Crescat Scientia

I just saw Priya on a WTTW 11 commercial.

I will be in Texas later today.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Texas, but there's something about snow. Right now flakes are falling deliberately and quickly, but earlier it was sparse puffy flakes floating down. And these little mercurial messengers always dance to the music. Liszt's Liebesträume plays softly in the background as the white dots slowly and softly paint the street in choreographed harmony.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the northwind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of snow.

I had forgotten what illness was. I feel always cold, but sometimes hot; my throat aches; my head is clouded. I couldn't sleep yesterday. I was up for 20 hours before I finally collapsed, but at no point was I tired.

This blog started as a LiveJournal blog in early 2003. My username there was txaristocrat. Then earlier this summer I set up jgarrett.org specifically so that I could have a rather permanent, personal e-mail address. As an added bonus, in moving my blog to the new machine, I now had complete control over it. So for example, I could choose the style more freely than at LJ, or include polls, or whatever I so desired...

When I did this, the computer on which all of my site was hosted was one a friend of mine had set up at his job (at a web hosting company). Near the end of the summer though, he left that job under somewhat questionable circumstances. And he left quickly...

The computer was soon taken down, so what little information I had stored there I lost, including those blog entries made after moving away from LJ, as well as some e-mail, and perhaps a few other things. I later set up my site again at a web hosting company where I had substantially more control. I never moved my archival blog entries though, the few ones from the LJ days.

The point of this is: now I have! So you can now see all the blog entries (excluding those from this summer forever lost) since I've ever had a blog.

His Nobel acceptance speech.

To people who set off car alarms at 6 am:

Don't. It's really annoying. It's your own car. Learn how to enter it without activating the alarm. If this is too hard, don't try to leave for work at 6 am.

Tonight's low in the middle to upper teens.

Brrr

Learned a new word. No need for a thesaurus today. ;)

Everything in this apartment seems to be on a single circuit-breaker.

I was restless last night. After dinner I went downtown. There were so many people, and so many unfamiliar with the city. Families would pass by the Marshall Field's and see the large trumpets and the big television display and marvel at it. That façade is so common to me; I've been at that spot often. The experience has tarnished for me. It reminds me of a quote:

I do not wish to promote any morality, but to those who do I give this advice: If you wish to deprive the best things and states of all honor and worth, then go on talking about them as you have been doing. Place them at the head of your morality and talk from morning to night of the happiness of virtue, the composure of the soul, of justice and immanent retribution. The way you are going about it, all these good things will eventually have the popularity and the clamor of the streets on their side; but at the same time all the gold that was on them will have been worn off by so much handling, and all the gold inside will have turned to lead. Truly, you are masters of alchemy in reverse: the devaluation of what is most valuable. Why don't you make the experiment of trying another prescription to keep from attaining the opposite of your goal as you have done hitherto? Deny these good things, withdraw the mob's acclaim from them as well as their easy currency; make them once again concealed secrets of solitary souls; say that morality is something forbidden. That way you might win over for these things the kind of people who alone matter: I mean those who are heroic. But to that end there has to be a quality that inspires fear and not, as hitherto, nausea. Hasn't the time come to say of morality what Master Eckhart said: "I ask God to rid me of God."

Downtown, I first went to Borders and browsed for a while. I spent a while reading Sandra Day O'Connor's book The Majesty of the Law. I would've bought it but for the long cashier lines. I recommend it.

Then I decided to go to a movie. I wasn't sure what was playing, but I knew at least the new Pride & Prejudice was out. I wasn't in the right mood, so instead I chose Ice Harvest. Ebert & Roeper gave it two thumbs up, but I think their judgment is very questionable here. It reminded me a great deal of Catcher in the Rye: angst-ridden, juvenile, and never really going anywhere. It was a mediocre film, not worth the money, but better than most films I'd expect in a mainstream theater.

The movie theater was a coup however: I learned Tristan & Isolde had been made into a movie! I was thinking just the other day that someone should make Tristan & Isolde into a movie. High time! So there are a few movies from this season I look forward to seeing at some point in time:

• Pride & Prejudice


• Tristan & Isolde


• The Libertine


• Duane Hopwood

After all this excitement, I came back to feed the cat. :)

See this BBC story.

What do you know? Since I wrote the post Identity, the Google listings have changed. When searching for "Jeff Garrett" the fifth result is now my blog.

I just saw quite the interesting movie. It's highly recommended! Rent it today.

