Turn that frown upside down.

Yesterday Evie reminded me that I had a crate full of harmonicas in almost every key. I showed her a bit of how to use them — as much as a six-year-old could handle, at least — and then I found my harp holder and decided to strum a little while I played. Ethan eventually came down to see what the ruckus was and seemed pretty delighted. And I have to admit, I think there may not be much that can cheer you up faster than playing guitar and harmonica together when you’ve had a rough week.

Eleya is gone all day at a bellydance hafla (which as far as I can tell means “party where dancers get together and dish about men, textiles, and whichever dancers didn’t show up”), so I have the kids today. The phrase “rue the day” comes to mind. At least I should have a little time around the boy’s nap break to get some work done.

Even a three-year-old can tell.

Brief but heartwarming.

I just wanted to say how nice it is to be able to see friends from 5,000 miles away once in a while. That is all; you may now return to your Various Labours.

Throw your fedora in the ring.

Brian Pepple graciously stepped up, and you should consider doing it too. Do you feel you have more to offer Fedora than just a pretty face and good code/docs/handshaking/pitching/etc.? Want to be involved in thorny decision making and interesting idea volleying? Have a little bit of extra time you hadn’t quite wrung out of your busy schedule? Then consider a self-nomination for the Fedora Project Board.

Daddy’s day in.

Sure, anyone can just sleep in on Fathers Day, but me? I helped my lovely bride out by going through a whirlwind of cleaning this morning. I did get a cute card from Evie that read:

happy Grouchy Father’s Day!
scram!

Following this was a small emblem of Oscar the Grouch in his trashcan. Funny to see this, since my daughter only knows Oscar from some old childhood Sesame Street books of mine. The other side read:

Dear Daddy, It’s your lucky Day!
Here is what you can do:
sleep longer
Tell everyone to be nice to you

Nothing like freedom of choice! Of course I got a nice card from my sweetie as well, with complimentary scrawled drawing on the back by Ethan, entitled “Giant Whale” and looking pretty much exactly like one would imagine, if one’s senses were deranged by a massive amount of hallucinogens.

Yesterday I got a little administrative work done for the Docs Project, including a draft schedule for our release notes. We should be deciding by consensus where to throw our weight for the next round of guide hacking. I’m already planning to give a hand to Jeremy on a “new world order” briefing document. It will hopefully help people who haven’t had time to keep up with the rapidly shifting landscape of package building and submission.

Interestingly, yesterday I got a call from one of my favorite Red Hatters who, through an unfortunate set of circumstances, ended up having a great deal more free time to kill this weekend than expected. I had made a big deal at the last FUDPub that she should drop by for a visit, as my house is not too far off her normal route home, so I invited her to come by and visit for a bit. (Thus the aforementioned cleaning escapades.)

Now I’m just picking up some odds and ends (or rather, avoiding doing that) while waiting for her to arrive, and hoping the kids don’t embarrass us by breaking into the liquor cabinet or running around naked and screaming “WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?!?”. Eleya is making taquitos tonight and prepared some nice chocolate pots for dessert already. Will report details later.

Listening to: Bleu – “Redhead” (At some point I need a plugin to handle posting things like that.)

Defending the indefensible?

Come on, Boing Boing, you guys have crossed the line from silly to tiresome. Watch the long-form video and at about the 1:02 mark or so, you can CLEARLY see the woman pulling out a container and emptying it on the floor, as is stated in the report. You can even see her shake the last drops out. Do you guys seriously think this is the way for a civilized person to act? You can even see, a few seconds later, the TSA officer looking at her and the floor, thinking, “Did she just do what I think she did?”

Yes, we agree already, TSA is up to their eyeballs in policies that are poorly conceived, formulated, and executed. They create a lot of hassle for everyone. And clearly having four or five TSA guys all humped up in the lane supervising “cleanup in exit lane 4″ is way over the top. But dumping water on a slick floor for other people to clean up or slip on — such as the older folks you can clearly see walking down the lane throughout the video — is unconscionable.

And did you not pay attention to the fact that this woman is another badge-toter? Is it not possible that she indeed wanted special treatment simply because of that fact, and not out of being a poor struggling mother? I can definitely assure you from firsthand experience as a Washington DC area native, that sort of thing happens constantly around these parts. I’ve seen police and other law enforcement officers try to skirt safety regulations because they think they shouldn’t have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. Why not try looking into that angle a little?

This woman showed up late to the airport, tried to get special treatment, and when it didn’t work out, she lost her cool. Rather than admit it, she’s playing you guys and much of the other TSA-hating press like a cheap violin. (I don’t love the TSA myself, but give me a break — there’s quite a difference between civil protest and asinine, infantile tantrum-throwing.)

I love your blog, and hate to see it degraded since it carries so many truly wonderful tidbits, so it pains me to have to call bullsh*t. But really, sometimes you guys need to pick better stories (and real victims) to stand behind. I hope your next hot story is a bit more worthy of the coverage.

Leaving the ’70s behind.

Tidbits like this make me really excited about future desktop work like this.

Rice rockets.

Saké.

As part of my saké/soju sojourn, I did a little light readin on ur interwebz about different grades and methodologies regarding saké. Enough, apparently, that I now feel it appropriate to pretentiously use the “é” character in the word saké — hey, at least I’m not saying “é??.”

So it turns out there are only a few American saké makers, and only one American-owned, SakeOne. Frankly I couldn’t care less who owns the place, as long as the output is palatable. The point being, SakeOne has a label called “Momokawa” which is made from the yeast, and in the style, of Momokawa Japan. It’s fairly well-respected and, I found out, also distributed via Total Wine as “Mura Mura.”

