Monday, August 19, 2002

Now we're getting somewhere - I've tweaked xian's CSS template to allow for a little better adjustment on width of the main blog section...it should take up a larger porportion of the screen on higher resolutions than on lower ones...though I'm still not sure it'll work quite right. I also just realized that my graphic may cause some problems with high graphic resolutions. Gotta play with that tomorrow when I'm at work... Anyway, I think this is the basis for what I'm going to end up doing here for the next while. I've still got details to work out - colors and fonts most notably, along with some other possible rearrangements of the divs, but I like this a lot. Thanks, xian!

9:16:06 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Kim Jong-il rolls into Russia [BBC World] A co-worker and I were trying to remember which North Korean dictator was which - Kim Jong-il's dad was Kim Il-Jong, right? I think. That and the Duvaliers always confused me...eventually, I realized that Papa Doc was probably the dad...
7:29:35 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I received a comment in response to my Saddam/W comparison below from a Howard Owens. He said, and I quote: "Your moral equivalency -- or is it lack of moral understanding -- is astounding. To compare any American president with a thug like Huessain is truly disgusting" Now, I just have to respond to that...if I implied that Bush is as much of a monster as Saddam Hussein, I apologize. Obviously, Bush has never gassed his own people. However, he is from being blameless in some very unpleasant things. When your communications director goes out and says that we should invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein did X, Y, and Z, you should make damn sure you that you never did X, Y, or Z. George W. Bush has authorized the deaths of a significant number of American citizens - I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but I seem to remember 100+ executions in Texas during his governorship. I find that simply nauseating and monstrous. Just think about that for a second - our president allowed over a hundred people to be killed. This was my biggest issue with Clinton - I remember a big deal being made over a retarded inmate who was executed on his watch - and one of my big four or five with Bush. The death penalty is disgusting and immoral. No other democracy on the planet kills their own citizens - just us. As I admitted, W. has yet to go on an adventure into someone else's territory. Yet. This whole Iraq thing feels like adventurism to me, not unlike George the Elder's invasion of Panama to prove he wasn't a wimp, or Reagan's invasion of Granada to make up for Lebanon. Is W. trying to conquer Iraq and make it his personal fiefdom? Nah - 'cos I don't really think he gives a crap about what happens to it after the cameras are off. And human rights...sure, we're nowhere near as bad as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Pakistan...notice a theme here? Iraq is bad, bad, bad, bad. But guess what - Iran has a superior human rights record than China...and guess which one we're trading with? Which reminds me - whatever happened to China being our enemy? I remember Bush making a big deal about that...oh wait. He found a different enemy, one that we don't buy stuff from...hmm... Bush is not Hussein. But Bush ain't no saint. Whatever moral high ground he may have, he either doesn't use at all or horribly misinterprets. That's the point I was trying to make, and the point I still feel is not only valid but IMPORTANT. If we, the American people, don't follow the example Kissinger, Scowcroft, Hagel, Armey, Eagelburger, Kerry, and other brave Republican and Democrat luminaries and speak out against this moronic plan to invade Iraq, we're going to wake up some morning to Gulf of Tonkin II... Oh yeah - and there's a great comment from a Randall following Howard's...the last line is the best: "American atrocities are good, because we aren't arabs."

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Voyager going strong 25 years on [BBC Science & Nature] *sniff* I have a personal connection with Voyager, y'know. In 6th grade, I did a project for a class on Voyager...the projects we were assigned were pretty open-ended for 6th graders - find a subject, research it, write a small paper, and do an interesting presentation. I remember a friend of mine doing the Munich Olympics massacre (yeah, in 6th grade), with a scale model of the complex. It was nutty. Anyway, I decided to do the Voyager project. With my dad's help, I wrote a program in LogoWriter that would simulate the trajectory of Voyager I and II through the Solar System, with the orbit of the planets matching their real-life orbits...nifty stuff. That still is the academic achievement I'm most proud of. =)

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I took the generic 3-panel CSS file I derived from a modified version of this site's new design and set to work converting it to a Blogger template, which is mostly a matter of replacing Radio macros and tags with Blogger-specific tags. A version of that Blogger template is now being used at mediajunkie: junk mail. Again, this is a pure CSS design with all the style declarations in the HEAD. It should be easy to grab and modify for any Blogger site, just by changing the details of the CSS specs. For this site, I retained certain font and color choices that were a legacy of (a) Mena Trott's Blogger template, and (b) color and typeface modifications I had already made. I plan to make a further clone of the basic CSS design, one for Movable Type templates (although I'm as yet not as experienced with the options for thse). As I get them ready, I will make all the templates available and finally write up the tutorial that's meant to go around them. [Radio Free Blogistan] One of my projects for tonight is to redo the basis of my home page - I want to do something a bit more interesting. xian's CSS template for Radio, which he's got over at the wonderful Radio Free Blogistan, is hopefully going to be the basis for whatever I end up doing...should be fun...

