Yesterday would have been Jon Pertwee's 90th birthday. I celebration, have a listen to I Am The Doctor, one of the truly strangest (but wonderful) pieces of Doctor Who related popular music in existence.

Hope everyone on the flist had a happy 4th of July, including those who aren't American and have nothing in particular to celebrate on that day. (Although, remind me to tell you sometime about the 4th of July celebration I witnessed in Brussels once. Francophone cowboys and Indians. Mon Dieu! I think I know how an Irish person must feel at an American St. Patrick's Day Celebration. But I digress...)

Daniel and I spent yesterday wandering around San Francisco. We had tea at Samovar in Yerba Buena Gardens and then wandered over to the Asian Art Museum with the vague idea of seeing the samurai exhibit. However, by the time we got there, it was only 45 minutes from closing, so we decided to postpone that to another day. So, we found a bookstore on Van Ness, where I spent a long time deciding between That's Not My Truck! and Where is the Green Sheep? as a second birthday present for my nephew. That's Not My Truck! was a strong contender, since "truck" is a word Lior is very fond of. In the end, I went with Where is the Green Sheep? because I personally found it a more compelling read. The quest of the un-named narrator to locate a green sheep, and said narrator's unwillingness to be satisfied with swimming sheep, dancing sheep, or pink sheep, had a certain poignancy, which wasn't matched by a small mouse's search for his truck. (Buying books for the preliterate is hard.)

Books acquired, we had dinner and caught a bit of the fireworks show. The higher-flying fireworks would partially disappear into the fog bank over the city and make it look like the clouds themselves were exploding. Neat effect. We left early, and on our drive home along Highway 101, caught bits of several other municipalities' fireworks shows. I think Daniel might have preferred not having explosions going off along the side of the road while he was driving, but it was pretty.

Plans for today include a bit of laundry, a bit of lazing around. Perhaps I'll catch up on the Torchwood radio plays. Daniel's parents are in town, and we're planning on seeing them for dinner.

So, I've been playing around with the BBC's new iPlayer RSS feeds. Seems like a potentially neat way to keep an eye on what's new on iPlayer, and avoid that problem of hearing about an interesting program *just* after it's no longer available.

I created a syndicated LJ account for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Radio programs feed: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/iplayer_scifi/. So, if you want to use LJ to keep track of science fiction and fantasy radio on iPlayer, add that to your friends list. It seems to be a bit slow to update, but we'll see how it goes. If it actually helps me keep track of programs I'm interested in, I might create some other syndicated feeds.

...are broadcasting this week, starting today. Check your iPlayer, or you can download the plays for 7 days after broadcast. (It says "UK only", but it let me download the first one.)

Daniel and I went to an Arabian-Nights-themed host-a-murder party last night. (He playing Abdullah, a poor innocent fisherman who is accused of murder; I playing his wife, Fatima.) A good time was had by all. I can remember a time when doing any sort of improvisational acting, even on such a small scale, would have rooted me to the spot with terror. I guess maybe I have grown up a bit! (The hosts also gave me a good part for a first-timer, since all I really had to do was proclaim my husband's innocence at every available opportunity. And if I got really stuck, I'd just ask people if they wanted to buy fish.)

Today I'm heading up to San Francisco to meet one of my Clarion West classmates who is in town. And it's the Gay Pride parade today. How crowded will San Francisco be on Gay Pride parade day? Guess I'm about to find out.

...apparently, we've had a confirmed case of H1N1 swine flu in someone who works in the building where I work.

It almost makes me wonder about the strange congestion/sore throat/fever thing that I had for a few days a few weeks ago. I thought it was just a particularly hellish sinus infection. Surely I'm not dim enough to mistake flu for a sinus infection?

I've just come across two instances in two days of confusion caused by different understandings of the idea of something being "transparent".

If someone says to me, "This feature should be totally transparent to the user," then I tend to think of transparency in the sense of clarity, of having nothing hidden. Depending on context, I tend to assume that the intended meaning is either, "We should be really clear about explaining this," or "The user should be able to see exactly how all of this works."

However, I've just encountered two uses of the term where the important semantic quality of transparency that's being referenced is invisibility or the property of not impeding one's view through something. Used in that sense, "This should be totally transparent to the user," means something like, "The user should not ever notice that it is there," or "The user doesn't need to worry about that because we hide all of the details so that they can focus on what interests them." Which is very close to the opposite of the way that I was understanding the term. Minor hilarity ensued.

So, I wonder...is my understanding of the term idiosyncratic? Is it a cultural thing? Or just one of those inherently ambiguous words?

I've just been all over the internet trying to buy a CD copy of the soundtrack for the Doctor Who episode "The Savages". (Thought I'd try to listen to it before Cadmium2 get around to covering it a few episodes from now.) Apparently, the darn thing is out of print. Audible.com has it, but I'd prefer a better quality non-DRM copy. Looks like Audible is the best I'm likely to get. (I've tried WhoNA, Alien Entertainment, Mike's Comics, Book Depository, Galaxy 4, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and eBay. Any other suggestions?)

I can't quite figure out why this particular soundtrack is out of print when most of the other early Doctor Who soundtracks are readily available. ("Fury from the Deep" seems to be another exception.)

On the other hand, my absolute conviction that I ought to be able to buy a copy of a soundtrack recording of an episode of television broadcast in 1966 for which the master recordings were destroyed is actually pretty amusing. You mean it's not actually written into the BBC charter that Doctor Who episodes must be available for purchase in the format of my choice?

Interesting radio program on drug de-criminalization in Portugal. Basically, in Portugal, drugs are still illegal, but you won't go to jail if you're caught using them. Instead, you have to go down to the Dissuasion Commision* and chat with a psychologist, who can assign you any one of a range of "administrative penalties" ranging from fines to community service to mandatory drug treatment. Apparently the idea is that if you don't treat people as criminals, they're more likely to be willing to get help if they need it.

The program is unfortunately very light on hard data about whether this new regime has reduced drug use or harm associated with drug use in Portugal. It seems, at the very least, that it hasn't increased drug use. I would also like to know more about Portugal's treatment programs - I have the distinct impression that here in the United States we can't provide enough spaces in treatment programs for everyone who wants one, so if Portugal has figured out something smart in terms of setting up and funding treatment, I'd be very interested in hearing about that.

*I love that name.

Been glued to Twitter most of the morning, as if political change in Iran is somehow going to happen faster through the sheer good will of lots of Internet spectators.

It does make me think about how the way I follow the news has changed over time. I can remember watching the Berlin wall come down on CNN; I remember following the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe mostly through plain old-fashioned print journalism in, of all places, Paris Match. On September 11, 2001, I learned about what was happening largely through blogs, starting with this post of Mary Anne's.

With recent events, I'm actually getting most of my news from fairly traditional news sources (BBC, guardian.co.uk), but Twitter is adding an interesting personal dimension. One of the twitter accounts I'm following belongs to a student at Tehran University. In the midst of reporting that his dorm is surrounded by paramilitary forces, he adds that the head of the University has announced that exams will not be rescheduled. University administration - the same everywhere.