“There’s nothing on [television] worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet.”
Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, to his children. In the 1930s.
I want this flashlight
[1]: http://www.surefire.com/maxexp/main/co_disp/displ/prrfnbr/889/sesent/00
[2]: http://www.surefire.com/maxexp/main/co_disp/displ/carfnbr/0/prrfnbr/251
[3]: http://www.surefire.com/maxexp/main/co_disp/displ/carfnbr/0/prrfnbr/685
Oooo.
Independence Day sends me looking for flashlights. When I went to the various drawers this year, they were gone. Blasted kids. So plainly I need a [new one][1]. And one that can generate 65 lumens – enough to stop an attacker – must certainly be the ticket. And with [this addition][2] it can generate 120 lumens. Oh my. Apparently this brand is popular with police and military. Yeah, while you’re there, get me some [batteries][3], too, please.
How much is my blog worth?
[1]: http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/
According to [this][1] it’s worth $1,693.62. Isn’t that funny. I remember checking about three months ago and it was worth $0.00. So at this rate, I’ll be worth millions soon.
It must be the rapier wit, piercing political insights, deep philosophical challenges, and world-moving technology assessments. Or a broken algorithm.
I fixed my WordPress permalink problem
You didn’t even know I had one, did you?
Permalinks are (in part) simply web page links that make a little more sense when you read them than index.php?p=123 does. I’m running my site on a Mac running system 10.4 (Tiger) and Apache, PHP, and MySQL (a combination sometimes referred to as MAMP). Anyway, WordPress 2 wouldn’t operate when I turned Permalinks on. “Access to / is forbidden or not allowed.”
It turns out that I needed to get Options FollowSymLinks in the .htaccess file. WordPress doesn’t add it when turning on Permalinks, but it seems to be required. They must assume it’s a pretty standard default, but it is not default on a Mac, apparently. Indeed, you’ll need to update /etc/httpd/users/(your-user).conf to AllowOverride All (or more secure would be AllowOverride to just the specific things you need) to have Permalinks work, too.
Novovirus (or how a typo can make you popular)
[1]: http://www.kpmartin.com/2006/02/27/so-theyre-calling-it-novovirus/
[2]: http://www.kpmartin.com/2006/06/28/world-novovirus-headquarters/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwalk_virus
Why were so many people searching for “novovirus”, sometimes called the cruise ship sickness, and finding my blog? I [posted about it once][1], barely mentioning it. Recently, I even [posted my wonderment about the phenomenon][2].
Well, I figured it out. It’s not no**v**ovirus, it’s no**r**ovirus. I misspelled it. And so were all those searchers.
So all of you hapless wanderers in search of hope concerning your stomach woes and un-swallowing, start looking [here][3], and good luck.
I think I’m so smart
[1]: http://www.helenmartin.com/?p=114
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield
[3]: http://www.tapecase.com/tc/3Minfo.asp?3Mtype=688&3Mdb=3MINDBUSRELPROD
My [Lovely Bride’s post about me][1] peaked a smidgen of curiosity, so I’ve decided to tell a wonderfully embarrassing story about myself.
I hate a dirty windshield. My nice little gumball of a Nissan Sentra had an ever-dirty windshield. It drove me nuts. Seriously. As you will see.
I decided it was all the drive-through, no-touch car washes I’d been putting it through. That it had built up a bunch of cheap wax where wax shouldn’t be. No matter how well I Windex-ed the windshield or how new the wiper blades were, the blades hopped along noisily when activated, and left streaks and smears in their wake. Not so bad that anyone else would care much. But it drove me nuts.
To prove my insanity, I hatched a plan. I was going to scrub the windshield free of any waxy residue. With what? Well, I heard somewhere that glass is harder than brass, so I though a [“non-stick safe” 3M scrubbie pad][3] would certainly be softer yet. And I may have been right. But my [missing fact][1] was that windshields are not just glass. They are [coated with plastic][2]. That’s what actually makes them “safety glass” and keeps the glass from flying around in an accident.
Well, armed with my disillusion, I attacked the windshield. I soaped it up and very gently swirled and swirled with my scrubbie pad. Bubbles grew. It smelled good. I grabbed the hose and rinsed… off… the…
I still think it was the waxy build up. The wipers didn’t hop or leave streaks after that. And what I did could actually have been considered artistic in some sense. Very lightly scratched into the whole windshield were swirls and swirls which interacted with nighttime lights in the most psychedelic ways. Haunting me – mocking me – every night thereafter; whispering “idiot”.
Alan Fine for Congress? I take it back.
[1]: http://www.fineforcongress.org/
[2]: http://www.fineforcongress.org/Position%20Papers.htm
[3]: http://www.kpmartin.com/?p=108
Well, I think I do. Oh, I don’t know. *Sigh.* Politics.
