X Marks the Spot

Hollowmen . Net

Racist and Ignorant McCain/Palin Supporters in Ohio — I ran across a couple of interesting blog posts in which some enterprising bloggers (Blogger Interrupted and BlueOhioan) got their cameras out and asked people standing in line for a McCain Palin rally in Ohio what they thought about Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin. It’s truly scary. I don’t mean like kind of scary like Halloween, I mean really truly terrifying like Nazi Germany.
Racist, Fascist and Lying Their Heads Off — McCain is behind in the polls because he has no real plan for the average citizen and Obama does and anyone that’s paying the least bit of attention knows it. So how does the McCain campaign react? Do they get their shit together and come up with a plan other than “the heels are on, the gloves are off?”
Spoonamore Reveals the Plan to Steal the 2008 Presidential Election — It may be crazy — or then again maybe not. I guess we will see come November 5th when all the “votes” are in.
Why Conservatives are OK with Palin Not Talking to the Media — Found on reddit and written by marko34. I don’t think I could have summed this up more concisely.
The American Republic will endure until… — “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Which one is the Elitist? — Talk about fucking ridiculous. The GOP continues to make Obama out to be an elitist and yet he lives relatively humbly while McCain can’t even remember how many homes he owns at times.
The Blind, the Clueless, and the Mentally Disturbed vote McCain/Palin — I can’t help myself - I have to say it. Anyone, anyone at all, who votes for McCain/Palin is either blind to the truth, utterly clueless when it comes to their claims or mentally disturbed and living in a universe where supernatural entities exist.
GOP Convention Spin (a.k.a. GOP Bull Elephant Shit) — Here are some nice untruths and outright lies that that GOP is trying to fool people with.
$400 haircuts vs. $520 Italian leather loafers — If I were a right-wing blogger, and I found out that Barack Obama was wearing Ferragamo loafers that cost $520, I would spend about 50% of my waking hours making sure everyone knew this.

23Systems

FLIR for WordPress 0.8.0 — FLIR 0.8.0 release notes
WordPress Developer’s Toolbox — An extremely comprehensive list of sites, tools, tutorials, tips and tricks for WordPress developers
This site looks awful in IE 6, but FLIR works — A brief bit about FLIR bugs in IE6
Lightbox Plus and FLIR, Projects and Frameworks — Various projects and the like that were pecolating
FLIR for WordPress — Announcement for Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) for WordPress
10 Ways to Save Time While Building a Website — Tips and tricks for expedient web development
14 of the Most Useful Web Design Blogs — Useful links for web designers
End of Life for PHP 4 — PHP4 Has reached the end of support
Theme Bugs — A bit about some bugs with some of my themes

Also at 23Systems:

Lightbox Plus

A WordPress plugin which implements Lightbox JS from Lokesh Dhakar. This plugin automatically enhances image links in WordPress to use Lightbox to display images in an overlay.

Actionable

A WordPress plugin to create a checklist of actionable items for users. Final release not yet available. You can try out the beta. Expected release date is 9/16/08.

Facelift Image Replacement

Facelift Image Replacment is a script that generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that visitors would not be able to see.

Here are the most recent posts from the collective.

23Systems

Lightbox Plus - I just finished version 1.0 of Lightbox Plus, a WordPress plugin that is used to create overlay images for display on a web page. You can download it and get support on the Lightbox Plus page.

Hollow Men

UPDATED - House Judiciary Votes to Cite Karl Rove for Contempt - The House Judiciary Committee, voting along party lines, had elected to push the motion for contempt to the full House of Representatives
John McCain, the new Ronald Reagan? - McCain's inability to either tell the truth or remember what he said the day before.
FOX News Outed as Mouthpiece for Bush Administration - It should probably read: FOX News Outed as Mouth of Sauron. Not particularly surprising.
Americans Have Become a Bunch of Lazy, Worthless Citizens - Former U.S. presidential candidate Al Gore delivered a speech on Americas future energy needs in Washington, D.C. Commentary on how Americans could solve our energy problems if we wanted to but will probably just go along with big business.
Houses votes 238 to 180, including 9 Republicans voting yea, to move forward an impeachment resolution - 9 Republicans broke ranks the party to put country first, voting to send Rep. Dennis Kucinichs article of impeachment HR 1345 to the Judiciary

Basic Roleplaying

Basic Roleplaying Supplements - Nick managed to get a post up about recent supplements for Basic Roleplaying from Chaosium.

