What a long strange trip it was... Many moons have passed since the last post... We went, we saw, we all made it back intact! And we've spent the last going-on three months running madly after a retreating toddler!<g>.

The short-form highlights are that we went back to Russia/Moscow/Kursk last August. Spent three full weeks there in point-of-fact. Wonderful trip, a very enjoyable vacation, if you will. During that time we saw Matt again, went to court, were given the right to 'keep' him (<g>) -- with the expected proviso that we wait the statutory ten additional days in Kursk before we actually 'got' him.

There were some tense times, as that was the week that two domestic airliners were brought down out of Moscow. But in the main we had an excellent time there. Daily visits for a few hours with Matt, and the rest of the time eating excellant meals, wandering around town, going on tours of landmarks, and sleeping.

After we got past the ten day wait and took formal custody of Matt, we took an eight hour train ride to Moscow. Quite a change of pace: from a middling-size 'regional center' like Kursk to a 9M person metropolis like Moscow! We went from a quiet little $50/day (with room board, visit to the grocery store etc.) hotel on Lenina Ulitsa in 'downtown' Kursk, to an $180/day 'American' hotel, the Tverskaya Marriot, on one of the largest streets in Moscow. I'll admit that as much as we enjoyed Kursk, we were really ready for some 'Western Comforts': air conditioning, nice sheets, big western buffet breakfasts, etc. We ate at the Americanskaya Bar & Grill two nights running, simply for the bacon cheeseburgers and fries!8D

Funny thing: Kursk had better Internet access than Moscow! In Kursk we had an Internet cafe in the basement of our building for $2/hour. The Tversakya Marriot was holding guests up at the rate of $30/day for Internet access! Highway robbery! And the nearest Internet cafe we could find in the directories was 20blocks away.

With the terrorist activites the prior week and threats on US-bound flights, Delta chose to tear down and examine every piece of luggage headed for our plane out of Moscow. As odd as the image is, watching other people's underwear being thrown into piles beside their bags was actually quite a relief: at least we knew where the risks weren't.:^|

The actual trip out of Moscow with Matt went fairly well: Like the overnight traintrip from Kursk to Moscow, he went straight to sleep and stayed that way the majority of the 10hour flight. This was aided by the fact that we had a bulkhead seat and access to the floor, and a number of pillows to pad said floor. But the JFK-Cincinatti leg was another story: a packed plane, no bulkhead, and two hours of screaming toddler operating at 3am Moscow time on our laps. 'Ugly' aint't the word for it. The Cincinatti-Minneapolis 'paper airplane' (regional-jet ) wasn't much better. I almost expected to have to help wind-up the rubber band driving the propeller... <g> But at least he slept part of the 90min hop.

Since that time it's been daycare, work, home to take care of / feed / watch Barney and Sesame Street-with, the tot. I'll admit it's the most rewarding time of my entire life. I'd spent the prior 27 years as an adult living a single decent-income bachelor life. I did what I wanted, when I wanted. I bought the toys I wanted, and generally had few responsibilities. Now I have a fraction of my old spare time and my priorities have shifted substantially, but life is much more fulfilling.

-- Yea I know, the single guys in the bunch are rolling their eyes. I used to do the same when new fathers talked at length about their offspring.:P

Anyway, Susan, Matt and I are all happy, healthy and doing extremely well. In fact we've got my folks and Susan's folks in town for the holiday for some extended wrestling with Matt. Quite a cozy little group.:)

I guess I'll wrap things up by giving you a peek at Matt with his recent large orange friend...

 Been a long time gone... Long story, long<g>: I was surfing the web this morning, to find a piece of software, and I wandered by a site that mentioned Floach's old fpnosa.mostelite.net (now closed), which lead me to do a quick google on Floach to recall his digs for the last few years: floa.ch. So I took a wander over to see what he's been up to -- he's been 'moved on' for longer than I am, so I kind of use him as a yard stick.:P

Anyway, Floach's posts about his new son last February, 'Caleb', (CONGRATS!) and other home-life movements caused me to reflect on the fact that I'm going to be in the family way myself, and that my lack of dto posts for the last 11mos or so has left the few folks on the net that may have an interest, in the dark.

