If you are using, or have used, Apple’s Safari browser with this site, and have experienced problems with the browser freezing up, please let me know: I thought it was a local network problem, but my mother says it’s happening to her too.

It appears that if you download the new iTunes update, and you’ve got an existing AOL account, with an AOL wallet, you can purchase iTunes songs from Canada, which is otherwise not possible.

The Five Minute Herald is a page on the Miami Herald website that’s a concise easy-to-scan miniature version of the paper. That’s a good idea.

Here’s an observation from my recent experience: users who are subjected to the authority of computer security schemes will relish the opportunity to defeat and/or work around those security schemes in equal proportion to how capricious those security schemes appear to them.

In my current situation, I am faced with the need to access a particular server that is behind a firewall, controlled by others. After several attempts to address the proper authorities in the proper manner — i.e. “doing the right thing” — and having been exposed to their seemingly arbitrary authoritarian methods, I’ve simply decided to give up, and use a technical fallback that allows me to achieve the same ends without their say-so.

I’m not suggesting that all authority is capricious, nor recommending trickery as a universal response. However it would do all computer security authority figures well to consider how their schemes appear to those that are subjected to them, for that, at least in part, will determine how effective they are.

The Royal Geographical Society publishes a variety of books related to expedition making. On their books web page, several of these that are now out of print are available for free download.

I’m especially partial to Desert Expeditions, which is described as follows:

Planning critera, equipment, vehicles for desert terrain, Fuel, food and water, personnel and training, Driving and vehicle recovery, Photography, vehicle maintenance, modification and tyres, medical and Survivial, navigation, maps and rescue aids.

I’m reading it right now. Here’s my favourite quote right now, speaking about sources for obtaining government permission to travel to a foreign land:

Embassy in UK/Europe of Country Concerned. Of variable use. Frequently staffed by ‘city slickers’ unfamiliar with regions you wish to visit and unsympathetic or suspicious of anyone planning to go there. However can be helpful.

Followed by:

Appearance. Being on an expedition is not a mandate for being unwashed, unshaven and scruffy — there are cheaper ways of achieving that. Keep fresh clothes to change into before entering towns after long periods out in the desert -especially if you seek police/immigration permission for the next leg. They are not normally impressed by unwashed foreigners.

Since moving in to the new palace of digital pleasure a week ago, I have been without a telephone. As chronicled earlier, I’m moving the old phone number over here, and switching service to Eastlink at the same time. Everything is scheduled to fly on Tuesday next.

There are, however, no phone jacks down here in the Green Room. But there are plenty of Ethernet jacks. Which has prompted me to invest in a Sipura SPA-2000 device from Pulver Innovations.

Having earlier acquired a Digium Wildcard X100P, which is sitting upstairs in this webserver waiting to be called into action, my plan is to plug the Sipura into the Ethernet jack here in my office, the X100P into the Eastlink phone line, and then to use Asterisk to manage my calls.

In theory, I should be able to take the Sipura with me to Yankee, plug it into Ethernet there, and have my office phone ring through.

Watch this space (or Labs, depending on degree of difficulty) for details.

Catherine and I went to two parties in rapid succession yesterday evening.

First up was the BGHJ party, across the street in the old Taweel’s Grocery Store. B, G, H, and J are architects (indeed B and G are the former owners of the building where I type this). We had a good time talking to Terry Stevenson about her travels in Spain, and to Tom Cullen about organic milk, and saw many other people we know in passing and see once or twice a year (what else is Christmas for if not for that?).

Second it was over to the Atlantic Technology Centre foyer, in response to invite from my new best friend Sandy to attend the ITAP party. Catherine’s comment: “who are all these people?” Apparently most of them were choreo-animators.

Here’s what we learned:

• Architects have much better taste in food. The Atlantic Superstore deli platter at the ATC couldn’t hold a candle to the smoked salmon, fresh oysters, and imported cheeses on offer from the architects.
• Technocrats are very concerned with systems. To drink at the ITAP party involved tickets. There was a complex door prize system. That said, the woman managing the door prize system and the drink tickets was perhaps the nicest woman in Prince Edward Island.
• Architects and technocrats are both, as a group, shy. Although the architects do a very good job at covering up their shyness with copious amounts of liquor and imported cheese, you can tell, scratching slightly below the surface, that they’re as socially ill at ease as anyone else. The technocrats all looked like deer in the headlights: there seemed to be a vague perception that they should be having fun without the actual fun present.
• Technocrats: take off your suits! With the exception of Jevon Macdonald, who is a last minute entry into my pantheon of well-dress men and thus exempt, everyone else looked like they would have much more fun if they could put on some dungarees. Advice: dress like Will Pate and your life will improve.
• Sandy Peardon, formerly my arch nemesis, turns out to be a very personable chap. ITAP, perhaps, doesn’t know how lucky it is.
• As a rule, electronic pianos should be kept out of any social gathering.
• Pat Binns is much shorter in real life.
• The Cingular logo is very similar to the ATC logo.
• An image of a website I designed is forever enshrined in a 3D rendering of the palatial ATC board room. Note, as well, that the table in the board room is constructed of some sort of magical see-through wood.
• Cheap red wine all tastes the same. It still only takes two plastic glasses to get me drunk.
• Cedars, where Catherine and I went for the after-party party, has the best hamburger in town, and some of the best wait staff. Hint from our server: instead of ordering a caesar salad, order the regular salad with caesar dressing; it’s cheaper and tastes better.

Because I am in possession of the gasoline receipts for Ian’s Land Rover trip from New York to Cavendish, I can attest to the fact that Ian and Tessa’s purchase of a Toyota Prius will be responsible for at least 10% of Brooklyn’s Kyoto committments. That would be if Brooklyn actually had any Kyoto committments.

Congratulations!