MetaMythos

Steve Perrins Quest Rules (SPQR) - Steve Perrin creator of the original RuneQuest rules has recommenced working on his latest rules system. If you are a subscriber now would be a good time to remind him.

Son of Posts from the Collective brings a slew of recent posts by me on various blogs I run or contribute to. Here's the rundown:

Basic Roleplaying . Net

Chaos Project Update
BRP Review - Someday
BRP is on the Truck

Also Nick had a couple of recent posts on Basic Roleplaying as well

Character Sheets
After the Scouring - The Way Forward
It's Out!

MetaMythos . Net

D&D 4th Edition Game System License and System Reference Document are Available!
The 20-Sided Die

The Hollow Men

ACLU Challenges Unconstitutional Spying Law
Liberty and FISA Amendments Act of 2008
Petition Against Fox's Racist & Hate-Filled Smears
FISA Passes Senate
Kerry: McCain's judgment "dangerous"
An Open Letter To Senator Obama: Vote NO On Telecom Immunity
Bandwidth Barons Want More Money for Fewer Bytes
The Constitution Dies Tomorrow
John Hagee: Idiot or Genius?

Here are my latest posts from the various blogs and site I contribute to:

Basic Roleplaying . Net

Basic Roleplaying Release Date and Cover - Chaosium announces Basic Roleplaying release date and cover.
The Chaos Project - Information about Peter Maranci's Chaos Project.
New and Improved Basic Roleplaying . Net - Basic Roleplaying . Net has undergone a rebuild and re-imaging.

MetaMythos

Basic Roleplaying Release Date and Cover - Cross posted from above.
PCGen Beta (5.13.11) - Information about the beta-test of the latest version of PCGen for d20 character generation
My Life With Master - A preview of a unique roleplaying game about being the servant of a master in the sense of Igor to Dr. Frankenstein.
Basic Roleplaying Advanced Readers’ Copy a.k.a. BRP Edition Zero - Preview edition of Basic Roleplaying.

Hollowmen

Practical Politics - H. L. Mencken always has something insightful to say about politics.

Also I have redone my wife's gallery site using WordPress

An Online Gallery of Melanie Sallis’ Artwork

Here are the latest posts from the blog collection I manage:

MetaMythos

Gary Gygax Co-Creator of Dungeons and Dragons Passes Away
Posting Issues

Hollow Men

March 4th Primaries
The Fantasy Years
Election Year

Technologue

“Some look at the world and ask why? I dream of things and ask why not?”

The World According to Nouns

The Road (Not Quite a Review)
i cannot continue with such insidious memory

I just wrote a Not Quite A Review of The Road.

Also posted on MetaMythos Sub-Cult of Humakt Truthseeker (RQ3) and Societal Domains (d20).

Well I'm in a good mood, not too tired, work is slow today and so here I am posting. Plus I'm listening to hypnotic Stereolab.

Anyway here's the story so far...

Twins are doing well. Nikolai and Darius slowly seem to be settling into a routine and we got some overnight help for a couple of nights a week so getting some sleep will be in the stars. Darius seems to have a bit of some sort of colic but not too bad. At first we thought it was of the acid reflux variety but now we are of the mind that he is just very sensitive. Overall thought they are becoming easier to manage and they are smiling and cooing when they are awake and happy. It’s hard with two to give a lot of attention to one or the other because well chances are that one of the two needs something concrete like food or diaper change. Melanie (msallis) has been pretty good about letting me sleep as late as possible but that's not very later. Roman is as usual a charming child and has been very good with the babies but at times is attention starved due mainly to the sheer amount to maintenance required by the wee laddies. I'll post some pictures soon, I havne't any with me.

Work is work and so that goes. Not much to say there but I hope that sometime I'll be able to get something outside work started. For those who don't know I am the Web Systems Manager (basically a webmaster with more responsibility, and I don't make the kind of money I should according to Salary.com though I did get a small raise recently) at Active Power. Please note that I if you view the website from the link I am not happy with the design but I got over-ruled by the VP of marketing and Marcom Director.

We’ve had a lot of family on town recently. My brother his wife and their little one are on town for about a month and then they are moving to Australia. She is from there, Geelong specifically, though they are moving to Perth for a bit where her parents are currently residing. During their visit my grandmother has come to visit from Seattle. My Dad will be here for a week starting next Saturday and I'm looking forward to seeing him.

