I Remember…

Image by Stephen Nessen/WNYC

Ten years ago this morning I had the luxury of being able to sleep in rather than having to get up early to go into work. At the end of August, 2001, I had left my temp job as a customer service rep for a multinational corporation to hang my shingle as an independent web designer. I woke up a little past 8 and answered nature’s call and boiled water for my French press, and once I had the coffee brewing I turned on the television to catch a little of the Today show.

I had missed the first plane striking the World Trade Center but joined the broadcast in the midst of the day’s initial WTF moments as the hosts trued to make sense of the reports that were coming in.  By the time the second aircraft struck the South Tower just past 9am I knew there was no way I’d be doing a thing to try to find clients for my new business. I’d already fired up my computer to contact some friends and to try to get more information on what was happening in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, PA.

I think the only thing that kept me from falling into a zombie-esque daze that day and the days to follow was my trying to find out just what happened and trying to keep up with how my country was reacting to the attacks.

I know it’s tempting to try to ignore the memorials and coverage of today’s anniversary but if you can handle coverage without depressing flashbacks I strongly suggest you add these items to what you pay attention to today:

• WBUR’s 10 Years Later: Remembering 9/11 page with stories from people who were caught in Boston’s role in the attacks
• NPR’s Reflecting on Sept. 11, 2001 series
• WNYC’s 9/11 Look coverage and their Decade 9/11 coverage, especially their special Living 9/11 program. WBUR replaced The Splendid Table with it last night and it was so good I needed to find a podcast so I could hear the entire show. Luckily for me the podcast is available from the show page. WBUR aired another special right after it but since I was still dealing with a spontaneous nose bleed I never did catch what the program is. If you know please let me know in the comments.
• Studio 360′s “Artists Remember 9/11″ show. WNYC’s Studio 360 is a wonderful show for getting deeper information on what’s happening in pop culture and this week’s show includes a look at Steve Reich’s new piece WTC 9/11, how comedians responded to the attacks, a new children’s book about the day, and much more.

(Several years ago I created an image to remember the attacks but since my computer dies the image is trapped on my hard drive and couldn’t find it on my backups, so I used the above picture from WNYC’s story on the lights being tested. I hope they won’t mind.)

The Lion sleeps, and will no longer waken

I woke up this morning, went to the bathroom, and turned on the radio to try to get a weather report, but before the weather report I got the sad news that Senator Edward M. Kennedy succumbed to the brain cancer that he’d been fighting for the last 15 months or so.

As someone born in 1960 I pretty much missed all the immediate hubbub surrounding Chappaquiddick, although I couldn’t miss hearing about it even before moving to Boston in 1989. When I did move to the Commonwealth I was able to find out more about the who had already served the voters of Massachusetts for over 30 years, but I wondered if continuing to reelect him was such a good thing. Term limits was already an idea sweeping the country and this voter had already considered it a pretty good idea, just to give someone else a chance to server even more than to keep a single elected official from garnering too much power. But as I learned more about the senior senator from the commonwealth the more I realized it was a pretty good thing that he won reelection again in 2000 and again in 2006.

The thing I’m hearing most is the fact that Senator Kennedy was one of the very few senators who would walk across the aisle of the senate during some very contentious debate on a bill and be able to broker a deal to get the measure passed. Of course as I watch the continuing coverage on WBZ TV (as well as on WBZ AM) I’m seeing that there are more important laws passed in just the last 20 years than I’m aware of  carry Senator Kennedy’s name as a primary force and factor in getting the bills passed. The mere fact that the senior senator from Massachusetts being missing has been identified as a primary reason that President Obama’s health care reform is having so much trouble getting passed, as pointed out by no other than Senator John McCain, Senator Obama’s opponent in last year’s presidential election. I can’t help but feel that the senator from Arizona does quite a bit of whining about losing the election, especially since most of Senator McCain’s public comments since November sounds like sour grapes that he’s not the one who moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but his comments on This Week with George Stephanopoulos over the weekend showed just how vital Senator Kennedy is in the battle for health care reform, a cause important to Senator Kennedy going back to 1962.

Nanci and I join the rest of not just the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but our entire nation in mourning the loss of a man who may have been a consummate politician but who was also one damned good man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the entire Kennedy family, especially in the wake of this second death in their family in over two weeks with the death of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver on 11 August.

I could go on, but you can see more coverage on the death of Senator Kennedy on

• Boston Globe
• WBZ TV (Boston’s CBS affiliate and Nanci’s and my favorite  news source in Boston)
• President Obama’s statement about the loss of Senator Kennedy (from WBZ TV)
• WBZ AM (Newsradio 1030)
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• Washington Post (free registration required)
• Senator Kennedy’s senate website

Senator Edward M. Kennedy
1932-2009
The end of Camelot is a great loss to our entire country
regardless of your political affiliation

[I spoke with Nanci as soon as I heard the news and asked her if she wanted to write this post, but she asked me to write it to make sure our memorial to the Senator was syndicated to the Ubuntu Universe. - Peng]

Dude, I need a hankie. Les Paul has died.

