The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Wednesday, September 5, 2001

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Wednesday, September 5, 2001
started 9/5/2001; 10:04:53 AM - last post 9/5/2001; 3:23:47 PM

Doc Searls - Wednesday, September 5, 2001

9/5/2001; 2:04:53 PM (reads: 5245, responses: 8)

Yes, Virginia, there is a MilkSucks.com

And Virginia Postrel pointed me to it. (Not that I can point to her pointer or anything.)

It isn't all just gazing at others' techno navels

I've started reading Slate again, and discovered that it has a page pointing to political blogs (which it also calls "mezines"), including one by the always-quotable Virginia Postrel. Unfortunately, hers doesn't let you easily link to dated content.

And hey, here's Lucianne Goldberg's gloriously politically incorrect blog. You may remember her as the friend of Linda Tripp whose insistence on publicizing Clinton's shenanigans popped the lid off the biggest worm can of the '90s.

Supply Rulez

Compare and contrast what users are doing with wireless against what the supply side — read, the carriers — wants to sell them.

The big media supply side doesn't like the Net. Never has. It wants to own its own private pipes and not interoperate except at the most basic levels. That's why TiVo and Microsoft's UltimateTV won't work with Dish but will with DirecTV.

Less 'Zilla?

Here's what Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's Chief Lizard Wrangler and one of the open source community's most sane and committed voices, had to say about her firing by AOL/Netscape. And here's the Slashdot thread on the same subject.

But if they had a deal with Dish, I'd probably own one

I just put up my thoughts about where TiVo stands amist the demolition of TV as Usual by those it has insulted for the last fifty years.

More fueling around

Why do only a few games get to hog the top of the popularity poll? For answers (and more) David Williams points to The Scratchware Manifesto.

Picture these

Yesterday

I picked up a FireWire cable and was amazed at how easily Photoshop and iMovie could operate the new Sony DVR-PD110 as a peripheral device. The Sony works both as a camcorder and a still camera (not megapixel, but not small). This is one of the first stills I took a couple days ago, when Jeffrey and I visited the fishing boats in the harbor. They were stinky, so the pic is of the boy holding his nose. Here's one right off the camcorder of Jeffrey on a jungle gym. it was shot from about 25 feet away. The pic on the right is of Jeffrey heading off to kindergarten yesterday. It's right off the camcorder too, and looks like it. Still, he's a cute boy.

Thanks, by the way, to those who wrote to tell me I didn't need to download drivers. iMovie and Photoshop were ready and willing.

Putting the paranoia back in the cautious outlook

At the dentist this morning, the assistant asked me where I live. When I told her the general area (our house is one of the black dots near the middle of this map here), she asked if we were worried about floods. I told her we had a few concerns. Then she told me about the great Flood of '95, which featured some rather impressive Acts 'o God, including the removal of a judge from his own house by a torrent of water and rock that poured through the guy's bedroom. As it happens we're fairly high up the watershed, but at kind of a convergence point. If certain culverts get plugged, the water will find our driveway. "They're predicting big rains this Winter," she added.

Then she asked about fire. How close was our house to the Sycamore Canyon Fire? How about the Coyote Fire?

Well, we're 120 feet from Sycamore Canyon Road, where the Sycamore Canyon fire stopped in 1977. That one burned up two hills and 270 homes. We're a few hundred feet farther from the Coyote Fire of 1964, which burned over the entire Santa Ynez mountain range behind Santa Barbara and took out 94 homes. The Romero, Wheeler and Painted Cave fires , also within the last few decades, were a little less close, but not much. On this map, we're within two pixels of where the Sycamore (yellow) and Coyote (dark green) fire perimeters intersect.

I witnessed the Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991, and we have friends who lost houses and neighbors there. The last two places we lived — in the hills of San Carlos and in Emerald Hills — were both very much like the Oakland Hills in their vulnerability to fire... and the eventual likelihood that fire would, well, nenew them. Given the history, the place we live now looks even scarier.

Functing again

Okay, today is working. I can stop writing in yesterday now. As often happens with MacOS problems, the only cure is to shut everything down and start over again.

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Dean Landsman - Re: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

9/5/2001; 3:35:05 PM (reads: 545, responses: 1)

Here I go, setting and maintaining the world's record for popping in on your blog in between home page flips.

