There was a birthday party for my grandmother two nights ago, across from the tennis court on Palmer Street. Anne and I appeared a bit late; everyone had already started eating. The buffet was interesting: slices of red meat that I believe was ham, scalloped potatoes, and severely boiled mixed veggies. (Donna has suggested that the ham had been "potted," whatever that it.) A succession of aunts and uncles made there way to our end of the table, and it was good to see everyone. My cousin Mark, now 17 and planning to go top university, ended up telling us stories of drinking outside the hockey arena and that he really liked PHP.

The trip back from Nova Scotia was not nearly as pleasant as the journey there. Because of my grandmother�s party, I had to change my ticket and take a lower berth instead of a roomette. I would have expected to socialize a bit, but there was even less of it this time than last. Sitting across the aisle from me and reading The Two Towers was a young thing going back to Queen's, and despite my Carpenter Tolkien biography we only exchanged occasional glances over several hours.

The berths were made up immediately after dinner, and I tried to go to sleep around nine. I last slept in a berth during my across the Prairies-to-Vancouver slugfest in 1989, and I don't remember being too tall for the damned thing then. The bigger problem, though, was the temperature. I actually prefer 15 C if I have a lot of blankets. On the night of the 30th, though, I remember waking up cold and covered in sweat. I woke up at 5:30 and snuck into the shower, stealing the last two hand towels from the shared washroom, and had breakfast.

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One of the things about coming back to Truro is dealing with my stuff. It's like a time capsule from 1989, the year I left Nova Scotia on my cross-Canada trip that had me ending up in Montreal, Guelph and Ottawa. There are very many books, a mix of Foundation year classics that I never got to and theatre books and perhaps a dozen Dungeons & Dragons manuals. All stuff that I never brought with me when I moved away.

There is also the remnants of what were several large cartons of papers and notes. I used to keep everything: old scribblers, any letter I ever got... everything. In 1993, during that difficult Christmas, I went through it all and threw most of it away, ending up with a single blue file box with a few things sorted by year. That was it. Now when I visit I try to deal with the books, sorting them into two piles: one to take back to Ottawa, and the other to donate to the local book fair.

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I traveled to Truro this year by train, and I may do it every year from now on. The trip is about 24 hours from end to end, compared to about five total by plane, but it isn't nearly as stressful as flying has become. In fact, the train provides some of the only downtime I really have during the chaos of the holidays.

I spent much of Wednesday with Iain in Montreal. The conversation was filled with the usual talk about conspiracies, politics, and pop culture. We trekked up to the new Paramount cinema complex on St. Catherine's Street where the Simpson's building used to be. The Lord of the Rings was sold out for every show except 4 pm, so we visited a craft show at Place Bonneventure where his partner was selling pottery. One of the vendors was selling miniature sundials as pendants and rings.

We then dodged construction trucks on the way to old Montreal and ate chocolate brioche, trudged to Indigo to get some reading material for the train and to the cinema to stand in line for an hour to see the flick. There was a TV crew interviewing the people standing in line; the crowd was young, high school and CEGEP age, with some dressed like wizards and princesses and other SFCA types.

I was worried I might not like the Lord of the Rings. During the five minute prologue I feared three hours of plodding exposition, but things were quite different. I'm actually a bit in awe of the film, in the same way that I admire The Matrix or Iron Monkey or Star Wars. It was simply a very well done adventure.

What has annoyed me since then is reading the reviews of the film at Amazon.com (and other places) from the hardcore Tolkien fans, who somehow manage to make the Star Wars devotees seem uncommitted in comparison. The Lord of the Rings is not a sacred text, and I have little sympathy for the Tolkien purists who won't accept any differences between the book and the film.

Jackson has created a very faithful adaptation and a very good movie: all the major themes of the book are there, and the film stands on its own. The hardcore Tolkien fans, who I am sure represent a very small proportion of the readers of the book, should thank god that Jackson cares so much about the story and the setting. One only need watch the Rankin-Bass Hobbit and Return of the King animated TV shows from the 1970s, or the 1978 Ralph Bakshi film, to see how bad an adaptation of the Lord of the Rings can be.