The IRS thinks I owe them money from 2005 and I’m not sure I don’t but I don't think I do. But this is irritating, I want a national sales tax with no tax breaks for the rich or corporations so that those who spend more pay more. I swear the onus of taxes should not be on the individual it’s such a pain in the ass and waste of time. It probably won’t matter soon anyway. Once our fascists in charge attack Iran China will tank the dollar and we’ll all be screwed financially. Well it was a good 200 plus year run ("God forbid...")I guess.

Gaming is virtually non-existent for me. I'd like to do run or play a role playing games but it seems to be simple out of the question right now. I have been able to squeeze in some computer games (in the middle of the night) mostly Overlord and Company of Heroes which both have been a lot of fun - the key being that I can pause them to take care of a baby.

I’m working on an RPG site with bobquasit and several others that should be out and about on the web soon. It’s focus is Basic Roleplaying, Chaosium’s d100 System. I’m just awaiting a second IP address so I can configure the DNS server correctly.

I’ve been trying to get things sorted so I can work on the following projects I have in mind:

• Write an open source CMS system that does what I want (lightweight, modular, and hierarchical.)


• Finish screenplay and begin shooting noir horror film.


• Write one micro fiction story a week and post to my personal blog (52 in one year! and as of this posting the site isn't working because I'm moving it.)


• Work with Melanie (msallis) to try our hand at web service bureau offering design, implementation and development.


• Go to the beach and Port Aransas before it gets cold and in between tropical storms.


• Play in or run a game using the d100 system


• Write up a campaign setting for d100 based on a magical apocalypse idea that's been floating around in my head for a while.

I’ve also been contemplating the idea of life as a simulation. Which is definitely a possibility but I am more inclined to think that the universe is a huge quantum computer ala David Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality and more specifically the Church-Turing thesis.

This is brief.  I haven't posted because we are overwhelmingly busy.  Things should slow down somewhat eventually and then I will be able to get some sleep and some free time.

Cause of business: twins, 3.5 y/o, work.

I do think of you all often.

Did I mention how incredibly busy we are?

This is crazy.

After having every test available done it appears that my heart is physically sound, blood flow is complete unobstructed and electrically I am actually having less unusual beats than the average person. No heart palpitations to speak of. This is good.

Theories are as follows in no particular order:

1. I am having some sort of acid reflux thing.
2. Because I have been under a lot of stress I am just overly aware of my heart beat and since I have a lot of adrenaline due to stress I can feel my heart beating harder sometimes - this is normal.
3. I have been having panic attacks of varying degrees.
4. I'm losing my mind
5. Some combination of the above.

Personally I am of the opinion that it is primarily the second  and third options.

Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts.

Last Wednesday night, Thursday morning (5/31) I laid down to sleep and started to have sporadic heartbeat irregularities. Now I occasionally get a skipped or doubled beat. But these were happening every few minute an not going away so after a couple of hours of not being able to sleep and getting more anxious by the minute I decided to go to the emergency room. I got there at about 1:30 or 1:45 in the morning. After I got there I didn't have any more... for a while. I had an EKG and two x-rays and was hooked up to some sort of monitor that measure heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate and oxygen level. Talked to the doctor who was a most amusing young Indian women who talked like a waitress at a roadside diner in West Texas. All of which were good - until about 3:05 am when the palpitations started up again. Just so you know palpitations are pretty much defined as any sort of irregular heart beat (double beat, skipped beat, PVC, tachycardia, bradycardia). Mostly I was having double beats. I couldn't sleep, though I desperately wanted to and as I was laying there I tracked the times when my heart did weird things. These are the times I marked down 3:05, 3:23, 3:24, 3:27, 3:42, 3:53, 3:56 twice, 3:58, 4:01, 4:08, 4:41, 4:42, 4:46, 4:49, 4:51, 4:52, 4:57 twice, 5:00 twice, 5:02, 5:05, 5:06 twice, 5:09 twice, 5:10, 5:12 thrice, 5:13 thrice, 5:14. Finally the doctor came back. She said that it was likely stress and nothing life threatening as none of the palpitations were in sequence. At this point I just wanted to sleep and stress could definitely be it as most of you know the Melanie and I are having twins soon and we are trying to get everything together for them and Melanie also was suffering from a fierce sinus infection and we just remodeled our house and I’m working full time and trying to help Melanie out and we have a three years old who is increasingly demanding and I don’t get enough sleep and I don’t eat right and I was having trouble quitting smoking (meaning I was smoking again) and so on… So the doctor gave me a prescription for 10 Xanax (0.5mg) to help with the stress/anxiety in the short term. I got home around 6:30 am and Roman was up already and I’d been up for 24 hours. Finally I got to sleep at around 8:00am after helping Melanie get Roman ready for school.

