The Journal of Gregory Lightyear

12:07 am - Funniest thing I've read in a long time...

Okay, it ain't from Detroit, and it ain't intelligent...

I've been one of those bizarre, avid readers of As The Apple Turns for... well... as long as I've been a Mac owner (I will never be able to thank F.M. enough for that)...

And this one rocks:

(in particular, Bono showed up to claim that he doesn't always "kiss corporate ass," which is technically true because we think there was one time back in the early '80s when he blacked out and his lips came off for about twenty seconds or so)

06:37 pm - Nerve Gas, Duct Tape, and Stupid People.

Okay, I'm lost for words. I followed a link from slashdot to an article discussing the fascinating recent events going on in the Midwest - an invasion of ladybugs, it seems, has overpowered the local populace.
Or, at the very least, outwitted. As for why I'm guessing it's not that difficult:

"I decided to duct tape the cracks around the doors and windows, like George Bush suggested to keep us safe from the terrorist gases," Grgurich said. "But it seems that the ladybugs are more invasive than gas. The duct tape isn't stopping them; it just seems to slow them down."

10:38 pm - Squeaple died today.

Motorcycle accident.

I've been flipping through various photo albums; Norm has a few photos of him, and I've got some old photos from the Catcher's birthday party in 2001, but I haven't got much of him that's recent - I haven't seen him in quite some time.

Most of the time, the fact that I haven't seen many of my friends in a very long time doesn't get to me; I still think of them the way they were the last time I saw them, a frozen memory I can reconnect to anytime I felt like doing so. Most of them are no more than a phone call and a pub away.

Or they were, until tonight. And now, for Squeap, all I have left is that frozen memory.

Not one of my better days; and it's left me with a lot of questions over what, on closer inspection, looks like pretty questionable behavior on my part. "Endeavouring to do better" isn't going to make him any less dead.

I'm okay - feeling a bit numb about it. It doesn't help knowing that he died in a motorcycle accident, of course; having just about barely survived one myself, I seem to have woken suddenly to the awareness that everyone I know, just about, is now riding one - including M., the other half, N., who I just got off the phone with, and J., one of the guys I work with. The only time the list gets shorter is when one of them ends up as roadkill or gets an all-expenses-paid morphine addiction courtesy of their nearest NHS A&E.

I'm definitely going to the funeral; I just don't know how I'm going to react. Of the many people I know who've been in accidents, this is the first of my friends to die on one. I want to see him again, to give him a hug and say goodbye, or something. Instead, I'm left wondering whether there's going to be an open casket, and trying not to imagine how it's going to feel to know he's lying there. I imagine this horrible moment of falling to pieces at the casket, just for a moment; it's hard not to think about the purple elephant shaped like your dead friend in a silk-lined box.

This will be the last thought on this I'm going to allow myself before the funeral, I think. Unlike job interviews and dates, funerals are not one of those things you're meant to go over and over in your head, rehearsing and imagining outcomes of. You don't build little scripts of funerals in your head. Or shouldn't, anyways, I think, and so I'm going to give a damn good try at not doing so.

12:23 am - A Tale of Two Experiences

Similar, in that both were beautiful stories; different in that only one of them was a well-told masterpiece.

The first was a film for adult minds who wish to see a world of magic through the eyes of their own childhood again; the second was a film for children who wished to see an adult's vision of a world of magic without using their minds.

The first film was Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), and it was more than just an animated wonder of cinematography; it was a beautiful story, full of allegory and rich in cultural references, a window into the soul. It was an experience I won't soon forget, and it brought back wonderful memories of the time I spent in Japan, wandering through Kyoto's temples, shrines, and streets. The movie is rich, brilliantly animated, inventively concieved, excitingly told, and stunningly executed. It is, without doubt, one of my top ten films of all time.

The second film was Underworld, and I regret stepping foot into that darkened room to waste my time. Oh, it's beautiful - an attempt to do film noir in color, a film that reeks of B-movie storylines and execution. A shining example of just how much special effects can do to turn a poor movie into one which can at least draw audiences, it's often visually stunning - unfortunately, the acting, and the storyline, are mentally jarring, and I found myself more than a little frustrated.