While I'm at it, another good movie is The Specials. We've tried to rent it before, but we couldn't find it at our video store! Can you believe that? On a more serious note, I watched Impromptu lately. The first two are light comedies, whereas Impromptu has a slightly heavier romantic tone. The story regards the entanglement of George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. Overall, it is quite a good movie. I highly recommend all of these.

AOL, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo! all have instant messaging networks. About 6 years ago, a superior alternative known as Jabber (or XMPP) was developed. It is now a published standard. Jabber is superficially very similar to other instant messaging systems. Each user has a Jabber ID and a roster of some other Jabber users. The online presence of those on the list can be seen, and they can be messaged. But Jabber is different:

• Anyone can run a Jabber server. Users are not reliant upon the continuing beneficence of a large corporate entity. Users with accounts on different servers can communicate, just as with e-mail. My Jabber ID is jeff@jgarrett.org and my home server is jgarrett.org, but any Jabber user can message me, and vice versa.


• There is not a privileged (often buggy, bloated, and poorly integrated) "official" client. All have access to the standards defining Jabber, so -- in theory -- all clients are created equal. Those who aren't on the most popular platform have access to a first-class client with the same features. Even those on the most popular platform have a choice of client.


• Authorization is required to view a Jabber user's online presence. This authorization is neither permanent (it may be revoked) nor reciprocal. In fact, more fine-grained control is possible. A user -- though online and available -- can choose to be "invisible" to some or all.


• Users may be signed into their accounts multiple times. Inbound messages go through the connection with the highest priority. This is especially useful for nomadic computer users. Forgetting to close a connection will not affect the ability to use Jabber as usual on another machine.


• A user's roster is stored on the server. It's therefore protected from data loss, and in a single central location.


• Users may opt to have their basic information listed in the Jabber user directory. Other users can then find them more easily.


• Gateways to other instant messaging networks exist. Not everyone uses Jabber instant messaging yet. :-)


• Security was a priority from the start. The whole interaction with the server can be encrypted. Even more, using the magic of public key encryption, individual messages can be signed or encrypted.


• The basic Jabber protocol was developed 6 years ago and has (almost) completed the Internet standards process. It has been widely used during this time, and is both stable and mature. Google is deploying its Google Talk based on the same technology. (Note however that not all of the features I mention are available on Google Talk. For example, Google Talk users cannot talk to most Jabber users not themselves using Google Talk.)


• Despite the rigidity of the basic protocol, its structure allows for easy extensibility. Features not yet imagined or codified in the standard can be developed relatively quickly and share many of the advantages of the "standard" features. There is a body who oversees this process, and publishes these enhancements.

Convinced? The first step is to find a client here and a server here or use jgarrett.org. In the latter case, be sure to read this. Your Jabber ID will be of the form username@servername. Once you've chosen a server, you are free to choose the username portion. Then you use your client register the new account. (The server will tell you if the username conflicts with another preexisting one, or is otherwise disallowed.) Now you can sign into your Jabber account and start talking. If your browser is configured properly, you can even follow this link to message me.

For more information on Jabber, check out the Jabber user guide.

Well I guess that you probably know by now
I was one who wanted to fly
I wanted to ride on that arrow of fire right up into heaven
And I wanted to go for every man
Every child, every mother of children
I wanted to carry the dreams of all people right up to the stars

And I prayed that I’d find an answer there
Or maybe I would find a song
Giving a voice to all of the hearts that cannot be heard
And for all of the ones who live in fear
And all of those who stand apart
My being there would bring us a little step closer together

The top Google hit for "Jeff Garrett" used to be one of my pages. A very old and tendentious one, if i recall, but still mine. I have had an Internet presence for 10 years or more, after all. Now you can't even find me! :-)

I've not had a blog for as long -- only about 3 years. The top Google hit for "Jeff Garrett blog" is unsurprisingly not mine. But still, check it out. At least people can tell us apart. :-)

A sweep! The first World Series appearance since 1959! The first World Series win since 1917!

I couldn't stop sneezing today. I thought it was allergies. But it's been unusually cold in the apartment all day, and now it's so warm. I know there's a problem when my apartment feels warm in autumn...

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis,
semper crescis aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis et inanis,
rota tu volubilis, status malus,
vana salus semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata et velata mihi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis et virtutis mihi nunc contraria,
est affectus et defectus semper in angaria.
Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite;
quod per sortem sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!