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August 31, 1998
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
News Links
External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
August 31, 1998
Adobe Systems, Inc. will introduce PageMill 3.0 for Macintosh sometime this week. The biggest question right now is how it will compare with CyberStudio's Go Live 3.0 which is widely regarded as the best Whizzy-Wig (WYSIWYG, or "What you see is what you get") HTML editor on the market. I've used PageMill 1.0 and now 2.0 to produce this colossus, and frankly, I'm hoping Adobe has some really nifty features in store because Go Live's $250 price tag is way outta my ballpark.PageMill's upgrade price of $49 makes it much more likely to happen, though such a low price makes me think that it might be a pretty lame upgrade. I sure hope not, though, because I've been bumping up against the limitations of version 2.0 almost since the day I bought it. That's not to say that it's a bad program, since it did allow me to create everything you see here (for what that's worth). It's just that I've a more grandiose vision that what my HTML tools have allowed me to express.
Here's my wish list: Mouseovers, better font management, Java and Javascript support, graphic image optimizing, and plug-in architecture (like, say, Photoshop). Oh, yeah, I'd like cascading style sheets too. If I get these, I'll be one happy camper.
In other other news, it's back-to-school day for Erin. The all-too-short-yet-very-necessary summer has come to an end. She'll be teaching the same Introduction to Religion and New Testament classes as last year, and that should give her a chance to refine things. It should be a great year!
I've updated the Sports section with a Steelers end of pre-season overview. It should be a great football year too!
August 29, 1998
I've had a couple days now to fiddle with my latest software updates and upgrades, specifically Qualcomm's Eudora Pro 4.01 and Simon Fraser's MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.Eudora Pro 4.01 sports a lot more of the "trendy 3-d junk" (as they called it) than past versions of Eudora. I find this distracting but not unmanageable. The best part of the upgrade from Eudora 3.1 is the filtering system. Under 3.1 it took a good long while to set things up, where as 4.01 creates filters very easily. This makes dealing with spammers easier (though, frankly, we still need an act of Congress in this area). Also, 4.01 has a nifty "Task Progress" window which is pretty convenient for moving Eudora into an "off-line" status when you just want to compose an e-mail (versus check for e-mail). Eudora Pro 4.01 ships with PGP 5.5 for e-mail encryption, a spell-checker, and a virus checker. I've found Eudora lots more powerful than the e-mail components in Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer. Retailing at about $40, Eudora is also more expensive than either of those solutions. But about 18 million users—me included—think that's worth it.
Still, if free is your bag, check out Simon Fraser's MT-NewsWatcher 2.4. No, it won't display in-line graphics, but it does have an excellent filtering system, it's multi-threaded so it can do more than one thing at a time (hence the "MT" in the title), and it won't cost you a dime. Definitely worth the download. (Try www.download.com and do a search for it.)
I've added a new image to the digital art Gallery, with a bright pattern piece called Retro Color Shine.
Did a kick-off-the-year BBQ at St. Francis High School last night. Great fun with the standard allotment of giveaways and free food. This will be Erin's third year of teaching at St. Francis, and it should be a great year!
We followed these festivities by a birthday party for Erin's dad and brother. Unfortunately, Erin's dad was feeling under the weather, but it was still good to see Joe and hang with the rest of the family.
August 27, 1998
Today's congratulations from the Davison On-line Club House go to my friend Shan who signed up yesterday to become the latest member. Remember, if you'd like to join, send me an e-mail and I'll issue you an invitation. [Note: The Club House is now closed. Sorry.]Only long-time readers of the web site are going to receive an iota of nostalgia value from this, but lookey what I found on Henry's old external, backup hard drive:
Welcome to the '90s zeitgeist...to the cyber-sin convergence of computers and conceit...to the newest reason for me to print more business cards...to the techno-alter of Me...to my sliver of the societal mirror...Step right up! Humanity for sale, $19.95 a month plus a small set-up fee. Unlimited downloads. The Cyborg Nation is being built, and you can have a very ego-gratifying part.