I wear my crown with pride.

--dfl

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Doc Searls - Re: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

9/5/2001; 3:57:41 PM (reads: 637, responses: 0)

We're all there right now. I can't get Radio to go active on the page. I'm going to quit everything and restart, which might help.

I'm also writing this from the kitchen table, since approximately nothing seems to work in my new office.

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Susan Kitchens - Re:Sycamore Canyon Fire of '77

9/5/2001; 6:40:16 PM (reads: 1030, responses: 5)

Then she asked about fire. How close was our house to the Sycamore Canyon Fire? How about the Coyote Fire? � Well, we're 120 feet from Sycamore Canyon Road, where the Sycamore Canyon fire stopped in 1977.

I remember the Sycamore Canyon Fire. It was summer, I was about to start my freshman year at Westmont College. I went up to SB the weekend after it happened (I lived in Orange Co. at the time), in a lame attempt to help. The help was ineffectual and non-existent, but I did hear some stories about watching the flames on the hills, and the smell of fresh ash was all around.

The first week of school, one of the student leaders volunteered the student body to help with a post-fire cleanup. So that weekend, I donned very grubby clothes, and joined a bunch of other students to clean up the site of one of the burned houses. Looking at that map, if you head out of Westmont down Cold Springs, take a right on Sycamore, and, just after Barker Pass, go straight into that dead-end road, there on the left side of that little street was a house that burned down to the ground. Completely.

We were offered hospitality by the neighbors, whose house was spared and who, I think, I ended up being acquainted with through some church connection or other. Anyway, I vaguely recall an anecdote about the family that lived in that house. After the fire, the couple came back to survey the destruction (chimney left standing, and a great pile of ash), the wife rooted around and found a diamond ring. They took off for some other where to hang out for a time, depressed and despondent. When they returned after we did they cleanup, I'd heard that seeing their cleaned property, chimney and swept foundation, it lifted their depression. Sure, their house was still gone, but the fact that it'd been cleaned and cared for cheered 'em.

In a few weeks, I'll be up there for Westmont's Homecoming.... my 20th reunion. wow.

Susan

2020Hindsight

p.s. congrats on reaching message #1000!

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Doc Searls - Re:Sycamore Canyon Fire of '77

9/5/2001; 7:22:35 PM (reads: 807, responses: 3)

We live a few hundred feet from the house you mention. Very close to Cold Spring School.

I remember when I first arrived in the Bay Area, in '85. We drove over the Bay Bridge and up Highway 24 to a right on Highway 13 (Warren Freeway), then off to stay at a friend's house on Thornhill. I couldn't believe that houses could be perched so high on hillsides. I stared up at the lights of the houses on Hiller Highlands, which has the best views of both Oakland and The City, looking right across the length of the Bay Bridge. I thought about how much I'd love to live there.

In 1991 everything surrounding that intersection, including all the houses on Hiller Highlands and most of upper Broadway, where all the houses looked so perfectly perched in the trees on the hillside, were burned to the ground. The fire even leaped Lake Temescal and burned the other side of the highway.

Now it's all rebuilt, and starting to look again like nothing happened.

Everything within sight of my little observatory here, save our immediate neighborhood, has burned in the last 40 years — including the whole vast wall of the Santa Ynez mountains.

Hey, stop by when you come to Westmont.

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Doc Searls - Re:Sycamore Canyon Fire of '77

9/5/2001; 7:23:47 PM (reads: 778, responses: 0)

We live a few hundred feet from the house you mention. Very close to Cold Spring School.

Now it's all rebuilt, and starting to look again like nothing happened.

Everything within sight of my little observatory here, save our immediate neighborhood, has burned in the last 40 years — including the whole vast wall of the Santa Ynez mountains.

Ah well.

Hey, stop by when you come to Westmont.

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Susan Kitchens - Re:Sycamore Canyon Fire of '77

9/21/2001; 6:23:22 PM (reads: 850, responses: 2)

I'm heading up there today; the reunion is this weekend! Did you get the email I sent recently about how to get in touch? I'll send another one.

Susan

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Doc Searls - Re:Sycamore Canyon Fire of '77

9/22/2001; 5:41:38 AM (reads: 946, responses: 1)

No I didn't. Send again.

I was just up there on campus playing with the telescope in the observatory. Quite a techno-hoot.