Ranting and Roaring

Only a few hours left to buy BlogMatrix Jäger at the low introductory price of 15 US. I’d probably buy it myself if I lived more than 1% of my life in Windows…

Please ignore — Bono.

Please ignore the post — bonoxide.

Saw any last minutes posts you liked by Canadian bloggers? Mail them to Jen at Circadian Shift for tomorrow’s Carnival of the Canucks!

Interested in hosting a Carnival? Send me a note or leave a message in the comments section.

Just a reminder that the price of Jäger is going up to $15 tomorrow, so if you’re considering purchasing it, now’s a good time to do it.

As you can see, I’m back to super early mornings again. Sigh. Rather exciting weekend: we had Trinity-Anne’s 3rd birthday party yesterday. Mom and Dad flew up from Newfoundland, my sister Jacqui came in from Halifax. We had 20 or so kids and 40 or so adults.

On Saturday and Sunday we had are first major regatta of the year: the Shark Trillium. That’s us there in 6th place (out of 36 boats). To put that in perspective, two of the boats ahead of us are professionals, three of them are world champions, at least one (and probably more) of them are Canadian champions.

Next weekend I relax.

I now have a Mac G4 with 10.3 sitting on the floor of my office. I’m getting a monitor for it tomorrow.

Entries with a “*” are new to 1.2. I’ll probably be editing this entry somewhat over the next week.

• Syndication formats supported – syndication allows Jäger to efficiently find out what exactly has been changed on a webpage.
  • Atom
  • RSS .9
  • RSS/RDF 1
  • RSS 2
• Syndication alternatives – for sites that don’t have syndication feeds:
  • Find changes in links
  • Find changes in links and read the webpage at the link
  • Look for content changes:
    • By HTTP If-Modified-Since/ETag:
    • By checksum on content
  • Only show page at set time of day
• Synchronization – run Jäger on different machines and have them all be aware of what’s already been read. Synchronization is done using an FTP server controlled by the user.
• Three views of your weblogs, individually controllable
  • All Weblogs List – everything that you’re subscribing to
  • Recently Update Weblogs List – things that you haven’t read yet
  • *Favorite Weblogs List – a version of Recently Updated Weblogs that lists only weblogs that have been marked as favorites
• View Control
  • Number of entries shown
    • Don’t show individual entries of a weblog
    • Show only “some” (5) entries from a weblog
    • Show all entries from a weblog (in the Recently Updated and Favorite Weblog Lists, “all entries” means entries you haven’t seen already)
  • Indicating you have finished reading weblogs:
    • Click again on the Recently Updated or Favorite Weblogs Lists will clear weblogs you have already read (Also: Actions > Skip Read Weblogs)
    • Power user mode: select View > Skip After Reading. When
  • Sorting
    • Sort weblog alphabetically
    • Sort weblogs by update time
  • Categories (see below for a description of Categories)
    • Don’t show categories
    • Only weblogs in the “active” Category – i.e. the most recently double-clicked on
    • Show weblogs in all Categories
  • *Increase or Decrease the size of the font used by Jäger
  • Keep Jäger on top of other windows
• Categories. Every weblog/news sources belongs to a Category, which allows you to group similar websites together.
  • Change the Category of a weblog by Actions > Categories > (Category)
  • Create new Categories by Actions > Categories > Add Category…
  • Unsubscribe to weblogs in bulk by selecting the Category and doing Actions > Unsubscribe. A dialog will let you select exactly which weblogs you wish to unsubscribe to.
• Weblog and entry control
  • Unsubscribe to an individual weblog by Actions > Unsubscribe.
  • *Mark a weblog as a “favorite” (Actions > Mark as > Favorite Weblog). Favorite weblogs are displayed
  • *Hide a weblog (Actions > Mark as > Hidden Weblog). Hidden weblogs are not exported to your Blogroll or OPML.
  • Pin a weblog or entry to the Recently Updated/Favorite Weblogs List (Actions > Mark as > Pinned to List). Pinned items stay on these lists even after they have been read.
  • Keep the entries in a weblog listed (Actions > Mark as > Keep Entries Listed). This overrides the View control that says “don’t show entries”.
  • *List only entries that have been found by a Watch List (Actions > Mark as > List only Watched Entries)
• *Watch Lists – find entries that interest you on a per-weblog, per-category or all-weblog basis (Actions > Watch List)
  • Easy-to-use search format, like certain popular search engines
  • Entries are marked with the color of your choice
  • Creating new Watch List rules is easy with the Watch List Wizard (Actions > Watch List > Watch List Wizard), OR select text in your browser and drag to Jäger
• *Filters – Remove keyword selected posts, OR only keep keyword selected posts. Actions > Weblog Settings … > Filters
• OPML
  • Import by dragging OPML link onto Jäger or using Actions > Subscribe…
  • Export by using Actions > Tools > Export Blogroll and OPML
• Drag and Drop features
  • Subscribe to new weblogs by dragging these types of links onto Jäger.
    • Weblog home page links
    • Syndication feeds – note that Jäger is generally smart enough to figure out where the syndication feed for a weblog is on its own.
    • Individual entry links – Jäger can generally figure out what the home page is from an individual entry link
    • Links of non-weblog pages
  • *Set up a Watch List by dragging text onto Jäger (for example, “Vienna, Austria”, “BlogMatrix Jäger”. Jäger will start a “Watch List Wizard” making it very to create a new Watch List item.
• Tools
  • Foreign Language Translation
  • Technorati Cosmos
  • Waypath Post Analysis
  • Blogroll and OPML exporting
• Foreign Language Features
  • Translate pages into another language using Google, AltaVista or Systran
  • *Automatically translate foreign weblogs when viewing
• Misc.
  • Change titles of weblogs and Categories directly in the list

