"Mid-afternoon" break...

There is thunder in the air as I write this. I am, however, too busy to go look out any windows right now.

I went to the store this morning and confirmed that the network cable I ran through the overhead plenum was electrically correct. Since 'demosthenes' had made a link to the hub using a shorter cable, I experimented a bit and found that the problem seemed to be related to the length of the network cable (the LEDs on the network card dongle lit and stayed lit at around the 17-foot mark).

Unfortunately, though the machine was able to connect to the network and recognize 'borg', the recognition was not mutual, nor was I able to transfer files over the network from 'borg' to 'demosthenes' (in fact, I ended up hanging the former machine in trying to do so). I suspect that a wireless link will be the only solution for Drew's machine, unless my research uncovers something I am not aware of.

* * *I went and tried to upgrade the PHP version on 'onegin' last night (and recompile it with support for GD), but when it came to the point in the configure script where it checked to see if there was a copy of libgd.a available, the script reported failure and exited. I know darned well that the library is in the specified directory, but can't seem to figure out how to convince the script of that fact (then again, I've not spent a lot of time doing so).

* * *My current translation assignment is going well, and is on track for a Saturday night delivery. Client M convinced me to take on a second assignment for the weeked (assuring me that the job was a small one), but I haven't yet seen any action in my inbox in that regard.

My old acquaintance Radek P. is moving from Virginia to Prescott, Arizona. Radek, as I have probably mentioned here before, is probably one of the leading Czech translators in the business and runs a profitable sideline distributing a list of translation jobs on a more-or-less weekly basis to several thousand subscribers. Prescott is not exactly a couple of hours away from Pagosa, but it is a darned sight closer than where he was formerly located, so I hope to be able to break away from time to time and go visit him.

Break's over. Back to work.

Cheers...

Eureka!

The proper command line for the PHP configure script is:

./configure --with-mysql=/usr --with-gd=/usr/local

I determined this by noting that the directory required for the --with-mysql parameter was said to be the base MySQL directory, albeit that directory does not contain the include files that the script complained about when I provided a complete path to where the mysql executable lay.

By analogy, I provided the --with-gd parameter with a path that was a directory 'short' (since the required library is in /usr/local/lib), and ta-dah!

The script worked.

Now, to see if the thing will compile. While that is occurring on 'onegin', I shall continue with the translation on my desktop.

Cheers...

A walk in the rain...

Sasha seems to like playing at "Escape from Stalag 13" around here. She took a powder again today, just as the sun was going down. Lee took off in the van to go look for her, to no avail.

When she got back, I took a break from translating and decided to go for a walk to find her. Lee tagged along.

After we got through the rough part (a downhill section overgrown with gangly brush between our house and the end of a nearby cul-de-sac), we started walking down the road towards the main drag (Meadows Drive) with the intent of walking back up Meadows to our street, and then up our street back home.

Sure enough, it started to rain soon after we'd gotten through that brush.

The walk was uneventful, with the exception of some very bright (and I might add noiseless) flashes of lightning.

And sure enough, soon after we got home, Sasha came galivanting through the front door, dripping of some unidentifiable (and hopefully biologically inert) substance.

* * *After getting MySQL and GD built into PHP, I now have a local machine (onegin) that'll let me experiment with terracotta, phprojekt, and phpMyAdmin. Of the three, the first has perhaps the lowest priority, although I can see where it can be used to provide clients with an interface where they can publicly leave and pick up files (the latter is important, as there have been a couple of times in the past where project coordinators have called frantically, asking me to send another copy of the work, as something had happened to the copy I had originally sent).

I've only just-just gotten phprojekt configured (and as is usually the case with such things, no amount of eyeballing of the docs is going to help one understand all of the nuances of the configuration). I will say one thing, though: the opening screen of the app is sure an eye-opener! The design is appealing and seems to have everything in the right place.

I haven't done much with the rates database over the past couple of days, but now that I have MySQL and phpMyAdmin on my local machine, I can move the databases from the machine at the store to the one at home and experiment "at leisure."

* * *I found an interesting article buried in an old (June 28, 2002) issue of the WSJ, on synesthesia, which is where one sensory experience (feeling or hearing, for example) triggers another one (e.g., seeing). I seem to recall reading of a correspondence between synesthesia and excellent memory recall, which is explained by the hypothesis that it is easier for synesthetes to remember things because they have a "multimedia" view of them.

The article suggests that perhaps one in 200 persons has this ability, which can take many forms. The article notes that Vladimir Nabokov wrote that the sound of the long A in English "has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French A evokes polished ebony."

Is this, perhaps, how metaphor entered our language? Not as a flight of fancy or an attempt to be cute, but simply as a result of a synesthete explaining his or her life's experience (O, my luve is like a red, red rose...). The article so much as states that some musicians see notes in color (ever wonder why Gershwin called it Rhapsody in Blue?).

Synesthesia, says the article, may even explain the origins of language.

Try this: draw a spiky shape and next to it, a rounded one.

If I tell you that in some long-lost language, one of these was called a 'kiki' while the other was called a 'shoosha', which would you think is which? Almost everyone says the spiky shape is the kiki, according to the article (which jived with my reaction). On another front, I recall once reading an analysis of character names in fiction, where it was found that most of the "good guys" had names like Hawk, Hank, John, Nero, etc. while the bad guys had monickers such as Ellsworth, Wesley, Tinky, and so on.

What this points to is perhaps some non-arbitrary connection between sounds and other perceptions.

Certainly nearly all of us are subject to a kind of "educated" synesthesia, I think (and here, I leave the article behind). Then again, it may not be synesthesia at all. When I write the word:

BIRD

on the screen and you read it, you should see, in your "mind's eye" a bird, and you might even "hear" it pronounced inside your head. What I mean by "educated" in this sense is that the bird you see will depend on where you grew up (a small legacy of my readings in cognitive science). One might also note that neither that word nor any of this post will make the slightest impression on someone who does not understand English, either, but that's a tangent for another time.

In any event, the bird you will see when you think about the generic, Mark 1 "bird" must be of some specific type of bird. For a New Yorker, it may be a robin or pigeon; for a native Floridian, it will likely be a mockingbird. Even if you try to draw a generic "bird," the resulting image will look more like some birds than others. And I doubt very much that anyone, except possibly an inhabitant of the South Polar region (or a dyed-in-the-wool Linux fanatic) would visualize a penguin when slapped alongside the head with the word BIRD.

But this freewheel is going well and truly far afield, and it's getting late. Lee has bought a ticket to go back to Houston. She flies next Saturday from Albuquerque.

For now, it's time to button things up and get some sleep.

Cheers...