During the whole recall debacle, a friend of mine told me that Schwarzenegger was popular with students (and Davis unpopular) because under Davis, fees had been rising. So did resentment. Students apparently believed in Schwarzenegger’s swagger about cutting taxes and fixing things up painlessly.

What fools. That’ll teach them not to study history: in such lean times, education has always been the first to suffer. Across the board, college tuition and fees will rise between 10 and 40 percent. Community colleges will up per-unit fees from $18 to $26. Not exactly a “tax” hike, but more or less the equivalent, especially to struggling California families trying to put kids through school, or kids (like I was) trying to work their own way through.

In addition to that, Arnold will kick these students while they are down, by limiting the number of students who can attend, turning away tens of thousands of students. Apparently, Arnold has taken a good, long look at the kind of McJobs that the Bush economy is promising and has decided that we won’t need so many college graduates, after all.

“What it means is that we have to cut back for the next two years until we get out of this crisis,” Schwarzenegger said. “There are certain things you have to do in terms of sacrifices you have to make. It’s that simple.”

Oh, it’s that simple now. How about during the campaign, Arnold? Too complex for you to figure out then? Or too much truth for your voters to handle?

And the education bit is just part of the picture, as Californians in all areas of life who supported Arnold are discovering that there are no magical endings, as Arnold, step by painful step, starts gutting their programs, stealing local taxes, and starts spreading the pain around–pain he castigated Davis for spreading.

In what should not be much of a surprise, a recent report released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (their web site is being overwhelmed at the moment) concludes that Iraq was not an imminent threat (something which should by now be crystal clear to anyone truly paying attention) and it was not necessary to invade; that it’s weapons of mass destruction was never a danger to us, that intelligence was misrepresented to the Congress and the American people, there was not a terrorist connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that studies should be carried out and information assessed so that American policy–particularly the preemptive strike policy–may be reconsidered and changed.

That is a very compact summary of the 111-page report (link to PDF file), but it hits the high points. While the Carnegie organization is described as a left-leaning think-tank and fingers of bias will be pointed, the points made in the report are nonetheless all too accurate, painting a picture of a war we never should have gone to, reiterating the well-establish fact that we were lied to in a rush to a war that had various ulterior motives.

Colin Powell has replied to the report, saying that “the game is still unfolding,” but it is becoming harder and harder for the administration to keep up the fiction that the massive stockpiles of WMD and an extensive Iraqi national program to produce these weapons could have existed when eight full months of painfully extensive searching has not turned up the slightest scrap of evidence that anything of the sort ever existed. The claims that weapons which threatened the doom of the free world are now cleverly hidden in some unknown garage somewhere are wearing thin.

It’s about time we give up the pretense and begin to accept that this was a war the administration wanted, not to protect us from WMD, not to free the Iraqi people, nor in response to any immediate danger or threat–but that, at best, the administration felt that Iraq was a possible future threat they wanted to eliminate and so used 9/11 and the current climate of fear to make the American people approve of a war they never would have approved of at face value–and at worst, that a variety of base motives, such as having control over oil production so as to control the markets, were the foundation of a massive campaign of lies and distortion.

And as all of this is being discussed, more and more of our people are being killed in Iraq–nine in a helicopter just today, five in various attacks on January 2nd, and recently a soldier killed almost every day. This in addition to all the other costs that American citizens and the country as a whole have been made to pay. Bush and his people would argue it as “we can’t leave now,” and while that is true, it is beside the point. The criticism is not that we should bug out and leave Iraq to become even worse, the point is that going into Iraq in the first place was a horrible blunder, a con job on the American people, and a diversion of money and resources from true national security. Capturing Saddam has not changed any of that.

Sorry, the forum is broken–I think my web host is rather covetous of processor time, and they tend to throw up roadblocks. I will get this back online as soon as I can, but it may be a bit. Apologies!

And with the list of comments now climbing over 40, I’ve decided to start a forum. What the heck.

(Recent comments suggest sex as a cure–woo hoo!)

Okay, you have got to see this.

Go to http://www.bushin30seconds.org/ to see a competition, sponsored by MoveOn.org, to create commercials to convince the people of the United States not to elect Bush in 2004. Many of the commercials are extremely clever and well-produced, some are outright hilarious–and some are too chillingly real. Celebrity judges to decide the winners include Jack Black, Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Gus Van Sant, Al Franken, Margaret Cho, and Moby. (“Moby”?) Definitely a lot of strong contenders in there, and most, in my opinion, are much better than the professionally produced political ads you see on TV.