Without doubt, I had expectations: I was a lover of White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade; their detailed depictions of centuries of history of Vampire society through the curse of Caine by god and his transformation and inevitable self-exile from the world of Man, and the dance of the Masquerade, hiding themselves from the world of men, fearful that the cattle, so many in number, would rise and destroy them if they ever became aware of their presence.

As a fan of the genre - of more than just this particular set of intricately woven legends - I wanted to like this film. How horrific to find that I was unable to find it within myself to see what was essentially an Immortal's take on Romeo and Juliet, a world where Werewolves, once slaves of their masters, become the hunted and sworn enemies of the Vampire clans living their decadent lives in glorious gothic scenery. A heart-rending story, when told well; an utter disappointment when incarnated in this lifeless body of cellulose, the light passing through it adding no illumination to the imagined thoughts passing through the mind of that director when he finally decided that film was done.

One of these films is worth seeing. Take your best guess as to which.

08:23 am - First day...

This is a record of my first day on the job. I'll file what happens on it as comments, as I don't want to fill my journal with more crap than it's already full of. :)

08:24 am - Response to Guardian's "License to drive a computer"

I've become a relatively gabby poster on the Guardian's online newsblog at http://www.onlineblog.com/. I saw a comment today that caused a few of the hairs on my neck to rise, and thought I'd respond; both there and here, as it's one of my less fond memories.

The article on the Guardian I was responding to was on Microsoft's operating systems, and how users should be more responsible users of these complex machines.

( my response )

03:32 pm - Someone congratulate me. :)

I've just been hired as the new CTO of What's On When, which provides worldwide event services to everyone from LastMinute.com to Travelocity.

I'm very happy. :)

01:56 pm - IBM's Compilers on MacOS/X

Well, there's been a major announcement - IBM has just released beta versions of their XL compilers on the Mac.

As to why this is important...

G4/G5 CPUs are unusual beasts. As are most CPUs. Each of the mainstream CPUs diverges from 'orthagonal' purist CPU design in a variety of ways; generally to get specific optimizations.

The most common compiler in use today is GCC; it runs on and builds code for a wide range of platforms - many more than most people have ever actually used in their daily lives. It's the standard compiler on which most people tend to think in and use; the most commonly used compiler suite on the planet, in all likelihood.
And yet, it suffers from poor performance. Not because it's a poor compiler - it's one of the best compilers on the market - but because it's a universal infrastructure, that models an orthagonal, generic CPU design.

Real CPUs don't look like the internal CPU representation that compilers use to generate fast, efficient, optimized code. As a result, the code gets the job done, but can be wasteful in terms of time and efficiency (and size, for that matter). Jack of all trades, master of none.
So, application developers looking to use the best their hardware has to offer - from geneticists running BLAST to search for genomes to mathematicians in Mathematica, from graphic designers in Photoshop to web monkeys in Dreamweaver, are generally using code compiled not with GCC, but with a vendor-specific compiler.
Intel users often end up using the Intel compiler; it generates more efficient, and higher quality, code than the competition, by a sizeable amount. On large runs, this can mean differences in runtime of anywhere from seconds to *hours* of real-world twiddling-of-thumbs time.

Traditionally, MacOS/X is a GCC box, as is Linux. Our Operating System is compiled using it, as are all of our applications; we rely on GCC to provide us with the quality and support that GCC has traditionally offered, and rely on application authors to hand-tune their code to work on our systems using either assembly language subroutines or pseudocode like the AltiVec extensions on G4/G5 systems.

This announcement means that the Mac OS is headed for a kind of parity that it's not traditionally had; while historically G4 AltiVec performance has trounced that of its Intel competition, even with the GCC compiler in comparison to 'native' compilers on those platforms, that we're about to see a new kind of compiler that has the promise of really using more of the CPU we already have in our machines; in other words, change compilers and your applications run faster on existing hardware.

