Archive for October 2006
A close shave
Catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, I decided that it was time to trim my beard, lest someone mistake me for a matawa – one of the local religious police.
My beard being a little on the long side, the trimmer ground to a halt. I removed the guard and shook out the blades, and then continued to trip. With the guard in one hand and the beard trimmer in the other, the result was startling.
I cut a swathe through my beard on the left side. Horrified I stood for at least a minute just looking at the damage and wondering what to do next. I screwed my eyes up in disbelief.
Thinking symmetry might help, I cut a matching swathe at the other side of my chin. This, of course, did not help. I now looked like a hairy cartoon character that had been run over by lawnmower. Twice.
Aghast, I continued to trim and for the first time ever in my life I have a goatee. And jolly handsome I look too.
I have had my beard since August 4th 1989. Today I almost lost it. It would have been a sad day. The earth might have come to an end.
Computer repairs
After that, they are going to reformat the disk. They think that it could be a hard drive problem. If I am lucky I will not need a new hard drive and the computer will be OK. If I am unlucky, then they will have to put a new hard drive in ($$$$$) but they are confident that I can get the machine working again.
Now feeling very happy. Hope it lasts!
I made a new soundslides presentation today. This time for history.
http://www.hobnail.com/SoundSlides/A9_3_HenryFord_SS/index.html
Podcasting
The feed is
http://www.hobnail.com/Podcasts/podcast.xml
In iTunes if you click Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast and then copy and paste this link in to the box, iTunes will download this and subsequent chapters automatically. I can’t do the same with the sound-slide presentations though. For those you will have to go to http://www.hobnail.com and click on the link.
The podcasts and slid-sound presentations are interesting to make, and much harder than I expected. I am hoping to get better at doing them. Already I am developing new ideas on how I should shoot images for such presentations and how it would be good to collect audio on the road.
Ladakh Sound-Slides Chapter 2
This is a large file. There are two versions, large and small for different speeds of internet connections. It should start playing after the first few kb have downloaded. If it doesn’t work after a couple of minutes, you need to get a better internet connection, because it even works on mine in Saudi Arabia, and that is powered by hamsters.
If you get bored you can run your mouse over the timeline to look at image previews, or even read the captions!
http://www.hobnail.com/LadakhSS_ch2/index.html
Ladakh
and
If you have a slow connection, they may take a little while to start.
A new computer
Surprisingly, iMachines was open this morning. The owner raised his eyes and shook his head sadly when I handed over my damaged Macbook Pro. I will know on Friday if it is to be resurrected.
I bought an iMac, which I couldn’t afford.
I blame Microsoft
I can only think that it was caused by the excessively large ‘critical’ update I installed earlier this week, another one of Microsoft’s carefully crafted security patches for Office. My Macbook Pro, doubtless offended by the cheap and poorly thought out offering, must have become depressed, for last night it took a suicidal leap from my hands, to crash disasterously on the bathroom floor.
It worked briefly thereafter, but as I scanned Google Earth maps of Bahrain, it grew slower and slower – not unlike a Windows machine in fact. A restart, far from solving the problem, proved utterly disastrous. My lifeless machine now sits in front of me as I type away in a terrible internet cafe in the Rashid Mall, waiting, probably in vain, for the Apple store to open. This is the first night of Eid, and although the Mall is thronging with the bethobed, many of the shops have chosen to remain closed.
I hadn’t realised how much I have become attached to my Mac. Countless times throughout the day I have thought, “I’ll just …”, only to realise that without my computer I can do nothing. Having grown tired of reading a book and talking to chef, I resorted to a two hour run this afternoon. At least now it is Eid you can drink outside during daylight hours. The temperature in the 40s and humidity high was for once a blessing. Back at home I was far too tired to even think about my poor dead Mac.
Simone Maggi
Bubbles
Upstairs, thanks to Lu, a large bottle is bubbling away in the shower. It sounds like small boy with a bad case of wind.
