Our Wedding - 1965

Our Wedding - 1965
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

On December 19, 1965, Hilda and I got married. We still are :-)

Cioppino: A Fine Kettle of Fish - and our dinner tonight

Recipes : Cioppino: A Fine Kettle of Fish : Food Network

Without shame, I admit I made a Kosher version of this for dinner tonight, and we liked it. Yes, Rachael Ray is somewhat (more than somewhat) irritating (EVOO! EVOO!). However, she can can cook - way better than I can (so far). So, I made the recipe above for dinner tonight - with a change -- no shellfish. For the broth I used Osem Parve Chicken Style Consomme, for the other shellfish I used white nushrooms -- next time I will use more varieties of mushrooms.

Overall -- we liked it.

The future of computer hardware

Greg Papadopoulos of Sun posted this in his blog Greg Matter : Weblog
His well argued conclusion:

"By 2010 microprocessors will seem like really old ideas. Motherboards will end up in museum collections. And the whole ecology that we have around so-called industry standard systems will collapse as it becomes increasingly obvious that the only place that computer design actually happens is by those who are designing chips."

Now, like all things emanating from vendors of computing related products, this is somewhat self-serving in that Sun is indeed a chip designer, and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, his conclusion is logical.

Streeterville

Streeterville
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

Now I am working on a set that contrasts trees and structures in cities.

700 Sundays

Last night we went to see the Billy Crystal show "700 Sundays". Most of the audience appeared to enjoy it enormously. I got a few grins from it, but no real hearty laughter. The word that came to mind as I left the theatre was "bathos". Realizing that I may be emotionally challenged, I Googled for reviews. The first one that came up was 700 Sundays from nytheatre.com.
I pretty much agree with what the reviewer said -- but maybe not quite so negatively -- so I will say no more.

So now I have another place to show pictures

Originally uploaded by chmoss.

I have stated posting my new pictures on Flickr
http://flickr.com/photos/chmoss/

So, for an almost complete view of where my pictures are, you must now go to all of
http://clive.moss.net
http://www.pbase.com/chmoss/profile
http://clive.smugmug.com
http://flickr.com/photos/chmoss/

Why? Its a long story, best told some other time. In short - the web evolves, storage schemas evolve, group interactions evolve - so I am scattered.

In Memoriam - Gertie Moss - Passed away on Thursday November 3, 2005 (1 Chesvan 5766) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

As she would like to be remembered - Margate Beach - 1957. For more, see here

Google Maps Mania

If you like maps you must check out this website. It tracks applications the are built on top of the open API to Google maps (like this CTA map) , as wells as tools to build more maps..
These applications are a window into the future of web-based applications for we have been waiting for ever so long.
On a similar note, look at what Amazon is doing with maps. Street Photography at its most basic!

The Smoking Gun: Arresting Images

Now -- if you are into portraiture, this is a great site.

The Smoking Gun: Arresting Images

Fall in Chicago...

... seems to be a little late this year -- but some spots are pretty. 

Frapper! - a neat new application

Frapper! is a neat application. It links to Google maps, and lets anyone create a group map. This is the kind of thing that happens when interfaces are opened and made accessible over the web.

I recently came across this "old" picture of Jacob and Julia

Jacob and Julia - about 4 years ago!

Happy New Year to all

May the New Year of 5766 bring a more peaceful world, free from both man-made and natural disasters.

Gina's wedding on Block Island

My first cousin (once removed) Gina got married on Block Island last week.
We traveled there with my sister Beverley and her husband Lionel (who were visiting from South Africa).

Starting to post again

I don't know why it has been hard for me to keep this Journal going -- something of apparently more pressing importance always gets in the way. However, I am going to try again. I am not sure why I want to do this. I think that the driving force for me is that when all is said and done, and my grandchildren have reached retirement age, and are trying to find out about their roots, this journal may be all that is left of me for them to wonder about. Blogger may not be around -- but web archive do seem to keeps everything. I have found things from my old web site that I had forgotten about, logged and stored by some web crawler.

