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December 13th, 2005
11:28 am - Capital Punishment is Wrong
Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and prominent death penalty opponent, compared the death penalty to "gang justice."
"Gang justice is, if you kill a member of our gang, we kill you -- and don't tell me anything about how you changed your life or what you're going to do," she said. "You kill, and we kill you. And that's what the United States of America is doing with this."
[via]post/read comments
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December 12th, 2005
10:13 am - Vote to Keep Your Fingernails in Iraq
The election in Iraq is this week. It is a delicate situation. To make matters worse a story broke today about severe torture in an Iraqi jail. I imagine that can only have a negative effect on the election.
Here is a message for our leadership...
We cannot win in Iraq if we continue to torture! Quit supporting torture!post/read comments
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09:56 am - Webmail Referrals
It is always interesting when I see referrals from web based email programs. It is an interesting metric to know that there is some sort of viral aspect to content in my blog archives. I wish there was a way to capture the content of the emails that people are sending about older posts. You can see the content when you get referrals from web content.
I obviously wouldn't really want to be able to read people's emails. Maybe I should just make it more enticing for people to leave comments. Which makes me think about another interesting metric, the percentage of people that view a post and leave a comment.
Isn't analytics fun?post/read comments
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December 11th, 2005
01:20 pm - Go Texans!
I admit it, I am rooting for my team to lose today. This season is a lost cause. I think any help we can get in the draft would be better than a win this season.
So, go Texans. Loser takes all.post/read comments
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09:29 am
Check out StatZen
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December 10th, 2005
12:24 am - Jesus is Upset with Local Pastor
Apparently Jesus is pretty upset with Dr. James Dobson and focus on the Family. He still loves Dobson and his wayward followers, he just doesn't like them very much right now.
"This is what I realized: Rampant homophobia, ignorance of sex, derision of women's rights, a decided love of tepid dogmatic sameness at the expense of the luminosity and uniqueness of the individual human soul -- it was all just too much," Jesus said, this time appearing as a curiously shaped oil stain on a freeway underpass in Saragossa, Spain. "Then the bank thing happened and it was the straw that broke the Mary's back."
Apparently Dobson and his ilk have been causing problems for Jesus for a long time. Unfortunately it is unlikely that Dobson will make any changes as a result of Jesus' recent decisions. I mean, if they haven't been following His Word for this long, why would they start now?
[link to sfgate article]post/read comments
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12:09 am - Kudos to Clinton: Bush is Wrong
Bill Clinton stopped by the environmental talks going on in Canada a said Bush is wrong about climate control and how it would impact the US economy. I think it is great that he is willing to speak out against the idiocy of the current administration.
Bill, thanks for representing the other half of Americans! [link]post/read comments
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December 9th, 2005
11:53 am - Will Sprint's a900 Sync via iSync
Last week I talked about my likely move to Cingular because I am fed up with Sprint not providing phones that can sync with my PowerBook via Bluetooth. Then someone left a comment saying that you could sync an a900 with the Mac AddressBook if you jump through some hoops.
Does anyone have any idea what those hoops are? Is there any chance that the a900 will be upgraded to support SyncML? post/read comments
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December 8th, 2005
09:09 pm - Ruby Goodness
I have been writing some more Ruby lately. I am getting more and more frustrated with PHP's lack of true object oriented behavior. This has manifested itself with OO database object (especially with dates). I still like PHP5 a lot, but I am starting to feel that Ruby (and Rails) is a better fit for how I want to develop applications.
This seems similar to the transition I went through in 1999. At the time I was writing web applications in CGI Perl. I started playing with PHP but liked Perl more. Then I started to appreciate some of the things that PHP offered that were specific to writing web applications ( header() would be a good example). There were ways to do these things in Perl, but it was what PHP was designed for.
Now when I write Ruby (and Rails apps) I feel that it is designed to write agile object oriented code. I have been writing modular web apps for a long time, but it is so much more natural with Ruby. I think Ruby feels more natural for creating these kinds of apps because of 'every thing is an object' and 'meta-programming'. The meta programming stuff allows ActiveRecord to define relationships incredibly easy. In PHP, to do the same thing you would either have to write a method that always gets called, or you would have to create relationships as some sort of array that is an object property. the other possibility would be an XML config file which makes sense in Java, but not in PHP. With Ruby you can just have several has_many or belongs_to statements in a class.
While I don't like all of the conventions used in Rails, I generally agree with 'conventions over configuration'. I think I can learn to accept the conventions I don't like in order to not have to write frameworks for my project.
I also tend to think that Ruby (and Rails) are here to stay now. While I haven't made the switch of preferred language just yet, I think it is inevitable.
On a somewhat related note, I am going to go take a Zend Certification test this month. ;)post/read comments
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08:02 pm - Turducken for Christmas
I have decided to make a Turducken for Christmas dinner. While I most likely have the culinary skills needed to de-bone the birds and prepare the Turducken myself, I don't have the time. We ordered a frozen Turducken online and it arrived today.
My family will be doing Christmas dinner at our house this year. I think it will be alot of fun and I am looking forward to cooking some special stuff. I want to have a very traditional dinner with a little of culinary flair. I think the Turducken will fit in nicely.
On a related note our new dining room table and chairs will be delivered tomorrow.post/read comments
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December 7th, 2005
05:08 pm - Valid Points
There has been some great point / counter-point going on in my aggregator today. I am not sure if the authors know it or now so I am going to bring it all together here.( read more... )
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December 6th, 2005
11:14 pm - Not Again!