Go ahead. Check it out. Well worth the time, trust me.

Okay, I promise I’ll get back to political blogging soon. But a few more photos first. It was a very clear day today (doubtless due to the chilling cold), which afforded a very good view of Mt. Fuji. I had to go out of my way a bit to get a photo, though–what used to be a nice shot of Fuji from the riverside has become obstructed since last winter by a construction job across the river–spoiling the view for local residents at exactly this spot, sorry to say (I’m not one of them). Still, not too far away and you get a shot again. That’s progress for you.

And as I walked up to my apartment in my own building a while later, the moon was just rising over the horizon, a beautiful shade of orange. Talk about the Red Planet–here’s my own shot at that orb, or the closest imitator.

In the meantime, the first week of school is keeping me busy. And while I go easy on my own blogging, my students are starting up theirs–three sections of Introduction to Computers, and all fifty or so students have the assignment to blog once a week for the next thirteen weeks, on the topic of computers. Feel free to visit and perhaps comment, but please be kind and courteous (when was the last time you blogged in another language? These kids are amazing) if you interact.

The class I teach is pretty fun for me despite the workload; the students all get very creative with their projects, and it’s always fun to introduce a lot of the new technology and see practical advances for everyone. By the end of the semester, the page I linked to above will also sport the students’ web pages–one of the other projects they all must do.

A couple of cool photos fresh from NASA, showing color images of the horizon and some rocks nearby the lander in the Gusev Crater on Mars. Enjoy.

And the webcast begins… I’ll be watching as it goes on an post the announcements as they come, as added updates to this post. Right now it’s just crowds and Elvis music–Jobs should be out momentarily. Looks like the mini-iPods are more or less a lock, from both the various confirmations from the rumor sites as well as the emphasis on iPod advertising at the Expo itself.

Initial announcements are being made, and they’re showing people videotaping, photographing, and using their laptop Macs to broadcast reports out. The rumor sites as well as others have people reporting on it at the site–some even have stripped their sites down to the bare text minimum to accommodate as many as a million hits in the next few hours as those without the bandwidth to watch the stream come by to read the blow-by-blow. This expo, every year, really is a Mac phenomenon. And it begins….

Steve began by acknowledging…me! Well, the more than 60,000 people from more than 100 countries accessing the webcast. Then he stepped right into the 20th anniversary bit, talking about and running the 1984 ad, to huge cheers (it really is a good commercial). On showing the commercial, Jobs quipped: “We couldn’t help ourselves.”

Jobs then went into his usual start-of-the-keynote recap of past news (OS X progress) and new app versions. The first was Final Cut Express (impressive little app for the price). Then came MS Office 2004; new features: “notebook” view in Word, palette fading, a slightly improved print layout view in Excel, and the “project center”–all of them rather unimpressive, small-potatoes improvements. Why would we want to buy this new version? And from what I hear, this will be the last version before MS discontinues the suite on the Mac platform–they seem to be going out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Then Jobs went on about the G5 Supercluster at Virginia Tech, showing a video about it made by Apple.

And whoops, there’s the G5 Xserve in a 1u form factor and an unlimited client license for OS X Server 10.3. There is a single-2GHz version and two dual-2GHz versions. And a new Xserve RAID array which will work on Windows and Linux servers as well). Apple is now aggressively going after the server market.

And now iTunes (first the stats): the music store has sold 30 million songs and sales are going up, and it has a 70% market share; the top spender at the iTunes music store bought $29,500 worth of music–and Jobs wouldn’t say who it was. 50,000 audio books sold. And other little stuff. New iTunes features: BillBoard music charts, 12,000 classical tracks (where are the orchestral soundtracks?), making half a million songs on the store.

And there’s another rumor confirmed: Pepsi and Apple will give away 100 million songs in Pepsi yellow bottle caps (1 in 3 will have a free song) in February and March (watch for a super bowl ad). Also the iTunes music store will be open in Japan by the end of January, and Europe a few months later.

