Ranting and Roaring

Based on preliminary feedback we’ve received on 1.7.19, the following changes are implemented (and available in the next version):

• The ability to pause downloads and all processes associated with converting radio programs to MP3s
• The ability to set the process priority for the conversion program
• The ability to cancel downloads and radio programs will in progress
• A better way to discover radio stations

There’s more to come, obviously.

New Sisyphus has a posting on Canada’s bowing out of NAMD. It ends with the quote:

Time to upset the apple cart.

You won’t thought. And if by some chance you do, history shows you’ll punish the Canadians who most strongly support the United States and ignore the ones who most loath and express their disgust of you (hints: the former begins with “A”; the later “Q”)

So in the week the Economist bills him as dithering, Canada’s Prime Minister is unable to confirm whether Canada will participate in North American Missile Defence, ignoring his own Ambassador to Washington who says Canada is “in” and his own…

Bound by Gravity writes:

So, in the span of two short days Canada was in the program, then out of the program, and then neither in nor out of the program (or at least unwilling to say).

As an aside, the quote “when it’s in Canada’s interest to do so” can only sensibly be translated as “when it is in the Liberal Party of Canada’s interest to do so”. Canada the country gains nothing by looking foolishly indecisive on this issue except heaps of ridicule and mistrust from our southern neighbours.

Make a decision, defend that decision, and then follow through with that decision. It’s not hard.

And we vote for these clowns over and over and over. And are proud of it.

Varifrank: Question for the Day.:

Q: Is China buying oil and using it, or buying oil and sitting on it?

China shows a 41% increase in the amount of oil consumned over last year. That is a huge jump for one year add to it the 31% increase the previous year and you get a 72% over two years increase in consumption. That would mean that the Chinese werent using hardly any oil in 2002 but now they are using so much its flipped the oil markets upside down because of the markets lack of capacity to keep up with Chinas sudden demand.

I see the faucet has been turned to full but I dont see a 41% increase of goods coming out the other end of the hose.

So, is it possible for China to buy oil beyond its capacity to use and just store it?

Yes. In particular, in my mind

Via Best of the Web Today, we find this quote by historian Richard Hofstadter:

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. . . .

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman–sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.

Amazingly, Hofstadter was talking about the right back in the day; today, have you ever seen a more perfect description of the looney left’s worldview? The US and its leaders … especially Republicans … a ascribed no value system except the universal application of power and malice.

Sci Fi Wire reports:

Galactica Returns This Summer

SCI FI Channel announced that the second season of its hit original series Battlestar Galactica will premiere this summer, with 20 new episodes. The channel added that the entire ensemble cast will return for season two, including Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. Also resuming their roles are executive producer and writer Ronald D. Moore and executive producer David Eick.

Galactica will resume production in Vancouver, B.C., in March and will again anchor the channel’s SCI FI Friday block of prime-time original series.

The series, which premiered on Jan. 14, has been averaging over 3 million viewers per episode and has quickly become SCI FI’s highest-rated original series and has received unprecedented critical acclaim.

Sparks! can now be configured using the preferences (File > Preferences…) to connect to the Internet before recording a radio program. This will be useful for you folks still using modems.

This has not been tested yet! Please send your feedback.

The Help > Report a bug and Help > Request a feature menu items now direct the user to the forums for support.

Sparks! used to attempt to synchronize (i.e. find out what has changed) all its OPML directories at startup. How often this actually happens can now be changed:

An upcoming version will allow more explicit synchronization.

There’s a new button with the Radio’s weekday schedule that will toggle between all weekdays being set and no weekdays being set.

One of the neater features of Jäger that we’ve added back into Sparks! is the ability to monitor sites that don’t have syndication feeds. When you attempt to add a site to Sparks! and a feed is not detected, the following dialog is displayed:

The meaning and use of these are pretty select explanitory. The great thing about the checking for changed links option is that it will turn almost any newspaper into a weblog!

