See You In September. Hopefully

Posted on June 3, 2007

In yet another sign of just how pathetic America’s political class has become, it seems that leaders in both parties have decided to punt on the question of withdrawal from Iraq until September.

The rationale given for the delay is usually something along the lines of “we need to give the ‘surge’ some time, so we can see if it’s working or not before we pull the plug.” But that’s just a fig leaf. Nobody believes that the ‘surge’ is going to have miraculously improved Iraq by September. Even if it lives up to the wildest claims made for it, the best we can hope for is that it will have somewhat reduced the level of violence in Baghdad. That would still leave years of occupation ahead to finish the job — years that America just isn’t prepared to give.

The real reason for the delay, of course, is that it lets our “leaders” weasel out of making a tough decision for awhile, and hope that Events will somehow bail them out in the meantime.

I call this “pathetic” because (a) everyone knows what the conclusion will be in the end, delay or no, and (b) each day the decision is delayed, U.S. soldiers are dying for a cause that their leaders have already given up on.

In May, 127 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. That’s a little more than 4 killed every day. Assuming that rate holds steady, that means 499 more soldiers will die in Iraq so that our “leaders” can play it safe politically.

And that’s not including the number of wounded, which will be in the thousands. Or the Iraqi civilians who will die in the crossfire.

The next time you hear some politician — Republican or Democrat — bloviating about how they “support our troops”, ask them if they support waiting until September to do something about Iraq. And if they do, ask them what definition of “supporting our troops” includes sending hundreds of them off to die for no better reason that to give him or her an out from making the hard choices.

Pathetic.

Fun With Spam: How the Mighty Have Fallen Edition

Posted on May 18, 2007

Oh, Carly. Who knew life after HP would bring you to this?

Why I Can’t Take Digg Seriously, Vol. 2

Posted on May 17, 2007

Seen today:

4 of the top 10 stories on Digg today are essentially the same story: Ron Paul r00lz, Rudy Giuliani dr00lz.

Regardless of what you think of the merits of candidate Paul versus candidate Giuliani, it’s hard to imagine a world where that particular debate would actually merit this volume of navel-gazing.

Backing Up Your TYPO3 Sites

Posted on May 16, 2007

An important part of managing any Web site is having a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy. As far as I can tell, though, nobody has ever taken the time to write up what such a strategy should look like for those of us who manage one or more TYPO3 sites. So I thought I’d share my backup approach, which has evolved over time into a relatively simple system that I have used to recover complete sites from backup successfully. It’s also useful for migrating TYPO3 sites from one server to another.

(One caveat: I’m assuming that, like most people, you use the dummy site package as the basis for your TYPO3 sites’ directory layout. If you don’t, these instructions might need some modification to work properly for you.) 

First, make a list of all the TYPO3 sites you’re running; you’ll want to go through the following steps for each of them.  Then grab a copy of the application source and dummy site packages for your version of TYPO3 from typo3.org; you’ll want to include those in your backup. (You should keep copies handy locally at all times, in case typo3.org is inaccessible when you need them.)

Here’s the plan you’ll follow for each of your sites:

1. The first thing we’re going to do is back up the database for the site. Assuming your backend is MySQL and you’re using the standard MyISAM tables, you can do this with the mysqldump utility, like so:

   mysqldump -u db-username -p -h database-hostname -D name-of-database >  mysite.sql

2. Now we’re going to back up your site’s TYPO3 files.  Because many of the "core" files come in the dummy site package, you don’t need to back up the entire site directory. You only need to backup the five things that contain material specific to your site:
• The /fileadmin directory
• The /typo3conf directory
• The /uploads directory
• The .htaccess file (if you use one)
• The robots.txt file (if you use one)

You can dump all of these into a single bzip2-compressed archive file with the tar command:

tar -cjvf mysite.tar.bz2 -C path-to-your-site-root-directory fileadmin typo3conf uploads .htaccess robots.txt

Once you have these two files — a SQL dump of the database, and an archive of the site-specific files — you have everything you need to restore your site from scratch. (For multiple sites, the steps above are easily cron-able so that you can keep, say, 7 days’ worth of backups for each site.) If you’re worried about the two files getting separated, just tar them together into a single archive for easy storage.

Should you ever need to recover from backup, it’s simple if you used the above method:

1. Install core TYPO3 application from source package
2. Create directory for site to recover with dummy site package
3. Un-tar the backup file archive into the directory you created with the dummy package so that the files fill the appropriate directories
4. Clear out the old database, re-fill it with the MySQL dumpfile

The same process works if you’re migrating to a new server — just remember to check the file typo3conf/localconf.php when you’re done and update any server-specific settings to use the address of the new server.