More importantly, these compilers, as well as more accurately modelling our G4/G5 CPUs than GCC, often offer features that, right now, you just can't get in GCC. The most promising of these is called OpenMP - it's a language extension which allows you to write parallel code at a low level easily. What this means for us is that it will become very easy, using IBM's compiler, to turn algorithms in applications, even if they don't know anything about threads, into applications that, for those computation-intensive times, know how to use the fact that many of the Macs shipping today ship with more than one CPU. It means that multiple CPUs will get used more often, and that means a lot less thumb-twiddle time.

Today is a good day for mac developers; it promises to make tomorrow a good day for mac users. Today, we should be thanking IBM; tomorrow, your investment may have just become a better value for money.

Current GCC vs XLC performance comparisons show optimized GCC vs optimized XLC compiles showing improvements of anywhere from 11% to 51% on SPECint2000 scores. For floating point performance, the difference is even more extreme - more of the numbers are over the 50% mark than under; the G4/G5 have always had stronger floating point, and now the compiler backs that up with the appropriate optimizations to make use of the unique features of the architecture that enables that to be true.

For more information, have a look at IBM's presentation on their current and future compiler features along with some performance notes on how they got there. While not an example of how this will perform on a Mac, it's definitely a sign of just how much can be accomplished by moving to native compilers - something we can all look forward to in future releases of software on our embattled platform.

10:31 am - The Music Industry

There's a raging discussion going on in the rafters; most of the hub-bub was kicked off by a rip-off of the iTunes Music Store website by downhillbattle.org; it's raised some questions, as has what has turned out, for me, to be a very enlightened response by thehypercube here at LJ..

The issue, of course, is around Apple's profits in the iTunes Music Store, and the share of that money which actually makes its hands into the pockets of artists. Apple takes 35% of the cost of a track or album - that 99 cents, or 10.99. But the downhillbattle site also takes umbrage with the fact that the record companies will likely only hand back between 8 and 14 cents.

The argument is that this was the artist's choice - CDBaby, for example, a well-known label which offers the necessary CD production without bogging individuals down in overhead, takes its share and splits it 9% for CDBaby, and 91% for the artist/band.

In other words, the band knew this when they were walking into the label and signed the contract. They knew that the label would front all of the money for their production and release, and they knew what they'd be getting out of it.. The market isn't nearly as closed as people think it is, and there are other ways, other than the big labels, to get your music out there. These bands are choosing the 'get rich quick' offerings of the major labels, but they had a choice; this wasn't always true in the past, but it's true now.

So I don't actually have a problem with the labels anymore. The RIAA, of course, I still have a few bones to pick with - hence and my involvement with that project. But in the wide world of music, you do get what you pay for; and if you're dumb enough to give your music to the big labels, then they deserve to get your money.

The funny thing is, it's not like everything the big labels produce is crap. Some of it is fantastic, quite frankly - and some of the smaller labels that have been bought by Sony and others have every ounce of the music quality they had before they were swallowed whole.

Artists have a choice; that choice is that they can do for themselves or find elsewhere the things that a big label is willing to do in those package deals that we believe screws the artists out of millions of dollars. Hopefully, we'll see more of them make that choice, as the means with which to get our attention become more accessible.

11:15 pm - Oh yes...

It's good to be back. :)

11:12 pm - The Nature Of Shame

Today, the BBC is airing a set of episodes on that ever-popular issue, Asylum. This issue has, over the last few years, ripped across the EU; it was the single most important political issue during the set of elections in Austria, leading to the election of the far-right Freedom Party, at least partially in response to the Serbo-Croatian conflict's influx of new refugees of all of the races, including Albanians, into their territory.

Germany, another 'sufferer' has had public cries of dissent over the influx of Turkish, Albanian, and other major nationalities seeking asylum; East Germany still echoes with right-wing comments on this influx. France saw the rise of Le Pen, again in the rural areas, as does the UK and the growing popularity of the British National Party.

We are standing at the edge of a great sea of darkness; throughout Europe, rural individuals are quickly becoming hardline in their support for anti-immigration and anti-asylum policies.

