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New user? Wednesday, November 29, 2000
Salon.com Politics | Miami's rent-a-riot
Salon.com Politics: Miami's rent-a-riot
"GOP spokespeople have said that at least 750 Republican activists have been sent into South Florida from around the country to oppose the recount, with the party picking up the tab for a number of them."
Dear Rebuplican,
How proud are you to read that senior Republicans are responsible for causing riots?
This is absolutely pathetic.
Unbreakable
Last night I saw the movie Unbreakable. Go see it.
Wow. That movie was right up my alley. I want to say so much about that movie, but telling you my story now would spoil the movie for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet.
Perhaps I'll write the story up on a separate page, and put a big spoiler alert on the top of that page.
BTW, don't read ANYTHING about the movie anywhere until you've seen it. I had the movie half-spoiled for me by a news-site that didn't announce it was giving information about the movie when talking about next year's Oscars, I'd hate to see others fall into that trap.
Unbreakable is now my #2 all time favourite movie, right behind The Matrix. #3 is Fight Club, #4 is ... I think, Gladiator.
Lindros is facing a lot more than just 'risks
Lindros is facing a lot more than just 'risks
Hold on a second, read this paragraph about a former NFL'er with post-concussion problems:
"Some days I have good days, other days I don't. I might have a headache all day long. I might have blurred vision. I might have involuntary muscle twitches in my leg or with my eyelid. Sometimes when I am trying to communicate, I have trouble with word retrieval. Other times, my speech slows."
Umm..
Sometimes I have blurred vision (not too bad though). I have involuntary muscle twitches in my leg, very infrequently, but very often with my eyelid. Lately (since I burned myself out in October working over 250 hours in less than 3 weeks) I've had trouble with word retrieval, and other times, my speech slows.
What the fuck? I knew things weren't quite normal but could I be suffering from something close to post-concussion syndrome as a result of my burnout?
Internet Wasteland
Holy crap. Even At Home (-87.3%), Earthlink (-82.0%), Inktomi (-88.2%), RedHat (-95.5%), Vignette (-82.2%), Walt Disney Internet Group (-85.0%) and Yahoo! (-84.7%) are on this list of 211 companies that have lost 80% or more of their value from their 52 week high.
Good thing I didn't invest in any stocks directly. (Sorry to those who did)
My mutual funds were up big time thanks to SciTech funds earlier this year... that growth is likely gone by now. Good thing I'm diversified.
Templates in Conversant
Today I read about Jason Levine's new Manila plug-in, altTemplate. Finally, Manila sites can have more than one template (okay, two with the home page template)!
Not to suggest Jason's work isn't valuable or appreciated, because it is, but I'm sure Jason would agree that allowing multiple templates in a CMS is hardly a thriller of a feature. More like, why the hell did it take so long, and why did a 3rd party have to do it?
A flexible templating scheme is something Conversant, which this site is based on, has had since the beginning. Not as many people know about Conversant, so to the power users who find multiple templates appealing, here's how it's done in Conversant.
Some pictures to illustrate...
Each conversation (ie: DG, web-site, sub-site) has a list of templates that are editable in the administration interface. Here's a listing of the templates in the this conversation.
Here's what you get when you click on the "weblogs2" link to edit that template... (note these images are all cropped, this is only the important parg of the page)
In Conversant's Structure Editor (where you define the pages and folders in your site), you can choose a default template at the root level of your site that will apply to all pages in the site unless a different template is specifically chosen for a sub-folder or page.
In this conversation, the default2 template is applied to the root folder (not shown), but I've chosen the weblogs2 template for the home page since it has special elements like the "last updated" line and the weblog archive calendar.
When you don't want to specify a custom template for a particular page, you leave the "Template" option of the page to its default setting: "use parent folder template".
I'm glad Manila site operators can now have multiple templates per site too... it's a great feature for any respectable CMS to have.
Tuesday, November 28, 2000
Growing up, Canada style
Sometimes I wish I was still living in Edmonton. It usually doesn't take long for me to convince myself otherwise, but every once in a while something new reminds me how special it is to live in the frozen north.
This morning I was watching Caillou with my daughter. There's an episode where Cailliou's parents begin to teach Caillou how to skate. They're on an outdoor ice rink surrounded by snow drifts... the good ole' fashioned Canadian way to skate.
It really really bothers me that my daughter won't be able to experience that here in Victoria.
I think we'll take a winter vacation to Edmonton so we can expose her to Canadian winter play.
Judge orders sex.com returned to owner
CNN.com: Judge orders sex.com returned to owner
The article suggests sex.com might be the most valuable domain name in the world.
HA! Everyone knows the real most valuable domain in the world is nodootabootit.ca, owned by yours truly! ;-)
Russian party boy secludes himself in Web experiment
CNN.com: Russian party boy secludes himself in Web experiment
At first I thought he had pledged to stay inside his whole life; I missed the "for three weeks" part. It's going to be a long 3 weeks for that vegan.
Dutch MPs legalise mercy killings
BBC: Dutch MPs legalise mercy killings
Once again the Dutch are way ahead of the pack socially.
Canada shows U.S. how to count votes right
Canada shows U.S. how to count votes right
I think the U.S. already knows how to count votes right. The problem seems to be counting votes left.
BTW, I voted for a right-wing party so don't call me a leftist, unless you're referring to me being left-handed! Call me a believer in fairness. Maybe that makes me a naive idealist... so be it.
Monday, November 27, 2000
Right to complain
Tonight I voted for my right to complain about politics and the situation created by government in Canada.
My opinion is, if a person doesn't vote they shouldn't complain about what the government does or doesn't do.
I didn't know enough about any of the candidates, so I voted for the one that shared a particular view of mine. I don't know enough about that person to know if we agree on any other things.
It is absolutely my fault for not knowing enough about the candidates. Sure, they could have helped by talking to me, but none did. One candidate at least had a person knock on my door and hand me a pamphlet, but I didn't vote for that person anyway. (Sorry, but thanks for trying!)
I guess I didn't care enough to spend time forcing myself to learn about the candidates. I had the time.
However, the parties spent their time attacking each other instead of communicating their platforms... it's pretty sad, and I know this turned me off, it's why I didn't spend time learning the platforms.
At least our ballot was completely understandable, and uniform across the entire country.
Oh, and we hand count every ballot. And there was recount and chad humour from some of the elected candidates. hehe