I just got the following email on the East Nashville ListServ:
The police are searching our area of East Nash tonight for a missing 10 year old girl who did not return home from school at Meigs magnet. Hopefully they will find her safe and soon!!!
They never did find Tabitha.post/read comments
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12:03 pm - Two Types of People
There are two types of people in the world:
- Those who believe they are like everyone else
- Those you believe there is no one else like them
If you believe that statement then you are the second type.
As an interesting aside, I think Gandhi was the first type. Much of his greatness was due to his belief that everyone else had the same needs and desires that he himself experienced.post/read comments
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December 5th, 2005
10:54 pm - Using Bluetooth for Internet Radio
Doc Searls is asking about the technical problems one might experience trying to listen to internet radio in a car using internet from a phone. This is one of the things I would like to do when I finally get a new phone with bluetooth and cellular 'broadband'.
Doc is asking about using an FM transmitter to pipe the tunes to the car stereo. I would rather have a computer in my car with a display in the dash. I would then like that computer to be online via the bluetooth in my phone. I could listen to internet radio, lookup directions with mapquest or google maps, get email and instant messages, not to mention the stuff one could do with location based services.
So, what's the thoughts? Will changing cell towers break things too bad? The other stuff should only be limited by the hardware available in the car, but I could see how streaming radio could be problematic. It is pretty rare that I drop a call when switching towers, but there are some spots where it always happens. If this was the same for streaming internet radio I think I could live with it.post/read comments
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09:37 pm - The Complete Picture
I just read this post on Read/Write Web. It further solidifies my feeling that the world NEEDS a statistics tool that combines analysis about feed consumption (rss / atom /etc) with website statistics.
On a highly related note, I have still been working on StatZen, but I still have alot of work left to do. I overheard a musician talking at a coffee shop today. He was talking about having been on tour and being away from his family. That is when I realized that what I need is to 'go on tour' with StatZen. Only I don't really need to go anywhere, and I wouldn't trash hotel rooms, and it is probably best that there aren't any groupies. Ok, so it is not like going on tour, maybe more like a sabbatical, except with loud music and lots of caffeine. Ok, so it is not much like a sabbatical either, but you get the point.
The point is that the world wants (and possibly needs) StatZen.
Note: I went to Read/Write Web because I saw them listed in my BlogPulse neighborhood.post/read comments
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08:32 pm - Haircut
I got an actual haircut today. That is a real rare occurrence for me. I bet I could count the number of haircuts I have had in the past 5 years on one hand. Normally I cut my own hair with clippers. I ventured to a salon because I am toying with the idea of growing my hair out again. I had pretty long hair in high school, but it has been real short for almost 10 years.
One of Sabrina's friends did the honors. If you are looking for a good haircut in Nashville, Brandon Hamilton does a good job.
Speaking of stylists, Brandon and others will be at Plato's Closet on New Years Eve. Megan and Sabrina are planning a really cool event where people can come to Plato's and get all dolled up for the New Year's Eve parties. I don't know all the details yet, but they will be available at the Plato's Closet blog. Megan has been writing on the blog lately which is very cool.post/read comments
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08:22 pm - Note to Comment Spammers
Give up. You haven't gotten through in months. Before that you only got through for a few hours before all of your messages were gone. I can stay ahead of your tactics.
With the current state of things I see maybe 1-5 attempts at trackback spam that even make it to the moderation phase. Most of them are blocked and deleted without my ever knowing. Sometimes i check my logs and see over 100 attempts in a day, and nothing gets through.
I win. You lose. Give up.
Note: My favorites are the ones whose packets I just drop. For those, my blog is like a comment spam black hole.post/read comments
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10:00 am - Nokia Recognizes the Influence of Bloggers
I just saw a post on adverblog that talks about how Nokia has sent it's new N90 phone to 50 bloggers. Guess what, those bloggers are writing up a storm about the new phones and Nokia is keeping track of the coverage here.
Maybe Sprint will decide to do something similar when (if ever) they support bluetooth to go with their EVDO network. Otherwise you might see me start vlogging with a Nokia phone using one of Sprint's competitors.post/read comments
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09:20 am - Working from Bongo
the heat is out in our office so I am working from Bongo today. It reminds me of my days as an independent contractor. thought I must admit, I have grown to prefer a nice office to a coffee shop.post/read comments
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08:56 am - Holiday Lights
Yesterday I put some "Holiday Lights" up on my house. I think I should probably rename my "Christmas Tree" to a "Holiday Tree" as well. This is not out of some misguided political correctness motivation. Rather the name has more to do with the actual life span of my decorations.
We put the Holiday Tree up on Thanksgiving day. We will probably not take the three and lights down until after New Years. Since it is so cold in January and February, I might not go up on the roof to take the holiday lights down until after Valentines Day.
When I have a Christmas Tree and Christmas Lights up, then I feel they need to come down the day after Christmas. By calling them Holiday decorations I am just being more honest about my intentions.
There was a big uproar for some overachievers on the internet when Nashville dubbed the big tree with lights downtown a "Holiday Tree". I actually think this is a great indicator of their intentions. Maybe instead of hurrying to pull down decorations right after Christmas, the City of Nashville will be using their public works staff to fix roads and bridges and sidewalks and stuff. Three cheers for Nashville and their new priorities.
I know taking down decorations is not real high on my priority list either.post/read comments
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