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Ev at The End of Free writes: "No more free headlines. This is an old one I just found in my inbox, but I don't think it was covered here: iSyndicate (now YellowBrix) has discontinued their "iSyndicate Express," which was the Moreover-like headline syndication service. Moreover, Moreover recently changed the terms of service on their web feeds, so they're no longer available for commercial web sites for free. (They are still usable on personal and non-profit sites.)"

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"We have taken Mr. Darwin's name for this magazine because we believe that the current nature of business is cataclysmic with change, presenting many opportunities as well as much confusion and mystery. Our aim is to try to demystify change and to clarify and make more navigable areas of opportunity. We take the name Darwin, too, because evolution is an apt metaphor in which to frame the broad and variegated phenomena of business change."

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Snapshots in the Gutter, Letters in the Trash: A Collection of Found Art Links: "I am not working with any particular definition of found art here, instead operating on 'I'll know it when I see it' principle. Areas with which I am trying not to overlap are outsider art (art qua art created by people outside of the, um, art community, although some of the thrift store stuff probably qualifies) and art created out of found objects. this is found art, stuff people found lying around and appreciated with a certain level of remove, and frequently (which seems regrettable but unavoidable) condescension."

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When LP's Roamed The Earth: "Okay, so we're smack in the middle of the digital age. To put that into perspective, please remember that as one generation realizes it is aging because one of their icons, Kurt Cobain, died without knowing what an MP3 player is, another generation can mark its' age by the realization that John Lennon died without ever having seen a compact disc. Now, we don't represent those Luddites who bemoan the passing of the good ol' vinyl long-player. We understand that time marches on and not only do our turntables still work, but there is a steady supply of brand new 180 gram virgin vinyl delicacies finding their way into the finer specialty stores."

Posted by John at 10:11 PM | Permalink

Yesterday Google Groups came out of beta with an archive much more comprehensive than anyone had imagined possible. In addition to the old Dejanews archive, which begins in 1995, Google has added Usenet posts going as far back to 1981, only two years after Usenet itself was created. Google Groups now contains over 700 million posts.

Until the mid-1990s, Usenet was the most important part of the Internet. It was the place where knowledge was shared and, to a great extent, preserved. Today we are used to Web-based bulletin board systems that preserve posts going back months and years, but Usenet was typically a temporary thing, showing only the most recent posts from, say, the past few days. This led to the creation of the FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, which contained answers to queries that were made repeatedly in a newsgroup. The style of the Usenet post - short, informal, and to the point - became the basis for Web writing.

I posted to Usenet quite a bit in the early-1990s, mostly to rec.sport.pro-wrestling, but the earliest post I can find is to misc.investing in September of 1993.

Posted by John at 5:17 PM | Permalink

A web site is a public place: "What do people do on the Web? Most of them spend a lot of time looking for things. A Web site is like any other public place where people come to look, to learn, to search, or to experience. And as in any public place, visitors will succeed in what they came to do only if the site gives them a clear indication of: *where they are; *where they can go; *what they will find there. There are many ways to accomplish this, but one design strategy underlies every successful navigation system: it is a visual model of the hierarchy that's inherent in the content. Another way of saying this: A good navigation system uses the site's information structure as the basis for a visual hierarchy that guides the user experience."

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The Cypherpunks email list, an online forum that in many ways defined Internet activism, was booted unceremoniously from its original home, the Toad Hall Web site, earlier this week. Cypherpunks veteran John Gilmore all but dismissed the computer-security and privacy forum he co-founded in the early 1990s. It had, he wrote, "degenerated a long time ago to the point where I have no idea why more than 500 people are still receiving it every day."

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Fat Chuck's has compiled recent information concerning attempts at CD copy protection, including a list of suspected "corrupt" CDs.

Posted by John at 7:50 AM | Permalink