I went ahead and got myself one of the HP MiniNotes that have been so popular on the net.  I will say that my initial impressions are that the keyboard is going to take some getting used to and that the screen is one of the smallest and most difficult to read that I can ever remember seeing.  But the machine is so small that you can take it anywhere.  I plan to put it into a Timbuk2 bag for the time being until I can find a case that makes sense for it.

Okay, this is fairly obscure, but if you take my birthday as a series of digits (MMDDYY) and look for them in the digits of PI you find them starting in the 21,503rd position after the decimal point.

In a moment that is commonplace but still special, my daughter passed her driver's road exam and is a fully qualified member of the driving society.  It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but in our house -- where one of the parents doesn't drive at all -- it's not just about teenage freedom.

Despite an incredible bout of nerves that kept her awake the night before the test, she passed with flying colors.  Her excitement in naturally boundless as mine will be when I see the first insurance bill.  Still, she's a good driver and even though I have second thought about adding one more driver to the environmental mix, I'm pretty happy for her.  The father's role at the Driver's Licensing Center is to not say too many embarrasing things and watch as future truck drivers fail writen exams for their commercial license.  Oh, and pay the Department of Transportation $43 (USD) for a tiny bit of plastic and some ones and zeros in a huge database.

Currently I'm working my way through John Nunn's book entitled "Winning Quickly at Chess."  It is a book that attempts to demonstrate that many people lose at chess early in the game because of some basic flaws in their thinking.  I'm going through the book at the rate of about one game a day and entering them into Chess base so that I can go back and forth through the variations.

It's an interesting self-assignment.  We'll see if it pays off when I go to play over-the-board or online.

Here is a link for Keavy.

I'm just about finished with The Rest is Noise -- Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross.  I'll start by simply recommending it to anyone interested in classical music.  As a cultural narrative, it's a triumph because it puts the fundamental crisis of 20th Century music in nearly purely cultural (rather than musical) terms.  This means that almost anyone can read and enjoy this history without having to have a detailed musical background.

What Ross gets right, it seems to me, is the subtle connection between the end of possibility for the traditional strain of European classical music and the problem of filling the vacuum.  Schoenberg and Stravinsky are the early heroes of the book, but they end up tragic figures: overtaken by the forces they have unleashed.  Ross also draws another connection that I had never thought about: the connection between musical theater and cabaret in the 1920's and the emergence of jazz, bebop, Broadway and rock in the 1950's.  It's interesting how the end of classical music isn't really the "end" but sublimation into other forms.

What reamins is the bombast and nonsense of Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis and the Darmstadt School.  Ross is particularly good at pointing out the sheer craziness of the Darmstadters wihtout stooping to simply heaping abuse on their silliness.

It's interesting that Britten and Shostakovich are taken together after the 1950's and I learned things about Shostakovich that I had never read in any of the biographies.  One wonders what happened to British Music in this period because Ross chooses not to mention Alwyn or Malcolm Arnold as reactions against total modernism.

Still, Ross really delivers and I highly recommend the book.  It is at Amazon right now for about 35% off and that's a good value for a book that is going to give anyone interested in Classical Music in the 20th Century many hours of surprising pleasure and new insights.  Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker and this success makes me want to seek out his reviews and interviews in that magazine.

On Friday of this week -- the 29th of February -- Gaelen and I are on the road to Purdue University to sit in on some engineering classes.  Gaelen has already been accepted there and is sufficiently interested to go ahead and attend a day of classes.  It's something I never did when I was starting out as an undergradualte and, given that Purdue remains one of his favorite schools so far, it makes perfect sense to do.

It's a longish drive -- we'll leave about 4:30 after school gets out and are likely to arrive between 9pm and 10pm.  I'll be interested to see if I can make it through the campus tour given that my back is not cooperating with me lately.

The official -- or, quasi-official!? -- photographer for my brother's retirement ceremony has posted some pictures from the event.  Here is a link to the website that has the pictures.  I found it a little bit slow, but that's okay I suppose.

Sorry to have missed the Internet Governance Forum.  It's a chance for Brazil to experience excessive hot air and public whining.  As the conference drew to a close, the Russian representative, Konstantin Novoderejhkin, called on the United Nations secretary-general to create a working group to develop ''practical steps'' for moving Internet governance ''under the control of the international community.'' 