When you ask most musicians what thought comes to their mind when they hear the name Les Paul, they’ll likely think of the man who pioneered the solid body electric guitar, or at least the style of electric guitar that Mr. Paul developed for the Gibson Guitar Company. If you ask a recording engineer about that name and they’ll either think of the guitar or the man who helped pioneer many recording techniques and effects, truly the man without whom we may not have multitrack audio recording as we know it today. (Disclosure: I spent a number of years as a recording engineer in New Orleans.) Music fans may think of the many hit recordings he made both as a soloist and with is wife Mary Ford.

Image courtesy Wikipedia

Alas, musicians and music lovers around the world have a better reason to morn than the recent loss of Michael Jackson (not to dismiss Mr. Jackson’s enormous talent in any way, some people simply were bigger Les Paul fans than Jacko fans) as word came out this afternoon that Mr. Paul has died at the age of 94 of complications from pneumonia at the White Plains Hospital in New Your (the state, not the city).

If you head out with your buds tonight please lift a drink in toast to Les Paul, and if you’re playing a gig someplace in our great big world in the next day or four please feel t0 take a moment to remember this groundbreaking individual who gave us so many incredible tools for passing along the gift of music.

Lester William Polfuss, aka Les Paul
9 June 1915 – 13 August 2009
Thanks doesn’t come close to our gratitude
for what you did for modern music

Read his bio on Wikipedia, as well as the coverage in

• The Los Angeles Times
• The Boston Globe
  
• The New York Times
• WBZ TV, Boston
• Reuters
• CNN
• Guitar World Magazine
• and the range of stories on Mr. Paul’s death on Google News (at least I hope that link works)

I just hit the Publish button, but I have to add a link to a great story from Entertainment Weekly about some of the great songs made with the axe Mr. Paul invented, complete with videos.

Happy Towel Day, you hoopy frood!

Eight years and two weeks ago, the planet lost on of it’s most well known hitchhikers, Mr. Douglas Adams. In honor of him, don’t forget to bring your towel with you when you leave home. Then people can refer to you in the same way they referred to Ford Prefect.

Hey you, sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is!
-The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy entry on Towels.

And of course Happy Memorial Day to everyone in the States. If you’ve ever been a member of the armed forces, whether for the United States or any of our allies, thank you.

Thanks to Holger Levsen over on Planet Debian for the reminder about today.

Au revouir, Majel

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, has passed away from lukemia.

Millions know her as Number One and Nurse Chapel of the original Star Trek, Lwaxana Troi of TNG, and the voice of the Enterprise computer through almost every version of Trek that came down the pike. But she also had other roles on Leave It To Beaver, Bonanza and The Lucy Show, among many other productions.

Our hearts and thoughts go out to her family and friends. Thanks to KaiRo on Planet Mozilla for making Peng and I aware of the bad news.

Isaac Hayes, dead at 65

Yesterday the music world lost a legend when Isaac Hayes, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died at his home just east of Memphis, Tennessee. Family members report that they found him near his treadmill, which was still on, and were unable to get a response from him.

With 21 studio albums, beginning with 1967′s Presenting Isaac Hayes and 1969′s Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes definitely left his stamp on soul and funk music, extending it’s audience into pop music with his Grammy and Oscar winning first soundtrack song. Like many white American males, when I think of Isaac Hayes my first thought is always the wah-wah guitar intro and staccato horns of his “Theme from Shaft“, and his song arguably made him more known from the movie than star Richard Roundtree. His reworking of the theme for 2000′s Samuel L. Jackson starring sequel brought his unique brand of music to a new generation.

But dipping into even a selected discography shows that he’s known for a lot more than just Shaft. His cover of the Jackson 5′s “Never Say Goodbye” for 19791′s Grammy-winning double disc Black Moses in many ways betters the original. He also covered a diverse range of artists as Jimmy Webb, the Carpenters and Burt Bacharach and Hal David as he opened up a wider music market for artists such as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, and Curtis Mayfield.

In addition to his music and his charitable work through the Isaac Hayes Foundation, Hayes also found work as an actor through a recurring role on “The Rockford Files” as The Duke in John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York”, and in 1995′s “Johnny Mnemonic.”

He also lent his voice to the animated hit South Park when he took on the role of Chef. His departure from the show after the episode “Trapped in the Closet” mocked Scientology, which Hayes was a member of, brought mixed reactions, but you had to respect him for standing up for his faith, regardless of your views on Scientology.

The comedic world lost a star Saturday when Bernie Mac died, but I dare say we lost an even brighter star with the passing of Hayes. Many have tried to duplicate his sound, but nobody could match it. I’m going to miss him.