Today I picked up a variety of the Mura Mura varieties of saké and a bottle of the somewhat less prestigious “everyday” Gekkeikan. (I imagine this is to saké what Sam Adams is to beer — decent but still, essentially, mass produced.) I’m sipping a little of the nigori genshu “Mountain” label — which is really Momokawa Pearl — a cloudy, unfiltered variety which is quite sweet and tropical-tasting. I’m having it a bit below room temperature, which I think lets the flavor out exceptionally well. (I found out that premium saké is not warmed, but rather served at room temperature or below, while more run-of-the-mill varieties like Gekkeikan are perfectly enjoyable warm.) I have a feeling Mura Mura Mountain would go great with a curry dish or Thai food. I also picked up some of the dryer “Canyon” and “River” to try later.

I swear that this has nothing to do with kōji other than in a purely literal fashion. However, the timing is fairly appropriate, don’t you think?

DVD round-up.

Last night Eleya and I watched Robert DeNiro’s latest directorial outing, The Good Shepherd. Eric Roth has turned in a simply superb screenplay, with all the crackle of a good thriller, but without the added dash of cliché, plodding dialogue, or overwrought metaphor. And DeNiro is definitely showing signs of becoming a truly great director — deft, unpretentious, and performance-enhancing camera work show that he is following in the footsteps of masters like John Ford and Clint Eastwood. (Working with virtuoso cinematographer and frequent Oliver Stone collaborator Robert Richardson didn’t hurt, either.) I appreciated that the film didn’t belabor a particular political point of view, but rather showed the personal cost of the secrets borne by people whose lives are steeped in intelligence service work. At about 2:45 it’s a bit long for an evening’s viewing when you don’t get to sit down with your sweetie until after 9:00, but well worth the time.

Some other (un)mentionables from our recent month of Netflix rentals:

• The Fountain — We actually bought this and I had forgotten it was in our queue until it turned up the day after Eleya came home with the DVD. Since our copy was still in its wrapper, I figured we could preview it on Netflix and return the bought copy if we didn’t think it was worth owning. Turns out it would have been worth buying two copies — this was an amazing tale, thrice told, about the price of trying to make true love last forever, an intelligent tearjerker by enfant terrible Darren Aronofsky. Highly recommended.
• Hair — This may be a Milos Forman film, and I generally like his work, but this was, hands-down, the worst screen musical I’ve ever seen. In fact, I think it’s just as easily the worst musical ever, in any medium. Virtually tuneless musical numbers, asinine lyrics, and ham-handed attempts at issue politics made this virtually unwatchable. My wife’s summation of the last 20 mintues was the only melodious aspect of this horrible celluloid mistake. Avoid at all costs.
• Jules et Jim — I thought this was quite excellent; admittedly I’m not much of an aficionado of the French New Wave, but it’s easy to see why this is one of François Truffaut’s most popular films. Filled with whimsy and pathos in equal parts, it’s worth seeing if only for sheer visual audacity. With freeze frames, inventive aperture use, and other tricks later appropriated by Hollywood, Truffaut makes magic out of moments that would be simply a good yarn in lesser hands. Truffaut once said (I’m paraphrasing wildly) that every camera movement is a judgment pronounced on the characters, and you can definitely see that ethic at work in this movie. On the other hand, my wife said, “Feel free to watch future French films by yourself.” So maybe it’s not for everyone. Recommended.

Projects.

I started working on a little PyGTK project a while back to teach myself some more modern programming skills, and the results aren’t too bad, if a little simplistic to be considered alongside the luminaries working in the Fedora community. It’s just a small notification-area applet to allow you to twitter from your GNOME desktop, nothing to shout or call home about. Fortunately I ignored the outside world (as far as this mini-project goes) while working on it, because in the months since I started several other, probably much better, works have popped up. Someone’s done a full implementation of the Twitter API in Python, and there’s at least one GUI client available already too — although that one is in Mono, to which I say, “blecch.” Anyhow, if I ever get this thing to a state where I’m not embarrassed by it, say 2018, I might try to get it into the FPC.

The long, delirious burning blue.

Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-117) is well underway after a typically terrific liftoff. I don’t care how many times they’ve done it — I’m constantly amazed by the folks at NASA and these inspiring missions. Every single one rests on the skills and courage of a crew of fearless adventurers. They’re a constant inspiration and I wish them godspeed.

If it’s too loud, you’re too old.

Yesterday I turned 37 and got a bunch of swell gifts, including a previously-mentioned gift certificate from friends, with which I bought some good music. My wife and kids got me some additional great stuff, including the “new” Elliott Smith album, the latest by The Shins, and a collection of music by the Beach Boys, by whom I only have the much-loved Pet Sounds. They also got me a couple of great concerts on DVD. (Yes, I do live for music.)

My office had its annual picnic today, so I basically got a two-fer. We had some great food, with Yours Truly serving a good portion of grill duty (and an extra helping of my wife’s awesome baked masterpieces). The high-70′s (F) weather is apparently going to finally yield to the onrushing freight train of summer later this week, so some friends and I took full advantage up the sun, minus the heatstroke, by renting a couple of canoes to paddle out on the lake. We saw an assortment of young fawns, blue herons, and other beautiful wildlife gathered among the coves as we coasted along the perimeter of the lake, before finally heading back to shore.

We cooled off after the picnic by heading to a local pub (or what passes for one in the States) for a couple pints, then said our goodbyes. The subjects of sake and soju had come up over our beers (you’d think we’d get enough), so I stopped by the local grocer’s and to my delight found a couple different kinds of sake. So I’ve been sipping some warm while I catch up on email and get dinner ready for the family.

I think I like the idea of the extended birthday.