And here comes iLife. iLife ’04, they call it–“Like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life.” With iTunes, of course. Then iPhoto 4 (what happened to 3? Did I miss it? No, it says “2” on Apple’s web site still–hmmm), with support for up 25,000 photos, smart albums, better slide shows with 3-D transitions, Rendezvous photo sharing, and some other features–but what about speed? Sure, it works fast on Jobs’ superfast Mac onstage, but how about on my 800 MHz G4 Powerbook? Frankly, I have been less than impressed with iPhoto in the past, and it will take a major speed boost to get me back to it. Admittedly, Jobs did a good demo of buying a song–fast–from the music store and then integrating it on the fly into an iPhoto slide show with cube transitions.

iMovie 4: a few improvements–some interesting new title effects, non-destructive clip trimming in place, audio scrubbing (playing audio as you drag the play head manually), importing video from an iSight camera, and easy interactivity with .mac accounts.

iDVD4: You can tell they’re (a) making all of them version 4, and (b) building up to a new iApp. But with iDVD, some new features of course, including a project map which shows a flowchart of how all the clips are connected; new transitions and themes; and better encoding for 2 hours of video on one DVD.

And here comes the new, fifth app for iLife…

GarageBand.

A “pro music tool for everyone.” It basically acts as a music recording, mixing and publishing app. Mixing: up to 64 tracks; 50 software (MIDI) instruments (including, for example, a $50,000 grand piano); 1000 audio loops and other audio effects; and different guitar amps. You can play a MIDI instrument, like a keyboard, into the Mac, switching instruments for each new track that you record to simulate a band, laying new live instrument tracks down over existing ones, and editing existing tracks. The 1000 loops includes all kinds of instruments, all sorts of pre-recorded music loops, so you could patch together music without even knowing how to play an instrument or owning one. Jobs did a fairly impressive demo of using the loops to make a new piece of music that could easily be used as background music for a film or slide show, or perhaps even just to serve as a composition in itself. Once you get your composition finished, it is exportable right into iTunes and the iPod. Pretty impressive little piece of software there.

Now for the price: Jobs compares it with a Windows suite patched together for $300, justifiably said to be much lower in quality than iLife–and Apple keeps iLife’s price down at $49, free on every new Mac. Coming out January 16th. Also Jam Pack (more loops, MIDI instruments, and effects) and a USB keyboard, each for $99.

Not too shabby.

And last (unless there is “one more thing”), the iPod. 730,000 iPods sold in the last quarter, 2 million in total, with sales shooting up; iPod market share is 31% in units, 55% in revenue, making the iPod the #1 MP3 player sold. Small news: the 10GB model gets upgraded to 15GB; new headphones for $39…

Jobs then focuses on the fact that some 60% of the market in MP3 players are flash-memory, talking about the cost and low storage ability for songs. Obviously leading up to the mini-iPods. Says they’re going after this market. And here it is:

The iPod mini: 4 GB of storage, rather than hundreds of MB on Rio and other players. Smaller (business card size, half-inch thick) thinner than other players–16x more storage in a smaller form for $250, $50 more than a Rio. And colors–anodized aluminum, in silver, gold, blue, green and pink.

Not bad–not the $100 price range people were hoping for, but still a very nice deal, and Apple has never had problems selling players at higher-than normal prices.

And now Jobs is wrapping it up, reviewing the whole keynote, and coming back to the 20th anniversary theme–but no “one more thing,” no anniversary special-edition Mac, no new speed bumps for the G5 (yet).

Nevertheless, a very interesting set of announcements–interesting for me as well, since I was going to get my school to buy iLife anyway. And now it’s 4am, and I really have to get to sleep!

Got your 3-D specs? Unfortunately, I don’t at the moment, but if you do, there is a very nice panorama (shown only a part above), in 3-D, at the Spirit Martian rover site for you to take a look at. If you’d like to see pictures that the press isn’t showing you in full, here is their multimedia page (including raw images not included in press releases).

It’s back–the web page at Apple which will host the webcast in another 24 hours or so. Know that you have to have QuickTime that can handle MPEG-4 (any recent QT will do). In the past, the streaming quality has gotten better and better. Not nearly TV broadcast quality, but more than good enough. If you have a satellite dish, the coordinates and frequencies are here.

Sorry I’m not able to blog much–hardly any political stuff over the past week, you guys must think I’m off my feed–battling a rather long-lasting, nasty cold, and my classes start tomorrow so preps are taking up time as well.

Woohoo!

