For many years now, I have had a Peterman duster (in the original canvas color, which I'm happy to see has again become available), but really no hat to go with it. I've been known to wear a baseball-style cap (with a graphic for the now-defunct UCSD HP-PAL) with it, but the result was questionable.

While I was out to-day, I was seized by the urge to get a hat. So I stopped at the Village Hat Shop. There I found and purchased a chestnut-colored Jaxon Nubuck Safari.

(As I was completing purchase, the salesgirl said that /ˈkiən/ was a fine Irish name. I didn't tell her that my middle name is in fact pronounced /ˈkʌɪən/ and that, though there are Irishmen named Kian, in my case my name was just an invention based on my father's notions of euphany, and his disregard for how a name pronounced /ˈkʌɪən/ ought best to be spelled.)

The hat unfortunately isn't packable/crushable, but should develop some character with time.

I am compelled to correct a claim that I made about Babycakes. Rather than simply sacrificing their parking in order to expand their patio, they have actually installed a very nice moveable partition; which has at least two possible configurations, one of which provides a larger patio but no parking, the other of which provides parking and less patio space. I believe that they can move the partition in a matter of a few minutes, and yet it looks permanent in either configuration.

I did not get to Babycakes last night until shortly after 21:00, at which time the pool was partially drained and any whipped cream boys were long gone, so I didn't take any photos. However, I was told by a barista and by one of the owners that photos were on-line. I believe that these can be found at their MySpace.

I was skimming a summary of the log for this website, and noticed a few hits from various searches for babycakes. This prompted me to do my own search for babycakes, which revealed one or more baked-goods firms doing business by that name, doing inter-state business, or with a presence in California. That means that if the local Babycakes hasn't licensed the name, then there could be a trade-mark battle.

In any case, Babycakes continues to transform the site. In my opinion, most of the physical changes make the place more appealing. A change largely effected to-day reflects considerable confidence, though it may represent a miscalculation; specifically, they have extended the front patio by eliminating the meager parking. [Correction (2008:08/12): The parking wasn't permanently eliminated. Rather, a reconfigurable partition has been installed, which allows the patio area to be extended or contracted.]

I was told a few days ago that peculiar things will be happening at Babycakes to-morrow. Reference was made to a pool and to whipped cream boys. I may not get there until after such events (I didn't get to the place until almost 22:00 on Saturday), but I'll bring a camera if I think that I have a chance of capturing images.

Readers of this 'blog might recall that I collect working slide-rule tie-clips, and readers of my defunct LJ might recall that I have a collection of ordinary slide rules (to which I almost never make additions, because I had limited ambitions and most of these have been met).

Recently, the Woman of Interest mentioned the slide-rule tie-clip collection to her maternal grandmother, who volunteered that her late husband (grandfather to the Woman of Interest) had had one, and offered to give it to me. I was happy to accept, as none of my other such tie-clips has a family significance for me. I also learned that this man had had a slide rule, a Pickett & Eckel of unknown composition, but that it was not in working order; the rules wouldn't slide, and there was a lot of white powder on the device. I offered to fix it and return it, but the outcome of that offer was that it was given to the Woman of Interest, for whom I was to fix it.

The slide rule arrived on Monday (along with a bag of premium salt-water taffy, perhaps to sustain me as I worked on the device). It proved to be a Model 500, and I decided that it were of a light-weight metal with plastic laminate for the scales, and that the white-stuff were probably corrosion product. Some of Pickett's later slide rules were definitely made of aluminum, and aluminum oxide powder is typically white, but I didn't find confirmation on-line that this model were made of aluminum. Nor was I sure that other metal parts wouldn't be damaged by water; the braces, bolts, and rivets might be of a different metal, and the indicator spring was surely not aluminum. Meanwhile, I had to be careful about that plastic laminate as well.

Having gone to the local drug-store for something else, I wandered around the aisles looking for something to use to clean the slide rule, and saw jars of petroleum jelly. That seemed a great choice; it could be used to wet areas without water, loosening and suspending the oxide and other dirt. Any residue could function as a lubricant and water repellent, and it shouldn't reäct significantly with the metal, plastic or marking colorant. There would be no odor. The only down-side is that the residue will tend to hold onto particulates with which it has come into contact, but occasional wiping should fix that. (Unfortunately for the store, I already had a tub of petroleum jelly at home, but I'd bought that from them, years ago.)