There’s a few minor bugs here. “Jäger” needs to be changed to “Sparks!” and the third option needs to disappear as it no longer has any meaning in Sparks!

It is much easier to change the Category of a weblog, the Playlist of Radio Stations and Podcasters, and to move weblogs between “My Playlists” and “My Podcasters” in Sparks 1.7.19.

To change the Playlist of a podcaster (or radio station), right click on it and select Change Playlist…:

To change the Category of a weblog, right click on it and select Categorize…:

These actions will bring up “Categorize” dialog:

From here you can:

• Move weblogs back and forth between “My Podcasters” and “My Weblogs”
• Change the Category/Playlist
• Create whole new Categories/Playlists (simply by typing in the name)

In previous versions you had to drag and drop the weblogs. You can still do this but it is no longer necessary.

Bound by Gravity picks up the thread of thought started by Let it Bleed:

[LIB]: We need policies. I’m not even sure what those policies should be. I tend towards the libertarian end of the right-wing spectrum, and I have some ideas as to what I’d like to see, but I have no clue as to what would win an election. But I do know a couple of things: whatever the policies are that the Conservatives decide on, and pardon my French here, do not fucking shut up about them. Those policies should be drilled into MPs and their press offices; those policies should be repeated ad frickin’ nauseum whenever a random Conservative mook gets up in front of an audience or in front of a camera.

[BBG]: Canadians aren’t hungry for a change of government. It’s not that they’re particularly electrified by what the Liberals are serving up – rather that they have not been given a coherent, intelligent, exciting alternative. They constantly hear what the Liberals are talking about, and then hear the CPC’s objections – but rarely do Canadians ever get served up some real Conservative policies.

The policy statement by Bob really resonated with me this morning when I read it; Bound by Gravity’s response is what (potentially) scares me if the Conservatives start coming up with them. I don’t want and I don’t need a third party in Canada with a set of marching orders for my life. I’d like to see a government with libertarian _tendencies_ (i.e. smaller government) rather than a bunch of bitter farm owners looking for their chance to finally stick it to the eastern bastards.

The layout and control of the panes is much smarter in version 1.7.19. The three panes of Sparks are:

• The Tree, on the left hand side. The Search Field sits above the Tree and the Controls below the Tree.
• The Browser, on the right hand side. The Status Area sits below the Browser and shows what is being downloaded by the browser
• The Results List sits above the Browser. The Results List is only displayed in “three pane mode” and shows useful information available in the Tree. The Location Area is above the Browser and Results List and tells what the browser is displaying.

Here’s what’s new:

• While reading items in “My Weblogs”, Sparks! will reconfigure itself to the “two pane” mode. In all other items, Sparks! will work in the normal three pane mode.
• You can reconfigure this using the two-pane/three-pane buttons in the Controls area.
• The Results List tries to display useful information. For example, in “My Podcasts” it will display all available podcasts and podcasters.
• Selecting an item in the Tree will select the most closely related item in the Results List
• Selecting an item in the Results List will select the corresponding item in the Tree.
• The Tree will collapse all previously expanded “paths” when a new path is opened. This keeps the display much neater.

Media files (audio and video files) are now displayed in the browser when viewing the weblog, podcast or radio station and their various entries. Clicking on the graphic will initiate a download or playing as appropriate.

If a download is started Sparks! will prompt you when it is finished to play the file.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you download a media file stored under “My Weblogs”, Sparks! will ask you if you want to reclassify the blog under “My Podcasts”.

As mentioned in the previous entry, Sparks! now has a number of extensions that allow you do extra things with links dragged to the application.

To get to the extensions menu, select Action > Subscribe, Record or Import…, press the “+” button next to the location bar, press F5 or drag a URL to Sparks! (future versions will allow files to dropped also).

A very useful trick: if you’re reading a webpage in Sparks! and you see a link you like, just drag it over to the left-hand pane and off you go!

Send to Del.icio.us

This will post a link to Del.icio.us. The “Del.icio.us User” and “Tags” are remembered after the first time you enter them.