After so many disappointments, most recently the failure of Europe’s Beagle, we finally have ourselves another success. The Spirit lander just executed a picture-perfect descent and (as far as we know) landing, everything right on schedule, contact kept with the lander as well as could have possibly been hoped. So now the lander is deflating its crash balloons, resting safely on the ancient river deposits of the Gusev Crater south of Elysium Planitia, and southeast of the Viking 2 landing site at Utopia Planitia. A map showing landing sites can be found here, and an interactive zoom-in map without landing sites labeled is here at the USGS.

Part of a panorama photo could be forthcoming in the next few hours, or perhaps sometime in the next day or so.

Always good to have a billion-dollar success story now and then. And to have that success be in the name of exploration, science, adventure and understanding.

Update:

Photos have been downloading since earlier tonight. Here are a few, which I took the liberty of colorizing:

The MacWorld Expo in San Francisco is just a few days away, and many people expect a good many big announcements. For those of you who do not regularly surf the rumor sites, here is a quick list of the rumored announcements, and my wholly unprofessional assessment of their likelihoods:

Mini-iPods: The rumors began with the idea that low-priced iPods would be released, possibly as low as $100. The rumor was quickly snubbed as being impossible, as no news of a smaller form was out–but now, reports would have us believe–and this is considered a very high probability today–that Apple will be releasing mini-iPods, smaller than standard iPods, with only a few gigs of storage, with a variety of colors and styles. Probability: 90% or higher.

Software Updates: Expect new versions of a lot of software, including Final Cut Express 2.0, iMovie 3.5, iDVD 4.0, iPhoto x.x, and iTunes x.x. Probability: pretty much a solid lock for most of these.

New Apps: Rumors have been flying about a new application, probably an iLife app (though the long awaited “iWrite” or “Document” word processing app has been raised as well). Several rumor sites have teased, “we know what it is but we’re not telling,” which I translate as “we have no clue whatsoever.” They’re in the business of telling. Still, confidence is high that we’ll be seeing an addition to the iLife suite, most likely in the area of audio (many bets are on a music mixer). Probability: 90% or higher for the iLife app, 75% or higher it has to do with audio, 50% or lower odds on any other specific information.

“iBox”: Recent days have been filled with visions of a MacTiVo of sorts, a set-top box that would record TV shows digitally, making them accessible through your Mac network, and watchable on your Macs throughout the house. It might not have the ability to auto-schedule recordings like TiVo or ReplayTV, but it would have a DVD recorder to save shows if you no longer have room for them on your hard drive. It would also run iTunes and iPhoto, becoming a sort of digital media center for your house. Plug it into your TV and stereo set and you’re off. An interesting idea–though without auto-programming or (possibly) commercial-avoiding technology, it might not be such a TiVo- or Replay-killer. Still, a tantalizing prospect; Probability: I’d say 75%.

New G5s: Rumors have been out for some time about smaller, faster, cooler G5 chips from IBM, and that we’ll see speed bumps to the new G5 desktop line up to a dual-2.6GHz model. Could be. Probability: 60% for desktop G5 revs, 30% or lower for laptop G5s.

Anniversary Mac? In case you missed it, the 20th anniversary of the Mac (remember the Super Bowl ad, “1984 will not be like 1984”?), and some are prophesizing that a 20th anniversary edition will be out, possibly a new Cube. Probability: eeehh, maybe. I’d say 40% or less.

G5 XServes: In response to your “Huh??” the XServe is the server version of the Mac, used to head up LAN networks or act as Internet servers. These flat, wide, stackable computers currently run on G4s, and are expected to make the jump to G5s. Mostly a thing for Administrators to get excited about. Probability: not much of us non-admin types really care.

Apple did have a web page staked out for the QuickTime stream of the keynote by Steve Jobs, but it is currently not responding. It may come back in the next day or so, as Apple has regularly streamed these keynotes over the web. The keynote will start January 6th, 9am PST, that’s 2am Japan time on January 7th.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine on New Year’s Day, something referred to as Hatsumode in Japan, visiting a shrine to pay one’s respects and to pray at the outset of the new year (I just did that myself–I’ll blog on it as soon as I get the video on to my computer). Koizumi’s visit is classed as an “official visit,” which somehow apparently makes it a political act instead of a religious one, which would violate the separation of church and state here.