( Read more... )

11:39 am - Al-Jazeera translation offline...

That link I gave previously for an automatic translation of al-Jazeera into English from Arabic is no longer possible without registering to Ajeeb and paying a monthly service fee. Unfortunately, there appears to be no other service like it on the web.

If anyone else knows of a free arabic->english site translator on the web, yell. Until then, I can't read al-Jazeera anymore. :(

09:53 am - A Landslide Brought Me Down

The door to my closet remained firmly locked for the majority of my youth. Like many Midwesterners growing up in towns and cities like Milwaukee, where the suburbs were in many ways untouched by the ravages of time that has changed our culture, I grew up in a world void of people of color, of any apparent sexual persuasion other than heterosexuality, and of poor people.

I won't get into warm, fuzzy memories of hot lunch tokens and government cheese. There's no point. We were poor - and like a lot of poor people, we had a pretty tough life. Looking back, I wonder how I survived. At the time, it didn't seem nearly as hard to live through as it does now to look back at. Perhaps that's just youth; perhaps children are more oblivious to the circumstances of their lives than I have the ability to pen into words. I don't know. I have my memories; some good, some bad, and most bring up painful moments in my life. That past shaped me to be who I am today, and I don't know who I would have become had I not lived through those years. I don't often think about who that person might be, or what he might be like.

Anyways, I digress. Like most Midwesterners at the time in the area I lived in, and the areas I knew of (I'm trying to avoid saying it was like that everywhere - but I'd be lying if I didn't say it felt true) I believed being gay to be a relatively filthy, dirty thing. My level of contempt and disgust of homosexuality was fed to me by a culture that gave us the wonders of monster trucks, truck pulls, and WWF sundays. And so the slow and painful realization that I was gay wasn't easy to accept, and I accepted that I was gay long before the image of being gay was positive.

I remember spending a lot of time crying in my room. I used to curl up in bed, in my black bedroom (which, evidently, remains black to this day - my father seems not to have repainted it, even though he moved into the room) with the curtains drawn, listening to music, letting the words evoke tears from within the folds of the blankets. I remember how good it felt, how it felt like anything I could ever want to say had already been said and sung, and all I needed to do was to find the right music, have those words spoken in song, and I would, for a moment, be free from the pain of silence.

It took many years to become comfortable with the idea that being a gay man wasn't something perverse, or disgusting, or wrong, or dirty. It took a lot of tears, and a lot of help, and often that help simply wasn't there.

The big turning point, where I first realized I had a problem, was when I was walking home from somewhere; I was living on 6th Street, near enough to the bad areas of Milwaukee that people didn't spend a lot of time walking around chatting to neighbors. I was walking home when the white pickup truck drove past me, a couple of guys in the front and one in the back; as they drove past, they shouted 'faggot' and jeered, and I turned on one heel, raised my fist into the air, mouth open, lungs full of anger.

And said nothing. I stood there, frozen, and suddenly realized that I was, indeed, and I'd better get used to the idea. The name, that label, had so much negative connotation, so much venom, and yet there I was, a gay man - one who had never told his friends, nor so much as looked cross-eyed at another gay man. I'd never had sex with another man, never kissed another man, never dated or so much as touched another man in that way, and yet I knew, and I had a problem. The problem was, I had identified myself as gay without ever removing my hatred of being gay.

I don't know if it is like that for everyone; maybe it is. It seemed especially hard to undo what had been a lifetime of associations with homosexuality; parents who hated them, a brother who used the words as slurs and the ideas as invective, a whole family of farm-bred rednecks who essentially despised homosexuals and who had ingrained into me the idea that there was something wrong with them - now something wrong with me.

I remember that moment was the turning point, a moment of clear realization when one becomes aware of the immensity of the problem. A moment where one suddenly stands back from the minutiae and details of moment-to-moment life and saw, for the first time, myself - standing in the middle of the sidewalk, watching a now distant white van, tears streaming down my face and arm hanging weakly in the air, afraid of who I was becoming/had become, and feeling desperately alone.

