.blindness.

i went back today for the goat's cheese, artichoke, rocket and pesto sandwich. mmmmmmm.

i Heart buchanan, on byres road, which i've never previously visited because i thought it was too posh, has a nice artichoke/mozarella salad w/pine nuts and sultanas. i got a scoop for lunch and it was quite pleasing - it's in some mint vinaigrette.

It's not that easy to get my brand new MacBook into a good development environment. I want to use it to develop two projects side by side, one in PHP and one in Rails - the rails stuff will be fine, but to just get a quick apache/mysql/php setup running isn't. I went with fink over darwinports, cause i've used it before and it's the most like Debian - but "apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5" doesn't work at all - there aren't binary packages yet for most fink/Leopard ports so it spent hours compiling but the php5 package fails to build because of some sort of Zend dependency problem. Seriously, they don't have a binary package for php5?? Did I stop paying attention and find that everyone's stopped using fink or something??

as in JWF actually listens to it before posting ... or at least half of it. first impression: this is a big step above the last one. but like the last two, it's missing the lackadaisical quality that makes his classic albums so fucking... classic. will the 'natural bridge' sessions w/malkmus and nastanovich ever see the light of day? it's hard for me to think they will be better than the released album but i'd still like to hear them. i could start a whole tumblelog of favorite berman lyrics but i'll start with this one: "guard my bed / while the rain turns the ditches to mirrors"...

i'm dreading hearing the new silver jews because i love their old record so much and i'm afraid of another turd.

Nickname: Shaq Shaq Daddy Superman The Big Aristotle The Diesel The Shaq Attack The Man of Steel The Showman of Big Men

even though the DB is in latin1, if i tell rails in database.yml: encoding: utf8 It somehow all works. So much for trying to make mongrel talk latin1 - no need for that!

the story of my life? My rails app running over mongrel is serving pages in UTF-8 (as it should be). Unfortunately the database I'm connecting to - which is read-only - is in latin1. So a lot of characters are getting garbled. I can't change the db to be utf-8 so I guess i want to make the rails app run in latin1 as well???

O corpse of March! in my ranch Automobile subtitles. Ranches reply Ranches apes to angels, "Ha ha boxes of apes!" Railings That lift up to the beautiful city Apes the tree-bout's limitations for Niceness ankles ankles today Soon day. O boxed cool breeze! Mex- Icans! "I love to climb that valley up in hill To what oh Peacock slays then cuckoo hat." But we met on the open street If Paris, near the breaking of lemons Riot. A room. "Bake home," sang the wry weather; "Yes" is what the went-title said. "Good morning," sang the Swedish substitute, "at last The title of drinking water is when The apple of formlessly crying today Kenneth sunrise." O about! movement Ship-easing rags! "I clank," sheep- Hooded then fire methods, oh! Arch Of banking! "Wade in minutes," she cried -- Ink peroxide-machine May love you Doughnut, the Kinkaid Subway, "Goodbye, goodbye." Music. And then snow. Oh sing! "His shore finally sees The angry radiator --- back lots ink famous!"

I had invented a machine, about 3 feet high by 4 feet wide and maybe 2 feet deep, that could tell what any person in the room had recently eaten (or any food at any stage of the digestive process). The machine would then write poetry based on these foods, which it spat out on a little ticker tape.

o spontaneity, will you ever return???

the Thaiking of Pelham 1 2 3 (Thai) Nippon Intended (Japanese) Once, Twice, Fries Baguette Carter (sandwiches) thanks to coworker AMH for the last 3...

Milli Vanilli - somehow I had to deliver a weird wooden cart from Brighton to East Anglia to present to the members of Milli Vanilli. After I pulled it a few feet I looked and it was solid, but it was supposed to be hollow. It was made out of logs. I abandoned it and went home.

David Beckham had a secret wife and kid that no one knew about - he just stayed married to posh spice in the eyes of the media. The secret family lived in the North of England, county Durham somewhere, and we were friends so they invited us over. We had tea and then we all went to this local community center, where his son was playing deck hockey. I was helping to coach him. Everything was pretty nice.

I'm working on a big Rails app for work - well, it's not really that big - and as I'm still getting used to the Rails philosophy I can feel myself start slipping away from it, into what's _easier_ rather than what's _better_. The whole DRY strategy is fun, but I feel like I'm teetering on the brink of "losing" control of this application. Part of this come from the fact that I'm using .RHTML for all my views, but a few are in HAML as I'm experimenting with HAML - and within the RHTML, I don't always use the Rails Form Helper stuff - sometimes I put explicit HTML instead - mostly to embed javascript etc.

The Wire is no more. Finished episode 60 and now I must leave the wonderful world of Baltimore. Life after the Wire ... what will it be like?

??Overexposed : treating sexual perversion in America?? by Sylvere Lotringer and ??On Being Blue?? by William H. Gass. £2 each!