Anyway, I carefully disassembled the slide rule, cleaned it with the petroleum jelly (and the indicator plates with hot water), reässembled it, and made sure that the scales and indicator plates were in good alignment. The slide rule is back in working order.

My best thinking seems to be done in the shower. Yester-day, in the shower, I came up with the idea for what may in fact be a killer app.

The thing that distinguishes a killer app is not that it provides an excellent solution to a problem so much as that it provides an acceptable solution to an excellent problem. That is to say that a killer app may not have ideally efficient code, but manages to do something very desirable that other programs pretty much aren't doing at all.

Some time ago, I wrote a simple pair of programs for the use of the Woman of Interest and myself. Their functionality is very limited, and they were written under an assumption that now seems more dubious. So I was thinking about how to rewrite them into something more powerful, and quickly developed the general idea for the hypothetical app.

Later, I returned a phone call from my friend Phillip (a programmer), and during the course of our conversation sketched the idea for him, telling him that I would want to discuss it at some future date. But Phillip quickly got very actively interested, and discovered that I had coherent answers for related programming questions. (What I don't have are answers for some of the marketing problems.) Basically, he wouldn't let go of the subject, and we ended-up talking for hours. Phillip had one excellent technical suggestion about how to improve the app. He's planning to research potential sources of competition, and then get back to me.

The nature of the app is such that, if some party produces a decent implementation and gets a significant number of users before anyone else produces a decent implementation, then that party can probably profit for years, by virtue of path dependency. But, if a well-funded rival recognized the potential market before there were already a substantial number of users for the app, then that rival might be able to get utterly displace the first party. Hence, I'll remain annoyingly vague about the idea, until I either abandon it or have product ready to move.

My favorite history of economic thought is A History of Economic Reasoning by Karl Přibram. This book significantly shaped my thinking about the history of Western thought in general, and helped me to better understand some competing economic theories and how to resolve the conflicts amongst them.

I ran across a copy of an older book by him, Cartel Problems: An Analysis of Collective Monopolies in Europe with American Application for sale on-line, and ordered it.

It arrived on Friday. The copy is really in rather nice shape. But it bears the marks of an odd history.

The book was published by the Brookings Institution in 1935. On the first page after the copyright page, in the inside margin, is hand-written 1-6-55 Gift Brookings Instit. So my guess is that they had a bunch of copies still in stock in 1955, and decided to reduce their inventory by giving them away.

At one stage, it was in the browsing library established by William Allen White[1] in Kenyon Hall of the College of Emporia, a Presbyterian institution in Kansas, which had a strong focus on religion at its inception, but became more secular in the '50s and '60s.

The copy was moved from the White library to the John B. Anderson Memorial Library of the College.[2] A book-plate of the Anderson Memorial Library was pasted-over some previous plate (which I suspect was also of the Anderson Memorial Library), and over a stamping in ink below that, which reads FROM WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE (which I think must refer to the library, rather than to the man, as White died on 31 January 1944).[3] I believe that the 1-6-66 is simply a misreading of 1-6-55, that the College was given the copy in 1955, and placed the copy in the browsing library, and that the volume was later moved to the Anderson Memorial Library.

The Anderson Library itself was closed in 1968, but I presume that its entire collection was moved to the Laughlin-Lewis Library of the College.

The College of Emporia was closed at the end of 1973, but the site and facilities were bought in 1974 by The Way International, a heterodox Christian corporation. The college was thoroughly renovated over the next dozen years, but closed and its plant sold at auction in 1991.

I think that it was at about this point that the copy of Cartel Problems found its way to the Wallace Library of the Criswell Center for Biblical Studies, In Dallas, Texas. The Wallace Library stamped its name in ink onto the Anderson book-plate, onto the title page, and on a card-pocket on the inside back-cover (which bears no other marks).[4]

One might wonder what a place calling itself a Center for Biblical Studies was doing with a 1935 book on industrial organization. Indeed, the Criswell Center — now Criswell College — is a Southern Baptist institution, and the majors offered do not include social sciences or business. My guess is that the Center acquired this book in a lot, and just thoughtlessly put it in their stacks. Eventually, someone actually asked, and the book was liquidated.