It has a built in HTTP server that runs on port 5335 or 5336. This server can only be accessed from the localhost — i.e. your computer. There’s a large number of “extensions” available under the Actions > Tools menu that use this server. It also makes Jaeger work with “Coffee Mug” subscriptions.

[ Original question: When activating, ZoneAlarm reports Jaeger is asking permission to operate as a Server: Why? ]

Sure, yeah, hunting, that’s the ticket. Glue.

If you haven’t tried Jäger yet, give it a try. Jäger is a “one panel” weblog and news reader that sits along side your browser and assists in blog reading. Next month — i.e. Tuesday — the price is…

Here’s the latest Carnival of the Canucks schedule. There’s a slight alteration — Don at Talk Canada wants to do a special Stanley Cup edition on the 8th of June and hey, who are we to argue? Especially now since we’ve got a series. To make this a little more sporting, any of you Yanquis out there cheering for Florida feel free to chip in your comments. In the meantime, don’t forget to send your comments to Jen for your regularly scheduled CotC.

• #20 This Tuesday, 1 June: Jen at Circadian Shift
• #21 Tuesday, 8 June: Don at Talk Canada with the “Stanley Cup” edition.
• #22 Tuesday, 15 June: Ray and Sean at PolSpy

Interested in hosting a Carnival? Send me a note or leave a message in the comments section.

If you haven’t tried Jäger yet, give it a try. Jäger is a “one panel” weblog and news reader that sits along side your browser and assists in blog reading. Next month — i.e. Tuesday — the price is going up to $USD 15, so try and get it now while it’s only 10 bucks. If you’re feeling a little brave, try the Beta version. It includes lots of neat features, such as a high priority list of favorite weblogs and “watch lists” that check blogs for your favorite topics (“supreme court”?, “federal election”?, “john kerry” or “george bush”?). The net result is you can save up to a half-hour a day of time you would have otherwise wasted looking for new stuff.

It only takes two minutes to get going so take a second to give it a spin.

I took a half-day off work and built (with my Dad, the brains of the outfit) a retaining wall in the front of the house. I now own a nice/nasty circular saw and an ok power drill. Look for more pointless projects in my life.

I’ve decided to drop RSS enclosure support from the 1.2 release of Jäger since I no longer have a good reliable source for attachments now that Webjay has dropped support for it. Not to worry, we’ll get it into the next release — the code is 95 written but needs extensive testing.