You should read "The Island at the Center of the World" by Russell Shorto

In the interest of labor saving and because I agree with what she says, read the book after reading this review
Bookslut | The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto
The book can be found at Amazon here.

We went to Stratford to see Shakespeare

Last week we visited Stratford, Ontario.
See more pics here

Well ... my windshield is fixed, sorta kinda ...

So, the fixer arrived for the 2:00pm to 4:00pm fix at 6:00pm. He looked at the problem and said something along the lines of -- I am not sure I can fix that one, but I will have a go at it. He was clearly competent at what he did, and knew the limitations of the method he was using. He patched it, and the crack may or may not spread. We will wait and see, and hope that I do not get another $1000 ding soon.

How to get a chip in your auto windshield fixed

On a trip to Stratford, Ontario, I noticed a small chip in my windshield. This being a new car (less than 1000 miles on the clock), I called Lexus. Thus started a long sequence of calls, which I document here to prepare the reader for this ordeal.

1. Call Lexus. Get transferred to service department. Get information that they can surely fix it, no problem. Just bring it in. Warranty coverage, I ask. No, he says. All you need do is pay. No thanks, I say.
2. Call Allstate insurance . Yes, it is covered, but with a $500 deductible. If it is less than that, I should not make a claim.
3. Call Lexus. Get transferred to service department. How much, I ask. $1000 to replace the windshield, he says. AARGH, I say. Less if it can be patched, he says, we have a guy that comes in to do great patches.
   
4. Call Allstate. Make claim. She asks -- is it larger than a dollar? Is it in your line of sight? No, I say. OK, she says, if it can be laser treated, than Allstate will fix it, no deductible. Who do you want to have it fixed by? Here is a list of names. Wait, I say. Can I use the Lexus fixer. Sure, she says, if he is on our list.
5. Call Lexus. Get transferred to service department. Get voicemail. Hang up.
   
6. Call Lexus. Explain that I do not want voicemail. Get transferred to service department. Get voicemail. Hang up.
7. Call Lexus. Get transferred to a real person in the service department. Get the name of their windshield guy.
8. Call Allstate. Give them name of windshield guy. Yes, he is a preferred provider. Get transferred to Estella at windshield guy. She says to call at 8:30 Wednesday to get a time for the appointment.
9. Call Estella. Guy answers. I am calling to get the time of my appointment, I say. Pregnant pause. My name is Clive Moss. Pregnant pause. Can I speak to Estella, I ask. Sure, he says. Pause. Estella on the phone. She says -- I will call you back in 5 minutes. I wait 30 minutes.
   
10. Call Estella. Guy answers. Can I speak to Estella? Sure he says. Appointment is made for between 2 an 4 o'clock today.

Watch this space for the next enthralling episode...

PAW (Picture a week) - Julia at Summer Camp

I have caught up at last! Click on the image to see it larger. If you want to see my cumulative efforts for 2005..Click here

Olympia DualPhone for Skype

Do you want to use Skype like a normal telephone? I have a telephone like handset that plugs into a soundboard that works pretty well, but it has a short cord and no wireless capability. For a better way, look at this.
Olympia DualPhone for Skype reviewed - Engadget - www.engadget.com
And here is another way of doing it for only $69.

My China trip pictures have been uploaded...

... to smugmug. At last I have finished editing the images from our China and Tibet trip. We had a wonderful time, and we can heartily recommend Overseas Adventure Travel as a tour company. If you have never visited China - go now if you can.
This picture was taken at the Sera Monastery in Tibet -- probably the most exotic location I shall ever visit. The whole Monastery has changed very little in past several hundred years -- with the exception of the monks' shoes.

