Hamm On Wry

I find it amazingly disturbing that we are giving up our fundamental right to question (free registration required), which is even more fundamental than our right to freedom of speech, in an any form of artistic expression. I understand that having someone denegrate your icons is hard to deal with, however letting someone condone violence for it only makes it easier to denegrate your icons again.

I don’t personally have anything against the muslim faith or any islamic people, in general or specifically. Every person I’ve met who claims that faith has been wholly great, but lets be quite clear, I have not met Osama. I believe that Osama should be brought to trial and if convicted should face justice. What that would be is beyond me, and depending on who you listen to, it’s everything from being raised as a Saint (by people who believe he did what was right, realize) to those who think his entire extended family should be wiped out as punishment for his crime.

Creative punishment is not something I want to get into, but I’m sure that if pressed there isn’t a one of us that couldn’t come up with some unique and inspired bit of twisted torture to exact our own revenge. I just don’t know that I want to know what’s lurking in everyone else’s head. My own are bad enough sometimes, and that’s just when I’m writing fiction.

My bigger concern is the path we are on, as a species, as a planet. We have once again come to the cross-roads where the health of the people is tested against the health of the institutions created by and for the people. When the institutions are unhealthy, fanatics and extremists start to weild power because their rhetoric and passionate insanity seem reasonable to the scared and desperate of the world.

In the west we have the posturing and evangelizing power of the mega-church, a very American product if ever there was one. “Super-size my faith!” is all the rage in Houston, as you can see any time you drive down the 16-lane wide Highway 59. After witnessing the people who go to mega-churches fight, swear, honk and complain while trying to get through the amazing traffic when church lets out, you find that ‘love thy neighbor’ is apparently not applicable when thy neighbor is in your way.

In the middle-east we have the other end of the spectrum with the voices of carnage and destruction not even having a home much less a place of worship, yet still spouting out their beliefs and driving their followers to darker and less-enlightened places. You have people in desperate situations, on all sides, who are scared, who are worried for their friends and family, and who feel that all is lost if they don’t do something, and these convincing fanatics give the desperate masses something to do.

Of course, so did Hitler.

Having pointed that out, do you see the path we’re on?

Originally, I was writing about Robinson’s Rant and Jeff’s Linked Support. After really looking at the software and thinking rather than reacting I’ve stumbled on a new way to make fire. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t know if he prefers “D. Keith” or “D.” or “Keith” or “Mayo” so I’m playing safe with his last name. I’ve corresponded with Jeff and know that he prefers words we don’t use in polite society, so we stick with “Jeff.”)

These two gurus are really tops in design aesthetics, full-on high-flyers, while I admittedly rank somewhere between flotsam and, uh, well, rank. They are covering the aesthetic bugs, tho, and that’s only half the equation.

I’ve only spent the day with iTunes 7, but I have found a few bugs that are both functional and aesthetic in nature. One is a remix album that is showing up as 16 albums instead of one in the flip view, and several others albums divided into 3 or 4 albums, some with artwork and some without, where the only change is the artist listing. In fact, it’s still showing the correct track number for these supposedly separate albums. It’s dividing the album up because of something other than the artist info, even tho that’s where the album breaks are happening. And it’s breaking them up regardless of the sort column that’s active, and it’s keeping the track numbers. So it’s very weird, check out the pic by clicking to get a larger version. That’s fairly minor bug and will probably go away in a month or two with a .1 update. I’m not pressed about it, yet, it’s just a bug that should be fixed.

I say ‘yet’ because there isn’t any guarantee they will fix this, as iTunes 7 still doesn’t fix one of the biggest complaints that I have about iTunes. Since the first iPod was released this has bothered me because,

1. I got the iPod, and
2. this bug is a mental disconnect between ‘iPod + iTunes’.

Now, you’d think, and rightfully so, that the computer hosting iTunes would be the more powerful machine. It stands to reason that the more complex functions would be reserved for iTunes and a lesser set of functions would be carried over to the iPod. iTunes can access the store, purchase and download files, upload them to iPods, etc., while the iPod can’t, so this all follows pretty logically. The iPod can do something that iTunes can’t, aside from fit in your pocket. Any iPod can play an album right from the get-go because you can refine your music source list via a sub-set that included ‘artist’ ‘album’ etc. iPods have been able to do this since the beginning, but iTunes can’t unless you

1. create a playlist with the entire album, which could be multiple cds, with all tracks in the correct order, or
2. access the album in the library by using the search function or just sorting based on album and starting with the first track

The first option duplicates a view that is already in place in the iPod, while the second means that you can have the dramatic and climactic-yet-soothing end of an opera be destroyed by the first track of Maroon 5’s latest album, neither of which is ideal. Yes, you can reduce the list in the library by searching, but that is also an inelegant option when the data and answer are right in front of you - adjust the library the same way you do in iPhoto, give me a sub-set defined by albums only. Just like my iPod.