UPDATE: It occurred to me this afternoon that there’s one potential extra step I left out. Most people will never deal with it, because they install their TYPO3 extensions as local extensions, like they should. But if you have installed any extensions as "system" or "global" extensions, you will need to back them up separately from your sites (these extensions are installed in the TYPO3 source directory, not your site’s directory).  So be sure you back up  typo3src/typo3/ext and typo3src/typo3/sysext if you’ve stored anything there.

Baby Names That Were More Popular Than “Jason” in 2006

Posted on May 14, 2007

(for boys, of course)

• Noah
• Tyler
• Logan
• Christian
• Aiden
• Zachary
• Caleb
• Isaiah 
• Austin
• Evan
• Jordan
• Landon
• Cameron
• Connor
• Hunter

I guess the days when 65% of the boys in a given school were named "Jason" are over…

It Is This Kind of Incisive, Hard-Hitting Journalism That Makes the Huffington Post a Must-Read

Posted on May 14, 2007

Seen on the Huffington Post this morning:

You don’t say!

Mother’s Day

Posted on May 13, 2007

I miss you, Mom.

(Random observation: the post I wrote the night my Mom died is the number one hit for "Beverly Lefkowitz" on Google. It was a hard one to write, but I like the thought that it’s helping carry on her memory.)

“Coasting” Is Also Bullshit

Posted on May 9, 2007

Apparently I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the bicycle industry’s sales story to potential new riders is a bit… lacking: Shimano, one of the big makers of bike components, has plowed a non-trivial amount of money into an initiative called "Coasting" to address that very issue.

One blog describes the point of "Coasting" this way:

Shimano is trying to get people who don’t ride bikes to start riding bikes. They hired an outside company to study the industry and find out why people who can bike don’t bother. The outsiders figured out that gears are confusing, and the people who sell bikes are an exclusive lot that isn’t too willing to help newbs work their brakes and oil their chains.

So now Shimano is trying to affect a major shift in the way bikes are designed and sold—and they’ll make a boatload of money if it works out. Of course, if everyone in the country starts riding their bikes, then I think Shimano’s entitled to Microsoft-style cash.

Coasting is trying to make cycling accessible and fun. Their bikes don’t require much maintenance, and they come with automatic transmissions and coaster brakes.

Yes. Their big insight into why people don’t ride bikes is that it’s too hard to ride a bike. Which explains why you never see kids on bikes, right? ‘Cuz it’s too hard.

One of the first bikes released under the "Coasting" initiative is the Trek Lime. Like all "Coasting" bikes, the Lime’s key selling points are a low-maintenance design and a Shimano-designed automatic transmission that eliminates the need for the rider to shift gears. It also has some nice design touches, like an underseat trunk where you can stow your keys or your iPod.

So how much does this bike, designed specifically to entice people who aren’t currently cyclists, cost? Take a guess.

You’re right!  The answer is: $500. Or, more specifically, $579.99.

I don’t know how much Shimano paid that "outside company" to determine that the reason The Masses aren’t strapping on bike helmets was that shifting gears was too hard, but I could have answered the question for them for free: for someone who isn’t a passionate cyclist, $500 is too fucking expensive, nifty automatic transmission or not. Especially for something that faces a serious likelihood of being stolen out from under you.

They’d have been better served throwing out the technological gimcrackery and lickable design and focusing instead on making a simple, rugged comfort bike that they could sell for less. My uneducated guess is that most middle-class people have a $200 barrier in their minds for purchases; anything above that becomes a Major Purchase and requires a whole array of complicated rationalizations to justify. So getting product underneath that psychological ceiling would have moved a lot more bikes than "look, no shifting!" would.

Bikes Are Bullshit

Posted on May 7, 2007

So now the weather’s finally getting nice, and I’ve been thinking about ways to finagle more outdoors time — an important thing, when your career basically forces you to stare into a monitor 8-12 hours a day. I was walking to the Metro the other day when I noticed several bike paths that run right by my apartment…

And I think: I should get a bike. I could explore those bike trails, use it to get to class rather than drive my car, and maybe use it for part of my commute too (biking to the Metro instead of walking). And since my car is finally paid off, I’ve got some extra money every month to play with, so I can afford to shell out a little.

With all this in mind, therefore, I dropped by a local bike shop this weekend to take a look at what’s out there. Friendly Bike Shop Clerk and I start talking, and I tell him that I want a basic, no-nonsense starter bike for use around the neighborhood and light commuting. He says "Great! Let me show you a few" and walks me through the pros and cons of three different models…

… that all cost $500.

