I woke up in the mood to do some writing.
When I learned that Stuart Scott lost his battle to cancer, I spent a lot of time putting my thoughts in writing.
I’m sad and I’m spent. Can’t put any more effort into writing today.
I’ve seen it three times now and I can’t get enough. Becky and I saw it in the theater and we couldn’t wait to take Terri to see it. She loves super heroes much more than I but she didn’t think she’d like it. She left the theater proclaiming it one of her favorite movies of all time - as I had done when I left the first viewing. Billy purchased the Blu-ray for her for Christmas and we watched it last week again. It provides a solid mix of real humor, cheap humor ( but little crude ), and sentimentality. Full of puns and fun dialog. Even in the casting of Vin Diesel, and the promotion of his role, sets the tone for the film - it’s one big joke, and I mean that as a real compliment. Both “plan making” scenes are absolute classics. They combine great performances with perfect timing - you will not be disappointed. All of the performances are solid, but the biggest surprise for me was Dave Bautista. His performance as the metaphorically challenged Drax the Destroyer was flawless. The “nothing goes over my head” scene still makes me laugh out loud when I think about it. The only thing parents should know is that this movie is violent throughout. I know of children younger than six who have seen it, but I can’t imagine my children having seen it at that age. At both theater viewings, we saw young children carried out crying and screaming. Every child has a different tolerance for this, but I have to believe it would scare most children. Otherwise, it’s a marvelous film.
read moreWe like to play games at our house. I don’t remember exactly when this started, but at some point we started buying one board game for Billy and one for Becky for Christmas every year, and we enjoyed playing the games together on Christmas day. Like most toys you get your kids for Christmas, they would go unused for most of the next year, but every once in a while we hit on one we all really liked. I remember one year we considered not getting them because it seemed like the price on games had jumped dramatically, but we realized that a few hours of family of fun was certainly worth a few dollars. I am very glad we did because we’ve continued this tradition almost every year since. Even as Billy and Becky got older and started to have more expensive gifts, we had Gram and Grandad get the games for them. At some point Becky really started to get into board games and we started spending more time playing as a family. Now it’s a running joke with my brother and sister that they have to buy a new game every time they come to our house because their kids love the games we play when they are here. This year, Becky’s gift from Gram and Grandad was Takenoko. It’s a blast and we’ve played every day since Christmas - most days more than once. Billy got an Xbox One this year and he and I have been playing through The Master Chief Collection on legendary difficulty. I’ve played through in single player on legendary before, but we are having a great time doing it together.
read moreOne of the most interesting things about life, if you ask me, is that we don’t know how long it will be. Today is my 48th birthday. I know I’ve lived 48 years, but I don’t know how many I have left. The important thing, I guess, is to live it. Happy New Year!
read moreThis is something we talk a lot about at our house, but the “throw like a girl” commercial featuring Mo’ne Davis got me thinking a lot more about this recently. I still hear people saying that girls shouldn’t be allowed to play baseball with the boys. I’m willing to have a reasoned debate about the pros and cons, there is one argument I cannot handle - “it’s too dangerous” If it’s too dangerous girls, maybe it’s too dangerous. Period.
read moreYesterday a tweet caught my attention.
This morning, our daughter demanded handwriting samples.
Then, compared them to her note from the tooth fairy.
With a MAGNIFYING GLASS.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) October 28, 2014It probably goes without saying, but I just love the idea of a child trying to dispel the myth of the tooth fairy.
My first thought was something similar to what was expressed in a reply to the original tweet.
@hotdogsladies Amazing! And the only validation you need that you are absolutely killing it at the parenting game!
— Mike Swimm (@mikeswimm) October 28, 2014I’m not sure exactly what @mikeswimm meant by his tweet, but I agree this girl’s behavior is a sign of doing something right as parents.
If you ask me, we all need to do a better job teaching our kids to be skeptics. Any kid who is challenging what she knows and what she has been told is on the right track. No question about it.
read moreRichard Hagenstoon, author of Fabricating Faith: How Christianity Became a Religion Jesus Would Have Rejected
But of whom was Jesus speaking when He used the word Gentiles? I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but one has to look no further then U.S. foreign policy to realize that many people interpret the Bible far too literally on this issue. If you interpret Scripture in the reformed tradtion - as a complete book that tells ONE story about ONE God with ONE plan for ONE people - you’ll see that “Gentile” and “Jew” are used to represent two peoples, God’s people and everyone else.
