September 2005 Archives
This is something of a public service announcement; the South Burlington High School Ski / Snowboard Swap is Saturday October 1 from 9am to 5pm. Since I didn't find out about it until it was over last year, I figured it was worth mentioning. As I understand it, the swap is a place for folks to buy and sell used ski and snowboarding equipment. If the price is right, I may very well score myself some new gear.
I took some time to watch a television show called Firefly recently. Okay, I'll admit it - a DVR and a marathon on the sci-fi channel were a winning combination for me.
For those short on patience, I'll open by saying I found the show to be excellent and well worth watching. In fact, I have every intention of renting the DVDs so I can see the episodes that never aired. That's right - some episodes never aired. You see, for some reason Fox decided to cancel the series before the first season finished running. This was a big mistake. Fans were outraged at the cancellation. Universal, hearing the fans collective plea, released the entire first season - including the un-aired episodes - on DVD. The fans were grateful, and the DVDs sold exceptionally well. Universal saw this and responded in kind. A feature film, entitled Serenity, will be released this weekend.
Firefly is set five-hundred years in the future in a universe where the earth's natural resources were depleted and humanity moved on. The human race has found a new galaxy and tera-formed planets to live on. An alliance was formed by core planets, and they decided they were in charge of, well, everything. They took control by force. The story itself is about a Firefly-class freighter ship called Serenity and it's crew. They travel the outer rim looking for work and essentially just trying to survive.
The show could be classified as a sci-fi western, which by definition is pretty unique and interesting. The culture portrayed is actually a mixture of many cultures and time periods. The result is something that is familiar enough to be comfortable to look at, but foreign enough to make a watcher think. The character development is deep; even a casual watcher will grasp the characters' motivations and histories will be revealed in reasonable portions.
Overall I think it's an excellent series; everything is top notch. It's so engaging that I find myself really getting absorbed into the world as I would with a book. I will definitely be following up by watching the rest of the season, and seeing the feature film. I would urge any science fiction fan to do the same.
I hate to admit it, but I suppose I'm harboring some hope that this film is going to be used by Universal to gauge interest in a second season, and a third, and so forth. A little hope is a good thing.
The Vermont Attorney General has drafted a set of rules that would protect the Vermont name from being used improperly in food products. This strikes me as a fabulous idea, though I don't know all of the details.
From reading this I get the impression that the set of rules is just that - a clear cut set of rules to govern how the state's name can be used. By publishing these rules, the state would have a basis for protecting itself, companies would have guidelines to protect themselves, and the average consumer would be able to buy with confidence.
The Douglas administration appears to have thought otherwise. They have revoked their support in favor of what appears to be more aggressive regulation. They want law suits. They want to make an example of someone.
I have to say I strongly disagree with this tactic. Although law suits might be appropriate if there's a clear statute that's being violated, I don't think it's at all right to sue without any clear precedent.
Fortunately it looks like Sen. MacDonald is going to make his own decisions on this one, and he seems to have a firm grasp on both sides. I, for one, am glad to see all aspects of this issue being explored. I hope to see a clear and positive outcome soon.
It was 7:51am, and I had only been out of bed for a few minutes. I looked out the window at my back yard and saw something. It was tan with some white around it's muzzle, it's belly, and the bottom of it's tail. It was the size of a large dog, but it's tail was long and thin and held out behind it, curved like my house cats. It's shoulders were clearly feline, shifting with each step as it calmly walked. It's ears were smallish and it's head was round. It's snout was not thin... probably a third or half of the size of it's head. I couldn't see if it had whiskers as I was looking through a screen, but it was definitely a cat.
From what I've been able to gather, this cat was too large to be a bobcat and must have been a catamount - a mountain lion. But here? This is one of the more city-like parts of Vermont. I wouldn't expect such an animal to be up here.
Based on my limited research, it seems catamounts are thought to be extinct in Vermont. But there have been sightings, and they're not undocumented. In fact, some sightings were by zoologists.
