of me

The 5th song, “Tymps (The Sick In The Hrad Song)” is an oddball, instead of ‘fighting, crying, kicking, cursing’, she’s wondering about a certain guy she kissed (trust me, the song doesn’t sound as girly as it does when I explain it), and she’s wondering why she kissed so hard; she must be either ’sick in the head’ or she ‘just really used to love him’, and she hope ‘that’s it’.

The 6th song deserves a special note. It’s the most intimate song on the album; just Fiona, her voice and the piano; a clear-cut rival to “When The Pawn…”’s Love Ridden. It’s again about love (somehow it never becomes a tiresome subject when Fiona sings about it); and even though the song has a down feeling to it, the nuance is different than Love Ridden. Where that song really was a sad song, Parting Gift isn’t. The nuance is different, as the chorus makes clear:

Oh you silly stupid pastime of mine
You were always good for a rhyme
And from the first to the last time, the signs
Said ’stop’ - but we went on whole-hearted
It ended bad, but I love what we started

There’s actually really a sense of humour in there; ‘It ended bad, but I love what we started’. This song also again shows how good she is on the vocal side.

—

This about it– I haven’t heard the rest of the album good enough to give a proper judgement over it. I’m not gonna pass on judgement on it anyway– it has already become blatantly obvious to me that Fiona Apple remains a vocalist/musician/lyricist from a whole other level than any of her competitors– she doesn’t have any. Some people compared her to Alanis Morissette– but that is a comparison one can impossibly make. Where Alanis is foremost a musician (Alanis’s sense of rythm is unbeatable), Fiona is foremost a personality. Fiona herself is part of her music– there is no other girl in this world that would be able, or would dare to, make Fiona’s music. Alanis, in all her greatness, is rather ‘generic’ compared to Fiona.

With “Extraordinary Machine”, Fiona takes the whole business of singing/songwriting to yet another level. She is at lonely heights, and no one can even come close to her. It is also clear I made a huge mistake a few months back by concluding that James Blunt’s “Back To Bedlam” was the album of the year– Fiona is here and she dethroned James easily. Fiona is back, fighting, crying, kicking, cursing, as the absolute Empress of Music.

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!!! I waited 6 fcuking years for this moment!

Today, I needed to gather data about the layout and markup of two old manuscripts in my university’s library.

This was done in a special, small section of the library– the section called “Oude Stukken”, which best translates into “Old Works”. Now, I submitted my two requests on paper, and the woman went to another room to look for the two manuscripts I wanted to examine (two letters from the nobility in the 1590s). I expected to be given some scanned images of them or something– but then she returned with a folder in her hend, and when she layed out the contents, I saw she had given me the real thing! I was allowed to study two 400 year old letters in real time!

Sick!

I was so scared I might tear them, or whatever other stuff I could do to it to break them. I did my measurments (I measured stuff like margins, line spacing, letter height, etc.), with my iBook sitting next to the two old manuscripts. Kind of an odd sight; 400 year old handwritten letters next to an iBook. Anyway, when I was done, say, a good hour later, the woman took them back, and stored them again.

Those documents are literally invaluable. They are unique, one-of-a-kind and 400 years old. That simply means that those documents have a value which cannot be expressed in Euros.

That makes them the most expensive things I have ever touched.

I stood within 1 metre of the Queen and the Crown Prince today! Awesome!

I was walking from the metro station at the Amstelveense Weg to university, when all of a sudden, at the junction in front of the academic hospital (part of my university), a lot of policemen on motorbikes came out of nowhere, and freed the entire junction. I wasn’t even allowed to cross the road! While I was wondering what was going on, it slowly dawned on me that today was the first day of Vladimir Poetin’s official visit to my country– I then realized it might be OR the Royal Family, OR Poetin passing by. I focused my eyes on the coming limousines, made a step forward onto the road, and starting staring straight into the biggest limo, the one without tainted glass (since I knew Royal limos don’t have tainted glass)…

…and sure enough, I was staring my Queen Beatrix straight into her face! Next to her sat Crown Prince Willem-Alexander! The limo passed me by within less than a metre’s distance!

So uber-cool!