You can also just double click on the “Send to Del.icio.us” item (with an empty URL) to get to your Del.icio.us home page.

Send to Movable Type Weblog

This will create a new entry in your Movable Type weblog (assuming you have one) posting the link with a sample message body (which obviously you can edit). The “Movable Type URL” and the “Tags” are remembered.

If you specify any “Tags” (tags are individual words with no spaces) a number of Technorati Tags will be added to your posting. These are very useful for allowing others to find and classify your posts.

Study the example above for the format of the URL you have to enter to specify your movable type account — essentially it’s your main “mt.cgi” URL and “&blog_id=#”, with “#” being whatever is appropriate for you (probably “1″). The next version of this will be a little smarter.

Send link by E-Mail

Need to tell someone about a link? This brings up your e-mail application with the link as the message body (to which you can add more text).

What’s coming next?

What’s coming? Well, an extension to tag and upload MP3 files, that’s for sure! If you have any ideas, let us know.

Walid Jumblatt, patriarch of Lebanon’s Druze Muslims, says the recent Iraqi election is partly responsible for his country’s anti-Syrian uprising (þ Daimnation!):

“It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains Jumblatt. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”

There is now a single menu option to handle adding things to Sparks!: Action > Subscribe, Record or Import…. You’ll also see this dialog when you drag a URL to Sparks!

You’ll note a few things here:

• Everything to do with adding things to Sparks! is here: adding radio stations, adding weblogs and podcasters, and adding OPML directories.
• The menu items are greyed at different levels: Sparks! tries to determine what the best action for the URL or filename you’ve entered. If you’ve entered something that’s clearly incompatible with an action it will be inactivated (the icon will go grey too) — for example, trying to add a file as a weblog.
• There’s three extensions at the bottom of the list: Send to Del.ico.us, Send to Movable Type Weblog and Send link via e-mail. What these do should be fairly self-evident, but we’ll explain further in an upcoming entry.

  Extensions are shipped as source code and it should be fairly easy to add new extensions yourself if you know a little Python.

BlogMatrix Sparks! 1.7.19-beta for Windows is available.

A list of what has been changed a what has been fixed will be posted later today but let’s just say it’s significant.

There’s at least one good reason to live in Vancouver (þ Darren Barefoot):

The woman was wearing extremely tight low cut jeans with a sequinned belt. The jeans were so low that I could see almost half her ass. I realized later that she was not wearing any underwear. I did think that she was attractive, but to be honest, I could see so much of her butt that I was uncomfortable. The woman and her daughter continued to pull out and make piles of books and sit in front of shelves, reading…Later, I asked my co-worker if he had seen the woman who bought such an enormous number of books. He replied, “Oh, you mean Kate Beckinsale.”

The best I’ve done in Toronto is sit next to alcoholic tv stars.

We thought that Sparks! 1.7.19-beta for Windows would be out yesterday, but there’s a few more bug fixes (and related testing) that need to get into the product before we put this one out the door.

The number of changes in the version are quite substantial. Feature wise, the only major things missing are OPML Export and BitTorrent support (both of which we consider critical).

There’s a fair number of mopping up exercises to be done bug wise, especially with making radio recording more reliable.

A Small Victory reports that NIN has a new album coming out May 3.

With Teeth is what the album will be called (as you already know if you’re a NIN fan) and one song The Line Begins to Blur- – has been leaked, of course (there was previously a teaser of the song up here, but just about ten seconds of it.

It is good. It is very good. Oh god, it’s SWEET. I have such high hopes for this album – I don’t recall anticipating an album this much and I know now I will not be disappointed. The official release date is May 3. I’m going to start a countdown. I am jonesing for this.

Ken Layne:

[paraphrasing] Oh, by the way I had a kid on Saturday.

I said this at a dinner party last week, but it bears repeating: I have no idea how I got to the end of my thirties without ever having really listened to Depeche Mode.