It was definitely exciting to see. Wish I had my camera up there, but I wasn't going to give up watching the cat to go find it.
I just finished reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I found it quite excellent and enjoyable, and a challenge to read in some spots. The story had enough twists to keep me interested, but nothing obnoxious or annoying. Just a really fun and enjoyable novel, and definitely worth my time.
Unless you're reading this entry through an aggregator, you've undoubtedly noticed the new look to this site. In fact, if I've done a really good job, you've done a double take and wondered if you're in the right place.
You are.
The old look and feel was a lot of fun to put together and use, but the truth is it was just plain unclean. I felt colors were a little gaudy, and everything was just overall dark. The worst part was that everything felt totally crowded.
When I set to work on this new look I intended to put everything in the same boxes the entries are in, but a wise friend suggested that I don't. He was right. I like it much better this way.
Anyhow, I'm pretty excited about the new look, and that's why I published the change before everything was as perfect as I feel like making it. Below is my to-do list to finish up.
- Fix blogroll
- Remove version from 'Powered By' section
- Recode the 'About' section
- Recode the 'Contact' section
- Fix a link color in the comments section
- Tweak widths of div tags in entry headings so all categories fit
- Upgrade MT
- Recode the search result page
I don't want to jinx it, but it seems that the rss feed for Two Lumps has started working again. As one of (I'd like to think) many folks who sent e-mail begging for the feed to be fixed over the last few weeks, I would just like to express a deep and heartfelt thank you to the writer and artist of this fabulous comic. If you hadn't fixed this, I might have lost my near-cat-like laziness and been forced to visit the actual site forever. But thanks to your benevolent act I may once again read Two Lumps in my aggregator.
My Heros!
Not long ago I directed my readers (that's you) to a well detailed hack to tell the Weather widget that ships with Dashboard to show you the last time it updated. That solved one of my two big problems with the widget.
The other problem was a little bit more confusing. For longer city names, such as mine, I found it far more difficult to locate the clickable sweet spot on the city name that was linked to the AccuWeather website. Then I had an idea. It's just HTML and JavaScript, right? Well why not make something else clickable?
It seemed to me that the next logical thing to make clickable was the temperature. I looked through Weather.html and found a line that read:
<div id='temperature'>--</div>
I altered that line to read:
<div id='temperature' onclick='goToAccuWeather(event);'>--</div>
After opening a new copy of the Widget I found the temperature to be clickable.
Please remember, backups are your friend. As was suggested in the original hint, I recommend that you make a copy of Apple's original widget (found in /Library/Widgets) in your own local widget directory (~/Library/Widgets). The one in your home directory will replace the default one in the Dashboard bar, and you will have a pristine backup just incase.
Here I sit watching Resident Evil: Apocalypse. I'm very hard to please with films. Especially lately. And on top of that I've never been a big fan of zombie flicks. But some one in this film just proclaimed, "GTA Motherfucker!" He then accelerated his car, hit a zombie, and yelled, "Ten points!"
And sometimes that's really all it takes for me. Two thumbs up. I'm half an hour into the movie and I'd happily stop watching now and consider it great.
Google Blog Search lives! And works! It's neat! Yeah. That's all I've got.
I'm tired. My stomach hurts from having a particularly poorly made breakfast (a la losing power in the middle of cooking it). It's just going to be one of those days. And that's okay, because now that I've been warned of the nature of the day I can handle it.
I arrive at the office wondering what challenge I'll handle next and am quickly shown. Mail.app has decided that it doesn't want to function. Fortunately, since I have a large monitor and keep my mail client on a separate desktop (using Desktop Manager), I keep the Activity Window open at all times. That told me that the client was "Restoring Open Windows." What open windows? I don't remember leaving anything out of the ordinary open when I quit the app last night.
