Sometime back I read the words:
So perhaps we should mute our cries of doom and speak, if not in tones of triumph then at least of hope—and courage. For those of you who have the urge to create still another
fully realized worldsteeped in misery and horror resulting from 20th century stupidity—please try another market. I firmly believe the readers are as bored with it as this editor.
There, in my room in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, I stood up and cheered.
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Been using Macromedia products, a lot. Started out with Freehand (BM, Before Macromedia, version 3 to be precise). Kept going to 10, then decided to go whole hog and went to Studio MX.
One of the things I liked was MM’s “two-machine” license. I could have it on desktop and latop, without muss or fuss. Great.
I’ve rarely agreed with Rep. James Sensenbrenner; I was even upset when he became my congressman through redistricting.
But through his encounters with the Bush White House, I’m gaining some respect for the man. And my respect is harder to earn than my agreement. He voted against his party and his president when he refused to vote for a disaster aid bill because it lacked controls and accountability. And here we are, half a year down the timestream from then, and we’re finding out that the disaster aid money was, indeed, misappropriated, as much as $1.4 Billion (yes, that’s a not million but billion) didn’t go for what it was supposed to. And his insistence on calling a spade a spade (“path to citizenship”? = amnesty) in the illegal immigrant debate is refreshing in the world of spin that passes for political journalism.
I may not agree with you any more frequently, sir, but the next time we’re in the same watering hole, the first round’s on me.
Much has been made of Ann Coulter’s lastest screed. People have e-mailed some of the local talking heads insisting they denounce her. Charlie Sykes bluntly informs us it “isn’t his job”? to do that. Jessica McBride decides to be a bit more honest, and admit that she’s done the same thing to liberal writers, so puts forward an attempt, but just as it starts to sound sincere, she tosses in the inevitable “yeah, but the liberals do it, too.”
I confess I usually don’t have any patience for her kind of spin, but in this case she gets the link because she proves my gran to be correct. One of the things my gran always told me was “Even a stopped watch is right—twice a day!”
And that’s why you’ll read neither Repulican/Conservative nor Democratic/Liberal propaganda here. Just look. You have Ann Coulter (she’s got a real brain inside that head, one has wonder why she uses it so seldom, but instead prefers name-calling to conversation) and others like her on the right (She’s the most egregious, so she gets primacy.) Those who dare to disagree with them cannot be sincere; they are eeeeeeviilllllll and must be ridiculed and otherwise made to shut up.
And on the left you have Maureen Dowd and Kos, two people whose track record for the truth is so stellar that if they told me the sun was shining I’d come to the door to check with an umbrella in my hand.
Mrs. McBride is, in fact, correct. The front-row icons from the Left do, in fact, misbehave. So badly that I’m ashamed more often than not to be seen in their company. But the similar icons of the Right aren’t any better. The political scene in this country is so bad that I’m almost afraid to express an opinion for fear I’ll end up agreeing with one of the repulsive icons on one side or the other.
So I have this to say to both sides: Go ahead and pollute the air with your ramblings; it’s a free country. And though I signed my name on the dotted line and suited up for four years (USAF) I’m not going to suggest you thank me for it, because I certainly didn’t do it for you. In fact, if James Madison could see us now, I wonder if he’d revise the wording of the First Amendment, in your honor. But part of the price of Freedom is to have to have your polemics flying about our head, verbal “drive-bys” while the rest of us try to actually do something.
But if the prospects are to fall in line behind either group, I’ll pass. You’re both disgusting. Go lead your parades. And let me know when you’re done, so the rest of us can step gingerly over the sound bites littering the landscape and try to get something done.
It says here that Google is killing the economics of content, in the main because it makes it profitable to build a site with nothing buts ads. The disconnect for me is that the writer sounds as if that’s something new and different, something we haven’t had before, something that Google has recently enabled.
Truth is, though, that particular publishing model has been around for decades at least, if not centuries. Every community has those community shopper gazettes (our is called the Bargain Express, the one where I grew up was called the Shopping News) that contain nothing but ads (the non-advertising content—usually well under 10%—being so fluffy you never notice its presence). And beyond that, there are hundreds of industry publications whose sole reason for existence is to print press releases and give you a number to circle to ask for more information about a product.
There are lots of things that worry me about Google, but this isn’t one of them.
I’ve been noticing a sharp upturn in comment spam including bizarre references to gmail servers, such as www2-2.gmail.com and I can’t figure out what’s up.
The comments are archetypical spam comments, but the message, instead of containing links to products, contains several similar links to gmail servers. I generally still shoot on sight, but I’m curious what the purpose is. If any of you have been leaving comments like that, take the time to explain why, please?