The good news: the next version (this weekend) will be Release Candidate 1 for 1.2. That is, if we find no more bugs we’ll release this version as 1.2, a full two weeks early. I’m finding the features of 1.1/1.2 so compelling, I’d rather everyone had them now.

Well well well:

Jacques Villeneuve has flown to France for a secret Formula One test. The teams’ world champion of 1997, according to a source, is at the southern Miramas circuit and should drive a BMW-powered Williams FW26 on Thursday.

It’s to check-out a seat fitting prior to a ‘proper’ run, said the source. FIA regulations allow just 50kms of testing per-team in a grand prix week.

Earlier this week, publications reported that the French-Canadian – whose BAR contract was not renewed for 2004 – would test at Jerez in ‘very late June.’ Williams’ engine partner owns the Miramas track.

BTW: I’ll be a the Grand Prix in Montreal in June.

CotC #20 is upcoming soon, this Tuesday hosted by Jen at Circadian Shift. If you have written a blog entry in the last week that you’re particularly proud of, or just saw something out there you liked, send it over to Jen.

The Ontario Children’s Aid Society should be folded, all it’s members forbidden to have jobs that bring them into contact with children again in their lives, and their buildings should be razed and the ground sown with salt. The CAS is attempting to strip two children from their foster parents (who they’ve been with since they’ve been babies to hand them over to strangers in BC. Their reasoning is based on the twisted and sick racist “thought” that informs far to many people in government social services:

But the foster parents are white, and Ian Mang, the lawyer who represents the Squamish Nation of Vancouver, said yesterday the little girls’ ties to their native roots are more important “than attachment to caregivers or transient expressions of affection.”

A wonderful governmental description of who their parents feel for their children.

Mr. Mang acknowledged that tearing the youngsters from the only real families they have ever known may cause “some problems,” but said, in effect, that a bit of short-term pain is better than a long-term identity crisis that would have the children returning to the band as “messed-up adults at the age of 18.”

Yes, imagine the confusion these poor children will feel when they found out that a person of a different race raised them. It makes you ill to your stomach, doesn’t it?

But David Feliciant, the lawyer for the Hamilton CAS, said the case is not about any unfair treatment accorded the foster families, or about the band flexing any political muscle. Nor, Mr. Feliciant added, is the case about love.

“It is naïve to suggest that love conquers all,” he snapped. “It doesn’t.”

Yes, and certainly not the mighty power of the goon and the bureaucrat.

In particular, Mr. Mang, who is white, emphasized yesterday how special, even indescribable, is “what it’s like to be Squamish” and “grow up Squamish” amid the “sacred places” of the reserve.

Ohhh, he’s white. Wow, that’s changes everything. Why, if a white person things these children should be stripped from his family, well it must be ok. And cower, ye worm, under the mighty indescribable power of the sacred Squamish place! How can you understand, you pathetic loser with no real culture or history worth talking what it’s like to be a part of a real society?

Mr. Feliciant, while saying he wasn’t diminishing the pain the children would suffer if removed from their homes, described it as “short-term distress.”

Imagine anyone you know that has children, who they love and who love them back. These foster parents are these children’s real parents: they’re the only parents and the only love they’ve ever known.

Now, imagine them being kidnapped by strangers. And saying, hey, they’ll get over it.

Your Dad, Joey, should get 5 of his friends together and chip in $600 each to run a 1/16th page in the Toronto Star explaining the rest of the “coloured” community that “If the Conservatives win, all us coloured folk will be rounded up within a half hour and put to work in the salt mines” — something of a legitimate and reasonable political concern during an election, if it’s true.

Then as he’s brought to the police station for booking (in preparation for further loss of freedom and/or property confiscation), he can explain that the Right Hand of God gave to all Canadians — everyone — the fundamental rights of (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; and (d) of association. And that he votes Liberal. Then as he’s being sexually humiliated and tortured he can further inform them that they won’t get away with it: not only is he a client of the Toronto Star, the Star is totally obsessed with torture [type: 'Abu Ghraib'], whereupon he will be laughed at and told only when it serves their political purposes [type: 'Paul Martin'], and besides, the constitution doesn’t apply to filthy lobbyists and dirty corporations like your Dad.

I told you I was pissed off.