It isn't clear from the condition of the book that anyone has ever actually read the thing. With the exception of a price written in pencil on the free front end-paper, all the observable wear-and-tear is plainly the result of the scribbling, pasting, and stamping of librarians, or shelf-wear, or possibly attributable to the book having been moved a few times.

[1]William Allen White was an important progressive journalist and political activist, and (for reasons unknown to me) They Might Be Giants use an image of his face in the video for Don't Let's Start and elsewhere.

[2]The John B. Anderson Memorial Library was established by Andrew Carnegie in memory of a Colonel Anderson, who had made his personal library available to working boys, including Carnegie, and had later served on the Board of Trustees of the College.

[3]Additionally, there is a raised impression of ANDERSON MEMORIAL LIBRARY / EMPORIA,KANSAS on the title page and on page 101.

[4]Additionally, CRISWELL CENTER / FOR BIBLICAL STUDIES is stamped in ink in the margin of page 29.

As a result of contemplating eventual replacement of my shaving brush, I have been looking into how three sorts of animal hair are harvested — badger, boar, and horse.

A type of badger bristle is used for the finest sorts of shaving brushes, but these bristles are got from killed badgers. As much as I would like a high-quality shaving brush, I do not want to do anything to promote the killing of badgers. (Their populations could be controlled without slaughter.)

Other shaving brushes (like some hair brushes) are made with boar bristles. Most boar bristles seem to come from killed boars, but there is actually at least one firm that shears living boars to harvest their bristles. I'll look into brushes from such a source.

(I can also get a synthetic-bristle shaving brush, though by all accounts these are inferior to natural-bristle brushes.)

I was under the impression that some shave brushes were made with horse hair, but seem to have been mistaken on that score. [Up-Date (2 August): I have indeed found some horse-hair shaving brushes.] In any event, I learned that some horses are raised for the hair of their manes or tails, which is clipped, but that most horse hair comes from slaughtered horses.

I was asleep when the 'quake hit the Greater Los Angeles Area late this morning (I'd gone to sleep less than four hours earlier), but when the shock reached Hillcrest, it woke me up. First there was a little rattling, then more aggressive shaking.

Yet I didn't hear any change in the activity in front of the building. People didn't raise their voices, and so forth. And, after I was out-and-about, I over-heard other people saying or implying that they felt nothing. My guess is that my apartment shook as much as it did because it is on the third floor, and the building amplified the oscillations.

I was glad that the 'quake itself wasn't stronger at its epicenter. Frankly, I'd be pleased if the Los Angeles area would just have a series of 'quakes of that magnitude, until the energy trapped in the fault were spent, rather than some eventual Big One.

Yester-day or the day before that, AMD made available a new version of their Linux driver for the graphics adapter in my note-book computer. I was pleased, as I hoped that it would eliminated the logging-out problem that I've been having. (This problem did not go away when I up-dated my driver on 6 July.)

Well, things have changed with the new driver, but seemingly for the worse. I'm still logged-out when using Firefox with some webpages, but now the display ends-up blanked and effectively disabled, so that I have to completely restart the system. (Perhaps the frequency of being logged-out has been reduced.)

Oh well. I will hope that the next driver up-date resolves the problem.

David's Coffee Place is apparently now replaced with Babycakes. An expert came and inspected the piano, which is being sold.

Again, I regret these changes, though in most cases the new owners may be making the best choices available to them.

Meanwhile, a block-and-a-half north, a place named Mille Feuille is scheduled to open in August. They advertise themselves primarily as a chocolatier and bakery, but apparently will be offering tea and sandwiches as well. Since Babycakes has been envisioned as having more in the way of desserts and baked goods than David's Coffee Place, and as more of a restaurant, the appearance of Mille Feuille may be a problem for them. (There are many other restaurants in the immediate area, but Mille Feuille seems to be closer in intended product mix.)

Addendum (23 July): The piano that is being sold is a baby grand (in fact, an especially small baby grand, but with a good lower range). I was informed last night that Babycakes has an upright piano that they will be putting into service. (The notion being that it will take less floor space.)