This will be one of my fairly rare geeky programmer posts. Fair warning, non-technical folks.

So, does anybody out there in tech-land know anything about Quartz Composer? It’s apparently a graphic programming environment for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and while it has gone utterly unpromoted by Apple, it looks to be extremely interesting.

According to its web page, “Quartz Composer brings together a rich set of graphical and nongraphical technologies, including Quartz 2D, Core Image, Core Video, OpenGL, QuickTime, MIDI System Services, and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), which is a lightweight XML format.” What I’ve read of the docs so far appear to back this up — you could create a screen saver that not only downloads RSS feeds, but also composes and plays MIDI songs based on the contents of those feeds. (Admittedly, they’re not likely to be good songs, but that’s up to you.) The good bit, however, is that it’s all visual — you don’t have to write any code to do it.

It appears that this has much of the same approach and power as Isadora, which has long been one of my favorite tools for creative fooling about with audio and video on computers. I’m very interested to take some time to play with this and see if it lives up to its early promise.

This past weekend, Kathy and I went down to San Antonio for a 10th anniversary getaway. I had been plotting the trip for a couple of weeks with the invaluable help of Christina, who stayed with the kids while we ran off to have a little bit of exclusive couple time, and was pretty excited to finally be able to set the plans in motion.

We started off by checking into the Travelodge downtown. While not palatial, it is clean and only a couple of blocks from the Riverwalk, where we spent much of our time over the next 48 hours. We then embarked on a quest to find “Dolores del Rio”, a funky Italian place I had heard of, but had never actually been to. Given that all of the reviews of the restaurant I’d found on the internet included directions, and that those directions seemed to bear no relation to each other whatsoever, I had expected locating the place to be a good deal more challenging than it actually turned out to be. We were quickly seated, and joined a few minutes later by Chris and Becky, who were in town to pick a place to live when they move to San Antonio in the fall, and Lana and Meara. The evening was great — wonderful food, scintillating company, and a jazz band nominally led by my friend Barry at the keyboard, who graced us with an alternately ethereal and funky version of “Tea for Two” in honor of our ten years. Then the belly dancers came out, draped me and Chris in feather boas, rounding off the dining experience nicely. We had only expected to stick around the restaurant for a couple of hours, but were having such a good time that, by the time we finally parted company after dinner, it was time for bed.

The next morning we lazed about for a while, enjoying the luxury of sleeping in — an opportunity rarely afforded the parents of four children. We then embarked on a driving tour of the San Antonio Mission Trail, a series of four missions (five, if you count the Alamo) established by Spanish Franciscans back when the New World was first seeing European colonization. Though I think every child in San Antonio is required to go on field trips to the missions several times over the course of his public school education, I had very little memory of the sites, and enjoyed them every bit as much as Kathy, for whom this was her first visit.

Incidentally, I can hardly think of a life I’d rather lead than that of one of these monks who helped to establish these remarkable communities. What a wonderful thing to be so intimately involved with helping people meet their physical needs, while at the same time providing a place for cultivating their spiritual lives and working together to build places that are so beautiful.

After the missions, we went and pottered about downtown for a while, enjoying a late lunch at Casa Rio, a restaurant with colorful umbrellas over its riverside tables that largely define the visual look of the Riverwalk for me. We then enjoyed the air conditioned promenades at Rivercenter for a while and ducked into an arcade for a bit to race cars and play motion capture boxing games. (Visiting Rivercenter is always a bit nostalgic for me, as my high school choir sang there when it opened. “You just add water…at Rivercenter!” I’m still not sure what unholy business dealings resulted in our presence at the opening of a shopping mall, but it was fun at the time.)

Our original plan for that evening included a trip to the San Pedro Playhouse for a musical show. However, by the time we left on Friday, they had not responded to my request for tickets on their website. (I finally got an email back this morning saying “Oops. You went to our old website. Here’s the address of our new website, which, by the way, doesn’t offer online ticket ordering anymore.” Nimrods.) So, we Plan-B’ed, and got some coffee at a local coffee shop with indifferent coffee but the most extraordinary service I’ve ever seen. The pink-clad fey man behind the bar, when Kathy asked if they happened to have a newspaper handy, said “No, but I’ll get you one” and sprinted out the door before either of us could respond effectively. He went across the street to a gas station, but found their newspaper rack empty. He then proceeded to run further down the street until he found a place with a paper handy, purchased it, and brought it back for us to review. (All we wanted to know was movie times!) Truly above and beyond the call of duty, and thus earns a heartfelt recommendation of Timo’s Coffehouse on San Pedro. (Just don’t ask for anything tricky with decaf.)

We capped the day with a visit to The Quarry, a site that, while I was growing up in San Antonio, was a wretched, filthy eyesore of an abandoned industrial site, ironically next to one of the richer neighborhoods in San Antonio. Several years back, however, it was made over as an upscale commercial space, and now boasts many interesting stores, a microbrewery or two, and a huge movie theater. We pottered around Borders for a while, and I picked up P.J. O’Roarke’s latest, which I perused while Kathy dropped by Whole Foods. We then watched “Cinderella Man”, which was a lovely, moving film (even though it was about boxing) and drove back to the Travelodge.

We slept in a bit more on Sunday, ran a few errands, and returned to our home, to be greeted by the excited shrieks of our kids (and a few, truth be told, from me as well). The trip was a great time which Kathy and I both enjoyed a great deal and got a lot out of. It was super to devote some time to just cultivating that relationship, away from our workaday concerns, and to slow down and celebrate getting to 10 years.