• I’ve been married 5 years today!
• I’m still too mad to write anything further about the election gag law.
• Election, eh? That’s super. I’m tempted to help out the Conservatives, but I’m still not quite sure what their platform is. Abortions for all; abortions for none; or abortions for some, with miniature Canadian flags for others? If you know the answer, get back to me.
• I took Trinity-Anne up the CN Tower yesterday. That little girl is fearless: after an initial jump back, she sat on the glass floor, looked around, got up and started running back and forth on it. Daddy had enough when she decided to jump up and down though — I don’t care if she’s only 25 pounds! (Put not your faith in engineers).
• Trinity-Anne’s third birthday is on Thursday.
• I spent the weekend doing race committee work for the Ice Breaker Laser regetta at TSCC. It’s was the May 2-4 weekend: of course the weather sucked!
• I’ve sworn off Smirnoff Ice until the next time I see a McCarthy.

Eugene (do they call you Gene?) Volokh writes:

While we’re at it, why are there gender-generic terms “parents,” “siblings,” and “children” — and, in English, only a gender-generic “cousin” — but not “auncles” or “niecews”? (No, I’m not serious about those two particular suggestions; I’m noting the absence of any such word.)

After doing a minor amount of research about why there isn’t a different word for M/F cousins, I suspect the answer is because when the word came over from Latin (via old French), we lost the endings that differentiated M from F and end up with the same word for different genders.

The Latin root words are consobrina (F)/consobrinus (M), meaning cousin on the mother’s side. Note that there’s a different set of words for cousin on Dad’s side (sobrina/sobrinus) and another set of words for cousins that are from your Dad’s sister or your Mom’s brother (amitina/amitinus).

Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to speak Latin, but I am pretty handy with Bartleby’s.

There’s no need to look for this if you’re using Jäger. Whenever you see a website you like, just drag the link over to Jäger’s window and it will do the rest — it even works with “Not my Boss” Ross’ website.

More seriously: syndication feeds are something users shouldn’t even need to know about. They’re just a channel of metadata about what you’re looking at.

Free idea for the Blogware people: a template validator, that ensures all the things that should be there actually are.

It can be downloaded here:

Major changes:

• We’ve removed Jäger from the Referer field. Due to popular demand.
• Refreshing the main list is much more efficient.
• Help is almost ready.
• We’ve added a “Watch List Wizard”. Here’s how to try it: select a phrase in a blog you’re reading and drag it over to Jäger. There’s some issues if that selected phrase has a URL in it; hopefully we’ll have this fixed for the next release.

  
  
  

• We’ve add an extra step to the Add Weblog Wizard if syndication feeds cannot be discovered. Try dragging F1 Racing.net onto Jäger.

  

The next release will focus on getting downloading and attachments working, and maybe one or two tiny more features. If all things go well, we may get 1.2 out the door a week early. Cross your fingers. Documentation will drag a little on this version, because I want to put more effort into getting a Macintosh version working and on to marketing.

Having had some problems with Blockbuster myself (with them overcharging me for old movies), I laughed quite a bit at this:

He then tried to meet me halfway with the late fees, at which point I said “Why don’t we do this? Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

Reminds me of the time a friend was stopped by a cop for speeding. The officer asked him “Do you know why I stopped you”? His response: “You had nothing better to do?” Very satisifying and only a $25 ticket at the time (ah, the good old days).

Three things that have sealed the deal for me on whether I’m going to use the referrer field.

1. These two posts — here and here, they key phrase being “The key lesson here is that you shouldn’t be messing with the viral aspect of your product”.
2. Doc Searl’s referrer logs. Note the presence of Technorati’s home page, NetNewsWire and Radio Userland. Sorry, I don’t have one thousandth the budget of Dave Sifry or John Robb: they define the playing field and if they’re going to use it, so are the other players.

Since I’ve added Jäger to the referrer field, hits and downloads have had a substantial increase. If Jäger’s showing up in your referrers a lot, it’s because a lot of people are hitting your site with it. Note that the vast number of these hits are probably adding very little load to your server, since Jäger is very well behaved with regards to If-Modified-Since and ETags.

The referrer page will link to ‘/user’, a page that will explain what Jäger is.