February 29, 2008
EP Re-Coded
Due to all the small problems that have been cropping up with EP's Movable Type installation I thought I'd better have an experienced Movable Type programmer take a look. As it turns out, the installation is more code that's grafted onto the MT base than it is code integrated with it. And evidently fixing small things here cause new problems there. Viz. (for as long as you can see it) the test post below, which despite being deleted through the MT interface nevertheless persists on the site. Or at the moment EP's search function not working. And this morning I almost couldn't post the podcast! Problems... What's required is essentially a rewrite of the whole thing. Hopefully this will all take place behind the scenes. Once we've got clean code it'll be much more straightforward to continue the upgrade path with MT, and actually possible for the first time (despite earlier expectations) to deploy many of the cool new features that MT has introduced. So please excuse minor glitches while we sort this out.
February 27, 2008
The Taming of Hillary
Yes, I watched all the debate last night. I'm surprised so many commentators thought it a draw — as if they're awarding boxing points... To me, Obama clearly won, staying cool throughout and reasonable also. Hillary, in marked contrast, was a raging mess. If you think about it, all those years Hillary stayed with Bill must have done great — perhaps irreparable — damage to her character. It would have been better if she'd left him early on in Arkansas; by making a devil's bargain for political purposes she lost essential parts of herself. And at her age I don't think you get a second chance with that.
February 25, 2008
Run Ralph Run?
I'm confused. Ralph Nader announces on national television that he's running for President. Some news accounts say he's running on a Green ticket. Well, nobody seems to have told the Greens yet, as the national Green party web site is still busy reporting on Green primary races, let alone the Green convention. More Green internecine warfare? Organizationally, Ralph does not seem to be bringing much to the table.
February 21, 2008
Save the Menhaden
This is not a book review. My guest on March 7th will be Dr. H. Bruce Franklin, author most recently of The Most Important Fish in the Sea
$100 Oil
We're definitely over the threshold of $100/bbl. oil. It didn't get the media coverage it should've, probably because the markets briefly hit $100 just a little while ago and most mainstream analysts are treating the whole thing as an anomalous blip. But OPEC isn't in any hurry to increase production — it probably can't — and demand worldwide continues to grow despite the U.S. economic downturn. Unless and until there's a worldwide crash, which doesn't seem to me very likely for the near or medium-term, oil prices should continue to rise. $100 is a real milestone. Because, the fact is, we're running out of the stuff, notwithstanding the crazy guy who argues whether Peak Oil is true or not.
Comments Hosed Again
Early today I discovered why I was having trouble (a lot of trouble) posting items at EP — during the recent upgrade to MT 4.1 a certain critical subdirectory had been placed in one directory when it really belonged in another. I moved it and deleted the one that was where it shouldn't have been but then thought to double-check whether comments still work. They sort of do and sort of don't. It seems like it's impossible to sign in, despite a welcome message to the contrary, though anonymous comments are working. I'll have to figure out what instruction was pointing to the now deleted directory and how to redirect it to the good one, which may take a while.
∗ Update: With help from MT technical support, who walked me through it, I fixed everything myself. Logins, captchas, everything. Whew!
February 20, 2008
Podcasting Protocols, Explained
It seems easy enough: record a phone conversation, reduce it to .mp3 format, post on the internet. Voilà, a podcast. If only! Several of you have asked what, exactly, goes into making the EP podcast? Everything starts, of course, with trying to figure out who would be a good guest to talk with — and the final podcast product eventually gets posted to EP, which is itself a complex process that includes everything from graphic design to coding. Here, however, I want to explain the basics of the technical side of recording that results in the .mp3 file, from my perspective as EP's audio engineer.
Snake Eyes
The next real test, the mainstream media tells us, is March 4th, echoing the Clinton campaign regarding the importance of Texas and Ohio. Wait just a minute, though: the remaining states to hold democratic party primaries will choose 1,191 delegates. Texas accounts for about 19% of those; Ohio for 13%; Pennsylvania for 16%; North Carolina for 11%; and there are a whole bunch of other contests. Few strongly favorable to Hillary. On the flip side we're seeing convention fever — state electorates one after the next vying to push Obama over the top. He'll continue to pile up wins by impressive margins, possibly, possibly losing a couple of contests. To put it bluntly, Obama is now running rings around Hillary (shades of OODA) and it's time to call the race. If she had a scrap of decency she'd be looking for the fastest way to gracefully bow out…
February 18, 2008
NATO's Kosovo Colony: Independence in the Brave New World Order
US to Kosovo Serbs : "Hit the Road"
By Diana Johnstone
(with help from the author of Brave New World)
PARIS — This weekend, the Western propaganda machine is working overtime, celebrating the latest NATO miracle: the transformation of Serbian Kosovo into Albanian Kosova. A shameless land grab by the United States, which used the Kosovo problem to install an enormous military base (Camp Bondsteel) on other people's strategically located land, is transformed by the power of the media into an edifying legend of "national liberation".
Continue reading "NATO's Kosovo Colony: Independence in the Brave New World Order"...
Apple Aches
On February 4th I bought a new Mac Pro. I'd had my Power Mac for two and a half years, and though it handled audio files pretty well the new Mac Pro is roughly five times faster at certain audio tasks which, when working on files of about one Gigabyte, means considerable time savings. Specifically, for example, it means that instead of getting up at 3:30 a.m. on Friday mornings for final production of the EP podcast I can sleep until 4:30 a.m. Anyhow, all is not well in Apple-land. Many people who got the new Mac Pro — including me — have had freezing issues where the computer suddenly, unpredictably, seizes up. You can't close programs or do anything except move the cursor around. Only a hard re-boot gets it working again.
February 11, 2008
Obama Neuralgia
John Edwards won 61 delegates before dropping out. He's now reportedly considering whether to endorse Hillary or Obama — given the closeness of the race he could swing one or the other over the top. I'm still not so sure he's going to endorse either but if he does I hope it's Obama. Great, substantive differences exist between the two remaining candidates, having more to do with political philosophy than with particular policies, such that it is unfair in the extreme to characterize them both as corporate sock-puppets.
February 6, 2008
McCain vs. ?
Mike Huckabee put up a good effort, Mitt Romney put up plenty of dough, but John McCain looks pretty much unstoppable at this point. Amusing, as to many conservative Republicans he's the anti-Christ, but scary at the same time when considering how inadequate he would be as President. Obama did better than I'd expected, not as well as I'd dared hope, but has evened out Hillary's advantages moving forward. He took the all-important primary in Missouri, by a hair, giving him better bragging rights than California. (In the general election Missouri has always voted for the winner since 1900, except once, in 1956, when it went for Adlai Stevenson over the incumbent Dwight Eisenhower.)
February 4, 2008
Fire and Ice
Some say the world began in fire. Some say in ice. For pro football, ice works. I'm normally not a football fan — I used to like college games until they, too, got too bulked up and professional-like — but I knew that this year's Super Bowl would be a classic. And it didn't disappoint. I was rooting for New York but even so I think the action was exciting for everybody. And Eli Manning: what can you say? The guy's got heart, brains, and icewater in his veins.