I didn't think much of the 106.7 WIZN van parked in front of the Shaw's on Shelburne Road in South Burlington when I walked in. After all, everyone needs to eat. So I just went about my shopping normally. Then I came upon what looked like an oxygen tent. It was about the size of a porto-potty and there was a ton of paper in the bottom. I watched amused as a man and woman coerced an elder gentleman into the tent, and laughed hard when the money started flying around. When he came out the woman asked, "Who's next?" and from behind me one of my coworkers announced, "He is!" while pointing at me.
So into the tent I went. The woman explained that I had ten seconds to grab as much fake money as I could, and if I got one that read iPod and another that read Mini I'd get a free iPod Mini. Yeah, like I'd turn that down. So I got in and grabbed a hefty armful of money, then got out. In my arm I had two beer t-shirts, one Burton t-shirt, two coupons for Wendy's, and a cd from someone I'd never heard of. I was allowed to choose one, and I took the Burton shirt.
Yay for free stuff!
HornWare's SharePoints has been around for a while, but I don't think I've ever mentioned it before and it definitely seems to warrant a little attention. SharePoints is an application or preference pane (your choice) that you can use to create, well, Share Points. In other words, if you want to share something other than your home directory with your mac this application will provide you with a gui to set those up quickly, easily, and intuitively.
I'm the first to admit that it takes a lot to impress me these days, but Hostage didn't do it for me. Bruce Willis was excellent. It is my opinion that he carried the film and is all that kept me from stopping it mid-way through. The suspense was non-existent, the plot was predictable, and the ultimate villains were mediocre at best. The Marshall character could have been good. His back story was well developed and he could have been the ominous creepy guy he appeared to be destined for. But the script took care of that. And let me tell you, nothing says scary like offering a small boy a hit off your cigarette. Wow. Chills. </SARCASM>. Still, I don't fault the actor in this case.
All that being said, I also felt that the director had some serious trouble deciding what sort of film he was making. It didn't feel like it flowed.
But hey, that's one man's opinion. In summary, another film with vast potential down the tubes.
Better late than never. In my travels a few weeks ago I found this hack to add the time of the last update to Apple's Weather widget for Dashboard.
The piece is very verbose and thorough, explaining what each bit of code does rather than brief instructions. Marc tested, G5 PowerMac approved.
So why would you want to do this? The short version is that the Weather widget only updates when you're viewing the dashboard (which saves bandwidth). So rather than glancing at the dashboard and knowing whether or not the widget already updated, the user ends up looking at the widget and wondering if the data is hours old or brand new. This isn't always the case - for example if it says it's sunny out and you're looking at the night sky through the window you know you haven't updated. But having that time there is pretty helpful - at least for me.
I, for one, appreciate this hack.
Apple released iTuned 5.0 today. I've only looked at it briefly but my immediate thought is that it looks more like the new mail.app. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.
I'm a pretty critical person. It's important that I take the time to recognize good things as well as bad. Recently I've seen some friends unhappy with their banks and I've got to say that I'm not. For the last five years I've done my banking through TD Banknorth (formerly Banknorth, formerly the Howard Bank). And to be honest I've been consistently comfortable with them. They've been approachable in their branches, and seem to keep good hours on their phone support. Their online banking interface is intuitive and functional, and useful features are included. And they've got a good spread of ATMs around the state.
Recently Banknorth merged with TD and became TD Banknorth. Since then I received a new debit card with a new number on it out of the blue. TD Banknorth was just being responsible due to a number of credit card number thefts recently. The transition process between cards was made smooth as could be, and I honestly think things have been improving.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with my service with them, and it just seemed nice to actually say that about something.
Bob Denver passed away last night. Like scores of others, I've gotten entertainment from his role as Gilligan in Gilligan's Island. So incase there isn't enough death being reported due to the hurricane, allow me to put another one on the list.
I watched I, Robot this weekend. I had heard it wasn't all that related to any of Asimov's book, so I went into the viewing with that in mind. From that perspective the film was pretty fun. I think fun is the best word for it, in fact. If it has mirrored the book in some way it could have been more serious, but it didn't and it wasn't.