What the above leads to, is that I've been motivated to post an update: no not on the shell front (shellfront.org is much more well-informed and up to date these day's than I<g>), but on the personal front. So herewith are my movements for almost the last year:

To start with, after running a shell site off/on for the last six years (dto's big #6 was the top of June, unremarked:P), geeking-out heavilly (lanparties, servers in the living room, five computers in a closet, watching alot of TechTV & G4...), and other female-unfriendly activities, I finally caught the notorious 'relationship' bug, that has felled inummerable site's before... Which happily has caused the same fate to befall dto. I've been spending what little time I've had away from work, with Susan... My partner, mate, SO, insert metaphysical-descriptor of choice (she hates all the common ones<g>). And I intend to continue to do so for as long as I am able to suck wind -- possibly longer. Cope! I've moved on.<g>

On to the 'family' portion of the story: Susan and I are 8/10ths of the way through adopting a wonderful little 15month-old boy from Kursk, Russia. And in point-of-fact, we just returned from a whirlwind trip from Minneapolis, to New York to Prague to Moscow to Kursk, to meet our new tot. Wild isn't a sufficient adjective. For a guy like myself that hasn't been further west than Anahiem CA, further south than St. Petersburg FL, further north than Grand Marais MN, or further east than Manhattan, this was quite an eye opener!:D

I guess I'll finally cut to the chase, here's a picture of our little guy... *beam*

Erm, the tot's the cute one on the left<g>.

The first trip was to meet the little guy and formally accept the referral. We got to play with him for a few hours a day for the three days we were in Kursk. Wonderful time, amazingly perfect little guy. *wistful sigh*

Unfortunately, the first trip was only step one of the process and we weren't able to bring him back yet: a second trip for a court date is still pending in several months. I have to admit it was really tough leaving. Though we were allowed to leave some toys and a child's soft photo album with him, for the caregivers to let him play with until our return.

We did get to spend four hours at the Kremlin in Moscow on the way out (while waiting between 8hour train ride and 2hour flight to Prague). And we also got to overnight downtown in Prague and have a great meal in the Old Town Square. The armpit of the journey had to be completing a nine hour flight from Prague to Newark NJ, only to see Continental cancel our flight to Minneapolis and offer to put us up in the fabulous Days Inn Newark-Airport. It rained. It sucked. I'm not sure which was worse. We got home 15hours late, and Susan got to go directly from the airport to work. Joy! Nothing like traveling for days just to go right to work.

At some point in the next few months we'll get another call and start the mad dash again: call the travel agent to arrange a flight to Moscow; arrange for train tickets to Kursk; spend a few days there prior to the hearing; get grilled by a judge, *maybe* get the 10-day waiting period waived, (which would allow us to move on to Moscow immediately), or if not waived we spend a couple of weeks in Kursk.

Once we're done in Kursk than we move on and spend a week in Moscow tackling US/Russian paper work to get his citizenship & passport nailed down and possibly sightsee a bit in Moscow. Then it's another 24hours of travel -- hopefully with a happy little guy:P, though possibly not<g>--, and then we get to get on the ground at the airport in MSP, kiss the tarmac, go home and collapse for the next month!

And that probably covers what I'll be up to for the next four to five years!8D. Though I do intend to drop in here or more appropriately over at tinstoys, my personal site, to file the odd update.

Oh well, things to see and people to do!

 Short 'n Sweet... I've been getting release notes from ()rm about his latest and greatest releases of ShortPopup for... well it's been a number of years! And the bizarre thing is, no matter how much work he's done in the past, he's still finding new-n-nifty™ ways to enhance what I consider one of my most essential desktop accessories.

It's been a good chunk of a year since his last revision hit the ground, but this morning brought a new note in the mailbox...

After nine months of work, it's finally ready!
Have a look at the list below to see what's changed!

- Fixed bug with /addexplore opening the wrong folder.
- Fixed bug with /dotitles causing /addexplore on submenus to get incorrect icon.
- Fixed bug with disabling of menu entries for links to non-existant network machines.
- Fixed bug with multiple .pif's all getting the same icon.

- Massive speed increase in SPU appearing.
- Subfolders -always- get added to menus.

