Week of 2006-12-09 17:00 to 2006-12-16 16:59

From the woefully short description, this fellow seems like he was such a peaceful, likable old guy. What a sad thing to happen.

“Camper’s slaying stuns friends”

The Angeles National Forest was a home away from home for Alexander Roglinov.

Every other week or so — whenever his work as a part-time security guard slowed — Roglinov would take off to the forest and pitch his one-man tent on an overlook above the San Gabriel River. He gave people framed collages of pictures he took in the wilderness.

“He loved, loved, loved the forest,” said friend Ginger Frankson, a recipient of one of those collages. “It was like something that fed his soul.” […]

But on Tuesday, forest officials found Roglinov’s body in the forest, next to his tent and ransacked car. He had been hit with blasts from a shotgun. As authorities try to determine the circumstances of his slaying, friends remember a gentle ascetic soul, a sociable outdoorsman who lived in his car — seemingly homeless by choice….

I hope they can figure out who did this and why.

Another cool IBM article, also via rootprompt.org, this one of particularly cool implications: “Monitor your Linux computer with machine-generated music”

Use Perl and FluidSynth to create a real-time musical composition of your system status. Learn how to integrate various system monitoring data into a harmony-producing, MIDI-controlled audio synthesis. Explore audible information methods and configurations to help you monitor and manage your computing environment.

I’m reminded of the old SimEarth feature that would play musical tones based on various status reports, whether positive or negative. I am enamored of the idea of alternative monitoring techniques.

Via rootprompt.org, a cool article from the regularly spiffy IBM developerWorks article series, “System Administration Toolkit: Get the most out of bash”

Ease your system administration tasks by taking advantage of key parts of the Bourne-again shell (bash) and its features. Bash is a popular alternative to the original Bourne and Korn shells. It provides an impressive range of additional functionality that includes improvements to the scripting environment, extensive aliasing techniques, and improved methods for automatically completing different commands, files, and paths.

I can’t imagine anything could match watching these giant mammals moving through the water.

LA Times — Gentle giants put on their show of might

On a chilly Sunday morning, with a fierce northwesterly wind raking broad white streaks across the ocean, the only clear sign of animal life is in the sky.

Two peregrine falcons beat their way headlong into the wind, briefly, before veering to their right and riding it swiftly out of sight.

A red-tail hawk emerges from beneath the cliff like a harrier jet, and holds position for a moment before also turning and dashing away.

The spotters follow the birds with binoculars, then turn their attention back to the water, one of them explaining, “When you don’t have whales, you make do.”

But the California gray whales are coming. Another season is here and slowly, surely, sightings will pick up.

Their 10,000-mile journey, from the Bering Sea and beyond to Baja California and back, is as predictable as the tides. It’s one of the longest mammal migrations and it’s certainly the most scrutinized….

Apparently Ernest Hemingway is being denied entry into Gaza:

;)