Dan Gillmor of the Merc has an excellent interview with Mitch Kapor about his new software venture. Apparently Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Mac programmers and one of the brains behind the innovative General Magic user interface, is on board.

This promises to be extremely interesting.

 

Three in the afternoon is an unpredictable time in the New York City subway. Your train may come quickly, and it may be empty. Or you might wait forever and get caught in a maelstrom of high-spirited high-energy newly liberated school kids. (Subway crime spikes in the later afternoon, by the way.)

Or you may ride with a clown.

He got on the southbound N train at Union Square. Middle height, well-worn black leather clown shoes, big red nose, heavyset (though it was hard to tell from his loose purple pink and green suit), carrying a black nylon gym bag and slightly shabby miniature violin case, patched with bright blue duct tape. His bald cap had a fringe of orange hair a couple of shades dingier than Lucille Ball’s, and contrasted with the two teenaged girls seated nearby — one with vibrant blue hair, the other with green.

A bunch of kids on the platform at Union Square tapped on the train’s window before it pulled out, hoping to get a reaction. The clown turned briefly toward them, then faced forward, his face blank, like any other subway rider. Just another guy in worn makeup coming home from a gig. He didn’t look at his watch, if he wore one. He didn’t nap or close his eyes. He didn’t read a newspaper. He didn’t panhandle. He didn’t clown, and no one (except for the kids on that one platform) tried to engage him. He just … rode.

I got off four stops later at City Hall, regretting that I didn’t have time to track him any further. Just another mystery of New York.

 

Techophiles of a certain age will well remember Mitch Kapor. Founder of Lotus Development Corporation, and chief visionary and/or author of such groundbreaking software as Lotus 1-2-3, Improv, Manuscript and Agenda.

Mitch — an interesting guy beyond the software business — was out of Lotus well before IBM bought it. He spent some time on the beach, and some more as a venture capitalist.

Now Kapor is apparently getting back into the game, building an open-source personal information manager for small-to mid-sized businesses. Oh yes — it’ll run under the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

There’s a ton that’s wrong with the software business today (a subject for a different and longer post some other time), but it’s mighty encouraging to see people like Mitch Kapor and Dave Winer finding the fertile ground between Microsoft’s redwoods.

 

Mallomars are back.

This may not be much of a deal to you. But Nabisco keeps Mallomars off the market during the summer because it’s impossible to keep the dark chocolate cladding from melting. Rather than changing the formulation to the detrement of the cookie’s perfectly balanced taste and texture, Nabisco just takes the summer off.

But when the weather cools, the familiar screaming yellow sealed box shows up on shelves, sure as the robins show up in the spring, sure as the swallows return to Capistrano, sure as the buzzards come back to Hinkley.

Other bakeries make biscuits with graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate; the BBC, of all places, has produced a neat taxonomy of them. (And I didn’t realize that New York City eats 70 percent of all Mallomars.) I’ve tried some of the pretenders, and I really ought to search out Moon Pies for a re-taste. But all others just pale.

 

Bought a Mac. Dual G4 1.25GHz tower. First Mac in the house in more than 10 years.

Hideously expensive, but a gorgeous piece of engineering.

If I have an efficient day, I’ll put power to it today to make sure it’s not DOA. Then I’ve got a bunch of stuff to throw into it — memory, a second optical drive, another hard disk or two, and a D/A converter — not to mention pillaging and moving the homebrew tower that’s currently in its space. (Anyone want to buy a truly excellent steel full-height tower enclosure before it goes on eBay?)

Anyway, it’ll be a few days before I get the Mac in place and spinning. I’ll keep y’all posted.

 

New York is one of two finalists for the US bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. (San Francisco is the other. As if…) The city fathers are apparently spending the weekend filming a video to send to the Proper Authorities to show how wonderful a host Fun City can be.

To make the point, a faux torch run was staged today at three points in Manhattan, and full-dress ticker-tape parade is slated for tomorrow through the lower Broadway Canyon of Heroes. (What would they have done if the Yankees had prevailed, rather than engaging in an unlikely fold south of LA? Had two parades within a month?)

And tonight, without any advance publicity, there were fireworks in the East River. Big fireworks. Noisy fireworks. LOUD fireworks. Drew a lot of people, not all of them entirely sure when the barrage started that this was all for Entertainment Purposes Only. <sarcasm> After all, it’s not like there is any stock footage anywhere of fireworks going off over lower Manhattan. </sarcasm>

I think it’s a fine idea to have the Olympics here in 2012, and I’m looking forward to major fireworks off Lower Manhattan every day during the Games. Maybe by then my blood pressure will have returned to normal.

 

Yes, I’ve missed you, too. (Where has the time gone?) Stuff’s been a tad hectic hereabouts with the onset of Fall.

Anyway, more to come.

 

Back in 1952, composer John Cage wrote a piece of music called 4’33”, which consisted of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Infrequently performed, it is nonetheless famous.

Far more recently, British songwriter (notice the semantic difference between “composer” and “songwriter”) Simon Batt recorded an original song entitled A One Minute Silence on an album by his classical rock group The Planets. The song was, sure enough, a minute of silence. In what was probably a tribute, Batt credited the song to Batt/Cage.

That was probably a mistake. Cage’s estate came after Batt for plagiarism. CNN says Batt wound up writing a six-figure check to the John Cage Trust.

From CNN:

Before the start of the court case, Batt had said: “Has the world gone mad? I’m prepared to do time rather than pay out. We are talking as much as ｣100,000 in copyright.

“Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds.”

The kicker: the piece has been released as a single. Would that it crosses over to American radio…

Later: The New Yorker goes into a little more depth, much of it along the lines of Mark Johnson’s comments to this post. The magazine expires links, but check this:

Batt … has tweaked the Cage people further by registering hundreds of other silent compositions, ranging in length from one second to ten minutes. “I couldn’t get four minutes and thirty-three seconds, obviously, but I got everything else,” he said. He is proudest of two of his registered copyrights: four minutes and thirty-two seconds and four minutes and thirty-four seconds. “If there’s ever a Cage performance where they come in a second shorter or longer, then it’s mine,” he said.

 

From the AP, via CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) — There are more differences between a chimpanzee and a human being than once believed, according to a new genetic study.

 

The Museum of Sex opens next week at Fifth Avenue and 27th Street. The Catholic League is already upset.