- Added /dotitleimages command and params to display an image at the top of a menu.
- Added /blockfolders command and params to remove certain folders from appearing.
- Added /openall command and params to open all files detected in a folder.
- Added /dothumbnailsontooltip command to display thumbnail contents on a tooltip.
- Added /removeallext command to remove all extensions from files.
- Added /imagereductionx and /imagereductiony command to automatically reduce title images by a certain amount.
- Added /inifile command to let you stick all options in an .ini file.
- Added 'clicktoopenfolder' to /dotitles to open the folder when you click on a title.
- Added 'gradient' to /dotitles to draw a normal gradient fill in the title background.
- Added 'usedrivenames' to /dotitles.
- Added 'nobackground' and 'nooutline' to /display and /dotitles.
- Added 'left' to /dotitles to draw the title on the left of the menu.
- Added /onlyfiles to stop subfolders from appearing on a menu.
- Added 'by extension' options to /sort.
- Added /separatorbetweenfilesandfolders command to let you make prettier menus.
- Added /separatorabove and /separatorbelow commands to make the menus prettier.
- Added /barbreakbefore and /barbreakafter commands to let you split the menus up into columns.
- Added /startdirectory command.
- Added a timer parameter to /dieonmouseout to control when SPU dies.
- Added right-click context menu functionality.
- Added 'noclick' to /dotitleimages to block opening/context menu on image.

()rm.. --
Digi Tallis Developments. http://www.digitallis.co.uk

For those of you completely out of touch, what 'ShortPopup' is, is a self-contained quick/lite menu applet, that when configured from the commandline of a shortcut, will display a list of all the files in a given directory (tree) in a variety of very flexible ways.

Some of my favorite applications of ShortPopup are:

• browse my mp3 playlists as a catalog (by shortcuting the .pls files organized by alphabetical subdirctories).
• point it at my explorer start menu tree to use it as the primary menu for new shells that don't quite have a functional control interface.
• It's also a great way to browse up and launch .doc & .xls files... or any other large collection of data files, as well.

 Bin awhile comin'... And this post is a few days overdue... Seems Comcast didn't feel we needed the whole cablemodem thing the evening of this release. But enough of excuses! :P

Hello all,

==========================

BBbin 1.2 (2003-09-03) / qwilk
- Slit compatible (EX)
- Full style parsing! =]
- Bro@m list support
- Multi monitor support (not tested)
- IntelliMoveEx™ (intelligent re-positioning of the BBbin window at e.g. change of screen resolution or if the x/y position is off screen at startup)
- Windows 9x/ME compatible? ;)
- Minor bug fixes and enhancements

==========================

..as always, head on over to http://desktopian.org/bb/plugins.html! :D

BR//Karl -> qwilk
http://desktopian.org/bb/

Whats'it? From the BBbin.html:

BBbin is a xoblite / Blackbox for Windows plugin that provides easy access to the recycle bin (also known as the trashcan, dustbin, the round archive, etc.) and all of its facilities ...that is, pretty much, just opening and emptying it! It does, however, perform these *seemingly* simple tasks with a lot of style! =]
Please note that BBbin 1.2 requires xoblite bb1 or later, or a recent (nightly) build of Blackbox for Windows.

So scoot your butt over to the plugins page over at Xoblite, and hook it up!

 Out of the box... Qwilk's been working on something amazing out in the workshop for many moons, and today he finally decided to roll it out onto the tarmack...

after many long months of crazy coding sessions and not being able to stop adding cool new stuff, I finally decided it was ready for the world. I am hereby proud to present... xoblite bb1! :D

(Hmm, what's this xoblite thing, you ask? Well, the executive summary is as follows: xoblite is an advanced Blackbox for Windows branch with integrated SystemBar and Slit + a whole lot more... =]
..where the "whole lot more" is described in slightly more detail below... )