Why, I wonder?  Have things been going that badly?  Not happy with ICANN, IANA or the IETF?  Then why not show up at those meetings and contribute positively rather than whine from the sidelines?

You won't find out about it on CNN but the World Chess Championship is underway in Mexico City.  The official FIDE page is available here:

Link to MEXICO 2007 World Chess Championship - World Chess Championship 2007

Would it be possible for the West Ham and Sheffield United nonsense to be over?  This is faintly ridiculous actually.  Now players from the team are actually pretending to be Mike Tyson in Iceland:

Link to BBC SPORT | Football | Internationals | N Ireland players brawl on plane

Today I'm in the Madison office on the lovely Eastside of Madison. Google has been kind enough to provide a little map of where you can find me today. I'm messing around with this because I'm going to be on the road so much in October that you will need a map to find me.

View Larger Map

Sounds crazy, but I'll hardly be in Madison anytime in October.  There's the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, a RIPE meeting in Amsterdam, the ARIN meeting in Albuquerque, a meeting with ETNO in Brussels, a BT confab in Washington DC and another BT meeting in London.  All in all, a schedule that piles on the frequent flyer miles.  I'm learning to pack light (a goal expressed on Leo's Vegoda's blog as well).

I didn't know about it until this morning, but there is a site dedicated to Madison soccer information.

A friend of mine asked me if they ever catch the people who phone in the bomb threats that close down Madison East High School. In fact, I didn't know! But it turns out that they have . . . and, what is even better, the person calling in the prank gets charged with a felony.

Since I play this silly game it was amusing to see a very nice article by the Wisconsin Historical Society on the history of cribbage in Madison.

UW-Whitewater reports that Madison is the fourth most literate city in the United States. This only goes to show that with enough data to select from, you can use statistics to prove anything. Madison is indeed a very "literate" city -- if you take that to mean the relatively high concentration of bookshops, coffee shops and number of cab drivers with post-doctoral experience. Nevertheless, I would have enjoyed this more if the UW-Whitewater people had cooked the numbers so that Albuquerque came in first.

They could have collapsed after the horrible draw against Fulham last week, but West Ham came out with all guns blazing away at Newcastle on Saturday. A wonderful goal by Marlon Harewood showed that the strong striker still has the capability to sting. Not long later Carlton Cole scored on a great corner kick to being the game to 2-0. Newcastle seemed to recover but only threatened when individual ran on to long balls. A horrible but accidental elbow to the head took Quashie off the field for five minutes with a huge gash to the head that bled spectacularly. Newcastle did nothing with the man advantage and once he came back on, Quashie was immediately bringing the back four of Newcastle under pressure. West Ham still look incredibly uncertain when they are forced to defend quickly, but only a few times in the first half was there any pressure from Newcastle. Roy Carroll had to save a great ball from Nicky Butt and Butt also had a good chance on a free kick right before the end of the first half. Then, on an obvious offside, Newcastle got a goal back. The argument was that Carroll was impeded by a screen who did not play the ball. The new offside rule once again costs West Ham a goal right before the half.

Coming back from the unfortunate set of goals that seem to happen right at the end of a half is a test for West Ham. It happened with Fulham and cost them two points. It happened with Fulham and now it happened again in the first half against Newcastle. For the first ten minutes of the second half, West Ham ws purely in defensive mode -- only occasionally being able to counterattack. Then, Boa Morte puts his hand on a ball in the box. Solano scores the penalty easily. The decision just before halftime clearly changed the game and they gave up a 2-0 lead. Newcastle's Martens threatened often and Ferdinand had trouble keeping him marked. At 65 minutes after a dangerous corner kick, Davenport put the ball into the net but was called for pushing off the much smaller Solono. Long balls from Newcastle continued to put West Ham in trouble. The attacks came most often on the righthand side with Milner running down long balls to that side or being fed balls that he could turn back into the box. One could say that West Ham simply held on for the remainder of the game.

So, instead of 3 points against Fulham and 3 points against Newcastle, West Ham gets a total of two points. That might be the four points they needed to stay up. If you were willing to be encouraged you might point to the fact that they are scoring goals -- three last week and two this week. Unfortunately, the flip side of that is that they have given up 11 goals in three games. It would have been more without Roy Carroll.

There's still a chance for West Ham this year, but the chances are fewer and the hopes are increasingly desparate.