OK -- I am back from China

We returned from our China trip in the middle of June. My first reaction - WOW. I feel like the Europeans must have felt on seeing America emerging as the "New World". The energy and vitality and dauntless enthusiasm of the people and the economy they are fueling are overwhelming. If I could speak/read Chinese I would consider emigrating (if I could persuade my family to follow. I have done it once without family -- that was enough.) Barring unfortunate government action, China will emerge as a major - perhaps the dominant - world economic power.
Modern China, not the USA, stands as the experiment that proves the power of the marketplace. The USA's strength could arguably be ascribed to many independent factors -- the spirit of its large immigrant population, its natural resources, its constitution, democracy, its geographic isolation, you pick your own explanation. In China, we have the perfect controlled experiment. Until 1976, they had a centrally planned economy. They switched to a market economy. Nothing else changed. Bingo -- every thing got better.

PS-That's the Shanghai skyline viewed from the Bundt.

China and Taiwan -- talk about a long term view of the world!

In an article in the economist- Economist.com | China and Taiwan: - it was written:
"He supports the idea of an interim agreement lasting 30-50 years whereby Taiwan would agree not to declare formal independence in exchange for a pledge by China not to attack. Neither China nor Mr Chen has explicitly rejected this, so far at least."

WOW! Deals in the USA often do not survive the next Evening News!

Kupishok: For Eternal Memory

A video of the day that we spent in the home town of Hilda's grandparents has been placed in the National Center for Jewish film. For details, see
Kupishok: For Eternal Memory
Some of the stills in the movie were taken from my pictures. A subset of the pictures from my trip is on my website.

Many more of the pictures are here

Blah and Goodness

Last Thursday we saw a blah performance at the Chicago Symphony. What could have been an exciting evening turned out to be lackluster performances of Stravinsky's Petrushka and the Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony. Maybe it was the Conductor (Valery Gergiev from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) -- maybe we were not in a receptive mood -- but we came out feeling blah. We had high hopes based on a thrilling performance of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet that we managed to see in St. Petersburg last July. In retrospect, that was silly. Just because Gergiev uses the same hall does not imply anything. Duh!

OTOH, on Sunday we saw Silk at the Goodman Theatre, by Alessandro Baricco, directed by Mary Zimmerman. Magical goodness.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Click it to find the answer!

OK - so I am four years late - I was busy filing my taxes

I was searching for something when I tripped across this news item.
ABCNEWS.com : PKZip Creator Dies -- April 22, 2000

Katz was they guy that created the Zip format in a flurry of controversy, remembered by old farts like myself, but few others.
The full story is explained in more detail here , here and here.

So, why should I not advertise?

My latest pictures are posted here.
If you like the site structure, sign up by using this link

http://www.smugmug.com/?referrer=P9ZOPaIS5snuQ

and we will both get a credit on our subscriptions.

I survived the Ring

After a week immersed in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs (about 20 hours in the Opera hall, including intermissions), I can now rejoin human society. Despite its ridiculous story involving the intrigues of gods and demigods, it was a wonderful experience. The music, plot and staging combine to stimulate the mind in many dimensions.
This picture is from the curtain call after Walkure.

The Ring at Lyric Opera of Chicago - all week

This week we are focused on The Ring at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Last night we saw Rheingold. Very impressive production (at least, I was impressed).

The most unusual event of the evening was that the line at the men's room before the show were way longer than the line at the ladies' room.

The Surprising New Science of Splashes - who would'a thunk it?

Ever wondered why water splashes? Read on...
The Surprising New Science of Splashes

I am doing my part

Interesting article

The future of blogging | CNET News.com

Lookingglass Alice

Tonight we saw "Lookingglass Alice" at the appropriately named Lookingglass Theatre in the Watertower (the real old one, not the modern ersatz one) on Michigan Ave. Breathtaking acrobatics - a fun time for all. Do not miss it if you are in Chicago -- and take a kid with you if you can. On until April 14, 2005, I believe.

The future

This clip is an interesting view the world of news in 2014. Click it and relax.