====================================

xoblite bb1 | 0.3.8.29 | August 29th, 2003
# *Much* improved plugin architecture:
- Plugin handling (load/unload) is now performed using the menu (no more manual editing of plugins.rc)! :D
- Improved ease-of-use (no more "&-loading") and faster restarts with updated plugins
- More error resilient + user friendly error messages...
# Integrated slit with unique experimental "Puzzle" plugin positioning... 8)
# Integrated systembar with new placement options (e.g. DockedToSlit), updated icon mode with saturation/hue, MinimizeAllWindows and RestoreAllWindows using X1/X2 click on the taskbar, etc.
# The toolbar and the systembar can now be resized using the mousewheel!
# All core UI elements (toolbar/systembar/slit) can now be temporarily moved using Ctrl+Drag
# Much improved menu rendering, better looking bullets and bool indicators + "Alternative bullets" mode
# New "Styles" menu that can be opened instead of the Workspaces menu when mid clicking the desktop
# Lots of new configuration options in extensions.rc
# Most settings are now configurable from the core menus and saved to blackbox.rc / extensions.rc on change instead of at restart, once again keeping manual .rc editing to a minimum!
# Visibility for the toolbar/systembar/slit/plugins can now be toggled using the menu
# Support for multiple users, each with a different set of configuration files
# Support for global and application environment variables -> no hard-coded paths! :D
# Better style parsing, including basic font substitution and improved wildcard support
# New style settings: menu.frame.bulletColor, menu.hilite.bulletColor, window.button.pressed.picColor, menu.indicator, menu.indicator.color and menu.indicator.colorTo (all fully backwards compatible!) 8)
# Miscellaneous workarounds for better compatibility with Windows 9x/ME... :P
# Uses a subset of the Blackbox for Windows API -> compatible with most of the available plugins
# Online documentation (will be available later, for now read the included changes.txt for details)
# qwilk style bonanza! -> x-coal, liquid concrete, elyts, colour-blind and seaworthy...
# ...and an updated font pack with fixed gelly, glisp and glisp-bold fonts! 8)
# Lots of major and minor bug fixes, fixed mem leaks, new features + a new xoblite icon! =]

====================================

In other words, there are three files to download:
1. xoblite bb1 itself (which also includes my five new styles, which are pretty nice too IMHO)
2. the updated Blackbox font pack with fixed gelly, glisp and glisp-bold fonts
3. if you're a plugin developer, the temporary SDK package with the xoblite BBApi.h and Blackbox.lib

(please note that the xoblite API is a subset of the bb4win API, ie. plugins compiled for xoblite will always (?) work with bb4win, unless you really mess things up that is! )

Anyway, it's 3.44 AM here and I am really tired, so I hope the list above is enough for you all to post some juicy news items, hehe! With that, I'll let you off the hook. Now go xoblite, and enjoy! :D

And you can snag all of the above at the xoblite homepage here at desktopian: desktopian.org/bb/. I've been running it for several months, it's the real deal. Hook it up!

 Having their belly scratched... Qwilk sent me a link to a particularly odius piece of crap: that AOL is, as the piece at Hixie's Natural Log puts it, "Get[ting] Under Microsoft's Desk". Seems AOL has accepted a 'most-excellant' deal in settling their Antitrust suit with Microsoft. Blah. I generally get a kick out of retarded decision-making by mega-corps. But in this case it ends up screwing the general public even worse, as it enhances M$'s monopoly positions substantially (guaranteed increased marketshare of IE, WMP, MSN-Messenger and M$ DRM). Go forth and read the details.

 Variety is the spice of life... On the subject of mp3-server 'head-units', I got a note this morning from from Fraxinus, pointing out KiSS Technology's 'KiSS DP-500': a hybrid progressive-scan DVD/CD/MPEG-4/DivX/Photo/JPG-player with a 10/100mb Ethernet port.

I'm not finding alot in the way of details, as the site is somewhat limited in it's description (and the page is clearly written by someone using English as a second language). In fact the only reference to the network-mp3 playing was the 'Ethernet 10/100' entry on the page... and the fact that Fraxinus specifically mentioned it in his note.:P You might say that KiSS is somewhat undermarketing their featureset.<g>

As to a review of the core features, Fraxinus pointed out that Tom's Hardware's DP-450 review is essentially the same unit without the network connection. On that basis alone, it's a pretty interesting piece of hardware, as it was the first stand-alone video player that could play, "DivX format (MPEG-4) and output to TV or projector...".

Tom's DP-450 review is pretty detailed, and as usual includes close-up shots of the unit, it's components, and the interior. One item that comes out of the review is that, like the Tivo, the DP-450 uses off the shelf pc components: In this case a stock pc-dvd drive. It even includes a serial port on the mpeg-board, which Tom's opines should provide, "...access to the BIOS of the player..." Hmmmm? Could some enterprising developer eventually make macro-vision and region-code disabling possible? As they were with my old PC-based Creative DXR-3 MPEg-board/DVD-drive player, when combined with the proper piece of software

They did find a few weak points: like most pc-cd/dvd drives, the unit will, "...not play back audio CDs with copy protection." and, "...DivX video with 3.x codec cannot be played back", as well (due to the fact that the REALmagic EM8500 chip doing the decoding, "...only shows videos that have been compressed with a version 4.02 codec and above)".