Yes. Apparently an "entry-level" bike these days costs five hundred dollars. That’s American dollars, too, Jack. 

Now, $500 may not be a lot to you, but it’s a lot to me — especially for something that would be frighteningly prone to theft. I don’t want to drop five bills on a bike and then have it go walkies on me a week later.

So I was a bit surprised to discover that $500 is basically where bike prices start these days. And they go up pretty quickly from there; you discover rapidly that the $500 bikes aren’t what real cyclists buy. Real cyclists buy $1,500 bikes, and then keep a wad of hundreds in the waistband of their bike shorts to throw at any plebeians they pass on the bike path: "Here’s some money, kid, go buy yourself a real bike."

If you can stomach the cost, there’s then the matter of choosing a type of bike. When I started looking, I thought a bike was a bike. Wrong-O! There are something like 46,000 categories of bike to choose from. There’s road bikes and mountain bikes, "comfort" bikes and "hybrid" bikes, "commuter" bikes and "touring" bikes. There’s "urban" bikes and "city" bikes — which are not to be confused with "town" bikes. And that’s not even counting the huge array of high-end bikes for the cyclist who’s busy sawing one of his balls off so he can be just like Lance Armstrong. The only thing you won’t find are cheap bikes — unless you are willing to buy disposable crap at Wal-Mart that’ll rust through before you get it home.

How the hell is a newbie supposed to find their way through the proliferation of categories? It’s as if the marketing arm of the bike business was the Judean People’s Front. (Splitters!)

I’ll probably end up swallowing hard and buying one of those god-awful "entry-level" bikes; I’ve been scouring Craigslist for a cheap used bike, but no good candidates have popped up. But the whole process has been sufficiently disorienting that I wanted to throw it out for discussion. If you own a bike, how did you find the right one? Can something that costs $500 truly be called "entry-level" with a straight face? And if bikes are so freaking expensive, should I do the logical thing: quit my job and start selling bikes???

In Case You Were Wondering…

Posted on May 3, 2007

… stories like this are why people hate lawyers:

The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation's capital. For the past two years, however, they've been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants…

Manning said the cleaners made three settlement offers to [the plaintiff, Judge Roy] Pearson. First they offered $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000. But Pearson wasn't satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants.

Because Pearson no longer wanted to use his neighborhood dry cleaner, part of his lawsuit calls for $15,000 — the price to rent a car every weekend for 10 years to go to another business…

But the bulk of the $65 million comes from Pearson's strict interpretation of D.C.'s consumer protection law, which fines violators $1,500 per violation, per day. According to court papers, Pearson added up 12 violations over 1,200 days, and then multiplied that by three defendants.

Pathetic. 

UPDATE (June 25, 2007): Judge agrees, cleaners win. 

Well, That Took Long Enough

Posted on May 2, 2007

I made the final payment on my car today.

Longtime Readers™ will remember when I bought this car, and the accident that demolished my last one (and which would have killed me with it, had the impact been a few inches to the right).

“Kevin Carter”

Posted on April 30, 2007

Hi TIME Magazine
Hi Pulitzer Prize
Tribal scars in technicolor
Bang-bang club
AK-47 hour

Kevin Carter

Hi TIME Magazine
Hi Pulitzer Prize
Vulture stalked white piped lie forever
Wasted your life
In black and white

Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter

The elephant is so ugly
He sleeps his head machetes his bed
Kevin Carter
Kaffir lover
Forever

Click click click click click
Click himself under

Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter

Who was Kevin Carter? Find out.

Beyond the Red Line

Posted on April 29, 2007

For all you Battlestar Galactica fans out there who are distraught about there being no new episodes until 2008, here’s something to tide you over.

Beyond the Red Line is a 100% free space combat game set in the BSG universe, built by fans as a total conversion of the game Freespace 2 (which you don’t need to play, Beyond is a standalone game). It drops you into the cockpit of a Colonial Viper and lets you take a whack at the Cylons yourself.

The graphics and sound are amazingly well-done, and capture the BSG ‘atmosphere’ perfectly. (Here’s a gallery of screenshots and gameplay videos to whet your appetite.) There’s a short single-player campaign and online multiplayer too. And it’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. What more could you ask for?

(About the only thing I don’t like about it is the voice acting, which is a little over the top — but thankfully you can toggle that off in the options.)

While there’s only a few missions in this first release, Beyond the Red Line is an ongoing project, and based on the quality of this demo it’s definitely one to watch!

The King Has Left the Building

Posted on April 27, 2007

Kasper Skårhøj, the original creator and Benevolent King of TYPO3, has announced that he’s stepping down from active TYPO3 development to focus on new challenges, including raising his baby daughter. Here’s Kasper’s video message to the TYPO3 community.