EPIC 2014

Kabuki Macbeth

Tonight we went to see a performance of "Kabuki Macbeth" at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater Upstairs on navy Pier. The review in the Chicago Sun-Times was enthusiastic and accurate -- but I felt that the performances trod dangerously close to parody of the kabuki style, and at times crossed the line and became almost campy.

The evening stood in marked contrast to the rest of my day, which was spent on such mundane activities as paying bills, renewing car licenses, tidying my desk, etc, etc, etc.

Theatre of late

In the past few weeks we have seen three good/excellent plays.

"To The Green Fields Beyond" by Nick Whitby was far and away the best of the bunch. It is an eloquent and moving anti-war attack set in the context of the tank warfare of World War I.

"The Story" by Tracey Scott Wilson is well produced acted, but the story did not capture my attention in the same way as the other two plays. It was a tad slick and glib. It raised issues, but skirted around them.

"The Subject Was Roses" by Frank Gilroy is a powerful family drama that brought to my mind the English "kitchen sink drama" movement that emerged when I was in my teens (see -- I have not yet lost my memory). Strong stuff. The venue - the Writer's Theatre at the back of the bookstore "Books on Vernon" in Glencoe - is tiny. Only three rows of seats. Made us feel we were actually in the kitchen.

The quality of theatre in Chicago continues to surprise me. On Tuesday night we are off the see "Kabuki Lady Macbeth". Report to follow.

The Tagine was great and other thoughts

OK, so now I can post again.

I had a call yesterday from an old college friend who now lives in Israel. He was trying out a form of Telephony over the Internet known as Voice over IP (VoIP). The sound quality was terrible!

But at least the chicken was good. The recipe I used was from Cooks's Illustrated. It is not on the net, but here is a close approximation:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_16461,00.html

My recipe was similar, but involved browning the chicken in the spice rub. Do not believe the 15min prep time. It took me ages to prepare and saute the chicken -- which is probably why they skipped that step!

I have been remiss

I stopped posting for a while -- but I am back now.I wish I could say it was by popular demand, but the demand is not great :-)
At least, I am trying to be back! Google's system is not posting. I cannot update this Blog. Of course, if you read this, the problem is fixed :-)

The news for today (friday March 25) is that I cooked a Moroccan chicken dish called a Chicken Tagine.

I will keep posting - if I can :-(

Getting closer to the lost universe

In a previous post, I noted the little problem of modern physics -- we have lost about 95% of the universe. Can't be found anywhere.

Now, we may have found a "dark galaxy" that may contain the missing bits.

Radio astronomers may have found the first ever galaxy that is made almost entirely of dark matter. The "dark galaxy", which lies in the Virgo cluster about 50 million light years away, rotates in the same way as an ordinary galaxy but does not contain any stars (R Minchin et al. Astrophysical Journal at press).

The physicsweb article "Have we seen the first dark galaxy" describes it. The galaxy cannot be seen in the image below. That's why it is called "dark"

I'm baaack...

... from a bad cold. I missed several days. I don't think there is much point trying to backfill.

Today I cooked a super chicken stew from a Syrian recipe. Onions, garlic, wine, coriander, cumin, olives, chicken stock. Yummy. Cures colds.

The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record

This link was posted on one of the mailing lists.
The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated (A Library of Congress Exhibition)

This Library of Congress exhibit contains incredible color pictures from turn-of-the-center Russia. For example:

Amtrak subsidies cut. Why?

OK - so I am few days late in reacting to this:

CNN.com - Bush plan to eliminate Amtrak subsidy faces fight - Feb 9, 2005

The challenge (for me) when assessing proposals made by politicians is to decide among five alternatives:

1. They are right -- the proposal is good public policy (meaning -- I agree with it)
   
If they are wrong, we disagree because:

2. They are stupid, and do not understand the issues
   
3. They are evil, and have a personal profit motive (e.g. meeting their campaign contributors needs)
   
4. They have a different view of "right" and "wrong" than I. This could be based on religion, or some other moral basis. Reasonable people can differ regarding such issues.
   