For more information on the work of Isaac Hayes you can read the coverage in the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, as well as many other news sources.

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 1 July

Can you believe it’s July already? It seems I just had my annual review (aka birthday) a couple of weeks ago (it was in mid-May) and at the end of the week I need to make sure my DVR is set to tape the concert and fireworks from the Esplanade.

• Dining with ‘Dre: Shabu Hachi. While this review of a Los Angeles eatery may not mean much to those who don’t live in southern California, I love the way ‘Dre describes what a shanu shabu is. Just one problem: Now I’m hungry.
• Brian Burger: Happy Canada Day! Need I say more?
• SciFi Wire: Stargate’s Davis Is Dead. Don S. Davis, known to Stargate SG-1 fans as Major General George Hammond, passed away on Sunday of a heart attack. But people who pay attention know he was a character actor who has played whole lot more roles than just Gen. Hammond.
• Daniel Glazman: Linspire, Inc. It turns out that Linspire, who runs the Click ‘N’ Run (CNR) repository for some Linux distros, has quietly been sold. The question now is what will happen to Linspire, their free distro Freespire, and CNR.
• Christer Edwards: Enable Commercial DVD Playback on Ubuntu 8.04. One of the things that bug Windows users that switch to Linux is that playing a DVD isn’t as easy as installing something like WinDVD. But Christer has a great tutorial on not just how to get it to work in Ubuntu hardy but also why it’s not quite as easy as we’d like it to be.

Have a great rest of your week. I trust those of you in the States have plans to get together with family and friends on Friday, and I wish those north of the border have an awesome Canada Day. And I apologize for our current crop of politicians. I really didn’t have much to do with getting most of these particular asshats elected. In fact where possible I usually voted for the other guy.

Before I go, I have to admit that this? So me, other than the controller. So much so, in fact, that I turned it into a wallpaper.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 26 June

Sorry about not posting more the last few days. A good friend of mine had surgery on his Achilles tendon Monday and the docs kept him an extra day, making a busy week that much busier.

• Christer Edwards: Install Google Earth on Ubuntu 8.04. The latest version of Google Earth has made an already fantastic program even better. Christer makes getting it installed easy and even gives a tip for those with slow performance.
• Ubuntu Forums: HOW TO: watch MLBtv on Ubuntu. Major League Baseball has some great media options for baseball fans including the ability to watch games right on your computer. Unfortunately they don’t support Linux (of course), but dwdarkstar has put together a basic tutorial to let Linux loving baseball fans get their money’s worth for subscribing to MLB’s streaming media service.
• Mike Basinger: Using Dark Themes in Ubuntu (Gnome 2.2x). Many people love a nice dark theme for their computer but GNOME has always had some issues with it that affect usability. Mike has some great tips that can let you have both the dark theme and usability, too.
• Michael Garrido: Welcome Ghanima – My Own, precious… Notebook. Michael got a very nice little notebook from Compaq and he has some pics to show it off. It’s one of my pics for the day thanks to a link to some very nice wallpaper. As soon as I saw it I had to get it for my wallpaper rotation.
• Christer Edwards: A Reminder About Upgrading Ubuntu… Many people haven’t upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy yet, and with Ubuntu 8.04.1 coming down the pike soon Christer has a great post on some things you need to do when upgrading Ubuntu or any other operating system. I kind of wish he’d written this before Hardy was released a couple of months ago.
• SciFi Wire: Cast Endorses Jericho Movie. Rumors of a possible movie to carry on the twice-canceled CBS show are swirling around, and the actors who played Stanley Richmond and Emily Sullivan have said they’d love to portray those characters again.
• Chris Dufresne/LA Times: Dodgers’ 50th anniversary isn’t golden to all. I was sure I had blogged this but it turns out I only Stumbled it. Chris Dufresne writes a great look back at the Dodgers’ first fifty years in the City of Angels (no, not those Angels, they don’t even play in LA County). I especially love this

Hold it . . .

This isn’t one of those syrupy retrospectives about a boy’s love for his dog and the hometown Blue Crew, is it?

No.

This is actually man-bites-Dodger dog, an ode to ambivalence and the odd lack of a connection.

How do you explain it, occupying a half-century in the same area and barely exchanging glances?

• Britt Allcroft/LA Times: The George Carlin I knew. With the death of George Carlin on Sunday it’s to be expected that every news organization in the free world would write something the man that not only took free speech and comedy to the Supreme Court, he also changed stand up comedy forever. But Allcroft knows a different George Carlin than everyone seems to be writing about. He knew the Carlin who took over for Ringo Starr on PBS’ Shining Time Station, and he wrote a beautiful tribute for his friend George.

Big thanks to Susannah Clary for sharing a very funny (and rather timely) comic with Nanci and I. Nanci has some things to blog this afternoon but asked me to share it with you in case I get on before she does. I’d swear her schedule is crazier than mine is.