If you’re wondering how this will affect the TYPO3 project, there’s an excellent FAQ at http://typo3.org/whatnow/ . 

All of us who build on the TYPO3 platform owe Kasper a debt of gratitude for his years of hard work and dedication to the project. Thanks, Kasper!

Peter Jackson’s ‘King Kong’

Posted on April 25, 2007

I know I’m a little late to the party on this, but I finally got a chance to see Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong the other day.

Generally speaking, it was an OK flick; the visuals were impressive, but it was a little too long and too convinced of its own impressiveness for me to give it an unreserved recommendation. The one thing that really struck me about it, though, wasn’t the giant CGI ape or the big action set pieces. It was how deeply in love Peter Jackson’s camera was with Naomi Watts, who played the Fay Wray role of the ingénue who is swept off her feet by the mighty Kong.

Naomi Watts in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005)
Photo © Universal Pictures

The great French director Jean-Luc Godard once famously observed that "the history of cinema is the history of boys photographing girls", and I’m hard pressed to think of a modern film that more vividly illustrates Godard’s point than Jackson’s Kong does. The film seems to shift down into a different gear whenever Watts appears on screen; while most of the other scenes are played at a frantic pace, the camera lingers over Watts, contemplating her most minute features, in a manner that’s hard to describe as anything other than voyeuristic. The fact that Watts spends 90% of her screen time draped in diaphanous gowns that cling to her like Saran Wrap only makes the point clearer.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining — there’s many worse things you could do with three hours of film than spend it photographing hot women in clingy gowns. (If you need a list, ask George Lucas, he’s full of ’em.) It’s striking, though, how much of what we’re supposed to be impressed with from Kong seems so wan and by-the-numbers compared to the scenes with Watts. The action sequences, which seem to aim for new levels of popcorn-movie spectacle, left me bored; they felt contrived and obligatory, with no heart or passion. But whenever Watts came into the frame, the mood would change, the camera pushing aside everything else to focus in on its muse, the loud action-movie soundtrack of explosions and crashes quieting to a whisper.

I’m not sure if this was intentional on Jackson’s part or not, if he was aiming to treat Watts with the same reverence that the screen goddesses of the ’20s and ’30s got from their directors, or if he just loved the way she looked on screen. But does it really matter either way?

I was surprised, looking over the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, how few reviewers noted this aspect of the film when it was released; most waxed rhapsodic instead about the CGI and the action sequences. Maybe if you saw it on a big screen, those elements could more easily overwhelm you. But on the home screen, they feel a tad overcooked, at least to me; the few quiet moments the film allows itself carried more power for me than all the rock-’em-sock-’em sequences combined.

So is Jackson’s Kong worth seeing? You could do worse. Just be prepared for a movie that feels anachronistic, no matter how much CGI whiz-bangery is layered on top of it.

Heroes of the Web

Posted on April 23, 2007

Ever since Phil Hendrie went off the air, I’ve been casting around for something else to listen to on my daily commute to and from work; which has led me to dig around a little for good podcasts. (I’ve also written a little program to fetch and organize podcasts, to make it easier to keep them all straight.)

Since I’m a gamer, one podcast that I’ve enjoyed is 1UP.com’s Games for Windows podcast. It’s basically just the editors of Games for Windows magazine (the publication that used to be known as Computer Gaming World) sitting around shooting the shit about whatever happens to be on their plate that week.

If you like games on the PC, it’s worth checking out for that alone. But what really makes it stand out is a semi-regular segment they do called "Heroes of the Web". In the "Heroes" segment, they highlight and mock (complete with funny voices) an example of online dweebism gone out of control. For entertaining us all with their anal-retentiveness, the dweebs are crowned "Heroes of the Web." Since there’s a frightening amount of raging dweebism out there (especially in the gaming world, Lord knows), there’s no shortage of material.

To give you a taste of "Heroes", I’ve clipped out the segment from the March 27 GFW podcast and embedded it here for your listening pleasure. In it, they discuss something almost unbelievably pathetic: a Web forum dedicated to the bizarre fetishization of characters from the video game Sonic the Hedgehog.

You heard me. Ain’t the Web grand?

Anyway, here’s the audio (~7 minutes long):

If you like what you hear, you can get new "Heroes of the Web" in your MP3 player every week just by subscribing to the podcast.

New Releases: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and Thunderbird 2.0

Posted on April 19, 2007

Two big releases today in open source-world:

• The latest version of Ubuntu Linux, version 7.04 (code-named "Feisty Fawn"), is out; and
• Mozilla released the latest version of their awesome e-mail program, Thunderbird 2.0.

