Batteries

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Note to myself: Pick up a 9-volt battery for the smoke alarm on the way home tonight. That painfully loud chirp every five minutes or so is getting really annoying.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

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Wandered up to one of the downtown theaters today to catch the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Enjoyable, and worthwhile as either a matinee or a rent, but enough problems that it’s not a definite must-see.

Plotwise — well it was basically a Bond film (perhaps that was why they got Connery’s involvement?). Insane mastermind criminal bent on conquering the world, and our intrepid heroes have to stop him at all costs. The true draw was the heroes themselves, all of whom were drawn from literary works: Alan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dorian Grey, Dr. Jekyll (and, of course, Mr. Hyde), Tom Sawyer, and the sole female member of the group, Mina Harker (wife of John [?] Harker, assistant to Professor Van Helsing during that nasty incident with Count Dracula — yes, she’s a vampire). That alone made some of the scenes quite entertaining to watch, as various references would occasionally be dropped in (though not as many as I felt could have been).

Unfortunately, the plot has holes — well, holes big enough to sail the Nautilus through, some of the most astounding of which involve Venice, which is apparently some alternate-reality Venice. I’m still trying to decide which surprised me more: sailing the Nautilus (roughly the size of an aircraft carrier) through the canals of Venice, or driving a car pell-mell through the streets of Venice. Streets? Yeah, streets. And there’s more to come….

Sean Connery was, well, Sean Connery. As enjoyable as he is to watch, I can’t say that I’ve seen him in a role that really required much of him in a good long time. It’s unfortunate, too, but lately he seems to be just riding on the “Sean Connery is a crowdpleaser no matter what” wave, instead of getting anything actually challenging.

The rest of the cast — adequate, and they all filled their parts well, but none of them particularly stood out, for good or for ill.

Effect wise, it was a mixed bag. Some of the shots I liked a lot — the Nautilus, for example, I thought was gorgeous (if a little ridiculously large). Gleaming alabaster, with silver filigree and decorations, even to statues on the fore and aft of the submarine. Impractical, but gorgeous to look at. The shots of the Invisible Man were also quite impressive, especially when he had facepaint on (to make himself visible) and you’d get a shot of him from behind. Hard to describe, but fun to see. Other shots were less impressive, including an exploding building towards the beginning of the film, which was something of a surprise. I know there’s a push to do as much as possible with CGI, but would it have been so difficult to actually create a practical explosion effect? Oh, and Mr. Hyde just didn’t impress me in the least. Ah, well.

End result: not great, but not horrible, as long as you don’t think too much. Worth matinee prices or a rental, but not anything to stand in line for an evening show over.

Oh, two last things. First — I want fight scenes that can be watched, not fight scenes that have so many half-second cuts that it’s impossible to follow any of the action. Second — can we please have a movie that doesn’t have the obligatory five-minute “Look! If you give us enough money, we’re gauranteeing yet another vapid sequel!” sequence before the end credits?

Roger Ebert’s review is priceless, by the way.

Tweaking TypePad Templates

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Up until now, all the various design tweaks I’ve made on this site have been conducted from within the TypePad interface, without my mucking about with any of the code. That’s starting to change, however, as I start to incorporate some of the conventions I’ve gotten used to with my templates at The Long Letter into the site here. I’m taking things a little slowly to make sure I don’t break anything (permanently), but work has begun.

Some details and thoughts on my changes follow.

(The following notes will be updated as I work my way through the various templates and make my changes.)

All templates

Two minor changes have been made to all the templates.

The first is purely cosmetic, in that I’ve adjusted the indenting of all the HTML code so that it’s easier for me to track through. As a side benefit, it should be a bit easier for other people if they go poking around in my source code.

Secondly, and important for usability, I’ve noticed that in the default templates, none of the hyperlinks have the title attribute set (the text that shows as a tooltip in most browsers, or before the URL in the status bar in Safari). I was somewhat surprised by that, but it’s a fairly simple fix for most of the tags.