University gave me the chance of going to the local gay/lesbian/bisexual community; I remember seeing a poster for the GLBC, and wandered the halls looking for it, afraid to ask anyone where it was or where I was going. I found a small room in the furthest corner of the community offices in the student union, a cubbyhole; the door was locked, and there was a board with some times on it stating when it would be open. I returned twice and walked straight past it before being able to stop and go in. I was terrified; the memory of that terror is still palpable, and I know now that I must have looked ashen and meek, nervous and afraid. I was welcomed in, asked my name; someone got me a cup of coffee, and I just sat around listening to people as they filtered in and out, chatted with the staff, had ordinary conversations about ordinary things.

They accepted me long before I accepted myself. The memory of that fact is strong, yet the memory that always rises to the surface, like an oil slick on water, is always that one moment of recognition where I saw myself for the first time, ran home, went to my room, put on a CD, and cried myself to sleep.

03:11 pm - Read Different.

If anyone is interested in reading the news of the war from a different point of view, how's about reading it directly from al-jazeera?

A translation service which is surprisingly fantastic at translating Arabic to English can be found at Ajeeb, which appears to either be Yahoo or something very Yahoo-like, and translates pages, a-la Babelfish, into and out of Arabic.

To read al-Jazeera through this service, try this link, which does the job nicely.

Note that's a big URL; you can either cut and paste it into your browser's URL box, or click it from a bookmark - but it will not accept a followed link with a referrer different than ajeeb's own service.

01:48 pm - Lord of the Rings: The Very Secret Diaries...

Okay, so I stumbled across what must be one of the most funny things I've read in a very, very long time. cassieclaire has written a set of Very Secret Diaries of our favorite Lord of the Rings characters; and as fan fiction, it's some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. While you can follow the link, you can also fetch some of them off of that website.

However, they're better read in her journal, where she's done even more.

07:15 pm - Failure to Communicate

When us left-wingers aren’t busy rolling up and smoking our copies of the High Times, we like to relax with a hot cup of FairTrade coffee in our bio-conscious, locally made ceramic coffee cups, and read our copies of the The Guardian before mulching them and putting them into the compost heap in our backyards’ home recycling area.

02:29 pm - Re: Eric's short response

In a comment on the previous journal entry, E. wrote:

The pertient facts remain:

• It is clear that weapons of mass destruction are a goal of his.
  
• It is clear he will not comply unless convinced by a show of force.
  
• France would not let us try impressing him with unified force, so that route is dead.
  

Therefore, we are using force.

10:39 am - By the pricking of my thumb...

I know that as a man who was once a military man (Navy), and one who took part in the command and control centers of one of the naval fleet which orchestrated much of the attacks during the first Gulf war, my ex-boyfriend has a very different set of opinions on this than myself. Historically, we've almost never seen eye to eye on the use of military force, and I've never been a proponent of supporting the political leadership just because they happen to be using military force and military men might feel bad if I don't.

As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, I seem to have a strange habit of picking up boyfriends who are distinctly more right wing than my socialist-leaning self. Hmm.

Anyways, I've been written with a note which basically makes fun of the U.N.'s Britney Spears impression (Oops I did it again / Hit me baby one more time) when it comes to the last 17 resolutions on Iraq.

So here's a bit of my point of view; while not the whole truth, it's the part of the truth I find most compelling, that part of the truth which most strongly shapes my opinions on what seems to be an inevitable war:

( Read more... )

10:57 am - Blast From The Past, Part 2: On Israel and Palestine

I've had to give a good hard think about something over the last... well, few hours to write, and then three episodes from Season 2 of Sex in the City (why the hell is this show so compelling?) then more work, then Manon at the ballet... anyways. I've had some time to reflect on the subject.

Questions of bias have been raised, and I hope I have provided a response to those; but more importantly, and more to the point, an opinion needs to be re-analyzed in the current context so I can decide how I feel about what's currently taking place.

( Read more... )

10:07 pm - Blast From The Past, Part 1: Bias

Recently, an anonymous person commented on a previous entry, Honesty Breeds Contempt.

( Read more... )