With a personal web page, anyone can be a feudal lord. With a browser, anyone can be visiting nobility. So welcome to my castle. Log on, tune in and drop out. No great problems get solved this way, but it sure is fun. And there's no reason to think about anything important when there's this much fun to be had. Sort of like TV, only better.
Hello, Ty Davison, nice to be met. I'm not as think as you drunk I am. Not since college anyway. This is my web page, and I don't care what visitor number you are. You're all equal in my eyes.
Yes, that's right, friends. It's the original text that once adorned the entrance to the hallowed halls of this very web site. In a fit of stupidity, I had accidentally deleted it (see the News Archive entry for August 9, 1997), and I thought it lost forever. Fascinating what backups hold....
August 26, 1998
I've updated the Chess section with a new analysis, this one a game between yours truly and David Hemstreet, one my Internet chess foes. It's a great game!A special "welcome and hello!" to my friend Sue, the latest member of the Davison On-line Club House hosted by Yahoo! If you'd like to join, send me an email and I'll issue you an invitation. For whatever reason, the Yahoo! invitations expire after 24 hours, but I'm happy to re-send invitations if need be. Tonight's chat will be at the Club House, but I'll be changing venues as soon as I find a chat place that accepts 68k-based Macintoshes. (Two of my friends couldn't chat last week because Yahoo!'s new chat system doesn't allow for 68k-based Macs.)
Important Note: The Club House has closed. Sorry.
After years of telling myself I'd order the software, I finally whipped out the VISA and bought Qualcomm's Eudora Pro. I've been using version 3.1 illegally for a good long time now, and while I'd always meant to buy it, I just never got around to it. (Which is even more criminal, since the program only costs $40.) This purchase not only does right by Qualcomm, but it also eases my guilty conscience.
Software piracy is a very difficult issue for me. On one hand, I recognize that software authors and publishers are legally entitled to earn money from their work. On the other hand, I grew up with (1) the old hacker philosophy that information should be free and (2) the idea that once I bought something it's mine. To this day, I believe that once I buy a software package its mine to do with as I please. This notion of a software license is ridiculous.
So do I own every piece of software I use? Pretty much. I can only think of a couple notable exceptions, but they're generally items which are no longer for sale. That doesn't mean I won't accept illegal versions from other people or that I won't give them copies of what I have purchased. Given the price of software today you'd have to be an utter fool to buy something without being able to try it out.
Here's an example: A couple friends of mine (nameless to protect the guilty) recently gave me copies of Blizzard Software's Warcraft and Warcraft II. This may have been software piracy at its finest (or not), but it gave me a chance to play the games and form an impression. In fact, I was so taken by them that I went out and bought the Warcraft Battle Chest, a software collection of those two games plus an expansion set. I absolutely would not have done this without the opportunity to play the real thing. Warcraft has demos available, but I found them inadequate.
Now couldn't I have just kept on playing the games and not bought them? I suppose so, though (1) Warcraft II is copy-protected and (2) I'd consider that unethical for me to do. Is it possible that my friends don't go buy the software that I give them after they've had adequate time to try the software out? Could be, but heck, it took me something like 3 years to buy Eudora Pro, so I'm not pointing fingers.
My hope, of course, is that everyone would run out and buy the software they use—especially when it comes to the Mac, a platform that needs all the software purchases it can get. But the software industry has been hosing people for so long with bugs and outrageous charges on upgrades that it's pretty tough for me to condemn the average joe who has a couple of pirated copies of this or that. (By the same token, you can take the dudes who mass produce pirated software and hang them by their toes.)
All this likely comes across a profound ambivalence, and think that about sums it up. Until the legal and ethical converge a little more neatly for me on this issue, that's probably the way I'll stay.
(Just in case anyone's curious: I pay my shareware fees too.)