Jesus often used rhetoric to make a bigger point. Mark 10:18 and the parallel passages in the other gospels is an example of this. Jesus was not denying His deity, He was trying to get the listeners to make the connection - I AM good because I AM.
The point here is that some Christians don’t carefully read the Bible, or perhaps don’t take parts of it seriously. I agree. I make the same mistake myself.
This is the most interesting of the points, in my opinion, because some of the passages mentions are some that I have the biggest issues reconciling with the rest of what I know. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
read moreI wrote recently that I was saddened that too high a percentage of posts from some of the Christian blogs I read focus on one or two issues, and when they talk about them they over emphasize the politics. Well, I feel like I have to talk about one of those issues today. I read something the other day and I wanted to post a knee-jerk reaction, but I decided to let the tab sit open in my browser and see if I was still in the mood after a few days passed. I am. Albert Mohler calls homosexuality the inescapable issue and states that a church must affirm or not affirm homosexual marriages. He says there is no “third way.” I could not agree more, but he and I would disagree on the side we take on this issue. I am on the side of affirmation. Plain. And. Simple.
read moreSomething occurred to me yesterday and I am very excited about it - and then today I saw What will a linkblog look like in 2015? by Dave Winer. I am not the right person to fit the need expressed in that post, but a quote from the post really stuck with me.
There's going to be a lot of new stuff coming together here.
I’ve followed Dave’s work and writing for almost twenty years. I believe strongly in open standards and protocols, and I like a web that is future proof. One of his best ideas, in my opinion, is what he has always called a “river of news.” I love getting my news that way and I’ve tried a lot of different tools over the years and none have been exactly what I wanted. Even Dave’s own river tools were not exactly what I wanted or they didn’t quite work for me for one reason or another. About a year ago, I had this idea for an open platform that was inspired by Dave’s writing on all of these topics. It’s something I think the web needs, and though I’m no marketing genius ( nor do I care to be ), I think I even know how to promote it for mass-market appeal. About the same time, someone contacted me to work on a project that had elements of a river, which gave me a nice opportunity to work on something that would get both projects moving. Over the past year I’ve been experimenting with most of the tools Dave has been working on, but because the river tool has never been quite what I wanted I was mostly ignoring it. Until yesterday. I decided to give it a spin and the experience this time was much better. I had a head start because I decided to run it on the same server on which I run Fargo Publisher, but I feel like even without that head start, it would have been a very simple thing to get up and running smoothly. And that’s when it hit me how nicely all of these tools fit together. I think I’m a pretty smart guy, and I’ve known all along that my idea is inspired by Dave’s work, so I guess I am not sure why it didn’t occur to me until yesterday that not only has he provided the inspiration, but he has built the tools I need to build the thing.
read moreI’m a long time fan of RSS feeds. I subscribe to hundreds of feeds. I’ve taken some time away from it several times to experiment with getting my “news” elsewhere, but I always come back to some kind of feed reader. After the latest break, I went back to poring through my feeds. One of the topic folders I have is called faith. When I started reading the feeds in this folder, I became sad. There were eleven feeds represented. Eight of these feeds are from what most people would call “Christian blogs” ( two are atheist and one is decidedly not typical ). There were twenty-two posts to read from those eight feeds. FIVE of them from four different feeds were about abortion and two of them were about homosexuality. I understand these are important, relevant, and timely issues. If the posts were well written essays on the issues at hand, I wouldn’t even mind. What bothers me is that they are just more of the same rhetoric about the political issue and the signals of a culture in decline, etc. etc. I just think almost 33% of the posts dedicated to political rhetoric is out of balance. There are a lot of things Christians &emdash; and people of other faiths or no faith &emdash; could discuss.
read moreI sometimes have a hard time explaining to people why creationism is not science. This video is the best demonstration I have ever seen of what I’m trying to explain to them. Believe whatever you want, but don’t call it science!
read moreAlmost every conversation I have with a conservative about a political issue comes down to “you can’t make me!”
Honestly, I get it. As a real libertarian, I understand the argument for a smaller, less powerful government. I really do. That itself is an important issue. I also understand that oppression comes from sources other than goverment.
But I am tired of every other issue coming down to that one.
The debate over the ownership of guns is an excellent case study, because it is not, by any means, a simple issue. Sam Harris wrote an excellent piece almost two years ago about the complexity of the issue and the fact that both sides really do have good arguments. That’s the point. There is an issue to be discussed. There may be moral, ethical, and practical decisions to make. This is NOT just about making legislation.