From the Washington Post . . . "In its latest report, the GAO found that numerous applicants received duplicate rental aid. In one case, FEMA provided free apartments to 10 people in Plano, Tex., while sending them $46,000 for out-of-pocket housing expenses."  Your tax dollars at work.

I'd like to say that this only happens in America, but this is a story that could happen anywhere people are too sensitive to body odor.  Having a plane stop because of a passenger fart is an amazing but true story.

I'm not sure that the data is really correct, but what if you built a report that analyzed how many addresses were given out to each man, woman and child on a per country basis. That is what this report tried to do.

I'm not sure why I find this story so funny, but I do.  The BBC reports that Euro notes are disintegrating because of drug use.  No such report exists for money in the United States.  I wonder if that is what they mean by a strong dollar?

Life imitates art.  Bad art.

Here's a report that Northwest Airlines had a flight returned to Amsterdam after some passengers engaged in suspicious behavior.  First of all, it's got to be KLM and not Northwest, right?  Next, once again, there is no report on what the actual suspicious behavior was by officials.  Surely someone who got off flight 42 is angry enought to report what went on!

Michigan now has more cell phones than land lines.  A report indicates that the number of land lines is shrinking -- so it's not the pace of growth that is being compared.  In real terms the number of phone lines with wires is not just shinking but smaller in number than mobile phones.

It was a lovely day in Madison and perfect for a float on the boat with Chris.  Haven't seen him since I left UWM, so it was great to catch up.  One of the things I noticed is how appealing Madison can be in the summer.  We docked at the Memorial Union and scooped up some cheeseburgers and a few brews.  Three hours passed as quickly as you can imagine in the Wisconsin sunshine.  I did take a picture of the Beetle next to the shore and maybe I'll post that as I get used to Live Writer.

I also notice how few people were on the lake.  Okay, it's a Wednesday and the middle of the work week, but the lack of boats -- on a day where the locks on the Yahara were closed -- was quite a shock.  I kept wondering where everyone was!

And I do.  I hope they get bought.  It turns out that all the trouble that Dell has been having with laptop batteries is due to . . . oh, you guessed it didn't you?

Yesterday I noted the speed of the DSL circuit at my office.  This morning I tried the same test on my home DSL connection.  That statistics are somewhat interesting.

• Testing trhough Chicago: 3.905Mbps upload; 690Kbps download and 86ms latency
• Testing through Los Angeles: 1.542Mbps upload; 438Kbps download and 103ms latency
• Testing through London: 1.080Mbps upload; 360Kbps download and 133ms latency

NASA has apparently lost the original footage of Neil Amstrong's first steps on the moon.  Reports that it was accidentally knocked off the side of NASA headquarters by a falling piece of styrofoam insulation have not yet been confirmed.

Speedtest is a nifty little bandwidth tester that gives you some indication of the capability of your connection -- as tested from various servers around the world.  My office pays for 4Mbps service and the tests I did got 3.731Mbps from Los Angeles, 3.851Mbps from Chicago and 1.329Mbps from London.  The latency for the Chicago test averaged 54 milliseconds, Los ANgeles 111ms, and London 143 ms.  Upload rates clock in at about 320Kbps.

Dell's recall is making news all over, but I love the picture in the New York Times that shows what can happen if you have a Dell laptop.

I hadn't seen this before, but a friend introduced me to it.  It's Kayak, a meta-search engine for travel sites.  It also has a tool for doing email alerts for fare thresholds.  A very nice tool.

Incredible!  Dell recalls 4 million batteries -- the largest battery recall in the history of the computer industry -- and get this: my laptop isn't affected!  Maybe I'm protected against exploding and flaming notebooks.

The failure to agree on a standard to replace the old 802.11g wireless networking standard is becoming ridiculous.  In fact, it is starting to remind me of those days when there were three separate and non-interoperable standards for 56k analog modems.  I'm not sure if you remember those days, but they cost consumers tons of money -- none of the equipment worked together.  Deja vu?

It's nice to be able to have a blog editor in your back pocket.  I rather like blogware's web-based interface, but I've always been interested in getting a local tool working for formatting blog entries.  I think I would use my blog more often if I had a local tool for entering articles.

I tried this after reading a review at an interesting web site run by Paul Stamatiou.  Interesting stuff.  Also interesting is a bashing of a Motorola Q!

