Beautiful morning ...needed to get out and be a part of it ... drove into town before breakfast with engine light on again after getting gas the other day at local Shell station and took a short stroll on Cliff Walk. Strolling means stopping frequently to look down over the edge of the walk at the rocks and waves, peering through the hedges and telling the construction crews working on the "cottages" that they're doing a good job, and maybe even saying "Good Morning" to the few other people you meet along the way.

Yesterday in my reading of "Black Dog" by Stephen Booth, which I finally started two weeks after it arrived, the Chief Inspector asks, "Why is there always a man walking a dog?". This morning the man was Rob B, who I haven't seen since he retired about five years ago. The dogs looked to me to be a pair of Lhasa Apsos but I could be wrong about that. I said the obligatory "Good Morning" and not much more ... it seemed about right ... maybe I'll see him again if I come back sometime before summer to do the whole walk. I especially like the path on the rocks out at the point near the estate where the camels and peacocks used to be.

Is there Blog after death? What happens to all these blogs when their authors die? I’ll bet you hadn’t thought about that while you were banging out all those annoying observations about the Red Sox or wireless weasels.

If you wanted, blogs could be thought of as flowers ... each tended by a particular gardener ... each doomed when that gardener is gone.

Feeling my pain at this loss, my lover suggested in a moment of lucidity during an attack of faux hysteria that a "program could be written". Maybe ... maybe it could. In some ways Google and other automatic news extractors already do this ... but none come close to duplicating the perverseness that human intelligence brings to blogging ... what algorithm from what lab in Stanford would dare string together Rich Thompson, HomeStar Runner and fuel cell powered submarines ... these were all deliberate and conscious choices ... and these choices mean something.

Unless you make provisions to continue to pay for server space I expect your efforts will be gone shortly after you are. Even if you made the proper technical arrangements, the lack of activity in your blog would result in a dated archive of little interest to search robots, never mind humans. You could, of course turn your blog over to another in your will ... well, you could ... but humans, being what they are (see note characterizing them as perverse above), it would soon not be your blog at all.

I’m thinking there is an opportunity here ... a "program could be written" .... and it could start with existing news extractors. The basic engine would be tweaked and conditioned by your blogging history, and perhaps a personality test as well as other factors that clever people who know this sort of thing decide would help ... and it would then continue posting items as you might select and write them ... periodically there would be something about soft abstract images and a poet in my blog. This initiative, which might be called BIP, or Blog In Peace, could be set up quite affordably to go on forever as we can expect the cost of memory and computing power will approach zero in the relatively near future . We do expect that, don’t we?

That was easy ... but it’s just the short term solution ... how do we handle this for Deep Time?

Ok, I've changed my mind. The Canon PowerShot A80 could be the one .... it's currently the new leading contender in my "let's get digital" camera search ... how could you not love that flippy screen? I've given up on the older (and less expensive) A70 ... just didn't want to deal with E18 lock-up that many users mentioned ... and I was put off a little by the "soft" focus discussion ... not that focus is really much of an issue for images I've recently produced but I can see a future need for some crisp work. Seems I should also be thinking about buying a 128 MB memory card, 2 sets of rechargable Ni-Mh batteries, a "fast" charger and a camera pouch if I want a "real" camera ... this, combined with the cost for the camera brings the total to something like $400 ... more than I wanted to spend so I'm still looking ... and still having fun playing with my Walmart/Sakar toy.

Somewhat cool this morning but I was up and out early ... off to Sachuest Point for a walk. I'm still recovering from all the cutting they've done during recent rennovations ... I'm sure it was done for all the right reasons .... and I hate the stone dust on some of the walks ...was much more fun stubbing my toes, twisting my ankles and wading through mud puddles ... but still one of my favorite spots.

No, I'm not really birdwatching ... not this trip ... am just walking and sort of free associating through a variety of different ideas ... the sort of ideas you get when a chill wind is blowing in from the ocean and the scrubby shrubs and ravaged meadows that edge the trails are still very winter brown.

I don't want you coming here birding, fishing or anything else ... especially jogging ... I'd just as soon have the whole 220 acres or so to myself ... maybe you could stay home and just do a virtual tour .

