Happy holidays, folks, and try to keep in mind the reason for the season:

So, while waiting for gentoo to recompile (and in many ways because I was waiting for it to recompile), I installed Mac OS X 10.3 on my iBook.

I like it a lot. I like being able to hit F11 and have the windows zoom out of the way. I like the lack of transparent window titles. I don’t like the ‘brushed aluminum’ Finder windows. I like the improvements to Mail.app and Apple Help. I like the huge alt-tab app switching icons. I’ll get used to the oval-oid item selection.

But what I really like is that it ships with distcc on the Developer’s Tools CD. Because I’m a nerdy geek. W00t! Unfortunately, Apple’s version of gcc isn’t compatible with gentoo’s version, so I can’t use my Mac in a distributed compile for gentoo. Durn.

Someone asked what a ‘gentoo box’ is, so here goes:

Gentoo is a version of the linux operating system that you can install and run on pretty much any ol’ computer. I have gentoo 1.4 installed on an old PC, so that’s my ‘gentoo box.’

Gentoo’s claim to fame is that the whole thing is compiled on the box it runs on. This allows you to tailor the operating system and all the software to the machine itself. So what you do is you boot your computer off of a CD, install the basic operating system, set some options, and then it re-compiles itself, loading newer versions of it’s various software bits from the internet if necessary.

The process of updating the core operating system on a gentoo box is to type:

emerge -u system

..and then hit return. Last time I did that, it had to update 23 software packages, including gcc and glibc. It took two days to compile. Computers are fun!

gcc is the program that compiles other programs; it takes the program a person writes and turns it into a file the computer can execute. glibc is a collection of pieces of computer program that other programs can use, called a ‘library.’ And it’s a pretty important library, since a lot of programs use the routines in glibc.

That’s the explanation of the joke, and since jokes are never funny when explained, I’ll just cut my losses here.

It’s a little late to ask, but if any of you feel like getting me something whimsical, any of these would do the trick.

I think they can do next-day shipping…

In an act of paradox, I’m compiling a compiler on my gentoo box. It’s a strange kind of magic.

Stjnky links to a movie file of Zsu-Zsu’s Petals, just in time for the holiday season!

You’ll want to be watchin’ it.

What a strangely perfect time the early ’90s were… Republicans were out of favor even after (and maybe because of) the first Gulf War, WorldBeat was going to turn all lovers of popular music into hippies, and BBSes were still cool. And to top it all off, there was Zsu-Zsu’s Petals!

Today I rode the bus down to the U district to pay a bill, eat lunch, pick up some groceries.

I’m now a big fan of the 75 line. It passes within blocks of where I live, and directly connects me to either the U district or Ballard (or both, if I’m up for the trip). It is, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing. I doubt she’s ever ridden the bus in her life, but I digress.

I set out. I got to my stop and waited and waited. I can be horribly impatient sometimes. It seemed like hours, days that I waited. There was an offhand chance that I had missed the bus, since I was cutting the timing a little close, which made the impatience worse… Am I a fool for standing here expectantly when there won’t be another bus for a half hour?

I decided to walk to the next stop, and about half-way between, of course the bus came. I waved my arms, and the bus pulled over a little bit onto the shoulder of the road right in front of me. This was half way between stops, so I figured this was a signal he was going to wait for me at the next one. I started running, running fast.

The next stop was at an intersection of the main arterial and a side street. As I approached it along the arterial, cars came from both sides and stopped, for their respective stop signs. I saw both drivers look to see me running, and to see the stopped bus. A car came up from behind me, signaling a turn in front of me. He stopped just before the intersection, seeing that I was trying to catch the bus and he would have blocked me. Everything was in alignment… The bus was stopped, someone was getting on, the door was still open… The cars had stopped to help me out… I was just across the intersection from my goal, running like someone who would have to stand around in the light Seattle rain and wait for half an hour if he didn’t catch that bus….

And of course the bus closed the door and pulled away just as I crossed the intersection.

I looked around at all the cars, and the drivers were staring, dumbfounded. Mouths open. Like they had just witnessed a mugging. My co-conspirators, their desire to assist had been denied along with my desire to catch that mofo.

Sometimes the world really is rooting for you, except for the one guy who, for some reason, maybe just plain spite, decides to screw with your head.

I’ve been diggin’ Red vs Blue, which is a series of short movies produced entirely within a 3D shoot-em-up video game, by people who have never met each other in real life. Here’s a (relatively) short example: PSA: WMD.

Welcome to the internet generation.

More cool linkage from WorldChanging:

There’s a really great website called GlobalGiving.com. It’s a big database of development projects around the world, and it allows you to contribute funds directly to those projects over the internet.

If you go and look at it, be sure and use the ‘Find Project Wizard,’ which is kind of cool in and of itself.

What astonishes me is that so many of these projects are ultra-cheap – less than $20,000. For instance: A rural microcredit project in Honduras needs $11,000. That money will get parceled out into chunks that seem tiny to an American, and lent at low interest rates, with the side-effect of pulling people out of poverty. Eleven grand!

Web site with quicktime movies of Japanese ads featuring Arnold Schwartzeneg… er… however you spell that.

I had no idea Arnold could look any creepier, but these ads manage.