Auto-generating iTMS links with affiliate info

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I thought I was going to need help figuring this out — turns out I’ve got more iTMS link-fu than I thought. :D

Earlier this month, I was accepted into the iTunes Affiliate program. All well and good, except that at that point, I couldn’t find a way to link directly to individual items with my Affiliate ID — I could put up the generic iTunes badge (which now resides towards the bottom of my sidebar), or I could put up Apple-designed ad blocks (which, aside from the Björk ad on my original post, I’ve yet to do, mostly because they apparently need to be rotated out manually), but I couldn’t link to any particular track.

As of today, however, Apple now provides a tool to let me do just that, in the form of an addition to the iTMS Link Maker. This is most definitely a Good Thing — however, it’s still a lot more cumbersome than I’d like things to be. While it will be serviceable when I want to mention a particular track or album during the course of a post (for instance, right now I’m listening to William S. Burroughs’ spoken word album Dead City Radio, a must for any WSB fan), what I really wanted to be able to do is use ecto‘s ‘now playing’ feature (which I use to insert the currently playing iTunes track information into the bottom of posts I make at home) to autogenerate iTMS search links that include my Affiliate information at the beginning.

Back when the iTMS first debuted, some enterprising people figured out the URL structure that would allow you to create links to iTMS searches — in theory, all I should have to do is slightly adjust that URL structure to match the URL structure of Affiliate links, and I’d be good to go. As it turns out, that theory was right — for instance, here’s an iTMS search for U2 that passes through my Affiliate information.

Full gory details are in the extended entry…

Read more

Yet another set of library photos

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Seattle Central Library, Seattle, WA

While the new Seattle Central Library has been the subject of so many photosets across the Seattle blogosphere that it’s likely well on its way to becoming passé, I had to have my day.

Continuing with my experimentation with flickr (which I’m liking more and more), I’ve uploaded the best eight of my library photos to my flickr page.

Enjoy (if you’re not overloaded on giant metal diamonds already)!

(Originally uploaded by djwudi)

Bush’s hometown paper endorses Kerry

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Ouch. That’s gotta sting — the newspaper for Bush’s adopted hometown of Crawford, TX has expressed its discontent with Bush’s presidency and endorsed John Kerry for President.

The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush’s proposals on Social Security and Medicare.

“The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda,” the newspaper said in its editorial. “Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry.”

It urged “Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.”

(via Terrence, via The Agonist)

Update: Here’s the editorial itself.

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:

  • Empty the Social Security trust fund by \$507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
  • Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
  • Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
  • Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
  • Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
  • Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
  • Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.

(thanks to The Daily Kos)

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

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Found on This Modern World, an e-mail that’s apparently making the rounds:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but \$10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

Don’cha just hate those liberals?

One million plus, baby!

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Onemillion

Yowza!

I haven’t been checking often enough to know exactly when this happened, but at some point in the past few days (sometime on Friday, I think), my hit counter passed one million.

Over one million hits to this little weblog.

Now, that’s hits, not visits, for those of you more picky about the fine print than I. Even so, that’s still a really big number.

Pretty damn cool, I’d say.

Interrobang‽

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If I ever decide to move away from ‘eclecticism’ as a site name (which I’m not likely to do anytime soon), I think ‘interrobang‽‘ would be a great replacement.

The English language is constantly evolving. During the twentieth century alone we observed this evolution in many ways: spelling changes, new words, technology terms, scientific terms, and colloquialisms. Punctuation is also evolving. In 1962, the interrobang (‽), was introduced by the New York publishing establishment as “a twentieth century punctuation mark”. The interrobang combined the functions of a question mark and an exclamation point. It received some attention at first, but never caught on, although for a brief period during the 1960s it was added to some typewriter keyboards.

(via Boing Boing)

Rules for the Kerry/Bush debates

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Courtesy of Bob Harris:

The candidates are forbidden from asking each other any direct questions of any kind, nor can they challenge each other with proposed pledges. Thus, much of the skill used in actual debating is explicitly forbidden. Point for Monkey.

No pre-written notes of any kind will be allowed, nor can candidates use any props or have anyone in the audience to point to (like, say, Allawi) to examplify their rhetoric. Point for Kerry.

In the “Town Hall” debate, audience members will ask their moderator-screened questions, but they won’t be allowed any follow-up, and if they deviate from approved levels of free speech, they will be silenced. Candidates will therefore be able to a) change the subject entirely, b) misleadingly paraphrase the question (one of Monkey’s best tactics), or c) stall by following-up an earlier point, especially since their opponent is forbidden from asking any direct questions in response. Huge point for Monkey.

Remaining-time lights will be mounted directly onto the cameras, so the candidates don’t have to break fake eye contact with TV viewers.

In the “Town Hall” debate, the candidates will have small, predesignated areas in which they can “move about” in their attempts to simulate the body language of actual human connection. The candidates’ “move about” areas will not overlap in any way.

The shaking of hands is contractually mandatory.

Not far removed from a total farce, unfortunately — still, I’d like to be able to see them. Unfortunately, as I don’t bother with television, I’m not sure what options I have. Does anyone happen to know if there are any plans to webcast any or all of the debates? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.