This morning when the woman at Starbucks suggested "Sumatra" I thought immediately of the "giant rat" ... the Sherlock Holmes story "for which the world is not yet prepared ". Once the tainted blend hit my bloodstream I knew what I had to do ... why not some quick research ... maybe the "rat" had appeared. It took only a few minutes of googling to learn that this was indeed the case ... the "rat" had surfaced ... in fact, variations on the "rat" were pretty much everywhere.

"The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" by Arthur Conan Doyle is where it started. Doyle writes there: "Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. "It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."

The "rat" is now considered #2 in best untold Holmes’ stories but it’s far from untold. The first appearance I could find was one adapted by Edith Meiser for NBC and performed 20 April 1932. This series premiered on 20 October 1930 with The Speckled Band, with an elderly William Gillette, Sherlock in the theater and builder of Gillette Castle, in the starring role briefly with Richard Gordon taking over from 10 November 1930.

From then on it was open season on the "rat". It’s been done by Firesign Theatre, as a Hardy Boys adventure, by Basil Rathbone on the radio, in The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Theodore Riccardi, in a play Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra by Tim Kelly & Jack Sharkey at the Charleston Alley Theater, in The Giant Rat of Sumatra : The Baker Street Mysteries (#2) by Jake Thoene and most recently in Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra by Alan Vanneman.

Had enough? Perhaps, if I were to get Sherlock Issue #33, the article "Giant Rats" by Toby Earnshaw would provide a definitive list of appearances. Well, if I needed to know more, I could do that but I’m thinking I’m "ratted" out for now. May be time for a second cup of coffee. May be time to get refocused. Or have a shot of Bushmill's.

Reader's Digest announces America's Best. Really. Would the folk's at RD lie about something like this? Who actually works for Reader's Digest? Anyway ...why bother looking anywhere else for anything when it's all here ... everything from the best public bathroom (the third-floor ladies room of the Grand Casino Biloxi in Mississippi) to the best young composers (Rainbow Body, from the Atlanta Symphony with works by Chris Theofanidis and Jennifer Higdon) to the best charity innovations (Charity Navigator rates nonprofits on efficiency and growth. Guidestar displays the forms charities file with the IRS). Marc Cocchiola from Dana Farber's recently brought Charity Navigator to my attention ... it's an excellent tool (I've added it is a link on the right) ... and I love Rainbow Body ... RD may have done this right. You decide.
Read more of the best ...

Emily (not Dickinson) is available at something called Randompixel from Kevin Fox who writes "It started in the Fall of 1998 with six cameras (with names) given to complete strangers. Stickers on the camera instruct the recipient to take a few pictures and pass it along. When the camera is done, it is dropped in the mail, it returns home, and the pictures are posted." I like the concept but take a look at the boring pictures ... decide for yourself ... and ponder the implications. Maybe only dull people have friends they could pass the camera to? Maybe next week's camera will be better? What would "better" be in the context of this exercise? Maybe ... hey ... when I went to post this at Blogger.com I got a chance to sign up for a GMail account!

Digital cameras? Really? Who thought this concept up and how long have these been available? The very unpopular $19 toy built by Sakar and available from Walmart, that I picked up this morning and took for a walk along the beach, could be all I need for my 60 pixel art shots but I'm thinking a Canon A70 might be better long term.

The world's first fuel cell-powered submarine is currently undergoing deep-water trials and will enter service with the German navy in August. It wasn't that long ago when this would have actually been important to me ... no more. But I can just imagine the PowerPoint pixels being devoted to the 212A in DoD even though the HL Hunley is getting a lot more press.
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Here it is ... the Portable Media Center from Microsoft. Recorded music, TV, movies and photos in your hand. 40GB gives you room for 600 hours of audio, 175 hours of video, or 100,000 photos ... WMA and WMV of course. Coming in the second half of 2004. We'll see.
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How did Bob Woodward miss this one when he was researching and writing "Plan of Attack"? What the Washington Post purports to be a photo from an off-shore oil platform commissioning ceremony in 1956 seems just as likely to have been a photo of GW presenting his father with a first draft of a plan to invade Iraq. No? You think I could have this wrong?

