“Flag up” photo by RICKY FLORES, The Journal News (New York)

(xmas lights I stole from OWC and I’m too lazy to take down)

Tell funnier jokes

It’s what the aliens tell the Woody Allen character in Stardust Memories. ... I think that’s about the extent of my philosophical insights. ... As the beloved LOL related, Bob Hope was with the marines on some Pacific hell hole, and a marine for one reason or another had failed to encounter the enemy, which he really desired to do. So he cries out “Hirohito stinks!” ... Whereupon the enemy steps forward and shouts back “Roosevelt stinks!” ... The Marine is stymied, complaining “I can’t kill a fellow Republican!” ... This is supposed to have sent the saintly FDR into paroxysms of mirth at some big todo....


This website is defiantly composed entirely in comic sans because it’s so cute. ... Except for the pitiful iThing multitudes, who’ll just have to put up with sans or Times Roman or whatever the hermetic wizards of iThingyness decree for the moon phase.

The clamoring public may submit abuse & complaints to owenlabs@aol.com

... welcome to the most secret place on the web ... the bermuda-triangle of html ... my personal web page ...

the j.g. owen memoir/web site

Ah, the years pass, don’t they? ... But still, this remains! ... For more than a decade! ... Nothing compared to The Cernettes who appeared with some of the less complicated particles when the web was young and I only slightly senile....

So behold! and look upon my resumé ye mighty and despair ... and I hope your browser renders the word “resume?”, as one of my machines did, when it felt like it — so chic ’n’ wacky! ... Until I finally got terminally bored and set the form to the lovely and gracious “Windows 1252” character-encoding; apparently otherwise the browser guesses to the best of its ability and whim (?).

... Or then again, why not check out the puerile pretensions of my pointlessly-fashionable bloggery. ... Or ...

Whatever happened to those beloved rants?

Some time in the Clinton administration, I moved my whining about various gadgets and technical catastrophes to the rant pages, with such exciting themes as The New Yorker & the iPad. ... And then there is my softer aesthetic side, so distinct from the harsh concrete-like computer-science realism of the rest of the site, my heart-rending mp3 music, notes / endless discussion thereof and so much more! ... And be sure not to miss my Odyssey of the Home Electronic Organ, The Saga of the Nord Imperium. ... Or my silly cameras. ... Or check out the Hammond Chord Organ story and a lovely picture....

And here’s a search button, which you can try using to search my site if my incredible laser-like organization somehow fails:


One Voice & Global Warming

I’d forgotten about this MP3 until it turned-up on my ancient Apple shuffle. ... It’s a truly creepy PSA which I expect “Environmental Defense” forgot, but not me, here on the eternal golden memories attic web site! ... My shuffle played it after a Bill Monroe rendition of The Old Crossroads, and it was followed by the giant thundering chorus of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. ... Startling religious sentiments from a music robot....

Climate Change?

And incidentally, why’d they change the name from “Global Warming” as in the creepy MP3 to “Global Climate Change”? Huh?!??? ... ’Cause science said so? ... Anyway it’s all been fixed at the Paris Climate Accord....


Kompozer, the often-working WYSIWYG HTML editor...

I don’t mean your junky raw-HTML syntax-coloring tripe (although it has that, and so much more!). ... I mean a real hasn’t-crashed in-minutes-of-testing actual editor for human beings! For me! ... For Free Free Free! ... It’s open source, and it seems to work. ... Several times! Ad astra! ... Well there are more than a few rough spots, but it’s still better than numerous others I’ve tried, and they cost money!...

It started at nvu.com, but an enterprising interloper created Kompozer which he referred to as “Nvu’s unofficial bug-fix release” — and was the NVU guy frosted! ... Even ’though he admited he abandoned the project, and was moving on to a bigger and better open-source HTML editor any year decade now. ... Although he did provide a link, so I guess all’s well that ends well. ... Anyway the Kompozer guy also planned to take us upwards and onwards, and the product seems to install and seems to work! ... Go, Kompozer, go!

