Costume Manuals

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:18:17 JST

While working on Monsieur Mieux I compensated for my lack of ability to draw by sourcing nineteenth-century engravings from Google Books. The best sources I came across some costume books. They illustrate many, but not all of the costumes; some of the ideas are… remarkable:

Champagne Bottle: Make a cap to simulate the cork of a champagne bottle, tied across to represent the wiring, and covered with gold foil; the nape of the neck should also be covered with gold foil, which can be done by lengthening the back piece of the cap and joining it to the robe. Wear a close-fitting black robe with the label of any champagne brand worked on the back and front.

Anyway, pictures:

Characters Suitable for Fancy Costume Balls

Male Character Costumes, a guide to gentlemen’s costume suitable for fancy dress balls and private theatricals

Do enjoy.

RVM on Arch Linux

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:29:11 JST

I’ve been using Arch Linux as my primary operating system for four or five years now, and generally I’m pretty happy with it. I can’t say I have no complaints - about once a year a kernel upgrade causes my system to not boot without some babying due to initrd image problems, but the flexibility of pacman (or rather yaourt) and minimal nature of the system make it attractive.

Recently I’ve started using Ruby for some toy projects - it’s an interesting language, and has some points to recommend it, though it also has some odd quirks and a mixed user base. It also has versioning problems that make Python’s look rather well-managed.

RVM seems to solve this problem by allowing you to install whatever version of Ruby you want and switch between them rather easily. Unfortunately, it doesn’t install some of the standard Ruby distributions properly on Arch. Specifically, 1.8.7 is quite broken.

First problem: the source for the default RVM version of 1.8.7 doesn’t link properly on Arch Linux because it expects an older version of openssl. You can get around that by building not 1.8.7 but 1.8.7-p299, as mentioned on the Arch Wiki page.

The next problem, not on the Arch Wiki when I went to it originally, is not Arch-specific. A part of the Ruby build process can fail and spit out unhelpful errors from gcc - “data definition has no type or storage class” - because somewhere a file got truncated. This was originally noticed on StackOverflow with Fedora, and has been noticed in different contexts on Arch even without RVM involved. The fix amounts to doing this after your install fails:

 cd src/ruby-1.8.7-p299/ext/dl 
rm callback.func 
touch callback.func 
ruby mkcallback.rb >> callback.func 
rm cbtable.func 
touch cbtable.func 
ruby mkcbtable.rb >> cbtable.func

Of course use the patch number and path appropriate to your install. Resume the build and things should go fine.

Pleasant Dinner Conversation

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:45:46 JST

From Golden Age Comic Book Stories, which you should be reading.

A Stroll in Ueno

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:27:45 JST

Howdy, folks! I had a nasty case of something over the weekend and a bit of time before some more interviews, so I figured today I’d go by Ameyoko, a big open-air market in Ueno. I got a bit turned around coming out of the station, though, and spotted this sea of green from a few blocks away and went to investigate…

This is a giant lotus pond in Ueno Park. How big is giant? Please look at it on Google Maps.

No Fishing. When I saw this I laughed because I assumed it must have been years since anyway tried to fish there, but how wrong I was - I saw a guy fishing about fifty feet down the path, though I didn’t get a picture of him. I’m honestly surprised there’s any fish…

One of two temples in the center of that part of the park.

After strolling around in the park for a while, I did make it to Ameyoko, though since I wasn’t really shopping it wasn’t quite as nice as the park. I did find a treat for all of you back in Providence, though:

Still hot, though it’s letting up some. Ψ

Japan

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:02:46 JST

Howdy, folks. I live in Japan now.

Thanks to a very kind person I found on Craigslist I now occupy a stylish apartment in Azabu-juuban, a small, fashionable part of Minato-ku, the port district of Tokyo. Tomorrow I have a final interview with one company and I’m going to a Scala event, of all things. Most of this past week I’ve been moving into the apartment and fighting jet lag. The picture is of a shrine near my apartment.

The heat is oppressive - as bad as it ever was in Charleston - so I don’t spend that much time any day outside. I’ve managed to get a phone, register as a foreigner, buy some clothes, and find a good local used bookstore. The grocery store is three blocks away and has an excellent selection including the most delicious fruit I’ve ever had, Summer Angel plums, and Doctor Bronner’s Magic Soap. Even the bread is perfectly suited for toast, and I’ve had some very fine breakfasts.

The language hasn’t been a problem yet. My understanding is far beyond my ability to express myself, but I don’t have any trouble getting around, shopping, or ordering food, though I do still find simple words I don’t know, like “phone charger” (充電器), every so often.

Over the next few days I’ll try to write about some parts of daily life here in Azabu, and cover some things that are poorly documented whether in English or Japanese (like a lot of features handy for people with prepaid phones).

I can’t put it into words neatly, but though I am a stranger in a strange land, I’m very happy to be here.

Dinner in Caracas

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:09:08 EDT

Looks like I’m on a record kick. This is the classiest cover I own.

The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:24:18 EDT

Environments was a series of records of ambient noise (with one exception consisting of electronically generated bells) with remarkable titles and an interesting feature: the discs were intended to be played at any speed, and an attachment was available that would allow your record player to play them on an infinite loop. I can still kick myself for not picking this up when I saw it in Salvation Army.

Lest you think the title indicates this comes from Crazyville USA, two points: first, it was intended as a joke; second, selections were included on the Voyager Golden Record.

Enjoy.