RM: Glenda the Plan 9 Bunny
Hey DB, Just wondering what the heck the deal is with Glenda on your Dock. Is there some kind of crazy Plan9 emulator for OSX? Is there a QuickTime skin for Ed Wood movies as Ankalon suggests? Does the Cow know about this? Is it jealous? Can I really reduce my cholesterol with a low-fat, high-fiber diet? Drunken minds want to know.
Lord, for something that's just shown up in screenshots from time to time, people have been obsessed about this little bunny in my dock, asking about it in the comments and a few emails. The guy above even hunted me down via IM, just because he had to know...
Since few people know what Plan 9 is anymore, it was a unix-descended OS developed by Lucent/Bell Labs -- the people who were first slapping Unix together a few decades ago -- and had a big focus on the network and oodles of quirky charm. These guys were pushing grid computing back when most people barely had a decent TCP stack in their comp, and the name is derived from 'the worst movie ever made', Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Plan 9 still has a bit of a cult following, and there's a group called Plan 9 from User Space (heh) devoted to porting over the libraries and apps to other *nix OS's, like the BSD's and Linux and Mac OS X, but no iPod as of yet. I can't really do Plan 9 justice without going on for pages and pages, and I'm still a little hung over from yesterday, but if you're interested in what set this apart the links above should do you, and Wikipedia has a more basics-oriented write-up also.
Amusingly enough, while I think Plan 9 was/is exceptionally cool from a geek POV, I'm not running it on Mac OS X or something, it's just the 'Glenda' AdiumX dock icon. It makes me smile and is unobtrusive (I.E., it doesn't do much), and I get annoyed when Dock icons are flashing or jumping around.
P.S., a side story...I once worked on a project that brought me in contact with various Bell Labs folks. One particular technology was multi-device synching. I remember sitting with Rob Pike as he described this technology. He mentioned that there could be many "Glenda" modules in the system. Before he could continue, I interrupted and asked, "let me guess, there's a `Glen` module, isn't there?".
At that point he turned to me and very calmly said something like, "of course." Later in the day, after seeing movie posters for "Plan 9 from Outer Space", "Glen or Glenda", etc. about the lab, I asked what the obsession with Ed Wood movies was all about. He replied, "It's not so much an obsession. More like a healthy interest."
I'm guessing Rob Pike would laugh at The Cow. Just between you and me, the space bunny is one of the few mascots out there that can give The Cow a run for its money in coolness.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJuly 29, 2005, at 07:12 PM
Comments (10)
Posted by: Ankalon at July 29, 2005 07:58 PM
Finally, the little guy makes a difference.
I'm disappointed with the change.
Posted by: Wes McGee at July 29, 2005 09:17 PM
Well, learn something new every thing. I didn't know you could change icons in Adium (well, I only got the Mac 2 weeks ago, and I haven't really played with it -- except to wipe Tiger off of it and reinstall 10.3).
Posted by: Nugget at July 29, 2005 09:53 PM
Hooray for cows.
Posted by: Ben Reubenstein at July 30, 2005 12:03 AM
Just read the latest post on the PSP... Very cool...
Posted by: Ben Reubenstein at July 30, 2005 12:05 AM
Just read latest post on PSP... Very cool...
Posted by: ian at July 30, 2005 04:23 AM
I've used that as my default livejournal user icon for years now. :)
Posted by: your damn 'aqua' stripes at July 31, 2005 01:20 AM
figured it out.. it's that silly payware GyazMail program! There's stripes along it's toolbar, just as though the developers never got their hands on a copy of 10.3 or later.
I know that's not the case, having visited their site, but that's the only place you're seeing the old stripes, as far as I can think of.
I hated them too, and was relieved they were gone with panther, so was very surprised to hear you complaining about them in your 10.4.2 post.
Posted by: Tomas Sancio at July 31, 2005 08:28 PM
Why don't you use Adium for your Yahoo account?
Posted by: drunkenbatman at July 31, 2005 10:28 PM
Why don't you use Adium for your Yahoo account?
I do usually, but often have to log off of various accounts and login to the real clients, because there are some things Adium (or even iChat) doesn't do well between platforms.
"... world movie ever made." --> "...worst movie ever made."