Mitch W

I’m going to the Linux Foundation conference in San Jose.

I’ve only taken one trip since December 2019, for personal reasons. Every other night during that time, I slept in my own bed. That seems odd to me—my business travel schedule was so heavy during previous decades of my career.

Our new coffee machine makes 12 cups so I feel the need to make 12 cups even though I normally drink less. I’m sure this will not end up with my being awake at 3:30 in the morning scrubbing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush.

A history of disco in America–not so much the music as the cultural movement. I lived through it and learned some things while listening to this podcast. [The Rest Is History]

It’s Still Alive — “Frankenstein” is often presented as a warning against new technology run amok, but historian Jill Lepore argues there’s a lot more going on in that book.

Now I think I need to re-read “Frankenstein.” And Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr might find that interesting too.

Something I saw while walking the dog: This house has a lot going on–a model train set in the front yard, and signage on the driveway gate. Note random cactus

I don’t feel like I have anything to contribute to the discussion. My contribution might, in fact, be harmful; I’d basically be like one of those guys on Twitter who suddenly became epidemiology experts in 2020 on the basis of watching a bunch of YouTube videos and knowing how to use Excel. Also, I have other things I want to do with my time. And I mostly don’t like reading that kind of thing on social media, so why should I push it on other people?

I do keep up and have strong opinions, and I have been known to rant about them at length face-to-face or on the phone. I used to be more opinionated on social media, but I don’t do that here anymore—not much, at least.

I do have one or two social media friends who have no training in foreign policy or politics, but who post knowledgeably about those subjects. I do enjoy reading their posts, and find them insightful. And I enjoy discussions with them—on their timelines. Not so much here.

📷 The scrap of cloth in Minnie’s mouth was once a toy duck. It was one of the first toys we got for her when we brought her home as a pup 11 years ago.

Blue Planet sends OSS soaring to the ‘smart cloud’ — Blue Planet says its Cloud Native Platform’s Kubernetes-based containerized architecture enables rapid innovation, flexible modernization and avoids vendor lock-in. My latest on Fierce Network, with Dan Jones.

I need to use the puke emoji more.

What signal do I send when I’m walking the dog and I wave to a neighbor with a full poop bag in my hand?

My latest on Fierce Network: I’m happy to be here. Where’s the coffee? — If you’re interested in what I’m working on at Fierce, read this, where I introduce myself with a laborious metaphor involving the movie “Trading Places.”

I am reading the November, 1932 issue of Astounding Stories, starting with “The Cavern of the Shining Ones,” by Hal K. Wells. The magazine is on archive.org.

Archive.org has a library of pulps and other popular magazines, going back more than 100 years. At a glance, the most recent pulps seem to date to the 1990s.

Months ago, I chatted with a gentleman at a local community association meeting who makes a hobby out of browsing the pulp archive. He likes dark fantasy magazines from the 1920s and 1930s. He said he occasionally finds a gem from someone who only ever wrote one to three stories, and who is completely forgotten.

“The Cavern of the Shining Ones” isn’t a gem, but it’s not bad. It has a Lovecraft vibe. A party of men, recruited from Los Angeles’s homeless population by a mysterious scientist who wears goggles day and night, is searching for something in the desert. I’m only partway through the story, but I believe they will find the thing, and it will not go well for them.

Here’s the author’s biography, just one paragraph on the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

He was born in 1899 in Little Hocking, Ohio, and died in 1979 in Torrance, California. He saw active service in World War I and published “The Brass Key” in Weird Tales in 1929. Another title: “Zehru of Xollar” (1932). His work had “a tendency to the lurid.” I’ll just bet it did.

Archive.org offers downloadable PDFs of old magazines. (Other formats too.) I downloaded the PDF, loaded it onto my iPhone and can easily read it there. Even after being on the Internet for more than 30 years, sometimes it strikes me with awe.

I used a 😊 when I should’ve used a 🙁 in a business email, so my making a good first impression in the first week of my new job is ruined.

The eclipse isn’t the only cosmic event happening today. I’m pleased to say that I’ve joined the new website Fierce Network full-time as executive editor for reports, helping to launch its new research arm, contributing regularly to the site and authoring our new line of industry research focused on AI, cloud, open RAN, broadband and more.

Fierce Network launched Friday. Editor-in-chief Liz Miller has more about the new site here—tl;dr it’s a roll-up of Silverlinings, Fierce Telecom and Fierce Wireless.

Credit to Liz for the bit about the eclipse. It’s my first day on the new job and I figure it’s a great idea to get things going by ripping off the boss.