August 25, 1998
Erin and I watched The Truman Show, an excellent film by Peter Weir starring Jim Carey. This is easily Carey's best work to date, though Truman is not really a comedy. It's a movie about television and notions of perception and reality. I found it both entertaining and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.Long-time readers will remember my attempts at lucid dreaming from last year. Well, two nights ago I had the interesting experience of knowing I was dreaming while it was happening. I decided in my dream to prove this by attempting to walk through a wall, something I should be able to do if it's a dream, right? Well, wouldn't you know it. I bumped my face into the wall and didn't go through it, so I concluded that I wasn't really dreaming. (Interestingly, there was no pain involved with bumping face-first into the wall.) Close, but no cigar....
August 23, 1998
I've got a first-person review of Apple's new iMac in my Macintosh Advocacy section.I've done a lot of song-writing work in the last couple of days. My World War I song is nearly complete, though I've run into something of an interesting problem with attribution. In the song I use the line "What a thing is man?" and I could've sworn this was Shakespeare (specifically from Hamlet), but I can't find any reference to it, though there's at least one bit in Hamlet that's similar. Can anyone out there tell me where this line is from? There's a chance, I suppose, that it came out of my own little brain, but if not, I'd sure like to give credit where credit is due when it comes to the liner notes.
The other song I've been working on lately is called Our Days. It represents a good step forward in terms of lyrical and musical complexity. I started out, believe it or not, with a riff that made me picture an old blues guitarist hitch-hiking his way through the hot and dusty Mississippi delta. Along with that, I had the opening line: "Our days roll by like clouds in the sky." About 75 percent of the song wrote itself from there on out. (Why that's the case with this tune while I beat my head against a wall for months with the World War I tune is beyond me.)
Our Days will replace Grace, Part I on the album. I was never thrilled with Grace as a song, though I'd bet money that the chorus will reappear in another song in a slightly different form.
I don't know how interesting everybody else finds all this musical nonsense, but God I love this stuff.
August 22, 1998
My friend Helana has given me permission to link to a marvelous picture page of her new son Keith. Images were taken with a digital camera, and though the size is a little big (so download times are a little higher than usual), the quality is superb.At long last my friend Ellie has returned to the online world, and I received a cheerful e-mail from her yesterday for the first time in months. Welcome back, Ellie!
I downloaded the Warcraft II demo from the Blizzard software site last night and played a few rounds. The game makes a lot more sense to me now, and though I'll still be at a sizable handicap when Dennis, Joe, and I meet for a Warcraft II rematch next week, at least I'll know more than I did yesterday.
August 21, 1998
Dennis, Joe, and I did a little Internet Warcraft II last night, and while it was ultimately an abortive attempt at a game, it sure was a lot of fun while it lasted. We had severe TCP/IP lag, however, and it ended up blowing apart the game half way through. No matter, I was in the process of getting kicked anyway. We're going to try it again next week, and see if we can get better results. I love playing games over the Internet with friends.Erin's jury duty lasted all of an hour. The case settled, and Erin is now free from jury duty for at least another year. She seems pretty pleased by this turn of events.
I'm still hacking my way through the jungle that is Adobe Illustrator 6. I'm still somewhat mired in Lesson One, but I'm starting to see the extraordinary power of this application. This would be a very fun software package to use at a high level. In conjunction with Adobe Photoshop, there'd be almost nothing a person couldn't create in terms of an image. Talk about marketable job skills, too.
August 20, 1998
The Davison Online Club House continues to sign up members, yesterday adding my friends Joe and Dennis. I've received a couple reports of problems in signing up; please let me know if you have this problem so that I can help you resolve it. I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on all the fun. [Note: Club House is now closed. Sorry.]I've posted my latest opinion piece, this one about the Clinton-Lewinsky mess. Entitled, "What a Surprise," if you're a Clinton fan (even after the disgrace he's foisted on the presidency), you'll want to skip this.