Now, one might think that the prime minister visiting a shrine on New Year’s might be kind of like a U.S. president going to church on Christmas, and normally you’d be right; it’s just the choice of shrines that makes the difference. Imagine, for example, that a U.S. president visited a church that advocated white supremacy, and that it was not just one president or one time, but a string of presidents visiting the same church for more than a quarter century.

That’s kind of like what’s happening here in Japan. Yasukuni Shrine (English site), originally called Tokyo Shokonsha, was built in 1869 at the time of the Meiji Restoration, when the Tokugawa Shogunate collapsed and the Emperor was, at least nominally, reestablished as the head of the country in a constitutional monarchy with a parliament (“Diet”). Yasukuni was run by the military as a shrine for the fallen soldiers of national wars, and after WWII, many soldiers of that war were enshrined there–but in 1978, fourteen class-A war criminals from WWII, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, were interred there as well. Since that time, Yasukuni has displayed exhibits extolling the virtues of the war dead, and has taken somewhat of a nationalistic view of Japan’s actions during that period of time (one example is that WWII is referred to by the shrine as the “Greater East Asian War,” a name used by nationalists who rationalized the war as a movement to free Asia from European rule; other examples include the reverence paid to the war criminals and the shrine’s attitude that the war crime tribunals were a “sham”).

And there’s where the problem arises: the shrine kind of represents Japan’s reluctance to see WWII as a war of Japanese aggression, but rather as a justified war, a view in which the suffering by Japanese people and soldiers is emphasized and the atrocities committed by Japan are either de-emphasized or completely whitewashed and denied. In 1975, prime minister Miki visited the shrine, followed by Fukuda in ’78–after which the war criminals were enshrined. Then PM Suzuki visited in 1980, and Nakasone in 1983, ’84, and ’85–after which he stopped, due to the magnitude of protest from abroad, primarily from China and South Korea. Things were quiet until 1996, when Ryutaro Hashimoto visited again. In 1999, there was an attempt to band-aid the controversy by removing the war criminals, but the shrine refused to do so. (An excellent chronology of events can be found here.)

Koizumi sparked the controversy anew in 2001 when he visited the shrine, and has now done so four times since. Most visits by prime ministers have been in August during the O-bon season, in which the dead are honored; to my knowledge, this is the first New Year’s visit.

The aspect that sticks out here is that Yasukuni seems to be the shrine of choice for these prime ministers (we’re overlooking numerous visits made by other government officials); there is certainly no shortage of shrines to visit, and then there is the possibility of simply not visiting a religious institution at all. But the fact that so many prime ministers have chosen this particular shrine (instead of the more famous and innocuous Meiji Shrine, for example) seems to indicate a high-level endorsement of the nationalistic view of Japan’s wartime role–and at a time when Japan is beginning to assert a military presence overseas and is considering repealing the postwar constitution’s article on a defense-only military and the renunciation of war… well, one can see the objections that might be raised. Yes, Yasukuni is the memorial to almost all of Japan’s war dead since the shrine was erected, about 2.5 million Japanese, so it is a sort of Arlington National Cemetery. One might expect some nationalism if you regard it that way, but Japan’s history is different, and its refusal to apologize formally and definitively, make sincere reparations and take on a national attitude of remorse and disapproval for the nation’s actions (more like Germany has done) makes Japan’s situation a unique one.

The bright side to this is that there is no ongoing violence in this vein, so it is possible that Japan’s role in WWII and the decades preceding may be forgotten and forgiven over time. However, visits like Koizumi’s a few days ago are certainly not helping things much.

Just a little photo note here whilst I convalesce. I had forgotten that, every year around Christmas, the local hilltop observation tower (currently closed to the public) gets lit up quite nicely for the holidays. It stays that way a bit past the New Year, but I will have to see to be reminded for how long. It’s a lovely idea, and the only thing wrong with it is that they set the segments to flash on and off–it would be much better just to have them stay on, IMHO. Still, a nice gesture by the city (Hiromi opined that we must pay a lot in city taxes because of this, but frankly I don’t see this costing quite that much) and a nice though temporary addition to the skyline.

It has been a big turnaround from both yesterday and three weeks ago (note: I wrote the first draft of this on the flight on 12/30). Three weeks ago was the flight, which though short, was not really all that comfortable. With regular economy tickets, relegated to the back of the plane, the person beside me performing acrobatics to stretch and spilling out into my seat and the person in front not only leaning back from start to finish, but also banging the seat back at random intervals, it was not quite a smooth flight. At least it didn’t snow on my way to the airport. And then yesterday, I feel flu symptoms coming on, high temp, headache, fatigue–not such a good sign so soon before a trip.

