Experiment in Blogging.

Saturday, September 28, 2002

 

On the U.S. Airways flight back from Savannah last Wednesday afternoon, I sat next to a woman who sneezed profusely several times. Two days later, in the evening, I began having symptoms of a sore throat and cold. All Saturday I've stayed home except for a few hours sitting in a booth at the caferteria.

While home resting, I've been reading: Essential Blogging ; Peacock's previously mentioned political tract (THPFBS); and the latest NYRB issue.

The first item, Essential Blogging, proves to be a questionable purchase choice, especially for the $29.95 price, since it mainly contains the sort of technical information available on the web site of the blogging software it describes. However, it's nice to have it all together in hard cover form for easy review and comparison of features.

Quoting from the second item, THPFBS:

Today the productive capacity of the human race is such that it is possible for us to feed the world's entire propluation dozens of times over; to clothe everyone in the latest fashions; to cure or prevent most of the world's debilitating diseases; to house everyone in luxurious accommodations and pleasant cities; to communicate freely with each other; and, more than all this, to turn humanitiy's long-cherished dreams into social reality. In short, the conditions already exist for us to build a world better than Utopia.

Because the bourgeoisie emerged from the first triumphant insurrection by a revolutionary underclass in history, "it is the only revolutionary class that has ever been victorious." [Guy Debord]

The author's style tends toward the bombastic, yet lacks the rancor often heard in such critiques. I'll quote and comment on this book to a greater extent later. At the moment, I find myself still up and wide awake in the earliest hour of the morning.

Herb 11:10 PM

Friday, September 27, 2002

 

My office PC was upgraded this morning. I received a new IBM with 654 MB of RAM running Windows 2000 at 1.6 GHz. Now, when I click my mouse, the response usually snaps back almost instantly. :-) Also, I've just been told that a new, and higher resolution, 21 inch monitor is coming soon. Yesterday, my old PC was mostly unavailable, things were in transition.

Last night, at home, I browsed through my subscription copy of the 19 September 2002 issue of the London Review of Books. I noticed the address label was incomplete, it left off part of my street address, so I dialed the LRB 1-800 telephone number and gave the correction. I read most of Terry Eagleton's review of Jason Harding's book about T.S. Eliot's periodical, The Criterion. Later, I fell asleep while reading parts of Two Hundred Pharaohs, Five Billion Slaves by Adrian Peacock, which I had also just received in the mail. I'd tried to order Peacock's screed against world globalization & inequality from Amazon.com Books, but without success. However, I located it on a UK website, Politico's Bookstore and ordered it online.

Herb 4:59 PM

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

 

I'm back at the office, having returned from the Savannah, GA SESUG 2002 conference. I'm leaving my travel info for reimbusement.

Around 6 pm on Tuesday, I visited The Red Gallery of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I was greeted by Katherine J. Drewes, the Director of SCAD's Atlanta gallery, who was very personable, telling me all about SCAD and the upcoming Savannah Film and Video Festival, Oct. 26 -- Nov. 2, 2002. She also said there are free tours of the college available to the public. Before leaving, I bought a copy of a SCAD literary magazine published a few years ago and picked up numerous brochures, including a catalogue to give to my niece.

Herb 5:07 PM

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

 

Five items of interest from the conference are:

1) the batch production of a large web site of linked pages,
2) using the new SAS Treeview Java applet to display a large site map of web pages whose links are defined in a XML file,
3) the integration of Microsoft with the SAS/IntrNet Server,
4) the Axom software, and
5) SAS Enterprise Guide.

These items need further study, but may return an immediate benefit from my having attended the conference.

Herb 4:13 PM

 

Last night, I bought a Savannah Jazz Festival T-shirt at the City Market.

When I return to work from the SESUG conferenece, of which this is the last day, I will investigate the Axom SAS server as a possible replacement for, or enhancement of, SAS/IntrNet. I picked up the free Axom miniCD-ROM in the exhibitor's area.

Herb 3:47 PM

Monday, September 23, 2002

 

Today, this Monday afternoon, I'm in Savannhah, GA attending SESUG 2002, the Southeast SAS Users Group conference. So far, it's been an excellent conferenece, last Friday's pre-conference course on Creating Linked Web Pages with ODS was very informative, containing practical material I'll be able to put to immediate use upon returning to work Thursday. The Output Delivery System (ODS) course was taught by Ron Coleman of Links Analystical Inc and included a CD-ROM of example SAS coding.

I discovered a new SAS product in the conference Demo area, the SAS Learning Edition, an educational version of the SAS system available for only $125.

Also, Sunday evening, I saw a presentation on using the new Java Treeview menu (like StarTree from Inxight.com) which can be driven by an XML file -- it's very simple to use, apparently.

I'm updating this blog with Blogger using Internet access at the Ola Wyeth Branch of the Savannah Public Library next door to the Hyatt hotel.

I spent several hours last Saturday afternoon browsing in the bookshop of E. Shaver, Bookseller at Madison Square here in Savannah's Historic District. While there I met a young woman I presume to have been a college student who looking for a book about the general subject of "the criminal mind". I told her that a psychiatrist named Samenow had written a book by a similar title some years ago based ono his research in a hospital for the criminally insane. I couldn't recall the author's full name nor the exact title of any of his books, however. She asked me to guess at the spelling and repeat the name several time, as she made mental note of what I said. Checking the web just now, I find I had the correct name and spelling. :-) I also mentioned Richard Rhodes' Why They Kill.

Herb 1:52 PM