Archive for the 'General' Category



Italy retro-diary: day 7

There comes a time in everyone’s vacation when one must put down the camera and go shopping. My breakfast supplemented with chocolate milk had given me great strength for my first quest: power adaptors. While most hotels in Rome had had euro-style power outlets, we were now in real Italy, where they use Italian sockets; […]

Italy retro-diary: day 6

We awoke hungry, to a brisk morning. This was our view out of the window. In actuality, it was quite a bit prettier, because there was a balcony with potted plants and steam pipes on. The Hotel Cellai, while not quite living up to the photographs on their web site, was nonetheless a pretty neat […]

What just happened…?

Some of you may be wondering what’s been happening, since it’s been a while since the site has been updated. Never fear! I’ve installed a new toilet downstairs. This would have been a snap, except the previous owner forgot to install floor underneath the old one, so I had to run to the store and […]

Italy retro-diary: day 5

I love stuff. I’m happy when I’m surrounded by it. I eat it. I make it. From time-to-time I buy more of it. However, Sara was nonplussed when it was the answer to her question about what I wanted to see in Italy. So she made me do it. And it was a wonderful day. […]

Italy retro-diary: day 4

Our last day in Rome, so we had to get an early start. The breakfast server beamed as I finally got our room number pronunciation comprehensible. There wasn’t any really fresh bread (it was Sunday), but we were still adjusting to eating restaurant meals every day anyway. We dropped our bags at the bag-dropping room […]

Italy retro-diary: day 3

Saturday, and you’d think Rome would be a bit calmer. Nope. Anyway, we decided to jump on the bus again (and grab a 2-day pass) and head over to the open market. Sara went ga-ga over the fruits, vegetables, flowers and spices. After that (and a small footwear-related expenditure) we wondered the back streets for […]

Italy retro-diary: day 2

The Hotel Brasile had a good continental breakfast. Sara wasn’t all that keen on the bread, but I lapped up cheese and ham and milk. The staff maid had squeaky shoes, and was happy to help me pronounce cento-quindici (our room number: Chen-TOW qwin-dee-CHEE). Being in a strange city, we decided to head back to […]

Italy retro-diary

We’re back from Italy! As a memory aid, I’ll see if I can remember what happened. Day 1 and a bit: we got to the SFO ticketing desk ten minutes after they’d stopped issuing tickets. Luckily someone came and got our baggage anyway. We made the flight. Barely. In Amsterdam, my luggage decided that it […]

I’m transferring my DATs!

At long last, I’ve got round to porting Marcus Meissner’s DATlib from a Sun/Unix-y to a Win32/Generic platform. I also wrote a quick Dat2Wav.exe program to batch my music from DAT (digital audio tape) to WAV files. It’s available (for free) at my main site, but please report any problems (or successes) here.

Choral concerts done…

Sara and I finished up our concert set with the Santa Clara Chorale where we sang a bunch of ancient and modern Christmas-themed songs. We did two concerts in the Mission at Santa Clara University as well as a few shorter concerts. The final one was at St. Joseph’s Cathedral downtown. Also, Sara has finished […]