But today, things went much better. I had a flight that let me sleep in (a first on the way back to Japan), and just as I got into a forebodingly long line at check-in to claim another back-in-the-back seat, an airline rep asks me if I would like to switch to an earlier flight–and when I say I would do it if I got an aisle seat, they get me one twenty rows forward from where I was. So I am whisked directly to an empty check-in counter, and within 20 minutes I am boarding (instead of the 2-hour wait you usually have to go through), and find that not only do I have a forward aisle seat (35C, as opposed to row 57), but it is the one at the emergency exit, so footroom is about six feet in front of me. Nobody leaning back into my seat. Lavatories accessible easily, a great flight attendant and seatmate to talk to (hi, Alan!), a complete reversal from the last flight. And I get into Narita at 3:30 or so instead of 5:30, which means I get home early rather than mid-evening. Very nice indeedy.

Once in a while, you catch a break.

Postscript: It has been a few days already since I landed–my break in flight times extended to having my luggage come out early, getting through customs, and not having to wait forever for a Narita Express. Got home by 7 or so–and promptly fell to the bug that’s been dogging me for some time. But the DSL got here, my IP Phone and Internet connection is A-OK, and everything else is going well. Just a sore throat and a bit of fatigue, probably the jet lag. So hopefully I’ll catch my stride in blogging as well as all else and will be up and running.

Up next: New Year’s at the local shrine with Hiromi. And–post #400! And past the 150th-consecutive-day mark.

A few more bird photos, to end the month and blog for the day I will be en route (and possibly sick, but let’s hope not), not to mention still figuring out what the heck I’ll be doing with my new DSL–if I’m lucky enough to get the actual delivery of the modem/router, and everything works, yadda yadda yadda…. In any case, this will be about the 150th consecutive day of blogging for me!

Anyway, I love these little creatures, they’re cute as heck, and sing beautifully as well. (Sorry Hiromi, if you don’t like them–I know you’re not fond of pigeons, but aren’t these guys cuter?)

And I’d like to say hello and Happy New Year to Fran!

This yellow certainly likes to pose, she did it again today like last time.
Beautiful yellow glow here, caused by a slightly long exposure time.

And here is the whole shot; I include this because almost all the yellows happened to cluster here.

A shot with a large number of the birds clustered together.
When they get like this, you can really see how many there are…

And finally, a more mundane bird checking out the snow-white punk canary…

Though this time not feeling quite as hot. Naturally, I get my illness the night before I set off on what is by far the most difficult leg of the journey (11 hours back instead of 8 over). Hopefully, the homeopathic stuff I’ve taken will help, and I have some fizzie stuff that I can take on the plane, as well as aspirin, if I still feel this lousy when I take the flight.

At least this time I got a better flight, one which I can sleep in until 8 am for. And if I do get a full-blown cold when I’m back, then I have almost a week to get over it before classes start. But I am very much looking forward to going to the shrine for New Year’s, so hopefully it’s just a little bug and/or the medication works.

Anyhow, wish me luck.

And the game is over. Not a spectacular event; the Niners got ahead in the first half, but quickly lost it as the Seahawks tied up the game, and it went downhill from there. There were a few good plays, the Niners got a few interceptions, and the rookie Lloyd made a spectacular toes-just-in-bounds catch near the end of the game, though it was only a small gain and the refs spent several minutes reviewing the play when it seemed pretty clear Lloyd had kept it in.

My dad’s seats are pretty good, though maybe not for the most evident of reasons–they’re in the upper deck, just a few rows back from the rail, not behind but angled from the endzone so we get a good view of the field, especially when the action is at our end. Some good company too, nobody extraordinarily obnoxious. Apparently a lot of seats are sold to others at various games, especially Green Bay games–when the Packers come to play, it almost seems like there are more green and yellow fans than gold and red.

The weather was good, without the Stick’s signature winds, but after dark it gets real cold, and the chill seeps though several layers and fast. Still, we were prepared and though the Niners lost and the game wasn’t a nail-biter, it was still a lot of fun and I look forward to maybe seeing another game next year.