Archive Templates (category and monthly)

The default templates for archives display every post in its entirety in reverse chronological order (exactly which posts are displayed depends on the archive type — all posts in a single category for category archives, all posts in a month for monthly archives, etc.). That may work well if you create short posts, or don’t post terribly often, but for me, it’s a nightmare. I tend to babble and create (ridiculously) long posts, and while this site is new, if I do end up adopting TypePad for my permanent home once it’s open for business, then I’m going to want to import all two years plus of my archives. Obviously, with the default templates, this could make for extremely long archive pages.

So, to combat that, I set up my archive templates to create essentially a ‘table of contents’ for each archive page. Each archive page now displays the title of each individual post, linked to the post’s individual entry page. After that comes the post excerpt, then a brief listing of the post’s metadata (post time and whether any comments have been added — were I creating a multi-author weblog, post author would be included also).

With this setup, while each archive page will still grow over time, it will be substantially smaller than it would be if it were displaying the entirety of each post. By including the post’s excerpt, it allows for a little more contextual indication of what each post is about, so it should still be relatively easy to find individual posts.

Currently (as of 8:20pm, July 13th) I’ve only altered the category templates to reflect this scheme, but monthly archives should be updated shortly.

7/13 8:54pm: Monthly archive pages have also been updated.

Archive templates (individual)

Not too terribly many changes here, aside from the aforementioned HTML re-formatting and adding title attributes to the hyperlinks. I did tweak the post metadata line so that the permalink is attached to the timestamp on the post rather than a single word that just says ‘Permalink’, and then added permalinks to individual comments with the same style. Other than that, it’s primarily the same.

I would eventually like to see if the live comment preview I have working on my individual pages on The Long Letter will work in this layout, but I’ll probably save that for another night, just in case it turns into more of a battle than I think it will.

Main index template

Again, like the individual archives, not too many changes — primarily just the formatting of the metadata line, with permalinks moved to the post time. Not that exciting, overall.

Main archives template

The default main archive template is functional, but nothing more than that. A simple list of links to the monthly archives, with links to category archives (if you’re using categories) below that. Not bad, of course, but I wanted to do better.

The monthly archive links I’ve kept more or less the same, with the exception that rather than listing out one on top of the other (and using up a large amount of vertical space for very little information), they list out horizontally. Of course, you can’t really tell that now, but when we roll around to August it’ll be more obvious.

For the category archives, I’ve included the post titles to the last ten posts in each category beneath the category title. The title itself links to the full category archive page, while the post titles link to their respective individual pages. It’s not much more information that what was available before, but it does give a little bit more, and can make searching for a recent post a little quicker than digging through each archive page if you don’t quite remember what category it got tossed into.

Kickshaw grumbles

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Last year at the Bite of Seattle, I discovered an incredible local acapella group called Kickshaw that blew me away when I walked up in time to hear a flawless acapella performance of one of my all-time favorite songs, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”.

After their version of “Dance to the Music” came up in iTunes today, I hit their website on a whim and discovered that they’re going to be performing at the Bite of Seattle food festival next weekend. Got all excited, started planning to go to see them again — and then realized that they’re playing at 6pm on Friday. I’ll be at work. Grrr. Not thrilled with whoever scheduled that. Didn’t they know that they should have consulted with me first?

Uh, yeah. Right. Anyway.

On the bright side, come early August, they’ll be performing at the Taste of Edmonds food festival, which is just about half an hour by car from here. Prairie’s expressed interest in going, so hopefully we’ll be able to head out that way and catch them there. Would be very cool to get to see them again.

NOW Presidential Forum

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Len posted a report on the NOW Presidential Forum in Washington D.C. that he found in the comments somewhere on Blog for America. It’s an excellent summary, and well worth perusing — so I’m shamelessly snagging a copy of it. ;)

Since the NOW forum was mentioned by Kate in this thread, I guess this is the best place to post my thoughts. I was lucky enough to attend the NOW presidential forum Friday evening near my home in Arlington, VA. Joining Governor Dean were Carol Moseley-Braun, Dennis Kucinich, and Al Sharpton (who was fashionably late hahaha ). When Rev. Sharpton came in during Gov. Dean’s opening statement, Dean joked, “I hope that doesn’t take away from my time.” ;-) John Kerry sent his apologies for not being able to attend. John Edwards sent his apologies and his wife. No word on the whereabouts of Gephardt, Lieberman or Graham.