5. I am stupid, and do not understand the issue.
   

I will always discard 5. as an option that I discuss -- it is for other people to make that case.

In the case of Amtrak, the proposal is clearly wrong. The federal government subsidizes Amtrak's competition (personal automobiles) by maintaining the US Interstate system. Without the Interstate road system, trains would be packed.

It is bad public policy to subsidize the less efficient of competing alternatives. It may even be bad policy to subsidize any private endeavor, but that is another question.

So, the administration is either paying back political contributions, does not understand the issue, or believes it is morally wrong to ride trains. You decide -- I don't know.

Two movies in two days - a record for me!

We have joined a movie discussion group. As a result, we now feel impelled to actually see movies. Saturday night we saw Million Dollar Baby.

This was well made, but boxing turns me off.

Sunday afternoon -- cold and drizzly, we saw Ray.

Interesting story, well acted (probable Oscar for Jamie Foxx playing Ray Charles, but the story was dragged out for too long, and often played too hard at tugging at the heartstrings. (It seemed to work for the lady across the aisle -- she reacted loudly with appropriate sobs and gasps). The director made good use of color saturation as a differentiator between current scenes and flashbacks.

It seems like this is the year of the biography at the movies.

Great photo shows in Chicago

Today I went out with a couple of folk that I met through the Street Photography mailing list.

Despite a lifelong interest in photography, I spent very little time in galleries looking at photographs. In Johannesburg, there were no photo galleries. While working in the USA, time for galleries was almost non-existent. So, apart from an occasional swing by the photographs in the Chicago Art Institute, galleries were not on my radar screen.

Today was an eye-opener for me. We first visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College -- a stunning set of exhibitions spread over multiple floors. Next, over to the West Loop area - several commercial galleries with fascinating exhibitions.

For more on galleries in Chicago, see Chicago Gallery News.

An interesting space is the West Loop Art Market.

Its harder than it seems..

... to keep a blog current. I have never kept any kind of journal before, so remembering to say something every day does not come easily to me. Even harder is saying something of significance -- so I will fall back in the insignificant.

We went to the Opera last night night - saw the production of Tosca based on the 1964 Covent Garden production. Magnificent.

We installed a Comcast DVR today - so now, rather than not watching TV. I can have a machine watch it for me. I have set it record a bunch of programs that I always miss -- it remains to seen if I ever get to actually watch the programs. Of course, the tech who installed it did not set it up correctly, so I had to get the manual and set it up for a regular TV -- he had set it up for HDTV.

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms

Abstract:

Would you pay to see a monkey's backside? I hope not. Monkeys will, and I guess that's okay, though it sounds awfully close to the sort of thing that lands guys in jail here in the human realm.

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

Hmmm. No need for comment.

On the way to finding the lost universe

I have been a little concerned for some time now that the standard model of physics has some trouble locating 95% of the matter in the universe. It is there, they say - they just can't find it.

Now I discover that about half of the 5% that physicists have found is also missing.

This bad news was delivered to me in the guise of some good news: they have found some of the missing 2.5%. An article on physicsweb describes it.

The situation in physics now appears similar to the early 1900s. Newtonian physics described the known world, except for some minor anomalies that were ignored in polite company. Then Einstein and the quantum gang explain the anomalies and bingo -- everything you ever learned in kindergarten was just an approximation. Next we get nuclear weapons and transistors.

Only fiction writers and politicians can predict what will come next.

Actually, think most of the missing matter is in my filing cabinet.

Picasa for Photo Organizing

Google has bought Picasa

I downloaded it and tried it out, despite my heavy commitment (in time) to Imatch as a photo indexing tool. While its indexing system is not as powerful as a fully fledged image management system, its speed and ease of use are outstanding.

Try it -- you may like it.

It comes bundled with Hello! -- which I like much less. Hello appears to function like a Napster for your pictures. I do not feel comfortable with the idea of opening a pipe to my hard drive from the Internet, and I feel even less comfortable asking friends to install software just to look at my pictures. Its the Luddite in me, I guess.