At 12:00 noon Melanie woke me up because she was in such pain from the sinus infection she had that she got an appointment with our family doctor. So I drove her down there. I guess I was feeling ok – at least I had gotten some sleep. In the afternoon I went to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled and Melanie’s antibiotic prescription as well. I was still having the occasional palpitations and they seemed to become more frequent in the evening and while eating. I was becoming more anxious by the minute. I was sad and scared at the same time. I’m not really afraid of dying in and of itself and by myself but I am saddened that if I were to die I’d leave Melanie and Roman and our soon to be twins alone. I really don’t want to do that. I was telling Melanie all of this and I told her how I wasn’t able to quit smoking. Which I was starting to have serious withdrawal symptoms from not smoking at this point including such lovelies as anxiety, lightheadedness, tingling etc. I was also have other weird sensations like I had a fever (hot flashes, chills) but I didn’t (more about this later.) Finally Melanie asked me if I’d taken a Xanax which I hadn’t. So I took one and put Roman to bed and fell asleep with him after reading a couple of books to him. I felt pretty happy at that point, not because of the Xanax but it’s pretty nice to be able to read to and be close to your little one when you aren’t feeling well. Thus ended Thursday.

Somewhere in there I moved into our bed and was awaked early in the morning on Friday by Roman. He curled up and went to sleep with us and I fell back to sleep for a while. Finally we all got up and I took Roman to school because Melanie was still feeling pretty bad. When I got back home the palpitations started up again and seemed to be getting more frequent which just made me more anxious. I called my mom to let her know what was going on and she offered to take me back to the emergency room. So I said yes, let’s go, and Melanie would be able to rest some more. I felt sure I was going to be admitted to the hospital at this point. Let me say also that the ER that I went to both times is located at the hospital where my mom works. Anyway, the palpitations stopped as soon as I got in the car to go to the ER. So I went to the ER and had my vitals checked and elected to leave because there was nothing for them to see. The rest of Friday is kind of a blur. I think I slept some more in the afternoon with Melanie. Picked Roman up from school. Talked to my brother and dad to let them know what was going on. Put Roman to bed and fell into blissful and thoughtless sleep. I’ve been having sporadic palpitations for two days at this point. So ended Friday.

(to be continued)

Well that's it then.

I've made the jump from Win/Mac to Linux. It was high time. I've been using Linux on and off for long time now but never as my primary OS. Prior to that (e.g. before the WWW) I accessed the internet over a modem using telnet into my account on Unix and did everything there. While I find the ubiquity and availability of software for Windows to be good and the dedication to user friendliness and lovingly crafted interfaces on the Macintosh (MacBook or whatever the hell they are call now) to be good, neither OS was really doing it for me. I just like open source that much better and in any event I was trying to stick to open source or freeware for the most part anyway. What can I say, I like me some command line interfaces. I also like not having to worry so much about spyware/virii and the like or the ego of Steve Jobs telling me what kind of OS I should have. I'm even going to do my best to stick with Linux at work even though it's primarily a Mac environment. And if I really need to use something from Windows well there's always Wine or Parallels. I'm just hoping that there will be a coherence like setup for Parallells in Linux at some point. I also have to say that the amount of open source software available for Linux is really astounding.

For those interested I'm using Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) running the X Window System with GNOME desktop and Beryl window manager. The interface is so awesomely cool that Mac users will beg for the features and Windows Vista users will swoon with wonder.

This is so amazingly sad, funny and scary.  I can only shake my head when thinking about this.



Obviously it been edited to show the worst but still it doesn't bode well.  Perhaps it's an April Fool's joke.

A couple of whiles...
Until it stops being fun...

Nothing to say because I am too freaking busy to say much.  Was very glad to see cosima_sf and psykhosis while they were in town.  Looking forward to the giant web rebuild project at work being done and the giant garage conversion project being done at home so we can concentrate on on the giant project of having twins.

or What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’ S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)?

Link

It's been arctically cold since Staurday night. It's supposed to get colder still. We've had some light snow and lot's of sleet and freezing rain. Melanie and I are suffering from cabin fever along with not smoking. Here's what it looked like out there today.

I am so far less than wowed by the MacBook I have. The hardware performance is sufficient. Bootcamp will absolutely not work. The design of the product is quite nice. The operating system... well on the backend it's fine being a UNIX flavor but there are some oddities about it from an interface point of view. When I open up the hard disk I somehow don't seem to see the UNIX directories, i'm sure I can find them. Sure I can understand not showing them to Joe User from a corporate and maybe even a design perspective but since I’m pretty much an adherent to Ted Nelson's philosophy as espoused in "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" I don’t think it serve greatly to keep the user stupid. I think Apple locks the system down way too much.