My overall impressions from seeing these four candidates “up-close-and-personal” for the very first time:

Ambassador Moseley-Braun: She’s a good woman with good intentions and good positions — and she will make an excellent cabinet member for President Dean. ;-) At the beginning of the NOW forum, she was clearly (and naturally), the crowd favorite. Following a raucous NOW response to Moseley-Braun’s opening statement, Dean said, “I’m living every politician’s nightmare: following Carol Moseley-Braun at a NOW convention.” ;-) The crowd loved it and it served as the perfect ice-breaker, showing he had a sense of humor and a sense of his audience. As the forum progressed, she had a few nice things to say in reference to Governor Dean and as the two of them sat side-by-side in alphabetical order, they seemed VERY chummy. At one point during a particularly long-winded reply by Kucinich, Dean leaned over and watched Braun discreetly scribble something on her note pad, he whispered something in her ear, and then the two of them shared a giggly laugh — I’d give anything to see what she wrote. ;-)

Representative Kucinich: I was surprised how much I disliked the fellow. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal from way back — and hems way too liberal even for me. He also took a few swipes at Governor Dean, so I think he can forget getting any position in the Dean administration. ;-) I was turned off by his attitude more than anything else — he is interested in pushing his agenda and doesn’t really care whether or not he could actually make anything concrete happen. For example, his idea of a Department of Peace is a very laudable goal and one day, I’d love to see it become a reality. But if the man can’t see that in the current environment talking about the Department of Peace is enough to give Karl Rove wet-dreams, then hems completely lost it. After the forum, I overheard some NOW members dissing Kucinich for the flip-flop he did on abortion just before announcing his candidacy — those ladies said Kucinich can’t be trusted to truly defend a womanms right to choose and that “he’s a liar”. (They also said Dr. Dean looked very handsome with his short haircut and tan. haha)

Reverend Al Sharpton: The preacher did what a preacher should — had the audience nodding in agreement, had them clapping and laughing, and even brought them to their feet once. He and Gov. Dean had the most applause and laugh lines of the evening. (I was actually very surprised at how relaxed and easy-going and affable Dr. Dean seemed on the panel. So much for all those critics who say he is “too angry” and “not likeable” enough. I was very relieved to see he has a good — and quick! — sense of humor. I can’t wait to see him debate Dubya. Hahahaha .) One of the most surprising parts of the evening was after Sharpton sharply criticized the DLC for being too far to the right (basically he said we need to tell the DLC to shove it), Dr. Dean actually came to the DLC’s defense (in a way). Paraphrasing, Dean said he disagreed with Sharpton that we could write off the DLC (again, so much for Dean being “volatile” and “combative”. haha ). He said we’re going to need to bring the DLC along, we’re going to need to bring the unions along, we’re going to need to bring the gay and lesbian community along, etc — because we’re all in this together and together we can beat George Bush.

Governor Howard Dean: of course, I am already committed to him for my own reasons, so I was actually more interested in gauging the audience’s response. Although they were (slightly) cool to him at the beginning, he really warmed them up as the evening went on — the substantial contingent of we Dean supporters in the audience certainly helped ;-). I got the feeling a lot of the NOW audience didn’t know much about him — one woman sitting near me let out a pleasantly surprised “Oh really?” when he announced he was a physician. ;-) At several points, he relayed his accomplishments in Vermont and it seemed like much of the audience liked what they heard. The answer which struck me most had to do with domestic violence. Governor Dean gave a very impassioned discussion of this issue. He described how Vermont offers in-home visits to new mothers — regardless of whether they are poor or rich mothers — and if the families need help, Vermont provides them with job training, parenting classes, etc. He concluded that during his decade-plus as governor, these efforts to strengthen families have helped dramatically decrease physical and sexual abuse of children in Vermont. The NOW audience was VERY impressed by Dean’s sincere interest in this issue and gave him a hearty round of applause.

