Baldy plays guitar!
I felt like a complete infidel last night at the Joe Satriani gig. It was a sell-out show and I was using a free ticket (worth about $35) to see someone about whom I knew little while around me real fans were in paroxysms of ecstasy. To set the scene Joe looks like either Paul Shaffer or a heroin- chic Dr.Evil and the band like a cross between the members of Kraftwerk and the cast of Trainspotting. The audience spanned a wide age range so I had herbal smoke drifting back from the mob at the front and Old Spice from the group behind. The set was nicely done with what was either a much-abused bedsheet or a huge amount of Polyfilla obliquely lit. The odd thing was that the show was "being recorded for a DVD" (not merely "being recorded" or "being filmed"). I was considering protesting being confined to a proprietary format or circulating copies of DeCSS but since I was back behind the hypnotically swaying boom camera I don't think I had grounds for argument. The best moment they *should* have recorded for the world to see was the point where one of the Fillmore staff barged his way through the crowd, scattering bongs and dodging flaming joints and pipes, to reach a gentleman in front of me and to inform him firmly "There's no cigarette smoking in the Fillmore, sir.". The real highlights of the show were the incredible stamina of the video camera-wielding lady slipping athletically around the stage for three hours and Stuart ("Stoooooo!") Hamm's bass solo. Joe was pretty darned good as well.

Here's a puzzle I came across and was asking <crackmonkey> about while at <elise>'s excellent party. I have two boxes linked with 10/100 ethernet and a switch. They are never visible to the outside world so I use a hosts file for name resolution rather than bind. I can ping, ssh, scp, nfs and http each of the boxes from the other. The problem is that I cannot send mail. I am using Debian Potato on each with default configuration (so running exim ). I am not that familiar with exim configuration and a glance at the files hints that it does some reverse lookups and other trickery so hosts may not be sufficient. Is there any way of setting up exim in such a circumstance. I don't mind setting up bind if I have to but I'd probably have to do it on both boxes as I don't always have both of them on at once and so I would not be able to rely on the presence of a nameserver (of course, if only one box was powered up it would be difficult to send mail anyway, but I am still curious).

I walked to work through Golden Gate Park with a gorgeous sunset over the ocean at my back. It looks as if they will soon be draining the water from the Chain of Lakes to clean them up. I'd like to come back and see that when it is complete.