Perplexity

Perplexity: (n)  A unit of time.  The interval between the moment of incredulous surprise when your own code doesn't work immediately first time, and the "d'uh" moment sometime later.  Perplexity can involve formal debugging, wild guesses, accuations, paranoia, staring into space, and considerably more than 43 beans, but it is almost certainly inversely proportional to the amount of sleep had the night before. 

In the end, problem solving is about letting go of the problem, Creating space for answers unbidden. Ah, the sweet epiphany of "Got It!"

LOWERARCHY

Got hit yesterday by that beserker in Change Management arsenal - the Surprise Reorganisation.  I came off fairly lightly, retaining all my existing team, but I got hit with an extra Manager.  Yes, it seems that people who actually do anything are becoming such a scarce commodity that there aren't enough of them to go around.  The Senior Management are thus required to share subordinates.  

 

I am told this is referred to as a Matrix reporting structure.  I may not have read that particular management text, but I have seen the movie, and trust me, it doesn't end well for most of the real people.    

Wonders

Been thinking back on the new Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion. Still brilliant. Have great confidence that the future of the good Doctor is indeed DEFENDED. The chime of the Cloister Bell, rather than boding calamity, sends a shiver of familiarity up the spine. This is the real thing. Doctor Who in Our Time.

And where else is today's ape-descendant life form to look for the elusive Sense of Wonder from our entertainment megaliths?

In worlds closer to my own, NASA provided it in spades with the Cassini Saturn fly bys. The planet is the funkiest body in space and looks just as sexy close up.

Or the report from the December 2005 Scientific American that We* can now carbon date people born between 1955 and 1991 thanks to the global dispersal of carbon 14 during cold war atomic testing. Not just whole people - specific organs. Apparently my brain is as old as I am, but my skeletal muscle is a teenager. Sure doesn't feel That way.

Wonder of a different kind - the Christmas New Year holiday roadtoll officially closed today. Australia scored 79. The Royal Automobile Association is blaming the State Government for not spending more on South Australian country roads. I contrast that with the calls upon US congress to seriously establish a defensible position for the planet against meteoric impact from space. Both are real, statistically and for those involved, personally, significant and likely events.
Civilisation needs both specialisation and lobby groups. For every present threat, someone must possess the skills to counter it and someone else the eloquence to lobby for the resources for them to do so.

*We obviously meaning mankind in general, and not me personally. I haven't dated anyone for years, carbon-based or otherwise.

I've spent ages trying to get the tv-out to work with Fedora Core 4 on a Dell D600 with an ATI Radeon R250 lf FireGL 9000

Thanks to ATI's proprietary fglrx driver and the really useful blog at http://suslikcentral.blogspot.com all is working perfectly. TV-out with real video under linux is a reality. Xine, ,Mplayer, totem, all work beautifully.

Another nail in the coffin of the dual boot. Bill, your days are numbered.