Thanks for your patience and persistence, my dear Kathy. I’m glad we’re making this journey together!

(See my photostream for some more pictures.)

Today is Kathy’s and my 10th anniversary. Discussing it last night, we found it hard to believe that it has been that long already (though it’s a bit easier to process when one thinks of all the ground we’ve covered since that day). There have been some giddy highs and some excruciating lows, and I’m glad that all of them have gotten us to where we are today. I would be far less the man I am without her care and support.

Happy anniversary, darlin’. Let’s go for another ten now.

Word of advice: if you can structure your life in such a way that you never have to try to get passports for a family of six, do so.

Stuff that went wrong:

• First Visit:
  • We didn’t have a checkbook along. (I thought you could pay for everything with credit cards these days. Or, for heaven’s sake, at least cash. What does “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” mean, anyway?)
  • I took time off work based on the hours posted for the City Clerk’s office on the State Department’s website. They were, of course, wrong.
  • I did the photos on a camera at home, and in spite of doing my darndest to follow the instructions, they didn’t pass muster. (My headshots were, evidently, too close and detailed.)
  • The previous fact was, of course, only discovered after Kathy left the City Clerk’s office to go get our checkbook. And encountered a train on the way. Which was not moving. For 30 minutes.
• Second Visit:
  • We went to Walgreen’s to have the photos done by a professional. They pulled out a handheld digital camera, took the photos, and then printed them on the dang photo printing machine that’s open to the public! Well, I could have done that, you muttonheads!
  • At the City Clerk’s office again, we discovered that we didn’t have the kids’ social security numbers. (I was sure I had written them on the forms, which must have had a visit from the White-Out Fairy or something.)
  • When I got back from retrieving that information from the house, the lady at the City Clerk’s office took my driver’s license for ID purposes (again), and then informed me that she couldn’t use it because it expired back in March. I made a lucid, if slightly loud, defense of the idea that I am, regardless of when the license expired, still the same person I was two months ago. We eventually decided that the license, combined with my University photo ID, combined with my old passport was enough to verify my identity.

All of this, of course, was preceeded by Emily’s official adoption, which we were trying to get completed before submitting the passport applications. This too was a comedy of errors, which included the firing of a lawyer, the last-minute hiring of another lawyer, confusion about homestudies and their necessity, a trip to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Austin to get an updated birth certificate (which, of course, they couldn’t do, since Emily wasn’t born in Texas), and much more.

Anyway, I’m frightfully glad to have this hurdle cleared at last.

This morning on RealLivePreacher.com, Gordon references The Saint John’s Bible. This stunning project, the brainchild of calligrapher Donald Jackson, aims to handwrite the entire bible with illuminations and illustrations done in a beautiful hybrid of medieval and modern styles.

I’m just in awe. The artwork is wonderful, the lettering lovely, the scope of the project magnificent. Spend some time on the site, and be sure to see the prints in the online gift shop, where some of the best examples of the art are available in the Featured Prints section. Many thanks to St. John’s University for commissioning this project.

I’ve just added a new sidebar to this weblog. It’s called “Do Some Good”, and is devoted to links where you can help with a variety of important and worthwhile causes. (I figured these things are at least as important as the blathering I do here on a regular basis and therefore deserve top billing.)

I’m opening it with three links: the first is to Seth Dillingham’s fund raising page for the 2005 Pan-Mass Challenge, a biking event that raises funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

The second is to Mercy Corps’ Sudan Page. This part of Africa has seen an enormous number of people killed and displaced over the past several years, and is one of the worst humanitarian crises of our era. Mercy Corps is providing food and basic sanitation for refugees who have been driven from their homes.

Finally, for those of you who may not have any disposable income, I’ve included a link to The Hunger Site. Merely by clicking a link, you can provide a cup of staple food for the relief efforts of Mercy Corps and America’s Second Harvest.

Thanks for visiting and helping with some of these efforts. I’ll be adding to these links as time goes on, so keep an eye on this space.

John Rogers, a friend of a friend and a busy screenwriter, wields the mighty power of the pen this morning, turning his acerbic wit toward the Newsweek scandal. Quite a piece of writing, regardless of whether you agree with his conclusions.

A few months back, a gaggle of middle schoolers gathering up canned goods for a food drive showed up on our doorstep. “Hang on a second; let me get you something,” I told them. When I returned from rooting around in the pantry, I found them staring quizzically up at the top of the doorframe, where we have inscribed “Esse Quam Videri”.

“What’s that?” one of their leaders asked.

“It says ‘Esse Quam Videri,'” I told them. Blank looks.

“It means ‘To be, rather than to seem,'” I further explained. The blank looks didn’t budge.

“It’s Latin for ‘Don’t be a poseur,'” I elaborated.

Comprehension dawned. “Oh, that’s cool! Thanks!” she said, and marched on down the street with her canned corn in hand.

Today is Emily’s 13th birthday. We celebrated last night with a small-scale party at The Zone, our local skating rink cum arcade. (Our usual procedure for family birthdays has been to invite lots of people and celebrate in the back yard. After having a great time at friends’ skating parties, Emily decided that this year she’d rather do that, even though we had to severely curtail the guest list to keep it affordable.)

Everybody seemed to quite enjoy themselves. Emily was very happy with and grateful for the gifts she was given; the rest of us enjoyed zooming around the skating rink and playing Galaga and The Simpsons.

Happy birthday, kiddo. We’re awfully glad you’re a part of our family.