ATT, Cingular and Frustration

My wife's cell phone is old and almost broken. The calling plan we have from ATT is not as cost effective as newer plans. ATT & Cingular have just merged. Seems like a good time to upgrade the phone and move to a more cost effective plan. So, off to the ATT store we go -- same old store, new Cingular signs.

Youngish guy greets us, asks what he can do for us. We tell him. We want a bar phone (not flip) with blue tooth capability. That's the phone over there, he says -- but its not available anywhere in Illinois -- backordered, he says. You can have flip and Bluetooth, or no flip and no Bluetooth. OK, we say, let's get the new Cingular plan on the old phone until the new one comes in. Can't do, he says. Your old phone is locked to ATT, and we did not want to force anyone to convert, he says.

HUH? The phone is locked to the chip by software. ATT knows how to unlock it. Once again, ATT arrogance comes to the fore, even though the company was bought by Cingular.

The outlook is bleak.

A History of Civilizations

I recently finished reading Fernand Braudel's book with this expansive title and scope.

Absolutely fascinating reading, and highly recommended. It is refreshing to read a book on world history that appears not to have an ideological axe to grind, but tries to present an array of facts in a broadly based context that allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

The conclusion that I was led to is that civilizations evolve based on both their own internal dynamics and their interaction with other civilizations. This is another way of saying that predicting how civilizations will change is beyond current intellectual capabilities -- but change they will.

This is a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion. One is left edified, but with few insights that really help to explain current affairs. In hindsight, one can say: this is why it happened. With foresight, one can only say: something will happen.

Nevertheless, the book is still worth reading.

A superb Mozart and Mahler concert conducted by Maazel

This evening we saw the New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel playing Mozart Symphony #29 and the Mahler 5th Symphony. Superb.

Our seats for this series are in Row G on the far right. We get a great view of the conductor from the side, so we can see facial expressions clearly. I was struck by the difference in conducting style between Birnbaum and Maazel.

Birnbaum uses a podium with a railing at the back - and he uses every square inch of it. He leans back over the rail. He moves to the side and leans so far over into the violin section that he almost hits heads with his baton. He moves forward and lunges towards the brass to encourage more effort.

Maazel uses no rail - he does not need one. His body movements are expressive, and sometimes explosive, but his feet barely move more than a few inches in each direction. He did, however, launch himself almost six inches into the air with both feet off the ground several times during the Mahler.

The encore was the prelude to Act III of Wagner's Lohengrin.

Overall, a very satisfying evening.

This is why I want a four wheel drive.

It is the exit from my garage!

© Clive Moss

I am thinking of buying a new car.

I will get a four wheel drive of sorts, to combat the Chicago winter.

I find the discussions on this board fascinating.
Acura RL vs. Audi A6 vs. BMW 5-Series vs. Jaguar S-Type vs. Lexus GS - Forums

I drove the Volvo s80 this morning. The Volvo drives OK, but feels tacky compared to the finish of the Lexus or Infiniti.
Last week I drove the new Acura RL. It has great electronic gizmos, but I am underwhelmed by its feel on the road and its bland looks.

The Ultimate Geek Accessory

PaperHub review - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Now this is the ultimate geek desk accessory

So, this is a test to see if I can link to my pictures on pbase. These are my current PAWs (Pictures a Week):
http://www.pbase.com/chmoss/2005q1paw
Now, can I embed a picture? This is my grand-daughter Abigail:

Why this Blog

Why am I doing this blog? Two reasons. To work on my writing skills, and to answer the question that so many people ask -- what do you do all day now that you are retired?

Like most people that keep journals, I expect that it will not be read while I am alive. However, I do realize that anyone could, and so I will be somewhat circumspect in what I write.

What will I post? Anything that attracts my interest.

When will I post? Whenever I feel like it.

Who cares? Nobody.