Erin's been on-call for jury duty this whole week, and though she'd so far not been summoned to the court house, her luck ran out today. Our big fear is that she be seated as a juror just in time to conflict with the upcoming start of the school year. Our big hope is that Erin will be disqualified given her strong religious beliefs. (Or, as Erin's friend Terri put it, "...they'll smell your humanitarian ideals and kick you out of contention. Good for you, not so good for the system.")
After setting it aside for a couple months, I returned yesterday to working on my World War I song. The fresh perspective was just as helpful as I'd hoped, and the song is now probably 60 to 70 percent complete.
August 19, 1998
I'm happy to report that the Davison Online Club House is off to a rousing start. Since I sent out membership invitations yesterday evening the Club House has added two new members, my Alaska friend and chess buddy Dave Hemstreet and my Photoshop wizard friend Garr. I hope you'll sign up too! [Note: Club House now closed. Sorry.]I'm most of the way through Lesson One (of 12) in my Adobe Classroom in a Book for Illustrator 6. I now know more about Illustrator than I've ever known, but that's not saying a whole lot. Nonetheless, I have the feeling that I will be fairly accomplished by the time I complete the book. I'll be sure to post a few of my efforts in the Gallery section when I'm done.
I played more Quake World last night. It was fun, but I can't help thinking that it would be a whole lot more fun if I knew some of the other players. Apparently, most Quake-playing people have formed groups called "clans" and play together a lot. I don't know that I'm going to be playing that regularly and as a consequence I'm not nearly as good (nor will I be) as they are.
August 18, 1998
It's fun and free: Now available thanks to a generous donation of server space and programming from Yahoo!, the Davison On-line Club House is ready for action. It features a bulletin board system where members can post messages, it has a private "members only" chat area (where I'll be holding my Yahoo! chats from now on), and it costs you absolutely nothing to sign up and log in. I tried to send out invitations to join to everyone, but if I missed you, please email me, and I'll send you an invitation to join the club right away. [Club House now closed. Sorry.]It probably is worth saying one more time: Tomorrow night's chat will be held at the Club House, not at Yahoo! Chat. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any problems logging into the Club House. If I've not expressed it plainly enough, I'm really excited about the opportunities this Club House will offer readers of Davison On-line. I hope you enjoy it!
I listened tonight to the second of the California governor's race debates, and again came away with the conclusion that Republican Dan Lungren had won handily (though by a lesser margin than in the first one). Democrat Gray Davis seems to me to be continually blindsided by specifics on various issues, though commentators on the local National Public Radio affiliate seemed to think the debate was about even. Like the famous 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates, audio is one thing, video is another, and at the end of the day, video is what decides the winner in the public perception.
August 17, 1998
With mucho help from a new Internet friend, Krissie, I ventured into the wonderful maze that is Quake World. This is, in essence, Quake via the Internet, but that hardly begins to capture or describe the fun involved. Trust me: Regular Quake is stone-cold boring after facing human opponents via the 'net. No amount of artificial intelligence tops a human player trying to stay alive. This was a way cool experience, and that, as I've indicated, really only scratches the surface. Quake World turns Quake into the best multi player game of all-time.August 16, 1998
After an excellent but quick morning visit with my friend Dennis and an even quicker yet still excellent visit with Erin's Great Aunt and Uncle, we returned today to the sunny skies and 75 degree temperatures of the Bay Area. There doesn't really seem to be too much damage from the 5.4 earthquake that rocked the area while we were gone—but I'm no structural engineer, so let's all keep our fingers crossed anyway, okay?My reading material on this trip varied widely, but one item I definitely want to mention is a book which should be read by just about everyone: Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish's How to Talk So Kids Can Learn. If you're a parent or a teacher (or just want a little insight into child psychology), this book is a must-read.
