Few things are more eerie than trundling through a Las Vegas casino at 5 a.m. while a vacuum cleaner whines in the distance and every few hundred feet you pass some poor, solitary Midwesterner sitting at the slots, trying to coax a fortune from the blinking lights. What happened to all the shouting and jingling chaos that filled the place three hours ago?
(BTW: If you must play the slots, I’ve found The Munsters is your best bet. Between Marilyn and Grandpa, everything will be alright …)
The dogs and I got to witness an amazing sunrise at Melton Hill Lake this morning. Xena had ice clinging to her from her frosty dip in the lake and Gilligan and Ozzy where running around like maniacs. There’s something about the cold silence of a January morning, pierced by the occasional shriek of birds as they awaken, that is totally sublime. Steam rises up off the water. My mind’s as crisp as the dawn. The day can only go downhill from here …
I just finished John Markoff’s “What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.” It’s been on my list for a while. Overall, it was a great read.
Some of it is a rather dry account of the rise of the personal computer in Silicon Valley. And at times Markoff seems to generalize about the connection between the computer innovators and the counterculture. But there are strong ties in many spots, especially in the way LSD and the counterculture affected the worldview of these folks and their attitudes. It goes a long way to explain the open source movement and some of the collaborative approaches to development that have characterized the rise of the personal computer.
A few interesting notes:
