Miscellaneous Friday Items

The usual collection of Friday items that don’t necessarily warrant their own entries.

1. SWiK:
   Made a bit more progress getting SWiK installed locally; won’t be putting it on Hicks until I get a better feel for how it works. If you check the wiki you’ll find that I’ve been keeping it updated with my findings with respect to getting the dependencies installed on Ubuntu. I think I’ve got most of them puzzled out, although I have not quite managed to get it running yet.

   Something I’ve done in either the php.ini file or the virtual host config is not agreeing with me, as a restart of Apache makes it very angry. The setup.sh file also needs quite a bit of translation from the Red Hat version (will post mine when I’ve got it right); where are you when I need you, LSB?

   Incidentally, as if I needed more proof, this is proof positive to me of the power of open collaborative documentation.

2. Audioscrobbler / Last.fm:
   In the efforts to repair my iPod when it broke several months back, I completely uninstalled iTunes and with it – my Audioscrobbler (now Last.fm) plugin. I’ve reinstalled that, so for those of you interested in perusing my listening habits you’re welcome to here. A couple of the albums I’ve been listening to this week, as an aside, including the new Joseph Arthur, the new Jessy Moss, Camera Obscura (thanks Christine), The Dan Band and M. Ward all came from emusic.com.

3. Big Papi:
   In a season with more than its fair share of bad news and disappointment, Boston’s David Ortiz hit numbers 51 and 52 for me on TV yesterday. I’ll have more to say on this season later, but for now let me just say that like Pedro Martinez before him, Big Papi is one of those players I know I’ll be talking about 50 years from now (provided I live that long, of course). Say what you will about the impact that steroids have had on the game, for Papi to be the first player to have hit 50 homers for the Sox since Jimmie Foxx implies – to me – a timelessness (albeit fragile) to the game. Just as my grandfather could (and probably did) have cheered Foxx’s feat, so too do I applaud Ortiz’ accomplishment.

   Even better, from all accounts, both men come from humble beginnings (tenant farmers in Foxx’s case, auto parts sales in Ortiz’s) and could hardly be nicer human beings. So cheers to Big Papi.

4. Speaking of Baseball:
   Several of you have asked me who I’m rooting for in the playoffs, seeing as the Sox will not be going this year. That’s easy: the Tigers, because they’ve been so bad for so long, and whoever is playing the Yankees. And speaking of the Yankees, this is one of the reasons it was nice to be back in Maine for the summer.

5. In Memory:
   A little short of two years ago, one of my better friends from college passed away, the victim of ALS. A week ago today, I got a reminder via an old Yahoo Calendar entry that last Saturday would have been his birthday.

   Not that any of you knew him, but I didn’t want the occasion to pass unnoticed. Miss you, Seany.

On a less somber note, I’ve got a couple of other things to wrap up this afternoon, so you may not hear from me until Monday. I’m considering a trip up into the mountains, which apparently just received two feet of snow (one of my friends just had a half marathon in Aspen cancelled on her), so you might be reading another post on how cold it was 😉

Either way, enjoy your weekends.