If the answer is "6 months and 4 days", what is the question? Give up already? OK, the question would be "How long does it take a 3 lb 5 ounce package containing the Xlib Programming Manual for Version 11 by Adrian Nye to travel economy letter post from Rhode Island to Brisbane and back because Larry has 'left address' to which it was mailed?". Simple right? You were just going to say that. And how about the question if the answer were "$10.50" ?

"Sensiti" at Sensitive Light is hardly just "another fifty something trying to be a photographer" and I suspect he knows it ...

My copy of Black Dog, the first book in the Ben Cooper and Diane Fry crime series written by Stephen Booth arrived this evening via interlibrary loan. I've been waiting for this ... other titles in this complex evolving saga set in the Peak District of Northern England include Dancing with the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue and Blind to the Bones ... I read "Virgins" and "Blood" last week and finished "Bones" earlier today. You might want to try Booth. There are worse ways to spend your time. You could, for example, go to the Celtic's last regular season game ... you might even get seats right behind the C's bench ... really, it could happen.
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HyperSonic Sound seems pretty much the inverse of the "cone of silence" ... or maybe it could be better described as a line-of-sight oneway radio where the recipients don't actually have a radio and probably don't have a clue who's talking to them. Walmart and the Naval Sea Systems Command are looking into this technology from American Technolgy Corporation.
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You may not believe this, but by adjusting for wind resistance, men have no consideration for others. This cartoon is the inevitable result of that drop in wind resistance allowing Macromedia Flash to get into the wrong hands. I wonder if William Hung covers "Badgers" on his CD?

"We love you, Sasha" ... the continual cries from the extensive Gen-J component of the crowd at the Providence Civic Center were a prelude to a Marshalls World Skating Challenge performance last night by the ice princess which Sasha Cohen, and more importantly the judges, felt was one of her best of the year. Meanwhile Michelle Kwan seemed to still be jinxed by her difficulties with the clock and finished apruptly with a generous third behind world champion Shizuka Arakawa. In the men's program ... basically the warmup act ... Evgeni Plushenko, my second favorite Russian after Irina Slutskaya, beat Brian Joubert and Johnny Weir. And Boston won in Schilling's Sox debut.
Read more about the competition ... and about Sasha ...

Archos AV or RCA Lyra? You'd think that after only barely 48 hours with a DVD player I might be happy with watching some DVDs but I'm already thinking, hmmmmmm, wouldn't it be even better to have a digital MPEG-4 video player & recorder which can store 100s of movies for viewing on a tiny color LCD screen anywhere, anytime like those in the Archos AV series or like the RCA Lyra 2780. I have to wonder when Apple's player will appear and, more importantly, who's sitting on a monster distribution plan for movies ... Apple again, Amazon, Blockbuster, or maybe a "see movies" coffee shop from Starbucks?

Rich Thompson makes the Royals as the 14th and final position player. This is great news for those of us who have been following Rich since seeing him in Cotuit on the Cape some four or five years ago.
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But who needs a DVD player when there's HomeStar Runner and StrongBad . A look at the welcome and maybe this "Special Edition" commentary on one of the many 'toons should be enough to hook you.
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DVDs ... I'm thinking they might just catch on. I wasn't going to buy a player until I could get one for less than $19.00 but when Sears offered this Koss KD305(A) for only $32 (sale ends today) I couldn't resist ...with sales tax and then $10 off for signing up for a Sears card the little jewel ended up being only $24.64 . Now where do I get DVDs for less than a buck each?
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A List Apart is absolutely required reading if you are writing web page code. I'm thinking you use Bloglines and subscribe to their feed ... I do.
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Maybe, maybe, maybe ... Gmail from Google will have 1000 megabytes of free storage, search capability and no banners ... but it will have "relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest" placed by keyword matching on content of your email. What ? You expected free email with no ads at all ? Wonder what this means for Yahoo with reportedly 52.6 million unique users a month ... Hotmail is next, with 45.4 million users, while AOL has 40.2 million paying users.
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