So now we have the post-game wind-down in the rig, with dad watching the late game and people firing off fireworks in the parking lot as all of us wait for the traffic to die down so we can zip out when we please. So excuse me while I knosh on some cold cuts and lay back and enjoy the early evening before a nice night trip back down 101 to home. Here are some photos from the game.

People make fun of Star Trek conventions, but if the truth be told, those gatherings don’t hold a candle to football games.

As I type, I sit in the rig looking out at the Candlestick Park parking lot fill up, and there are people out there about as far as the eye can see. People with barbecues, giant coolers, folding chairs and tables, some with tarps and tents strung up out the back of or between vehicles in the lot. Niners logos and colors everywhere, people in jackets and caps and jerseys and sweaters and complete suits, many tossing footballs back and forth, and you know that some people out there are applying body paint. The tailgate parties are in full swing.

I mention the Star Trek conventions because there are so many characteristics in common. Aside from the clothes and odd person in make-up, you’ve got the camaraderie, the trivia nerds, the vendors, and of course, The Show. Except here, there tends to be a lot more hooting. And Star Trek conventions don’t have people outside holding up signs that say “I need tickets.”

Of course, this being the last game of the season with nothing at stake (San Francisco is out of the running), there were not as many scalpers as there usually are at these games–not to mention a lot fewer people in the parking lot this time.

And the rig is truly a luxury–getting here hours early, sitting down for breakfast, watching the early games on the satellite TV receiver, nice and warm on comfy seats and the couch, with all the amenities, as we see all the people outside in their jackets in their folding chairs on the asphalt. Sometimes, we have to lower the curtains for privacy as people figure out we have the satellite TV and start watching through our windows.

Just before the game, we’ll head out for the stadium. I’ll blog a bit more then.

OK, these guys are beginning to tick me off.

I already blogged about the Neistat Brothers, but to summarize, these two guys bought an iPod, and after 18 months of heavy use, found that the battery started losing its ability to keep a charge (which should be an obvious consequence to anyone who uses rechargeable batteries), then got a bad tech rep (again, something everybody knows happens and should be aware of) who told them just to buy a new iPod, and then–belatedly–tried a third-party battery replacement, a very simple job, but were so inept that they wrecked their iPod and had to buy another.

Without doing any further research or taking any responsibility for their botched repair job, they wrathfully started spray-painting hateful–and incorrect–labels on iPod ads all over their city, claiming that Apple’s iPod battery is unreplaceable (untrue–it is, they just blew it) and only lasts 18 months (also not correct, it varies with use and the battery you get). They then filmed their acts of vandalism, and posted the film online, and that has become a cult hit.

Fortunately, the iPod remains a big hit, so no one seems to be taking these idiots seriously–except the press. Every few weeks or so I see the same story get repeated in some major newspaper, and the newspaper always takes these clowns at face value, without questioning their veracity or intelligence.

Just FYI, most Mac and iPod aficionados consider these guys to be bogus publicity seekers. So in whatever way you can, just ignore them.

For a very long time, my father has had birds on the porch. That is, he took the front porch (which only accesses his home office), partitioned a large part of it with screen and wire, built a simple door frame into it, and then made it into a small home aviary. At first, he had parakeets in there, but they were not able to mix with other birds, and my dad wanted finches. Then he tried a variety of finches (owl, zebra, lady gouldians, etc.), and that was much nicer, but they are also very hard to care for (the gouldians died, and the zebras flourished, and the zebras pestered all the other birds. So finally, he hit upon canaries, and they’ve been happily singing away in there for many years now.

Not just singing, but also breeding; with nests in there, they tend to be quite prolific. He likes to keep their number down to about fifteen, but some years they just get out of hand. Just before I came, there were thirty-five (there are as many as forty-five some years)–but then he sold six of them to a friend, currently the best way to thin the flock, so to speak. He used to be able to trade and deal with a canary dealer in the area, but he went out of business, so now he sells them to friends and pet stores. And by keeping the color and breed strains he likes, he’s been able to produce some very vivid yellow and orange birds in there.

A few of them are of a “crested” breed, but with the way their feathers crown out on top, I like to call them the “punk” canaries. A few of them look like they have really bad hairpieces.

Many of the photos here came from a photo session with flash at high speed, so they’re caught in flight around the aviary. A bunch of quite beautiful birds, and their singing is wonderful as well.

An example of a bright orange canary.

A few really bad toupees.