I remember having a discussion with a friend a few years back and I mentioned the movie Super Size Me. I am a big fan of films and I enjoy documentaries. This is not a favorite, but it is fun to talk about because I don’t like anything about McDonald’s ( especially the food ). My friend quickly stopped that thread of our discussion cold with some kind of comment about the “liberal agenda” or some such nonsense. It seemed he couldn’t appreciate the substance of the film ( which perhaps was slight ) or have an intelligent discussion about the premise without thinking immediately about how some mysterious dictator out to tell him he was not allowed to eat at McDonald’s.
I know, I know. There are people who make rules about what size soda one should be allowed to buy. I’m with you. I have the right to buy any size soda I please. There must be, though, a time to discusss the merits of guzzling soda from a cup so large Ted Kennedy could drop an Oldsmobile into it ( ht, Dennis Miller ).
Bottom line? Just because I want to talk about the environment or guns or bad food choices doesn’t mean I want to criminalize your bacon and egg smothered burger. You can eat it, but I’m allowed to say what it is - a bad idea.
BTW, one of the most perplexing things in the universe to me is why many of these same people who don’t want to be told what to do support laws against abortion and gay marriage. Talk about being told what to do!
read moreWhen I first learned of the charge facing Adrian Peterson, my first concern was for child involved, but I was worried too about the reaction we might get from those who choose to use corporal punishment on their own children. I rub shoulders with many who believe “the liberal media” or “society today” is on a quest to outlaw their way of life. I stayed away from the story afraid I would lose my temper with someone over someone over all of this. I’m tired of the “everyone is out to get us” mentality. I’d prefer we talk about the issue itself - a child who appears to have been beaten - not disciplined, not spanked, beaten! Today, during a Sunday interview with Jim Rome, Charles Barkley ( a notorious big mouth who I have defended many times in the past ), said this …
every black parent in the south is going to be in jail -Charles Barkley NFL Today with Jim Rome
Setting aside the liberties Mr. Barkley is taking when he speaks for an entire class of people, this one comment is so off-the-wall, so irrelevant, so beside the point, that I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Like my mom always said, it doesn’t matter if everyone else is doing it.
Fortunately, Jim Rome focused the interview on the actual issue at hand - the child that had been beaten.
I know there are some who won’t respect my opinion on the matter after I “admit” this, but I have spanked my children, but what I did with my children was very far from what Peterson allegedly did. I don’t want to get into details, but I can tell you that we discussed this issue at length before our children were born, and we were very careful and calculating about using spanking without inflicting physical OR emotional abuse.
We have two very strong willed children. Teaching them obedience without crushing that will and without training them to do everything any adult tells them to do ( something we definitely don’t want ) was not an easy thing to do. And I’m not completely sure we succeeded. When our children were young, we did what we thought was best. If we were to start over now, we might do it differently, but we might not. Like most parents, I know I did some things wrong, and like most, I wonder sometimes what things I should have done differently, and I have regrets. But I am confident we did not abuse our children.
Parenting is a tough job. There is a fine line, in my opinion, between corporal punishment and abuse, and I think many parents cross that line. While it is not my place to police other parents, I think it is important to speak up when children are being hurt.
I agree with Jim Rome on this one …
That was child abuse. There’s no fine line here.read more
I have been in the process of moving away from my own home grown system for rendering my outlines. I’ve been documenting that on a separate blog. It made sense for a lot of reasons to host my own copy of Fargo Publisher. I was able to get that set up today and move my outline here. So far, so good.
read morebut we’ve had a very difficult couple of months. I’m trying to get things back to normal, but my mind is almost always on other things. I’ve never been one to have a huge problem with focus, so this has been difficult for me.
read moreI am very excited the work being done on Fargo and Fargo Publisher. I’m keeping my eye on those developments, and I’ll probably set up my own server to run it very soon - for myself and others hopefully. But I am still using my own homegrown system to render and upload my outlines to S3. I’m not sure I would encourage others to use it at this point because I did make some decisions in the blind and reverse engineering things based on live examples. This means that toggling between my system and Fargo Publisher - or using them at the same time - causes things to break. Now that the standard Fargo templates are available, I may change things up so that the systems work similarly. Now might not be the time for you to try it, but I did want to point out that I published the code I use via Github.
read moreI just can’t get used to using email over the web. I decided to give Thunderbird another try. I’m glad I did. The goofy interface I remember is from the Windows version. What I’m using now doesn’t seem so bad. It’s not quite the way I would have designed it, but I like it. A little slower than using the web, but it’s fine for the way I do email.
read moreOne of the things I’ve obsessed about the most over the years is how I share links. I’ve always wanted a way to shorten links but have a way to control the whole thing myself and/or move to other systems when necessary.