The DP-500 FAQ page at the site does provide a bit of detail about the network port:

Q01: What is the purpose of the Ethernet controller?
A: The ethernet controller has many functions and gives you the opportunity to connect your DVD player to both your LAN (Local Area Network) as well as the Internet. When this connection is established, you will be able to share files from a computer which the DVD Player will be able to play directly through the patchcord. You will also have the possibility to get an extensive list of radio channels that are playable directly from the internet. These two are the main features but firmware and PC-Link software-updates are constantly being improved and many new features will be added over time.

And the above also mentions that the Ogg Vorbis-format support is included as are ID3 v1 tags (displayed on your TV on the 'info page' during playback). Another expected piece of info from the faq, is that the nic [network interface card] relies on DHCP for address assignment. So you'll need a dhcp server or a router with dhcp server support, to put it on the network). Boy they are hiding their charms<g>.

A google search also turned up that there is a SourceForge project attempting to produce an open-source alternative to the PC-Link backend media-server software (the piece that provides access for the player to media files on a server harddrive). The project, 'OpenDP500', is only at the 0.2 release, but the last release was out on 4/21/03, so it appears to have current on-going development (they've already implemented a web-server for monitoring the DP-500's activities from any browser on your network - an alternative to having to turn on your TV to see what it's up to). OpenDP500 is java-based, so it's OS independant.

Surfing the support pages at KiSS turned up a DP-500 pdf manual as well. The manual spells out that PC-Link requires Win98/IE4+. Ouch. I guess Open-DP500 will be essential for non-win32 users.

The process of making media available to the unit (whether Audio, Video or Photo) is all performed from the PC from PC-Link, by creating 'folders' and dragging the media into the folders. Once media has been 'added' to PC-Link, playback is available via the remote's 'Menu/PC-Link' option, which will display them on your TV under 'Audio', 'Video' or 'Pictures' nodes, for playback.

At this point, I'm not sure if the DP500/PC-Link combo supports .m3u playlists already in place on your server, or if you have to use the 'Folders' you've defined in PC-Link to group music together into long 'playlists'. This is a 'make-or-break' critical requirement for me, as most of my playback is via several-thousand-tune 'genre', 'topic' or 'WTF'<g> playlists. These playlists can run from Jimi Hendrix to Frank Sinatra... clearly I put them together using criteria not covered in a db of id3v1 tags<g>

The manual also provides a little more detail on the free online 'KiSS WebRadio' system, which supports 'radio' audio streams from their end. I'm not sure how large the content-selection is though. Hopefully, like the SLIMP3, users have figured out ways to feed standard internet audio streams into the unit.

The KiSS DP-500 may not appear to be quite as flexible or full-featured as the SLIMP3, from the standpoint of straight MP3-serving, but in terms of a multi-media server head, it's certainly got a ton of potential and some killer core features of it's own. I may well end up with one of each, once the open-source server software matures a bit.<g> As long as there's an open-source alternative to the PC-Link software, if SLIMP3's open-source server-software developers are any model, there's little doubt that folks will 'hack-up' their own new features on the server-side software, as needed.:)

 Hot 'n Spicy... As long as I've got tinstoy open for posting news, and I've got something cool to mention, I figured I may as well do a post!

Last week I was surfing the net... yea, it's still known to happen, once in a blue moon<g>. Anyway, I came across a new piece by BeOS-god Scott Hacker on the Slim Devices' SLIMP3 mp3 server 'head unit'. If you check out the link, you'll find that it's a very small MP3-player with a nifty bright vacuum fluorescent display, remote with IR-receiver, 10mb network interface, and a couple of standard rca-jacks, for hooking things up to your stereo system.

As I've mentioned a number of times before, I've been running a multimedia server for the last several years. The initial build even included a DVD drive and Creative DX3 MPEG decoder card -- until I decided to just buy a Sony DVD player<g>. Anyway I've got an ugly set of rca cables strung under the couch and across the living room, connecting the box's Winamp-fed SoundBlasterLive to my stereo system. Not ideal, for esthetics or sound quality, but it did give me a radio station with a 7000-song playlist, that always seems to play my favorite tunes.<g>

Anyway the single biggest pain to the type of rig I have strung together, is that I need to pcAnywhere/TerminalServe/walk-up-and-login-to the server desktop to change playlists. Yes, I've long used WinampRemote to move forward/backward through the playlists and see the now-playing track, and have looked at mp3 juke/db/web apps like Andromeda from time to time).