As for the UI, while it looks and acts nice and slick, it is otherwise not that different from any other OS interface I have used. I’ve read many articles comparing OSX with Vista (or even XP) and frankly they aren’t radically different and in some respect Vista and XP are considerable better at a number of things. It doesn't matter who did what first. The same is true when comparing OSX or Vista/XP to KDE or Gnome on Linux. In may cases I Linux superior to both OSX and Vista.

As usual I’m rather unhappy with my ability to access hardware level features and on some cases software features especially Apple's propensity for locking people in.

Overall I just don’t see what all the fuss is about the Mac. I like it just fine but I’m also probably just a jaded and OS agnostic geek for the most part since over the past 7 years I have had to use Win2000 / XP / 2003 / Linux (KDE/Gnome/CLI) / OSX all fairly extensively in web development and frankly prefer to keep one of each handy for testing. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the Mac – I’m just saying that using the latest I still don’t think it’s anything spectacular.

Well I'm trying to be quit of smoking. I think it's easier if you are the only smoker in a relationship. Then the id of the nicotine addiction doesn't raise it's three hideous heads in the two of you and start endless clashes throughout the day.

I realize that it's only temporary, a few days to a week really. But it's sure irritating when it's happening.

This from nancynewt via Ash93

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an * asterisk beside the ones you loved.

Book Meme

1. *The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien


2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov


3. Dune, Frank Herbert


4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein


5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin


6. *Neuromancer, William Gibson


7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke


8. *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick


9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley


10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury


11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe


12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.


13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov


14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras


15. Cities in Flight, James Blish


16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett


17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison


19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester


20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany


21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey


22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card


23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson


24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman


25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl


26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling


27. *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams


28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson


29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice


30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin


31. Little, Big, John Crowley


32. *Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny


33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick


34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement


35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon


36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith


37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute


38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke


39. *Ringworld, Larry Niven


40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys


41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien


42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut


43. *Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson


44. *Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner


45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester


46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein


47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock


48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks


49. Timescape, Gregory Benford


50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer.

While I don't completely agree with this list it's still a good list of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books for someone looking for a place to get started. The list isn't entirely accurate either, The Demolished Man was published in 1951 which if memory serves me was before 1953. There are also some overlooked items and in my opinion some items that really don't qaulify as greatest, something from Greg Bear such as Eon or Blood Music and not Harry Potter for example.

As an added bonus in my post I've included links to Wikipedia for each of the entries.

Well it's Steal This Country^TM day. I'm curious if the mainstream media will continue to gloss over election fraud and voter manipulation. I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the election process at this point. I do not trust electronic voting machines - never have - as a programmer I know what can go wrong and that's without people deliberately adding code that might be used to manipulate votes. I don't like that I can't get a paper receipt of my choices. Hell anything I order online and can print out a receipt for. Anything I buy at a store I can get a receipt for. But something as important as voting - "Nope, sorry pal, you're out of luck. Just trust us." Yeah, right.

No transparency means no trust in my eyes. As things stand now, voting is a privilege. It should probably be mandatory for everyone over the age of eighteen. At least that should be the case in national elections, hence the will of the people. When elections are won based on who can market their candidate better and move people to vote based on that marketing determines the turnout there's something seriously wrong with this basic premise of a democratic republic. Failing the marketing campaign there's always the possibility of just altering you non-transparent, receipt-less electronic vote.

I am extremely disgusted with the amount of corruption in our government. There is so much I can't even keep track of it all. The level of hypocrisy that the Republicans have managed to attain alone should be cause for their being voted out of office, or in some cases jailed. No sane person should even consider voting for any of them at this point. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Now I'm not saying the Democrats don't have problems - no one party could ever come close representing me but the Democrats are generally closer than the Republicans at this point.

Its obvious that a two party system is not working. Vote for the lesser of two evils. Meh. I want some freaking choices here people! I want to be able to elect candidates that arent politicians, but rather statesmen. I want to see the money taken out of their pockets. I want to choose someone who, really cares about the environment. I want to elect a scientist. I want religion out of politics. I want to elect candidates who have a long view. I want to elect someone who doesnt care about politics. I want to elect no one.