I decided to look [more carefully][2] through [Alan Fine’s website][1]. Wow. He’s running as a Republican, but really I can’t see why. He appears to be quite solidly a fiscally conservative Democrat. Which may be the only shot a “Republican” has to get into office in the Minnesota’s 5th District. But… wow.
He’s running against [Keith Ellison (DFL)][3]. What would I do if I lived in Minneapolis? Boy, sometimes this representative republic thing doesn’t give you much for choices.
What do you do? Do you hold your nose and vote for the person closest to your views, no matter how far that is? Do you stay home?
A line from “The Quiet Man”
In solemn warning: “Two women in the house, and one of them a red-head.”
Indeed.
Have a nice Independence Day weekend!
[1]: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/14943697.htm
[2]: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?book=3386673&mode=card
[3]: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Johnny%20Dollar%20AND%20mediatype%3Aaudio%20AND%20collection%3Aoldtimeradio
It was pretty funny to watch my site statistics take an abrupt drop mid-Friday. It’s vacation time!
I worked a half-day yesterday, and in the morning the roads were wide open. Always a sure sign of a holiday weekend or a state employee strike. But I ended my half-day in Chaska, about 30 miles from home. I gave the pressmen a chuckle as they weren’t used to a designer’s client who knew what to do with a loupe. I took secondary freeways home, mostly Hwy 13, and made great time through my old stomps. And as I passed over I-94, I saw an absolute parking lot. Packed!
An hour later we were on our way to see Anna’s ballet program and it was still packed. It turns out there was a reason beyond the sheer volume of people undergoing ritual holiday city evacuation:
> The accident [on I-94] happened when the container truck hit a retaining wall on the right side of the roadway, ricocheted across three lanes of traffic and struck the median barrier, McDermott said. The truck jumped the median into eastbound traffic, and the front axle was torn off. The axle crashed into a Coca-Cola semitrailer, which caught fire.
>
> From [The Pioneer Press this morning][1]
That must have been exciting to drive immediately behind. Can you even imagine the concentration of grumpiness and sullen injustice over those preceding many miles of I-94. Many of these folks taking a half day, running home to get the boat, the wife, and the kids (in that order) and “hitting the road early to beat the traffic”. Foiled, hot (it was very uncomfortable yesterday) and left burning up their too expensive gas going nowhere. For hours. Because of one truck driver. I hope he didn’t have a heart attack or anything. But I shudder to think of the mob judgement that would have been meted out had it been discovered that he was just IM’ing on his mobile phone.
But, me? I’m happy as a clam. Well, happier I hope, as I’m not consigned to spend my life sitting in cool murk until someone comes along and rips my mouth open for a tasty treat and a chance at a prize; nature’s original Cracker Jacks. Instead, I get a nice long weekend. I do have a little work to do, and I’m teaching on Sunday, so there’s some studying to do. A little home improvement. A little Greek. Should be a good weekend.
Here are my hints for a nice Independence Day weekend:
– Don’t say “fourth of July”. Say “Independence Day”.
– Watch Mel Gibson in *The Patriot* to get a little feel why the above might be proper.
– Otherwise, have the TV off.
– Read *[1776][2]*. It’s truly fantastic.
– Go see some fireworks. It’s a light bug year.
– Eat a lot. Fat tastes good.
– Sleep late. Unless you work for any retail outlet I might like to visit, in which case you’d better be there on time and you’d better be cheerful.
– Listen to *[Johnny Dollar][3]*. No, it has nothing to do with the American Revolution, but I’m addicted, so you may as well be, too.
LibraryThing
[1]: http://www.flickr.com/
[2]: http://del.icio.us/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags
[4]: http://books.aetherial.net/wordpress/
[5]: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=kpmartin&shelf=shelf&sort=ratingREV
[6]: http://www.librarything.com/
I know my readers include both those who will yawn at this as old news, and those who’ve never heard of such a thing, but in the spirit of [flickr.com][1], [del.icio.us][2] and similar “social” web offerings, I went ahead and started to set up a [LibraryThing][6] [account][5].
Pretty neat stuff. You’re able to have a very nice catalog of all your books, and you can cross-reference with the other members of LibraryThing, seeing who else has that obscure “Gospel Worship” by Jeremiah Burroughs, and then browsing their library for similar books you might find interesting.
Also, the site uses keywords (or [tags][3]) instead of as well as categories, which means where a book may fall under one major category, you may think of it in more than one context. For example, a book on Fort Sumter may be rigidly classified “history”, but I can keyword it “history, South Carolina, Places I’ve Visited”, “American Revolution” and find it more easily in the ways I think about it.
I can use a barcode scanner (which I got off eBay for less than $20) to enter books into it with one swipe. (The barcode scanner also works with nice, non-web-based software like [Books][4].)
Anyway, [visit and peruse the beginnings of my library][5]. It’s fun. Many of the books that I’ve entered are actually books that I’ve packed away (there were entered by Kenny before they went into the box) so they’re not necessarily my favorite books, but it’s still kinda fun.