For quite awhile I wrestled with using an X10-compatible remote with a mouse dongle to remotely control the box. But over time, I found it was way to large a hassle getting things 'tuned' properly and the keys mapped.

Essentially, what I needed was an IR-controllable box I could stick in my stereo rack that could play the mp3's on my media server.

Several years have passed, and the mp3 collection on our server outgrew first a 20g, then 20+30g, and most recently moved to a new 100g drive (gotta love those cheap maxtor's!). And yea, I added Shoutcast streaming of 'KDRE Radio' from my server, across the net and to my office desktop (via Winamp with the MuchFX^2 plug-in stacker comboing up the OddCast/LAME-encoder plug-in and the RockSteady volume normalizer plug-in, to even-out the volume and down-sample the mp3's on my server).

There are stacks of reviews on the net of the various units. Because I wanted the front-end unit with the mp3's stored on a file server, I limited myself to either the AudioTron (longish review at Tom's) or the SLIMP3 (long revews at O'Reilly Onlamp and Tom's). After weeding through everything I could find on Google on the subject, I settled on the SLIMP3, largely because:

• It moves all of the actual heavy lifting to the backend server. The head unit only plays 'frames' of the mp3, with a local 1mb buffer to cover network latency. The backend software takes care of carving the mp3's up into the frames, and assembling the interface. It even manages everything displayed on the headunit.
• A biggy for me: The server software is open source! So I know my hardware investment won't be orphaned if anything happens to the Slim Devices, or the developers decide to abandon the project.
• The server software runs on several platforms: Windows, Linux or MacOS (it's Perl-based you know:))
• The server software is under active development, so that feature it doesn't have today may well be there tomorrow!
• The unit started out as a home-grown solution to a problem. Some hardware hackers put together a design and took it off to a local fabricator to produce. I sincerly prefer to give my dough to the little guys before contributing to another faceless megalith corporation
• It supports streaming in three flavors: Shoutcast, Icecast, and Live365
• It includes support for Ogg Vorbis format
• The headunit's firmware is network flashable
• There's an active user community and discussion forum for developers
• Heck add a wireless bridge to the combo, and it even does wifi, when you don't want to run a cable to the box<g>

The price was a little high, at $229USD (that's $20 down from the prior $249). But considering what it does, it's commitment to opensource and the fact that it's $70 less than the $299 Audiotron, and it was still a good deal for me. The only thing it's currently missing is digital outs (only a pair of rca-outs is currently available, along with the 10mb network interface). But considering that I've been willing to tolerate the noise of playing tunes via the Live card in my server, I should be one happy camper.

In fact the only downside thus-far, has been that the box is a little too popular: I ordered mine last Tuesday, with the proviso that it was backordered but should ship by 5/30/03. It actually left Slim Devices via UPS Ground this afternoon... But hey, I knew it could take some time!:)

I'll post up an update once it hits the ground and I've got it up and running.

 For five years I have seen her each day, and each time I believe it is for the first time.*... Absent-minded as I am, it took qwilk sending me a note to remind me that last Sunday, 6/1, was tin_toy's/desktopian.org's fifth birthday! Ok, I'll admit I had a decent excuse for it slipping my mind: I was in Las Vegas for four days last weekend.<g> But it's still a gross oversight to let it go by unremarked.<g>8)

There have been ebbs and flows of posting here over the years - more ebb than flow for the last little while. But I'm glad to see the old girl is still wheezing along. I'll admit at the time that pimpin.net went under in early 2002, and we were contemplating new hosts, I was seriously considering folding the tent. Fortunately, _why stepped in and offered to host us, and _why and qwilk continued to carry the banner and post while I was off buried in vocational garbage. :P

Although my mailbox continues to be full of unread mail from the LS Mailing List, and I seldom have time to even browse the headlines of my favorite news sites, let alone spend a few hours a day harvesting news from them<g>, I'm happy knowing that the site is still here and still available to host the odd observational-piece, news-item post, or random whatz-it link. Even if they are fewer and farther between than in the past.:)

As Shaw once put it, "It is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything."

* Jean Racine (1639–1699), French playwright. Titus, in Berenice, act 2, sc. 2 (1670).