You have no idea how much I hate having to create playlists so that I could listen to an entire opera while at my computer when my iPod did this on it’s own via a menu choice inside the source list. That sort of user-interaction disconnect is hateful, and with the album view I thought it was finally fixed. Is it? Nope. And that’s just sad. Especially because the gapless playback was certainly a much harder fix.

It would seem to me a simple step to mirror the twisty-filtered library of iPhoto, using the subsets already defined by the iPod’s source dividers instead of the years like in iPhoto. Why hasn’t this been done? It’s especially annoying now that the iTunes library has ‘Album View’ as a switch, but you can’t have it just play one album and not continue to the next. Trust me, there is nothing more jarring than having Madonna followed by Vivaldi’s Mass in G, or Avril Lavigne tacked onto the end of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

For the most part I like the new aesthetics, although I don’t know about the color of the scroll bars. I don’t particularly like the candy-aqua blue scrollbars of Mail and Safari and iPhoto. At least these new scroll bars in iTunes look like they could belong to the grey-semi-metallic look, while Safari and iPhoto appear schizoid to me in their heavy-metal-meets-candyland aesthetics, while Mail’s aesthetic is no more than a click away from having to don the pin-stripes of 10.1 again. However, all of them work, and I understand the functions each piece does.

I’ve said it before, design incorporates aesthetics and functionality, and they are balanced based on the needs of the user. I find the public experimentation with new user-interface elements a bit odd, but not disturbing like Robinson and Jeff do. I find the lack of a simple iTunes source-list twisty, which is effectively what the iPod has had since it’s inception, to be poor design - both aesthetics and functionality suffer in this case. Again, think of Madge on Vivaldi, and then tell me if the color of the scrollbars is all you’re worried about - and of course, FLAME ON!

I don’t really know what to write about this, but here goes. Yesterday at around 3:15 pm my grandpa Hal passed away. While I’m saddened that he’s gone, and he will be missed, I’m glad that he’s no longer in pain. Cancer seems to grab many in my family, but his seemed particularly horrible, especially because two months ago he was still picking up wings to rivet to his airplane.

I have to point out that he had an amazing life. He had many talents, was an amazing engineer, convinced the tiny town of Helena, Montana to build a new and better airport terminal so that 737s could land, created a scholarship fund for the Technical College in Helena to help those in need get an education, which he knew was the key to a better life. He was romantic enough to buy my gramma Jane a convertible Mustang, a green 1968 dream machine, so she could drive it once, with the top down, in the sun, before cancer took her away. He remarried to Zola, and the two of them were the cutest couple at the airport, always putting some magnificent flying machine together, chasing the dream of the next flight. Zola, although his second wife, was never second best, and she treated him like a king. He was 80 years old. He had at least another 80 years to live. Damn cancer.

My impression was that he wasn’t around when I was a kid, but we lived in Denver, and Hal and Jane were in Helena, so it’s not like they were down the road and skipped visiting. I really remember seeing him and Jane for the holidays to put out the candles-in-sacks all over their neighborhood. Those are great memories, but I’m still confused to the origins of the ‘Tom & Jerry’ drink we had. But impressions can have no real bearing on reality and while I don’t remember seeing Hal and Jane much until after I turned seven, I’m sure I probably did.

Jane died when I was eight, the same year, just a few months before grandma Sporty, my mom’s mom. I remember them both, although the memories are becoming more and more just impressions. Sporty was bright, wild, amazing, and lively, and Jane was calm, graceful, elegant and generous. But I don’t really remember Hal from then.

I remember when he and Zola got married, first because the wedding was in Vegas, second because I sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” for them. A more fitting song I can’t imagine, as over the next 20 years the two of them would travel the world, visiting Russia, Australia, and heaven only knows where else. They spent summers in Helena, avoiding the crushing summer heat of their winter home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. They flew together, Zola earned her Instrument Rating, which is a very difficult task, ask any pilot. He couldn’t have been more proud, and while the trips overseas were great for both of them, I know they’d both have just as much fun just flying around in their own planes, too. I can’t imagine what she’s going through, I just hope she knows she’s loved, too.

Hal kinda showed up at various times in my life after that, giving advice, telling me history, and always asking “Hon, when are you going to learn to fly a plane?” I never saw him angry, I’ve never heard him raise his voice but once, and that was when were in Japan and his nerves had frayed - but so had everyone else’s, and even then he wasn’t loud or dangerous, he just was upset, and that was so new and different from his calm, cool, casual-in-a-business-suit-and-tie demeanor that it shocked me. I just never saw it again.

He had a whiskey voice, even though he was a scotch man to the last. Of course, he preferred ice-cream by far. His voice could capture a room without yelling, would cut and twirl words with the faintest echo of his Southern upbringing, and would always include “Hon” when talking to anyone in his family.

One of life’s more inexplicable coincidences happened as my youngest sister Tricia just got final confirmation that she’s pregnant the same day Hal left us. He’ll miss the new great-grandchild, who is bound to be another pilot-in-the-wings, I’m sure. I don’t know that I can do you justice in telling that kid who you are, but I’ll sure try.

I will miss you Grampa. I’ll miss you a lot. Be safe on your journey, and may your soul know peace.