Famille Du Pentium

The FBI has released their “file” on George Carlin, after his daughter requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.  One would think this would be one hell of a juicy file on the man who made fun of J. Edgar Hoover on television and, of course, often repeated those seven words you can never say on television.

What muckracking did Carlin get himself into?  What secret data did they store?  What plans did the FBI have to track him, listen to him, and perhaps lean on him?

Turns out, not much.  In his FBI file were copies of several letters that upright, concerned citizens sent the FBI about his appearances on T.V. in 1969 and 1970.  Included in the file were thank you notes that the FBI sent back to those concerned citizens.

And that’s about it.

One note in his file from an agent asks “What do we know about Carlin?”  and another memo notes that they “have no data on Carlin.”

Carlin’s daughter Kelly was quoted as saying that the contents of the file “kind of disappoints me”, implying that she expected that she was disappointed that her anti-government father had not garnered more attention.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28779155/

Khan forever.  Enough said.

My brother Kelly writes:

An ordinary-looking keyboard, into which you load a plastic disc probably
about 12 inches across …. a clear plastic disc, with visible analog
waveforms printed on it, kinda like if a vinyl LP was bigger,
cardstock-thin, see-through, and the grooves were much LARGER.

My Dad had an Optigan when we were kids; we had much fun playing with it.  

http://www.optigan.com/

Mitch Mitchell, the last surviving member of Jimi Hendrix Experience, was found dead today in his hotel room.  He apparently died of natural causes.  After Jimi Hendrix’s death, and the subsequent death of Bass player Noel Redding in 2003, Mitchell continued to tour regularly as part of the Experience Hendrix Tour.  He was 61 years old.

Michael Crichton, the writer of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, Coma, Looker, Runaway, and the NBC series “ER”, died Tuesday after battling cancer.  He was 66.

My first favorite movie was Westworld, starring Yul Brenner.  One of my first computer games for the Commodore Pet 64 as a teenager was a video game based on “Andromeda”.  As a young adult, my first favorite novel was Coma.  And early on in the series, until they jumped the shark, I watched ER all the time.  And of course, who hasn’t seen Jurassic Park?

Rest in peace, Michael.

I’ve implemented a new theme.  I think it’s well readable, doesn’t have the notorious “free smileys” and “free e-cards” links that some themes force on the website, and is a little more aesthetic than the last one.  Let me know what you think.

We have now migrated to our new hosting company, and migrated our blog from Moveable Type to WordPress.  The theme is new … and will likely change again, I’m tinkering around with them, trying to figure out which one I like.  This one’s better for navigation, but it’s a little… er, “wintery”.

First, a big shout-out to Dreamhost, our new webhost.  They made it very easy to get everything set up, and saved me about 50% off what I was paying our previous host.

Here’s what made it:

This page – http://famille.org (no link – you’re here!).  The main webpage will continue to be in weblog format, all the better to host my various rantings and ravings and doting over my children.

Kelly’s Travels – http://kellystravels.famille.org – despite this website / blog having gone through about a dozen hosts (including being hosted on my own servers at one time), Kelly’s Travels remains the same today as it was when he wrote it.

Gallery – http://gallery.famille.org – is there, but empty.  Links in the blog to pictures pages won’t work anymore.  I will probably upload some of the more recent pictures (like our summer vacation, and the Newport pictures) soon.  But I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.

Enjoy, let me know what you think.

As noted in the past, we’re moving our web site to a new host.  The main page (“blog”) will transfer directly and easily from the current host to the new host, when we switch over.  But the family picture gallery will not.  It will reset to empty, and I will have to upload all new pictures.  Given my current project load at home, it will more likely just be new pictures (i.e. all the old pictures will stay gone.)

So if there are any pictures you want to download for posterity, do so now.  The changeover will happen in about a week or so (figure, end of October.)

http://gallery.famille.org

I’m considering moving famille.org to a different web-hosting company.  Right now the entire domain is hosted by Yahoo, which is convenient (if not a bit embarrassing) because then my famille.org e-mail is in the same web interface as my Yahoo mail. 

But there are support issues with Movable Type, for instance this version of Movable Type (the software that runs the blog) is very old, and Yahoo doesn’t seem to want to upgrade it.  Instead, their users get constant upgrade reminders (which we can do nothing about), which interfere with running the blog.  Further, features like remembering commenters (so that their comments don’t have to be approved every time) and properly dealing with SPAM comments just don’t work.  

Worse yet, Yahoo charges a real premium for their hosting, which is fine for some folks with the services they offer, but not for me.

So when I was at Oscon, I talked to the guy who wrote Movable Type blog, and he pointed me to a few hosting companies that (1) charge  a lot less than Yahoo, and (2) actually support the blog product.

This is more of an FYI for my readers.  The blog itself will move easily to the new site, when we make the move.  The pictures section is going to be a different matter.  There’s no way to migrate Gallery 2 from one site to another, I just have to download all the pictures and upload them again.  That’s going to take time, and also all the links will change.  I also might just start over  with new pics. 

Well that’s the latest news.  I’ll keep you posted.

Kermit Love, who helped Jim Henson design the costumes for the Sesame Street characters, died today at age 91.  Love designed the costumes and characters for Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster and also appeared on Sesame Street as "Willy", the neighborhood hot dog vendor.

Rest in Peace, Kermit.