Get to downloading!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters

Posted on April 14, 2007

Well, after much anticipation I’ve finally seen the new Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters.

So what’s the verdict? It kind of depends on who you are:

• If you’re an Aqua Teen fan already, go see the damn movie. Seriously. You will laugh your ass off. You may be thinking "oh, I’ll just wait for the DVD" but you really want to see it in a theater full of other howling ATHF fans to get the full effect.
• If you aren’t, walk away. Just turn around and don’t come back. Go see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or whatever it is benighted souls like you do to amuse yourselves.

Williams Street has made a movie that is uncompromisingly true to the twisted vision that brought ATHF to life in the first place. That means it’s full of the kind of random quirkiness that makes the show so funny. It also means that they don’t spare even a second to introduce you to the characters, or explain why these food products live in New Jersey and hang out with aliens and so on. They just throw you in the deep end and figure you can handle it. Which may be a bit hard for someone coming to the movie cold. (And which is probably also why the critical reception has been so wildly mixed.)

Thankfully, I’m an Aqua Teen fan already, so I had a great time. If you are too, I expect you will as well.

‘Dodos’ Coming to Cable, DVD

Posted on April 11, 2007

"Flock of Dodos", the excellent documentary about the "intelligent design" movement that I have told you about before, will soon be available on cable and DVD.

Showtime subscribers, set your TiVos: that network has picked up "Dodos", and the first showing will be on May 17 at 8:30PM.

If you don’t have Showtime, you’ll have to wait for the DVD release, coming on August 28th and including deleted scenes and additional material.

Or you could catch a screening, if there’s one in your area — here’s a list of upcoming screenings.

When Cats Commute

Posted on April 11, 2007

Smarter than your average cat:

Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings – he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop…

Since January, when the cat first caught the bus he has done it two or three times a week and always gets on and off at the same stops.

And yes, the article has pictures. 

“Sick Day”

Posted on April 10, 2007

Check out the girl in the Harbor Tunnel
Crawling to work six feet under
And the day has barely begun
They’re all chewing gum

And laughing
At the voice on the crackling radio station
Lead us not into Penn Station
Cause the best part’s just begun
We’re all becoming one
Again

And she’s making the scene
With the coffee and cream
And the copy machine’s not working
She’s a hell of a girl
She’s alone in the world
And she likes to say "Hey good lookin’"
She’s on her way
She’s taking a sick day

Soon

TYPO3 Usability Survey

Posted on April 10, 2007

If you’re a TYPO3 user, you should take the TYPO3 Usability Survey to let the developers know how they can make future versions easier to use. Since the biggest problem with TYPO3 is its God-awful learning curve, anything that might improve usability is worthy of note.

TaxACT

Posted on April 9, 2007

I’ve used this space to bitch about tax software in the past, so it’s only fair to give kudos when I find a product that doesn’t suck. Thankfully, one exists: TaxACT.

TaxACT’s Web-based product is reasonably priced ($16 to file both Federal and one state return), works fine in Firefox on Linux, handles weird tax situations like reporting Schedule K-1 income with alacrity, and gives you nice PDFs of all your tax documents for archiving when you’re done. Plus there’s no software to install, so you don’t end up with old tax software cluttering up your system, and you always have the latest version. And they have a clear privacy policy, which I always appreciate.

If you have tons of investments to itemize, TaxACT might not be for you; but for the average return, it’s all you need.

Have You Checked Out the JWM Linkblog?

Posted on April 5, 2007

It occurs to me that it’s been a while since I reminded readers about the Just Well Mixed linkblog.

The linkblog is a kind of daily supplement to JWM. Every morning, I scan through the headlines from more than 300 sites and online news outlets. (Thanks to the magic of RSS, this only takes me about 10 minutes.)

When I find an interesting article, I post it to the JWM linkblog.  That means that you could look at the linkblog as a kind of daily recommended reading list — I pick through the Web and find the good stuff for you.

And to make life even easier, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the linkblog, and get my daily recommendations right in your feed reader. It doesn’t get any easier than that. And of course, the linkblog is free.

If you want to read the linkblog, just point your browser to http://del.icio.us/jalefkowit.  And the address of the feed is http://del.icio.us/rss/jalefkowit.

Enjoy!

Shorter Bill O’Reilly

Posted on April 4, 2007

When Iran violates the Geneva Conventions, that’s a crime and we should all be very angry with them.

When America violates the Geneva Conventions, anyone who criticizes our doing so "hates America".

See for yourself: