November 2007 Archives

Quick can through the spin room. You can see people holding up signs for candidates (and others). The platform off to the right was where CNN Live broadcasted from. Rep. Peter King was on before me.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2007/11/28/sot.chris.nandor.cnn

Quick walk through the press room.

Protestors against Republicans, Bush, war, homelessness, etc.

View of the hall, interview with Keith Kerr, and a Chuck Norris sighting.

Interviews and footage before the debate. Video by roblimo.

My wife told me that someone on TV was saying that he was being told Brigadier General Keith Kerr was a plant from the Hillary campaign.

So, I asked him. He said no.

http://www.youtube.com/asknot08

Tour of the venue for tonights debate.

It's long, but mostly interesting.

Just chillin'.

I hate travelling.

Yes, AC, it WAS good video.

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Steve Grove, who works on the News & Politics section on YouTube. He's the face of "Citizen Tube."

I had submitted some questions to the GOP candidates for the upcoming YouTube/CNN/GOP debate, and he liked them, and also liked some of the songs I'd put up on my YouTube channel. Out of the blue, he asked me about writing a song about the GOP candidates and the debate. That night I jotted down some lyrics and had a tune in my head, and the next night I recorded it.

Well, he liked it, and said he'd feature it on YouTube. Then he invited me to actually come to the debate, and do videos from there. I said yes, so YouTube is flying me out to St. Petersburg, Florida, for the debate.

I'll be posting junk on my YouTube page.

I also set up a playlist for the videos I'm making related to the debate.

I don't know if I will be on TV. But regardless, the debate will be on CNN at 8 p.m. Eastern / 5 p.m. Pacific, on Wednesday, November 28, and the aftermath will be posted on YouTube.

Strange Days, by The Swirling Eddies. When a lot of people are hatin' on each other -- such as in politics -- this song comes to my mind.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I was just looking over some of Dennis Kucinich's stuff on impeachment.

I've never seen a rational article on impeachment against Bush or Cheney. And that has not changed.

Here's some of what Kucinich accuses Cheney of:

purposely manipulating intelligence to fabricate a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to justify an attack on Iraq

No evidence.

deceiving Congress about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida

No evidence.

threatening aggression against the Republic of Iran, absent any real threat to the United States

That never happened. No aggression was ever threatened against Iran.

This article in the Seattle P-I adds more ideas:

illegal war, in violation of both international treaty and the Constitution;

It was in violation of neither. And further, Congress gave Bush the authority to do it. Congress impeaching the President for exercising authority granted by the Congress is inexcusably stupid.

widespread domestic wiretapping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a felony. Bush already has admitted to this;

This is a dispute over whether FISA constitutionally limited the authority of the President, and can only properly be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. To impeach on these grounds would be a serious violation of separation of powers.

condoning torture in violation of federal laws and international treaties;

No evidence.

rescinding habeas corpus, the cornerstone of Western law since the Magna Carta;

That never happened, in fact. Only statutory habeas corpus was rescinded, and only for alien unlawful enemy combatants. It's absolute idiocy to say that a plain old law that granted rights cannot be rescinded.

And besides, Congress did this, not the President!

obstruction of justice regarding U.S. attorney firings;

No evidence.

subversion of the Constitution

No evidence.

abuse of signing statements

As they have no legal force, and are not mentioned by the Constitution, this would be a stupid thing to impeach over. That's like saying you should impeach the President for watching baseball.

and rescinding habeas corpus.

You already said that.

She goes on:

It's astounding that our representatives to Congress carry on with business as usual knowing that Americans lack habeas corpus and a working code of law.

It's astounding to me that the P-I would publish a column by someone claiming that any American lacks any habeas corpus (including stautory habeas corpus).

Many people accused me of leaving Ron Paul out of my "GOP Debate Song" (which has over 325K views this week ... yeesh!).

Except, I didn't leave him out. He was in there just like all the rest. You can even see his picture in the second version of the video that I did.

This, along with other similar experience of Ron Paul fans complaining about Paul being excluded (sometimes with merit, sometimes without) led me to write "You Forgot Ron Paul."

You may also wish to check out the outtakes from the Ron Paul Song recording session.

This is a song about how YOU FORGOT RON PAUL. Even if you didn't.

You Ron Paul fans asked for more lines about Ron Paul, so here it is. Be careful what you ask for next time.

See outtakes for this song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqYaxGiRk1I

Lyrics:

I saw you on the news last night
You were talkin bout all these dudes
And about how many people like them
And their fancy shoes
Well my guy ain't got shoes like theirs
He ain't wealthy, he ain't got great hair
But my guy loves liberty
He wants the best for you and me

Chorus:
You forgot Ron Paul
You did it again
You've hated him since I dont know when
You leave him out most every time
I cannot think of a worse crime
Oh, it is so plain to see
You hate democracy
You forgot Ron Paul

Ron Paul, he set a one day record
For raising funds
Ron Paul delivers babies
Gives smiles to everyone
He wins every online poll
And many straw polls too
Sure they don't mean a thing
But tell me, what other polls do

Chorus

I didn't hear the whole news story
I caught it in the middle
But I can only assume ...that

Chorus

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

While writing a song about Ron Paul, I had several aborted attempts. For the final version see http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfPbEMGtAQMOh , and those are Homer Simpson slippers.

Under Leopard, using Mac::Carbon:

[pudge@bourque ~]$ happening
Running background process /Users/pudge/bin/happening (983)
The process has forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely. You MUST exec().
Break on __THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_C OREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONALITY___YOU_MUST_EXEC__() to debug.

Apparently, fork-without-exec with CoreFoundation has always been bad. But it is now an exception.

So in the happening program, I had:

$pid = fork;
exit if $pid;

Now I have:

if (!$nofork) {
    $pid = fork;
    exit if $pid;
    exec($0, '-nofork');
}

YMMV.

Many people on YouTube are commenting on my beard.

For what it's worth, I've had this beard for 16 years, and it's not coming off any time soon. (I've had *a* beard for about 18 years, but I periodically shaved it until first semester of my freshman year of college. It's existed ever since.)

I've put up two versions of a relatively untitled song I wrote and recorded last weekend. The first is the original live version, and the second puts other video images to the same music.

The first video is now up on the front page of YouTube as the top "featured video."

Enjoy!

Politics with Pudge Episode 12, wherein I call Chris Dodd and Barack Obama on some things they said in the CNN debate a couple of nights ago.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/15/se.02.html

It thinks I am Japanese. Tiger Front Row did not.

It does not show cover art for shared sources. Tiger Front Row did.

When I am fast-scrolling down a list of items, and I see the item I want, and so I let go of the button to stop scrolling, I go way past that item as the list slows to a stop. Tiger Front Row stopped pretty much immediately, on or near the thing I wanted.

It does not have any way to repeat. At least with Tiger Front Row, I could use my (non-Apple) remote to tell iTunes make the currently playing playlist to repeat. I'd hit play in Front Row, then hit the button to call my "Repeat" AppleScript.

I preferred the Tiger Front Row.

pudge posted a photo:

pudge posted a photo:

Incidentally, the top two videos in Japan are apparently both by Avril Lavigne.

Politics with Pudge 11. I pick a fight with Obama and Huckabee.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21738432

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/huckabee_10-05.html

This is a more elaborate video to go along with the previous GOP Debate Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Dz0jc1mUs

Lyrics:

The Grand Old Party's looking for
Somebody who can lead
Someone who is electable
And adheres to our creed
Some say the group is not diverse
They're white, they're men, but wait
The Dems have just one candidate
Republicans have eight

Rudy's leading all the polls
But can he win the base?
Mitt changed on abortion
Hist'ry he can't erase
Ron Paul would end the FDA
And that is just a start
Fred has just begun to run
But sure does look the part

Hunter tells us what to do
In foreign policy debates
Huckabee's compassionate
And lost a lot of weight
Tancredo says let's build a fence
Across the whole southwest
McCain is loved by many
And hated by the rest

We don't know who we're voting for
We dont know who will win
That's why we use YouTube to ask
Our questions of these men
Time is short, we're voting soon
And I just thought I'd mention
If we don't reach consensus, then
We'll decide at convention

Politics with Pudge Episode 10.

In a recent journal entry I noted the Boston sports teams are doing pretty well. Since then, the Celtics have started the season 6-0, and the Patriots have gone to 9-0. And the Bruins have slipped a bit in the standings, having lost some close games.

I paraphrased The Simpsons, saying, "The Patriots are still winning, dominant as ever. The Celtics picked up some major stars, the Red Sox have the best record in the league, and the Bruins ... well, we love the Bruins."

Here's a song by Ryan Parker noting the same basic thing, from a different perspective: Thank Goodness for the Bruins.

This is a relatively untitled song about the upcoming GOP debate on YouTube.

Also see the music video version of this video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4f28pO17Ug

Lyrics:

The Grand Old Party's looking for
Somebody who can lead
Someone who is electable
And adheres to our creed
Some say the group is not diverse
They're white, they're men, but wait
The Dems have just one candidate
Republicans have eight

Rudy's leading all the polls
But can he win the base?
Mitt changed on abortion
Hist'ry he can't erase
Ron Paul would end the FDA
And that is just a start
Fred has just begun to run
But sure does look the part

Hunter tells us what to do
In foreign policy debates
Huckabee's compassionate
And lost a lot of weight
Tancredo says let's build a fence
Across the whole southwest
McCain is loved by many
And hated by the rest

We don't know who we're voting for
We dont know who will win
That's why we use YouTube to ask
Our questions of these men
Time is short, we're voting soon
And I just thought I'd mention
If we don't reach consensus, then
We'll decide at convention

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

NOTE this video was originally titled LCE023 GOP Debate Song, as it is song 23 in the Longest Concert Evar, but the prefix has been temporarily removed to reduce confusion.

Talk of an "asterisk" because the Patriots "cheated" ignores the undispitable fact that there is no allegation or evidence of any kind that the Patriots broke the rules regarding "spying" that in any way affected any game this season.

Anyone who talks of an "asterisk," should the Patriots go undefeated, just ends up looking like an idiot.

And yes, that includes Marcellus Wiley and Don Shula.

From This Week last week:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: You also said that you would continue the missile defense system that President Bush is hoping to put in Czechoslovakia. This week, president --

SEN. MCCAIN: And Poland.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Sure, Poland. This week, President Putin said that will be like the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again.

Why, oh why, do They always forget Poland?

So a lot of times when using Spaces under Leopard, windows just ... disappear. They are not visible in any space. So I have to open up the System Preferences and turn Spaces off, and then back on, which fixes it.

Here's a script that I put in my Script Menu (~/Library/Scripts/Reset Spaces.scpt) so I have quick access to it.

tell application "System Events"
    set (spaces enabled of spaces preferences of expose preferences) to false
    set (spaces enabled of spaces preferences of expose preferences) to true
end tell

Oh. You want a Perl version, do you?

Fine.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
 
use Mac::Glue;
 
my $sysevt = new Mac::Glue 'System Events';
 
my $enabled = $sysevt->prop('spaces enabled',
    of => 'spaces preferences',
    of => 'expose preferences'
);
$enabled->set(to => 0);
$enabled->set(to => 1);

I prefer AppleScript for stuff like this, since it's quicker to execute and I have to use AppleScript to figure out how to do it in Perl anyway, since AppleScript is sometimes easier to prototype with when you don't know what properties and objects you're working with. But it took only a minute to convert it to Perl, so no biggie.

System Events in Leopard has a lot of new junk in it for scripting preferences. Pretty neat, you can script many difference preferences now. Here's a list.

    appearance_preferences_object
        A collection of appearance preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            appearance: the overall look of buttons, menus and windows
            double_click_minimizes: Does double clicking the title bar minimize a window?
            font_smoothing_limit: the font size at or below which font smoothing is turned off
            font_smoothing_style: the method used for smoothing fonts
            highlight_color: color used for hightlighting selected text and lists
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            recent_applications_limit: the number of recent applications to track
            recent_documents_limit: the number of recent documents to track
            recent_servers_limit: the number of recent servers to track
            scroll_arrow_placement: the placement of the scroll arrows
            scroll_bar_action: the action performed by clicking the scroll bar
            smooth_scrolling: Is smooth scrolling used?
 