For a while I use Adjix which I really liked and the idea was that I could take those links with me. This proved a great idea because the service disappeared and I was able to take my links with me.
by rolling my own solution this time - ShortenLinks
I have a Cloud Cannon site at http://links.cloudvent.net. This site is nothing but a bunch of folders that contain one index file that redirects to another URL. I also have an Apache2 server that redirects my short links to those cloud cannon pages. This allows me to add links from any of my computers where I have Dropbox installed without having to be logged in to the server.
Let’s look at an example.
Apache2 redirects http://07.bsoi.st to http://links.cloudvent.net/07
http://links.cloudvent.net/07/index.html redirect to http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/
If I were to try to make a short link for that URL again, my script would simple print http://07.bsoi.st so I could share the short link.
If I try to share a new link, linkit.py will …
I have a cron job ( grab_config.sh ) that runs as root on my server and looks for the config file and updates Apache accordingly.
read moreTitle inspired by the excellent Coming Home to Vim by Steve Losh. Sometime in 2002 I switched to OS X as my main OS. Until then I had used Linux as my OS but I had some exposure to Windows and OS X. I’ve been generally happy with it since then, but I have become increasingly concerned with the direction Apple seems to be going - “approved” developers, etc. So I decided to switch back. I previously used SuSE, debian, and Red Hat, but I’ve been using Ubuntu a lot when I build AWS instances, so I thought that would be my best option. I am not sure how the transition will go, so I installed it on an old laptop and plan to use that connected to my 30” display, and I’ll leave my iMac running right next to it. The plan is to completely abandon the Mac and only grab stuff from it when I need it. It has been about a week and I’m doing just fine without the Mac. If it continues to go well, I will get a better machine and migrate over some stuff and make the switch. There are a couple of things I am a little concerned about. Syncing - I’ve grown accustomed to using several different Macs and they all sync up just perfectly. The experience with Linux and Windows was never quite as seamless, and I’m not a big fan of using my laptop as my all-day machine. I want a desktop and a laptop, and I want them to feel like the same machine. Email - I prefer a desktop client and I don’t like my choices on Linux. For now, I’m just going to use the web interface for email. iMessages - I’ve gotten VERY USED TO sending and receiving text messages from my Mac. I sit in front of the computer a lot, and it’s very handy. Music and Photos - I stopped using iPhoto and iTunes some time ago, but I do have huge libraries and I need to find a way to manage those photos and music.
read moreIt’s time once again for the Oscars and, as usual, I am going to share my opinions on the nominations, my projections for the winners, and our menu for viewing. First, the menu … As I mentioned last year, our household turned vegetarian sometime after the 2012 Oscars, so putthing a film inspired menu together is a bit of a challenge. This year, the food was all over the place, and it’s just three of us, so we opted to make it an all day menu. ( Actually, our diets are all a little different - Terri is pescatarian, Becky vegetarian, and I am mostly vegan but I eat cheese and eggs occasionally - but we wanted food we would all eat today. For breakfast, we had omelettes in honor of Philomena. For lunch, we had baked beans in honor of Captain Phillips, a native of bean town. We found a great recipe online for squash, spinach, and feta samosas, but we didn’t have then energy to put those together. We have one movie to watch yet, so we are having popcorn in honor of Nebraska - and we cooked it in the science oven in honor of American Hustle. For dinner we will have Mac and Cheese in honor of Her - something we imagine a bachelor might have for dinner. We are pretty sick of pizza and we love making cupcakes, but not eathing them so much. :) Snacks and dessert for the show - Texas Caviar ( Dallas Buyers Club ), Moon Pies ( Gravity ), Creampuffs ( The Wolf of Wall Street ), and Blackberry Cobbler ( 12 Years a Slave - in honor of his blackberry ink ). Meat eaters might want to add steak ( Dallas Buyers Club ), clams casino ( American Hustle ), and Lobster ( The Wolf of Wall Street ). For those of you that drink, you might want to include the following ( click on each if you can’t guess what movie they match ). Pabst Blue Ribbon Nebraska Champagne The Wolf of Wall Street Coffee Captain Phillips Guinness Philomena Proseco American Hustle Red Wine 12 Years a Slave Russian Vodka Gravity Strawberry Daquiri Her Whiskey and Coke Dallas Buyers Club The Nominations I thought there were a few surprises this year. There was a lot of talk about Jennifer Lawrence being a bogus nomination, but I disagree. I know I’m biased, loving Lawrence like I do, but I saw the film twice and I think her performace was worthy of a nomination. I actually think she might win. Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, and Robert Redford turned in fantastic acting performances this year. I’m not sure if their performances warrant bumping someone out of nominations, but they deserve notice. Julie Delpy should have been nominated. This is a hard category, but I think her perfomance was as good as any of the nominees. If I had to drop someone, it would be Meryl Streep ( and not just because I love Amy and Sandy ). I also thought Before Midnight deserved more than the single nomination it received. I was sorry to see ZERO nominations for Fruitvale Station. The movie had some flaws, but it deserved notice. I didn’t see Inside Llewyn Davis, but people who did seem surprised it wasn’t nominated. I’ve listed some other possible snubs below. The Winners I saw American Hustle twice and I think it could be the big winner this year. I think the Academy might be ready to give the high honors to a fun film for a change. Click on the categories below to see my choices and preditions. The order is based on someone else’s predictions. I’ve listed the ratio of seen/unseen for all the categories. Actor in a Supporting Role - 4/5 I really like Cooper and Hill, but I didn’t see Hill’s performance and I feel like I’ve seen Cooper do this before. My choice - Jared Leto Prediction - Jared Lito The other two were fantastic. Animated Short Film This is the first year in many that I’ve actually liked all five. I also liked the highly commended choices. I thought it was interested that all of these were about isolation on some level. My Choice - Mr. Hublot Prediction - Get a Horse Possessions was brilliant too! Animated Feature Film - 2/5 I’ve only seen two of these, and I don’t typically like the Disney movies, but I think Frozen was fantastic. My Choice - Frozen Prediction - Frozen Cinematography - 2/5 I’ve only seen two of these - Gravity and Nebraska. My Choice - Nebraska Prediction - Gravity Snub? - 12 Years a Slave Visual Effects - 4/5 My Choice - Gravity Prediction - Gravity Costume Design - 2/5 My Choice - American Hustle Prediction - American Hustle Make Up and Hair Styling - 2/3 Jackass seems to be the favorite and I didn’t see it, so my choice has to be Dallas Buyers Club. My Choice - Dallas Buyers Club Prediction - Jackass Snub? - American Hustle Live Action Short Film I liked all of these very much for very different reasons, but one of them was an almost perfect short film. My Choice - Just Before Losing Everything Prediction - The Voorman Problem To be clear, my choice is the perfect one. :) Documentary Short Subject All of the animated films were about isolation. All of these were about forgiveness in some way. And they were all very powerful films. My Choice - The Lady in Number 6 Prediction - The Lady in Number 6 Sound Mixing - 3/5 My Choice - Gravity Prediction - Gravity Sound Editing - 4/5 My Choice - Gravity Prediction - Gravity Actress in a Supporting Role - 5/5 All of these were fantastic performances, but one of them was certainly the best. My Choice - Lupita Nyong’o Prediction - Lupita Nyong’o Film Editing - 5/5 American Hustle had many technical flaws, and editing was the worst. In my opinion, it should not have been nominated. Any of the others could win. My Choice - Gravity Prediction - Gravity Production Design - 3/5 My Choice - American Hustle Prediction - Gasby Original Score - 3/5 My Choice - Gravity Prediction - Gravity Original Song - 4/4 My Choice - Let it Go Prediction - Let it Go Adapted Screenplay - 4/5 My Choice - Before Midnight Prediction - 12 Years a Slave I still disagree with sequels being considered adapted. Original Screenplay - 4/5 My Choice - Her Directing - 4/5 My Choice - Steve McQueen Prediction - Cuaroin Actress in a Leading Role - 5/5 My Choice - Adams Prediction - Blanchet Actor in a Leading Role - 4/5 This is a tough one for me. When I first saw Bale in Hustle I had a hard time thinking anyone could have done better, but they were all fantastic this year. My Choice - McConaughey Prediction - McConaughey Best Picture - 7/9 Tough category this year. I saw seven of these and most deserve a win. And I’m sure the other two are contenders. My Choice - 12 Years a Slave ( though I would be thrilled if American Hustle wins ) Prediction - Gravity
read more