Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Ten blocks downhill…

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From Jeffrey Zeldman:

Gunfire marked our first night in Seattle. Street warfare broke out when rival gangs spotted each other following an annual torchlight parade. Three teenagers were shot and a fourth was stabbed before police could penetrate the thick, panicky crowds to prevent further mayhem.

We were returning from a quiet dinner at Maximillien Bistro in the Market when citizens began running into us. Three shots rang out half a block away.

“Those were gun shots,” said a white man in a black ten gallon hat.

We made it to our hotel and heard the remaining shots and sirens through our window. National news services ignored the short-lived riot. The remainder of our trip was comparatively sedate.

Yikes. The restaurant he refrences is roughly ten blocks away from my apartment. This would have happened last Saturday night, probably in connection with all the various SeaFair stuff going on. What fun. And this is the first I’ve heard of it.

Of course, I probably was up at the Vogue when everything happened, but still…

But weren't you the drummer?

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Tom Tomorrow pointed out this jaw-dropping exchange in the midst of the President’s press conference from a couple days ago:

Thank you, sir. Since taking office you signed into law three major tax cuts — two of which have had plenty of time to take effect, the third of which, as you pointed out earlier, is taking effect now. Yet, the unemployment rate has continued rising. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come; the economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me — just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a — a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens — I’m not suggesting which network did this — but it said, “March to War,” every day from last summer until the spring — “March to War, March to War.” That’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear, “March to War” all the time.

Well, gee, you’re right, that attitude doesn’t contribute to a safe, healthy, stress free environment. Especially when you’re the idiot pounding those war drums every chance you get.

Unbelievable.

Unfortunately, the rest of the press conference is just as bile-inducing.

Blood on his hands

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Wow — Tony Blair’s in trouble, and the British press are taking no prisoners.

Finally, one British reporter shouted out: “Have you got blood on your hands, Prime Minister? Are you going to resign over this?”

Blair froze. He stood uncomfortable and silent at the lectern for what must have seemed like the longest 30 seconds of his political career, until Koizumi called a merciful end to the press conference.

If only the American press corps had as much gall and backbone when questioning our leaders as the British press does when questioning theirs.

(via Daily Kos and Lane)

Communion on the moon?

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Of all the things I’d heard about the first moon landing, I’d never heard that Buzz Aldrin celebrated communion there.

Aldrin and fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong were watched by millions on television as they stepped from their Apollo 11 module into the Sea of Tranquillity on July 20, 1969, but the first lunar communion was kept under wraps by NASA for two decades until Aldrin wrote about it in a memoir.

It was the first time liquid — wine, representing Christ’s blood — was ever poured on the moon. The specially blessed bread Aldrin consumed — representing Christ’s body — was the first meal eaten by humans on another celestial body.

Just fascinating to know, and it looks like the Anglican church might be getting a special prayer to commemorate the occasion. Nifty.

(via Dad)

Too Americanized?

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Pentagon officials says Americanizing Iraq is difficult because Iraqis have had little to no reliable information for the past 35 years, and have lived on a diet of innuendo, rumor, conspiracy theories, fear, and propaganda. Sounds like the problem is they’re too Americanized.

— Bill Maher (No permalink, July 29^th^ entry)

It looks to me like Bill’s weblog is using MovableType. Who can we contact to at least get him (or his webmaster) to turn on permalinks?

Help wanted: Apache/PHP

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I’m planning on sticking with TypePad as my weblog host once everything opens up officially (tomorrow, from the looks of it). However, this poses a bit of a problem. While I’m slowly moving all of my old posts from my old weblog to this new site, there are still lots of links scattered throughout the ‘net that point to the old addresses.

I think I know of a solution, however, I’m not well enough versed in the intricacies of Apache and PHP to pull it off on my own. So, I’m asking for help!

Here’s what I’d like to do…

All of my old posts reside at my personal server at http://www.djwudi.com/longletter/. It’s a Mac OS X computer running Apache, with PHP enabled.

I know that Apache can handle redirects, based on rules set up in the httpd.conf file. I also know that pattern matching and text string munging can be carried out in PHP.

All of my old individual entry pages are stored in my webserver with the following directory structure:

http://www.djwudi.com/longletter/archives/year/month/day/dirified_post_title.php http://www.djwudi.com/longletter/archives/2003/07/31/help_wanted_apache_php.php

All of the pages on this new site are stored using a similar, but slightly different directory structure:

http://djwudi.typepad.com/eclecticism/year/month/truncated_title.html http://djwudi.typepad.com/eclecticism/2003/07/help_wanted_apa.html

What I’m envisioning for the final system is this:

  • Anytime my webserver receives a request for a page that resides within the ‘/longletter/archives/’ directory, Apache redirects to a customised PHP script on my server.
  • That script does three things:
    1. Presents a simple page to the user with wording to the effect of “This site has moved, one moment while we redirect you…”.
    2. Looks at the requested URI and converts it to what the new URI should be. As I’ve kept post titles consistent, and the directory structures are similar, this should be fairly easy with the right regular expressions.
      1. Parse the requested URI.
      2. Remove everything before the 4-digit year and replace it with the new base address.
      3. Remove the 2-digit day.
      4. Truncate the post title to fifteen characters.
      5. Remove the .php extention and replace it with .html.
    3. Redirects the users browser to the new, correct URI.
  • Hey presto, we’re done — no matter which page was linked to at my old site, the user has been redirected to the corresponding page at my new site.

More brainstorming:

  • The above method works well for links going to individual pages, but what about category archives or the main index page itself?
  • Could the PHP script be made smarter? For instance…
    1. If the requested URI contains the year/month/day/title.php string, then the above transformation and redirect is processed.
    2. If the requested URI contains any other string (in other words, it doesn’t point to a specific post), then a page is presented that says something along the lines of “This site has moved, one moment while we redirect you to the new site…”, and a redirect is passed to the user’s browser that points to the index page of the new weblog.

Anyway, that’s what I’d like to do. It all seems straightforward enough in my brain, and I think that the technology I have available should be able to handle it all without a problem — I just don’t have the faintest idea how to code it.

Any and all advice, hints, tips, or straight-up solutions would be greatly appreciated. I’m not rich enough to offer untold wealth or cool prizes or anything, but I can offer much gratitude, public thanks and kudos, and probably pizza and beer (or a PayPal donation to a ‘pizza and beer’ fund, or some such thing).

And you won’t even have to fight me for the beer — I can’t stand the stuff. ;)