    cd_and_dvd_preferences_object
        user's CD and DVD insertion preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            blank_cd: the blank CD insertion preference (read-only)
            blank_dvd: the blank DVD insertion preference (read-only)
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            music_cd: the music CD insertion preference (read-only)
            picture_cd: the picture CD insertion preference (read-only)
            video_dvd: the video DVD insertion preference (read-only)
 
    dock_preferences_object
        user's dock preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            animate: is the animation of opening applications on or off?
            autohide: is autohiding the dock on or off?
            dock_size: size/height of the items (between 0.0 (minimum) and 1.0 (maximum))
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            location: location on screen
            magnification: is magnification on or off?
            magnification_size: maximum magnification size when magnification is on (between 0.0 (minimum) and 1.0 (maximum))
            minimize_effect: minimization effect
 
    expose_preferences_object
        user's expose and dashboard mouse and key preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            all_windows_shortcut: the key and mouse binding shortcuts for showing the all application windows (read-only)
            application_windows_shortcut: the key and mouse binding shortcuts for showing the current application windows (read-only)
            bottom_left_screen_corner: the bottom left screen corner (read-only)
            bottom_right_screen_corner: the bottom right screen corner (read-only)
            dashboard_shortcut: the key and mouse binding shortcuts for showing the dashboard (read-only)
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            show_desktop_shortcut: the key and mouse binding shortcuts for showing the desktop (read-only)
            show_spaces_shortcut: the key and mouse binding shortcuts for showing spaces (read-only)
            spaces_preferences: the spaces preferences (read-only)
            top_left_screen_corner: the top left screen corner (read-only)
            top_right_screen_corner: the top right screen corner (read-only)
 
    network_preferences_object
        the preferences for the current user's network
 
        Properties:
 
            current_location: the current location
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
 
        Elements:
 
            interface, location, service
 
    security_preferences_object
        a collection of security preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            automatic_login: Is automatic login allowed?
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            log_out_when_inactive: Will the computer log out when inactive?
            log_out_when_inactive_interval: The interval of inactivity after which the computer will log out
            require_password_to_unlock: Is a password required to unlock secure preferences?
            require_password_to_wake: Is a password required to wake the computer from sleep or screen saver?
            secure_virtual_memory: Is secure virtual memory being used?
 
    spaces_preferences_object
        user's spaces application bindings and navigation preferences
 
        Properties:
 
            application_bindings: binding of applications to specific spaces
            arrow_key_modifiers: keyboard modifiers used controlling the arrow key navigation through spaces (read-only)
            inheritance: All of the properties of the superclass. (read-only)
            numbers_key_modifiers: keyboard modifiers used controlling the number key navigation through spaces (read-only)
            spaces_columns: number of columns of spaces
            spaces_enabled: is spaces enabled?
            spaces_rows: number of rows of spaces

Playing MLB 07 The Show on PS3. Doing a season. Simulating most of the games, playing a few.

On September 22, with a solid lead on the wild card, and having won 10 games in a row, including sweeping the Yankees at home, we lose a simulated to Tampa Bay, with Josh Beckett starting.

The computer tells me upon game completion, "Josh Beckett sustained an injury (shoulder separation) during today's game. It appears he will be out for about 2 to 3 months. What would you like to do?"

The options are Keep Active, 15-day DL, or 60-day DL. None of the options are "kill myself," so I'm stumped!

So my memory usage in Leopard is WAY down. I have Safari, DragThing, SSHKeychain, perl daemons, MySQL, Apache, MacCvsX, Eudora, BBEdit, iChat, Terminal ... a lot of things running. Before this would put me into swap. Now, it does not. Not even close: with 2GB total, I have about 700MB unused.

It's ... just wow. HUGE performance increases in Leopard for me, just by not going into swap. I think some memory leak was fixed, or something. I dunno. But I like.

The biggest new memory pig is "helpdatad." Open Activity Monitor, sort by RSIZE, go into the Help menu of Activity Monitor, type into the new "Search" field, hit return, and watch helpdatad climb to the top. 180MB without breaking a sweat.

I killed the process and vowed to never type into that field again.