Over the Memorial Day weekend we took the Big Flat Boat out onto Lake Mendota for some swimming and a picnic. Some windy weather came upon us pretty suddenly, but we all survived and not too many of us burned. If you're interested, here are some pics from the the weekend that give you a general sense of what Memorial Day was like on the Big Flat Boat.

Each of the teenagers got a chance to steer the Big Flat Boat. Here it was Galelen's turn to take command.

Gaelen actually brought his homework and lounged in the front of the boat pretending to do pre-Calculus.

Lorraine and Heidi organized the picnic and ensured that everyone had more than enough snacks.

Heidi is suffering from an awful back injury, but she decided to go with us anyway. The best cure for a back injury is to snooze on a hot day on the lakes.

Keavy and I spent quite a bit of time in the water. To avoid some bad weather we anchored in a little cove in about three feet of water. It looks cold but once you get in . . . .

Keavy got her chance to drive the boat. I'll be expecting speeding tickets later in her life:

Even dad was occasionally allowed to steer the boat:

Finally, here's what the Big Flat Boat looks like on a stormy day in Madison.

This is nice: a listing of all public radio podcasts that seems to be kept to up-to-date.

Airbus is proposing that, on the huge Airbus 380, that customers stand instead of sit. Who would stand for a trans-oceanic flight? Well, Airbus knows its audience and so it's pitching the idea to Asian airlines. The International Hearld Tribune has a story on this.

CNN has an article on distracted drivers, but as usual they only talk about those drivers distracted by phones. They, predictably, avoid talking about having the kids in the car. Mom with the infant in the carseat in the back. We don't test that.

I tripped upon this at another site -- the University of California has made some of their sessions available for iTunes. I find this to be amazing and I'll be taking advantage of this as soon as I return to the states. The programs look very deep and pretty interesting.

This conference looks interesting. I'd go if I could arrange it.

Here's a heartwarming story about a woman who went out on dates with a man and then, after three of those dates, ran his name in Google. Now, why you would wait to do this after three times is a mystery, but the delicious part of the story is that the guy is on Maine's most wanted list. Reminds me of those people who check public court records in Wisconsin before going out on dates with other people. Sheesh, life was far more simple when I was dating! Back in the 1920's!

This is where I've been picking up a free font every month. Most of the fonts are useful and well-designed.

Here's a little utility that allows you to find out where I am when I'm online. I sort of like this!

Not really.

However, I really think this article gets at the nub of how far Microsoft thinks the user interface needs to be re-thought. If you can create a user interface based on the Dance Explosion machine, then what's next? Perhaps a user interface based on the game Twister?

Maybe it's the fans.

According to Reuters, by way of Google, there is the story that hundreds of fans of German soccer club Borussia Dortmund waved huge inflatable penises at local rivals Schalke 04 on Saturday above an abusive message for their hosts.

The pink blow-ups and a huge banner in Dortmund's yellow and black suggesting Schalke fans should procreate with themselves added a splash of color to the dour 0-0 draw between the two Bundesliga sides.

Schalke's stadium in the Ruhr Valley city of Gelsenkirchen will host four group matches and a quarter-final at the World Cup in Germany in June and July.

Every time I'm on the Tube in London I think about how convenient the ancient institution is. My co-workers simply hate the Tube -- a case, I think of familiarity breeds comtempt. At any rate, here comes a report I hope they don't read: it seems that millions of bacteria ride along in the Tube with all the passengers.

First, is this a surprise? Of course not, it's just something to take your mind off of Michael Jackson. Second, is this something to worry about? Of course not, there's far more worrying things on the Tube than bacteria. For instance, all those people downloading Ricky Gervais' podcast and then listening to it while standing next to you.

Google has published a Zeitgiest for 2005 that takes information culled from all of the queries sent to Google search engines and then aggregates it. The results are both interesting and sometimes surprising. It's not surprising that the iPod is the number one thing searched for on Froogle, but it does surprise me - it actually annoys me - that Janet Jackson is the top search in the news category.
I'm also amused that Martha Stewart gets more searches than Donald Trump.

If you haven't seen this it's worth a laugh. When you send a movie back to NetFlix you put it into a little CD-sized envelope. It turns out that many people are putting Post-It notes to the poor folks who have to open the returned movies. Some of the messages are hilarious; and not one is about Woody Allen.