Stalled

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1:23 pm: And look, they’re updating the thing over there; it’s up to version 7.10! And an “alpha” version 8!... Wednesday, March 24, 2010. 0.8b3 or so. ... Tuesday, June 8, 2010. Well really that was one was a little too alpha; for now I’m sticking with the sometimes-broken but not frequently actively malevolent 7.10. ... Friday, July 27, 2012. His web site has gotten cuter, I think, but activity appears to be over; still at 0.8b3. ... But back in the day, I gave him some dough anyway! And after all, I’m typing this in the cranky 7.10.

Well the project used to be at http://kompozer.net/ but no more; it’s wandered over to http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/ and looks a little peakéd there. ... So here’s the 8Mb kompozer-0.7.10-win32.zip with which I crash almost daily....

Breaks Stuff

I should note — so I’ll remember at least — that you should never never never copy a block from one Kompozer window to another — it is much too malevolent. Actually, I’ve stopped opening more than one window at a time, just in case. And of course I don’t use any of the project junk or anything; just edit HTML, which it does good about half the time when it doesn’t crack-up. ... I have a handy batch file disruptiveChrome.bat which I use to find Kompozer’s schizophrenic screams, which contains

findj “disruptive-innovations|chrome” *.htm

and after I foolishly moved a few blocks one dangerous day, that produced 2 or three screens worth of garbage! It turns-up many false positives of course. ... It’s tricky working-around these unfortunate things, but it’s still better than using some stupid $10K Adobe or whoever-it-is-this-week junk....


My Neighbor Boy is Stranger Than Yours

Life is wonderful, no?....


The peace that passeth understanding — in this case, a motel in the morning in St. Augustine I think. ... But the wandering years revealed it was actually Tampa, on the less glitzy side of Florida....



And here <== is a parental unit long ago and far away. ... That’s both of them => in front of the Volkswagen bus, with an old friend whose husband took the picture, which is one of those 3D things....

... And through the miracle of cousin-discovery, the other unit as a beautiful young woman, so many endless eons ago....


11/18. On a tragic note, the stupid movie Avengers: Infinity War really sux; everybody dies in the end. Actually, only a random half of the people in the galaxy die. The spider kid dies! ... Don’t show it to children. Or adults. ... Apparently the sensitive æthetes were so stricken by the catastrophic USA election they rent their plots. Perhaps there’ll be a sequel where a strangely-infirm elderly-but-pretends-otherwise heroic gurl will rally the remaining avengers and somehow resurrect half of the galaxy, through kindly sharing and holy pacifism....

12/10/18. The ending is referred to as a “cliff hanger” in the communist movie-flogging puffery biz. Like Ragnarök I guess — “the cataclysmic destruction of the cosmos and everything in it — even the gods”. ... But I suppose gamers — a group of ~8-year olds who see these movies when their mothers take them — would regard this kind of thing as perfectly normal....



Terrorist moron sets himself on fire burning the flag (Washington Times).


Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. 1907. Oil on canvas, 8’ x 7’8’’ (243.9 x 233.7 cm). MoMA.

what we’re
fighting for




The Amazing RoboHelp


Owen’s Rules

1. There are no technical problems, only personnel problems.
2. If it isn’t tested, it’s broken.
3. Include hardware reset in the software interface.

... Another item that has puzzled humanity for so many years can best be expressed as a question: Do all stupid programs inevitably dial the internet? Research is ongoing....

And here’s a thought: Features are hardest to fix.

... Finally, an old T-shirt sentiment, as true today as when I first saw it:

E = mc2 ...
It’s Not Just a Good Idea,
IT’S THE LAW

Thursday 6/1/23 9:46 am

simulated broken dreamhost counter: ... “I’m afraid ... the counter we provide on counter.dreamhost.com hasn’t been updated since around 2007, so it may not work correctly” — dreamhost “customer service”; this after the usual fraudulent blame-the-customer excuses. ... But then (Fri 6/9/17 7:50 am) I noticed the proud replacement had stopped working. So I don’t care how many hits I got. Never really did; & they’ve always been small integers....

Smoke-free

musicbut