During closing statements, Kucinich cemented my unfavorable opinion of him and Dean made perhaps his biggest brownie points of the evening. Mimicking the line Dean has borrowed from the late Paul Wellstone, Kucinich’s closing statement consisted of him droning, “I’m from the universal health care wing of the Democratic Party. I’m from the universal day care wing of the Democratic Party. I’m from the abortion litmus test for judges wing of the Democratic Party. I’m from the Department of Peace wing of the Democratic Party.” And so on and so on. He listed about ten things and as Dr. Dean sat next to him listening to this, you could see the wheels turning in his head about how he would respond. Then Kucinich (I’m sorry, I know we’re supposed to remain positive but this REALLY ticked me off) had the audacity to steal Dr. Dean’s “Take our country back” line, followed by a round of (in my opinion) polite applause.

Then Dr. Dean got going. He got right on Kucinich’s case (rhetorically of course haha ), standing up and poking his finger in the air: “And I’m from the Beat George Bush wing of the Democratic Party!!” The crowd went wild…and I don’t believe I’m exaggerating. ;-) Then he went into his “you have the power” speech. Even though I’ve heard him give this similar spiel several times by now, I still get goose bumps and (I don’t mind admitting) I actually had to fight back a tear as he talked about how George Bush has divided our country and how WE have the power to take it back — I really felt like he was talking directly to me.

I went to bed last night and for the first time in over two years, I actually had a sense of peacefulness and hopefulness that America could return to the country I remember and the country I was taught to believe in. Thank you, Governor Dean, for giving me a little peace and a reason to hope again.

It was interesting for me to see that both Carol Moseley-Braun and Al Sharpton were there, until this point I’ve heard next to nothing about either of them. Unfortunately, no matter what their platform is, I’m under the direct impression that they’re essentiall non-candidates — even if they weren’t so far down on the political radar, I’m afraid that this country isn’t anywhere near ready to elect a black man or a woman of any color to the Presidential Office.

The bit on Kucinich was very interesting too. I don’t know much about him, yet his name keeps popping up, and he was my top match in the candidate poll I took. Unfortunately, he doesn’t sound at all interesting after this writeup — which, while it was written by a Dean supporter, still feels to me like he gave a fairly accurate rundown of each candidate’s appearance. Suffice to say, at this point unless Kucinich does far better in other reports, he’s not going to be pulling me away from the Dean camp.

In the end — Dean still looks to be a winner to me.

Howard Dean, guest blogger

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Larry Lessig, one of the top copyright lawyers in the nation (I believe), and a well-known personality in the blogosphere is going on vacation next week, and his replacement “guest blogger” is going to be none other than Howard Dean!

This is, I believe, the first time a presidential candidate has been a guest blogger. But it is an obvious extension of blogs and the process of becoming President. Campaigns are all about meeting different groups and talking about ideas. Where better than a blog?

It’ll be very interesting to see how this works out, and how much will be coming straight from Howard Dean, and how much will be coming from the Dean campaign. Either way, it’s a fascinating step for a presidential campaign to take.

To protect against any confusion about whether Governor Dean himself is writing the blog entries, he will crosspost everything that he posts on Lessig’s blog on this blog.

Looks like that should clear up any Dean/campaign staffer confusion — nicely done!

(via Escapable Logic, Jackie, Jeremy, cedar, Heiko, and Ken — okay, so I was one of the last to know…)

Debate time!

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There’s a wonderful clip from Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ online right now — a debate betwen President George W. Bush and Presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush — that is flat-out hilarious (RealPlayer video file).

(via halfast)

Jon Stewart: Since the beginning of all this “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, “regime change”, “pockets of resistance”, “targets of opportunity” business, it’s been difficult to have an honest discussion about the direction President Bush is taking this country. In fact, when you combine the new madate that criticising the Commander in Chief is off limits in wartime with last year’s official disbanding of the Democratic Party, well, we’re left at an all-time low in the “good old-fashioned honest debate” category. Now, I know you’re thinking, “But Jon, every time I want to have a calm, honest discussion about these kinds of issues, I’m shouted down and harassed by the Dixie Chicks and their ilk.” Well, tonight, it all changes. We’re going to have an open, honest debate between the President of the United States and the one man we believe has the insight and the cojones to stand up to him. So first, joining us tonight, George W. Bush, 43^rd^ President of the United States. Welcome, Mr. President.