4:42:42 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Australia rejects Kyoto pact [BBC Science & Nature] ...and the US government rejoices. We're not the only ones any more! yay!
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Buffy Muscial coming to CD (0) [Bureau 42] ...and a massive crowd of a certain type of girls rejoices. =)
11:24:14 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Funny thing I heard on NPR while driving to work this morning - let me see if I can remember the details. It was Dan Bartlett (any relation to Jed?), the new White House communications director, talking about why we should hate Saddam Hussein...his reasons were, to the best of my recollection: He murders his own people He invades other countries He wants weapons of mass destruction He engages in human rights violations I think that's all he listed. In any case, let's do a comparison here.. George W. Bush murders his own people - Texas killed a disgusting number of people during his time in office George W. Bush invades other countries - well, so far just Afghanistan, but the whole point of this propaganda campaign is so that W. can invade Iraq, so I think we can count this George W. Bush already HAS weapons of mass destruction - isn't that even worse than wanting them? George W. Bush engages in human rights violations - *cough*Jose Padilla*cough*Hamdi*cough*Guantanamo*cough* Now it's true that I'd be going after Bush no matter WHAT his lackeys said, but couldn't they make it just a little more difficult on me? I like a challenge, after all, and this is just too easy...

9:02:41 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

How did I ever live without a news aggregator? Seriously? Thanks to Radio's news aggregator, I'm able to see interesting articles and editorials in the NY Times and Washington Post, I get my Slashdot and BBC news in one place, I can read my favorite blogs without having to remember to go load them...this is heaven for an infogeek like me. Only problem is I'm willing to bet that my massive news aggregation (50 sources right now) may be part of why Radio's shitting the bed on me so often. I'm thinking about stopping the automatic aggregation every hour and just doing it when I want...or maybe every three or four hours, and on demand. Hmm...

8:55:12 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Masterpiece: "12 Monkeys". Combining time-travel thriller and experimental film, Terry Gilliam's 1995 oddball classic steals a tale of doomed love and cruel fate from Hitchcock -- then pays back the debt. [Salon Headlines] They're right - '12 Monkeys' is, without question, one of the most challenging yet coherent films a major Hollywood studio has ever put it out. I actually prefer it to Gilliam's 'Brazil'...

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At 4:05 this morning (EDT), I got a hit from an Australian government IP. That, in and of itself, isn't all that interesting - I've also gotten hits from a Belgian government IP and a Taiwanese government IP. What got me about the Australian one was how they got here - via the following Google query: http://www.google.com/search?q=beaker+taliban&;hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N Seriously - someone was searching for Beaker and the Taliban. Huh.

7:09:50 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

The proof is in the pudding. This (scaled-down, I'm afraid) snapshot of my terminal window shows the Radio Free Blogistan home page in lynx. Coooool: [picture snipped but you can see it here] The navigation comes after all the entries, and it even reads fairly well, aside from things like my RSS-feed blogroll, which repeats the final names for the tinyCoffeemug-type images. Worse, the HTML is in the macro, so I'm not sure how to put in the alt text that should be there. Still, this makes me really happy. [Radio Free Blogistan] xian's always-interesting Radio Free Blogistan has become my first-read blog these days. He's got a great combination of metabloggish discussion about blogging, interesting culturejunkie tidbits, and techie fun that I really need to get around to lifting. He's also got the greatest background of any webpage ever. EVER.

7:06:34 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Budapest braves flood menace [BBC World] Every time I hear about another city in central/eastern Europe that's getting flooded these days, I get a little moopy. Mind you, it's not so much a humanitarian impulse - there is far more deadly flooding in India right now that's getting next to no media play in the West. No, I'm just being selfish. I've long been fascinated with Central Europe - during high school I read pretty much everything I could find on the Habsburg monarchy, and seriously considered applying to St. Charles University in Prague. I've really wanted to visit Prague and Vienna - the only major cities of the old Holy Roman Empire to be spared major bombing in World War II. As you can see from the picture here, Budapest is a gorgeous city as well. So when I hear about flooding encroaching on these beautiful old buildings, I'm reminded that I haven't gotten there yet...and who knows what might happen to them in the future.

7:02:03 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Required Reading [New York Times: Opinion] Remember the brouhah over freshmen at UNC-Chapel Hill being assigned a book on the Koran? It's important to note that they weren't assigned the Koran itself, but a book about the Koran. It's supposed to be a very high-quality introduction to Islam, unbiased and thoughtful. So, of course, the university got sued for trying to expand its students' worldview, or something like that. Anyway, the university won the case, though it's up for appeal. What I didn't know, but found out about in the above editorial, is that the state budget for North Carolina carries an interesting bit. To quote the editorial, "This ambiguous provision seems to disallow the use of state funds for a course on religion that does not study all religions simultaneously." The editorial writer makes the point that such a restriction could easily be interpreted to ban Bible studies. In fact, this could actually make all high-level religion classes at any state school in North Carolina impossible - for that matter, how do you study all religions simultaneously in the first place? Does this mean Scientologists and the Moonies get to be mentioned alongside Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, and Bhuddists in introductory comparitive religion courses? All in all, just one more reason to be a little more careful when writing laws...

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