I haven't really got anything profound to say. If you want a fun action-type film, check this out. Just remember, it's got nothing to do with the book.
I've seen and heard an excessive amount of complaining that the world does not care about hurricane Katrina's damage and victims. A lot of "Nobody has offered us any sympathy," and, "When something bad happens to someone else we're expected to provide aid, where's ours?" So many people with such vast resources would rather piss and moan than verify their facts. So I did the work for you.
World leaders offer sympathy, aid (CNN - Sep 2, 2005)
World mobilises to aid US victims (BBC - Sep 2, 2005)
Foreign aid pours in to help Katrina victims (NewKerala - Sep 3, 2005)
Scores of countries promise U.S. hurricane aid (Washington Times - Sep 3, 2005)
More than 50 nations offer aid (Suburban Chicago News - Sep 3, 2005)
Do I really need to keep going? Sure, plenty of countries don't like us for political reasons. But this poor us routine is annoying. There are plenty of ways you can actively help the situation instead of sitting around whining about things that aren't even true.
That felt great.
I decided to rent Constantine and check it out. The previews and commercials make it look pretty good. But, as seems to be typical of most films I've seen recently, the previews covered all of the best shots and scenes in the movie. I saw a lot of potential in this film but wasn't particularly impressed. There's still potential. If an extended version comes out, I'd be interested in seeing this again.
Especially of note in this film is the performance of Rachel Weisz.
I found myself reading an article this morning about Lake Champlain. Every fifty years after it's "discovery" in 1609 there is a, well, celebration. A party. A tourist attraction. A re-enactment. All of that historical goodness. I've found myself watching such things on television, seeing sitcoms with their re-enactments in their small towns and their pride and excitement. I wanted to be a part of it. It looked fun, and special. And in a few years my chance will come, only on a much larger scale.
I'll forget about this in a few weeks, but a twenty-four member quadricentennial commission will be focussing on it for the next four years. It's exciting to think about that. And also exciting to think about what it will do for our region. In 2008 Quebec will be celebrating their 400th anniversary. In 2009, we will have ours. There's talk of national ad campaigns and the like. All sorts of media attention. All sorts of excitement and just plain good stuff. It'd mean money for the region, development. It'd put us on the map. Selfishly, I won't be asked, "What state is that in?" when I tell someone I live in Vermont.
Continue reading "Anticipation for Lake Champlain's 400th Anniversary"
Many Burlington residents - or at least those who know about it, are excited about the city's project to turn cable television into a municipality. Currently the area's options for enhanced television are Direct TV or cable through Adelphia. Since most apartment buildings and many condominium associations, mine included, do not allow satellite dishes, Adelphia has something of a monopoly on the cable television in this part of Vermont. And that hurts. For years Adelphia has been gouging us with ever-rising prices.
Enter Burlington Telecom. Burlington Telecom has been running fiber throughout the city for years. They already provide some high speed internet services and are planning to provide cable television and cable modems to residents as a municipality. Of course, Adelphia doesn't like this very much. Goodbye monopoly.
Why am I writing about this? I was just reading an article about Adelphia attempting to delay things. Now, I'll grant you that some progress can be made during the colder months - business side especially. But when it comes time for winter, well, this is Vermont. Not much groundwork can be made. We all know the argument is, "You can still work in the winter. You can still make progress." It's true. But it's very limited.
I hope this moves forward, and I hope it's successful. It will add jobs, and hopefully provide incentive for Adelphia to improve as well as an excellent alternative for Burlington residents. Perhaps South Burlington will pay them to expand out here, too. That'd be quite something.
Allow me to summarize everything I have heard, read, and seen in the media about hurricane Katrina. Ready? Here we go!
Hurricane Katrina is bad. [Editor's note: Mmm'kay.]
Really I have one question. Why haven't any hotels started taking in refugees? Think of it. They'd help people, and they'd make millions. Imagine the end of every Holiday Inn commercial saying, "proud shelter of hurricane Katrina victims." That'd be one hell of an ad campaign.