My local PBS station is carrying this show, and I caught three episodes last night. It’s a passable mystery, though I have to admit I’m usually at least 15 minutes ahead of the detectives, so I can’t say it’s plotted very well.
But it was good to see Felicity Kendall in action again. Sigh. I really had something for her back when we were both young. Good Neighbors. I scoured the video stores for episodes of Solo. And she still looks good today. Deeper Sigh.
Now, if they ever did a buddy series with Felicity Kendall and Lis Sladen, I don’t think my heart could take it.
I just filled a 30-gallon paper recycling tub with old magazines. Constitutes a bit of a breakthrough for me, personally. I’ve finally internalized the absolute fact that history does not depend upon my personal archives.
It’s part of a continual war on clutter that I’m engaged in. I’m in the process of reclaiming my house from the detritus of 15 years of living in it (and 50+ years of living, period). We’ve joked here in the manor that we would enter DIYNet’s America’s Biggest Packrat contest, but it wouldn’t be fair for professionals to compete with amateurs. (To put that comment in context, I’ll point out the 30 gallons of paper recycling came out of one closet in the manor, and the closet is still overfull, and even has some magazines left in it.
Through it all I’ve had one constant guiding question. “What Would Hellen Do?” I’ve had more imaginary conversations with Hellen Buttigieg than I can count. If you’re not familiar with her, check out her TV show, neat. (And if you’re not, it proves you haven’t been paying attention.)
Slowly I’m slouching towards a less-encumbered life. RPG collectors may want to keep an eye out; I was in that hobby almost when it started and I’ve got five boxes of material slated to go to auction as soon as I can clear enough space to take some decent photos of it.
Since i throw rocks without hesitation, I should be equally quick to acknowledge progress.
Drupal 4.7 includes a new module installation bit, which is a very big step forward from the previous version. It’s actually friendy, something I’ve not run across very often before. Since I’ve compared Drupal and Joomla before on this blog, it’s only fair I do it again.
Add new module to Drupal:
Add new module to Joomla:
The two procedures are similar in complexity. Though Joomla doesn’t require you to copy the files up there first, it does require you to fill out a form with the file to upload. Joomla’s still seems subjectively easier because you do it all from within the web site’s interface, but the difference is hardly significant.
Now if only Drupal had a “remove” function that would clean up after the installation. The tables the module requires are still left in the db. If the module installer is well written, that won’t be a problem, but Drupal leaves the install code up to the module writer, rather than having every install follow a standard procedure. Makes for a high risk of variability in the installation of modules.
Nonetheless, it’s a distinct step forward for Drupal. Well done.
I’ve been having intermittent email outages at a client site that I’ve been trying for months to diagnose. Finally managed to get my hands on enough information to do so, and I find the problem is spamcop.
The client has a lot of field people, who have yahoo email accounts. The web hosting service the client’s domain is on subscribes to spamcop. And among the million or so email yahoo emailers is a spammer.
So, spamcop blacklists one of the Yahoo email servers, effectively shutting down communication between my client and the field people. Server blacklisting is effective when aimed at an organization, but in the case of Yahoo, or Google, or any one of the large concentation email servers out there, it fails. It punishes thousands, even millions, of people because of the misdeeds of one, hardly an efficient measure.
Yes, I’m familiar with the contention that this sort of “death penalty” is meant to be sure hosts police their customers. But it’s hogwash, pure and simple. If we start with the assumption that a company can predict with 99.999% accuracy whether a potential customer is a spammer (completely bogus, I’d expect a number far less than 90% to be more likely) that still means that one customer in 100,000 will get misdiagnosed. Which is still enough to keep a server like Yahoo or Google blacklisted forever.
Remember, the spammer doesn’t care if the server gets blackisted; he just moves on to another server. It’s only the poor suckers who have built a contact list based on that email address that get burned. It’s like nuking Kabul to get bin Laden; you kill lots of innocent bystanders while the real target slips away, laughing.
Yes, spam is a problem. But so is this. Yes, if they hang ‘em all, they’ll get the guilty. But before you applaud, think: that means they’re going to hang you, too.
I do. Love letters, that is. The tender shape of the “s”, the strong curve of the “G”, the broad back of the “m,” all these and more draw my eye and fill my mind. Which is one of the things that makes web design so tedious.
I look forward to discovering new, beautiful, fonts. I dig through the collections of hundreds (even thousands) of fonts on the CDs at the local discount store, hunting for the one or two diamonds among the piles of garbage offered for sale.
Fonts are, after all, the “voice” of written communications. The choice of font affects the message just as the tone of voice. It’s hard to take you serious if the information you have is presented in “Comic Sans” or “Marker Felt” or the like. Similarly, royal pronouncements seem so much more royal in a black letter font.
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