... or Glædelig Jul as we say in Danish. It's odd for me to be in Los Angeles around Christmas. The Christmas insanity is only really obvious in malls, homes of people I don't know and don't visit and possibly on TV which I don't watch.

In Denmark much of December is packed with Christmas parties. You drink special warm drinks. Eat special cookies. Maybe people does here too, but it's not the kind of Christmas things that I have been growing up with, so if they do I wouldn't register it as such.

There are no seasons here, so you mostly lose the feeling of time in the big scheme of things. Through most of my life each summer and each winter has been like a milestone. You identify and remember things by "last summer", "two winters ago". In Los Angeles the only sign of seasons is that the palms kinda, but not really, turn a bit brown. Time passes in a floating kind of way. Everything is just a while ago. Two years? 6 months? Who knows.

In Los Angeles there is no snow to identify the time of winter. When the smog clears after the rain, you can see snow on the stop of the mountains in the distance, but the smog will be back soon and the snow out of sight.

The picture of a big Santa Claus in thick, warm red clothing seems a bit absurd when you are still wearing t-shirts and tennis shoes outside.

The afternoons doesn't get dark. It does get a bit cold; but not wet and biting cold. You-can-wear-a-sweater cold, not you-must-wear-four-layers-to-go-out cold. You-can-turn-on-the-heater-at-night cold. But the latter mostly just because my apartment isn't insulated much at all. The summers are not long and bright here, so the change does not register massively on the internal timeline like it does when you are farther north.

Next summer Viridiana and I are planning to go to Denmark so we can get a bit of the long warm summer evenings and rainy summer weather. But for now it's a warm and very green Christmas in Los Angeles. Merry Christmas! :-)

Brent has released the first NetNewsWire Pro Beta. I have been ing the alphas and it's just awesome. Even the first alpha some weeks ago was great and Brent just keeps improving it. Lots of spiffy features. A find command. AppleScript support. A notepad to, er, make notes about things you want to post and an Weblog editor supporting lots of weblog systems. Several I didn't even know about!

Train commuters will enjoy that the Pro version stores headlines between runs, so you can refresh before heading out and read news on the train.

Wired wrote months ago:

A missing chapter from hacker Kevin Mitnick's recent book has been published on the Internet.

The chapter was originally slated to be the first chapter in Mitnick's new book, The Art of Deception, but was not included in the published version of the book.

The publisher decided to remove the chapter shortly before releasing the book. Wiley representatives were unable to comment immediately on why the chapter was pulled.

The chapter contains the first recounting by Mitnick of his life as a hacker and a fugitive, as well as his arrest, trial and life in prison.

The chapter also includes allegations by Mitnick that John Markoff, technology reporter for The New York Times, printed malicious stories about Mitnick during the hacker's years as a fugitive.

The text and word document versions are so badly formatted to be almost unreadable. There is now a nice PDF available of Kevins Story. It's a fun read; go download it already.

(via Cryptogram)

Related the Guardian has a good interview with Mitnick, 'Why did I do it? For fun' .
(via davorg)

Wired can say whatever they want about the mac community. (Update: I note John Gruber has a great response to the nonsense).

How I Caught a Counterfeiter with a Little Help from my Friends tells the story of a scammer buying macs with counterfeit checks and how he got caught.

He emailed me a new address and phone number, the phone number again traced back to the same address for Mr. Christmas. I called the Secret Service and the Chicago PD, pleading, all they had to do was be there when Fedex dropped off the package. It was a guaranteed hit, he'd have another counterfeit cashier's check, all you'd have to do is arrest him. Like shooting fish in a barrel. "Sorry, Detective McDonaugh will be out until next Wednesday, can I take a message?" Fine, if the cops won't do it, I decided I'd just Priceline a ticket and be waiting next door when it got dropped off. So I'd know what kind of neighborhood I was looking at, I asked for help again in the Mac boards. Two Chicago residents replied, and the next morning, courtesy of Tim, I had 23 pictures of the house, the cars in the driveway (with license plate numbers) and the neighborhood. I'd like to see a Dell user do something like that at 4:30 in the morning for a complete stranger a thousand miles away.

... and it has a happy ending involving a more responsive gentleman from the local law enforcement.

update 2: There's also this story about a guy tracking down a stolen iMac with Timbuktu and AppleScript...

(via MacRumors)

I got a scanner so now I can scan my artwork, cards, er, stuff. All too much fun.

Julian sent me a cleaned up version of the photo I posted long ago. Someone from Wired wrote to me a while ago because they needed a photo of Larry Wall, so I sent them to Julian. They ended up not using his photos because they needed something more dull. How dull! It was probably for the sidebar in the Science + Religion series from the December issue.

(more on the ~2 week weblog break later. No, I wasn't on vacation or otherwise disconnected. I wish. I think.).

A Japanese warrior was captured by his enemies and thrown into prison. That night he was unable to sleep because he feared that the next day he would be interrogated, tortured, and executed. Then the words of his Zen master came to him, "Tomorrow is not real. It is an illusion. The only reality is now." Heeding these words, the warrior became peaceful and fell asleep.