August 15, 1998—Salem, Oregon
Words fail to express my intense happiness at today's beautiful wedding of our friends Matt and Ginger. I met Matt through Erin, since they lived in the same Campus Ministry-sponsored house their senior year at the University of Portland. Erin and I were lucky enough to still be in the Portland area when Matt and Ginger met and began dating, so we've had the privilege of knowing them as a couple for the length of their relationship. Ginger and I have been e-mail correspondents since before Erin and I moved to California.I'm writing this now a day later, but I continue to feel like I'm basking in the afterglow of a holy love just from having been a witness to their marriage ceremony.
August 8-14, 1998—Salem, Oregon
Another in our seemingly endless series of jaunts up to Oregon, this time for the wedding of our friends Matt and Ginger. Along the managed to see a few friends throughout the week, including Garr and Teri, Terri and Jim, Dave and Melissa (and Jacob!), Bret, Mom and Dad, and Carlotta. That doesn't include everyone we saw at wedding-related activities. As always, my apologies to those of you we weren't able to see on this trip; I can only plead lack of time and express my hope that Erin and I will see you the next time we visit Oregon.Mid-week the Bay Area was hit by a 5.4 earthquake centered in San Juan Batista. Interestingly, that means the only earthquake I've experienced was Oregon's "Spring Break Quake" of 1993. I was sort of expecting that I would've gone through at least one in California by now.
Not that I'm complaining.
This Oregon trip was great also for the brief chance it gave Erin and me to visit our all-time favorite bookstore, Powell's. I was able to pick up two books from Adobe Systems Inc.'s "Classroom-in-a-Book" series, Photoshop and Illustrator. Although I've owned Illustrator 6 for a couple years now, I've yet to successfully figure out how to use it, so this will be a good test to see whether or not these books are as great as everyone says. Stay tuned.
August 7, 1998
The weather finally cooled off yesterday, and I was able to return to semi-functionality. I operated the computers and electronicsAugust 5, 1998
So yesterday I finally saw the summer's big block-buster, Godzilla, in an attempt to hole up for a couple hours in an air conditioned location. Not a bad storyline, though nothing terribly original. Special effects were excellent. Acting was incredibly hit-or-miss. Dialogue was about as dumb as it comes. Two hours of meaningless action, which great if you like that sort of thing or if you're trying to stay away from 100 degree temperatures. And, of course, it's hard not to like a lizard that tries to stomp New York out of existence. I'm sure we've all felt the same way at one time or another.Tonight's Yahoo! Chat at 10 PM will be the last one until August 19.
Now that the stock market is tanking, it might be a great time to re-read my "Investing Resources" piece in Opinions. Can't hurt.
August 3, 1998
The glorious 100 degree weather continued today, and, despite my best efforts, I turned into a puddle of gelatin. I did manage to get a little bit of work done in the morning, but you'll forgive me if web site updates are a little thin in the next couple days.I have, however, posted my latest movie review, this one about the colossus called Titanic. As always, be aware that my review contains certain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and didn't want to know, for example, that the ship sinks at the end, then best not to read my review. (Please tell me the ship going down bit wasn't a surprise to anyone.)
August 2, 1998
The wonderful scorching temperatures we'd been missing so desperately returned today, topping out somewhere between 98 degrees Fahrenheit and rocket ship exhaust. Although our apartment is relatively shaded from direct sunlight, as one might imagine these temperatures nonetheless hamper my computer and music activities.August 1, 1998
Went last night to a San Jose Giants minor league baseball game for the first time this season. The Giants' attempt at a comeback, being down 9-0 after 3 innings, fell short, and they ended up losing 10-8. Fun rally though, and a great time at the park.Listened to the first of five California gubnatorial debates between Democrat Gray Davis and Republican Dan Lungren. I listened on public radio where I thought that, with few exceptions, Lungren trounced Davis. But if we've learned anything in the last 40 years, it's that the visual image is what counts, particularly in politics. And apparently Davis appeared cool and unruffled while Lungren sweated like a hog. Today's newspaper called it a draw.