President George W. Bush: Good evening, I’m pleased to take your questions tonight.

JS: Well, thank you very much sir, I’m pleased to ask them. Taking the other side, joining us from the year 2000, Texas Governor and Presidential candidate, George W. Bush.

Governor George W. Bush: Good evening.

JS: Thank you, Governor. Mr. President, you won the coin toss, the first question will go to you. Why is the United States of America using it’s power to change governments in foreign countries?

PGWB: We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights, and for the hopes of mankind. The United States of America will make that stand.

JS: Well, certainly that represents a bold new doctrine in foreign policy, Mr. President. Governor Bush, do you agree with that?

GGWB: Yeah, I, I, I, I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, “this is the way it’s gotta be.”

JS: All right, well that’s interesting. Ah, well that’s a, that’s a difference of opinion, and certainly that’s what this country is about, differences of opinion — Mr. President, let me just get specific. Why are we in Iraq?

PGWB: We, we will be, um, changing the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people.

JS: Governor, then I’d like to hear your response on that.

GGWB: If we’re an arrogant nation they’ll, they’ll resent us. I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the “ugly American” is for us to go around the world saying, “we do it this way, so should you.”

JS: Well that’s, that’s an excellent point. Um, I don’t think you can argue with that. Ah, Mr. President, is the idea to just build a new country that we like better?

PGWB: We will tear down the apparatus of terror. And we will help you to build a new Iraq, that is prosperous, and free.

GGWB: I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called “nation building.”

JS: Well that’s fair enough Governor, I mean certainly that’s, that’s, you’re entitled to that. But then, Governor, answer this — how do you propose we nation build? Would you use diplomacy?

GGWB: Lemme say this to you, I wouldn’t use force, I wouldn’t use force.

JS: Well, Mr. President, clearly you’re skeptical of the Governor. Now Governor, you sound categorically against the use of force. In your time in Texas, what have you done to demonstrate your willingness to be tough?

GGWB: Well, I’ve been standing up to big Hollywood, big trial lawyers, um…what was the question, it was about emergencies, wasn’t it?

JS: No, no it wasn’t. Getting back to Iraq, Mr. President, you’re as familiar with the Governor’s record in Texas as anybody. Are you willing, are you willing, Mr. President, to trust Governor Bush with our foreign policy?

PGWB: I’m not willing to take that chance again, Jon.

JS: Strong words, from two very different men. Now, as this debate draws to a close, I need to turn to the subject of money. Much of this discussion on foreign policy is moot if we can’t afford to pay for it. So, we’re running out of time, quickly, both of you, let’s talk numbers.

PGWB: I’m sending the Congress a wartime supplemental appropriations request of 74.7 billion dollars. To fund needs directly arising from the Iraqi conflict.

JS: 74.7 billion dollars appears to be within the realm of reason. Governor?

GGWB: Obviously tonight we’re going to hear some phony numbers about what I think and what we oughtta do.

JS: Wow. That’s a little vituperative. Well on that note, I’m going to thank both George W. Bushes for taking part tonight. In keeping with our debate rules, we will end our discussion with a trite and insincere farewell, Mr. President, you are the most powerful man in the world, you go first.

PGWB: Goodnight, and may God continue to bless America.

JS: Wow — incredibly insincere. Governor, can you top that?

GGWB: Thanks, thanks from the bottom of my heart.

JS: Nice. Wow. Now, this has been, I have really enjoyed this meeting of the minds, what a historic evening. It’s really one for the vaults, if only there were a secure place to put the videotape of this for all time. Where could we put it?

Al Gore: I think it should stay in a lockbox.

JS: I’m sorry, where, where should we put it?

AG: Lockbox, lockbox, lockbox.

JS: Well, you don’t have to shout. We’ll be right back…

Too funny!