Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

Recently Angela and I got to briefly visit with Will and Natalie. It was our first chance to see their new addition. He's quite the cute one and he didn't poop on me.

More pictures are available in the gallery.

NPR's All Things Considered has a short piece on Cincinnati's Abandoned Subway.

(via Cincinnati-Transit)

Cory Bergman of Lost Remote asked if anyone had a transcript of Jon Stewart's appearance on Nightline. As I feared, the DVR cutoff the interview presumablly because ABC was running late. In any case, here is what I have recorded (and be kind, this is the first time I have ever tried doing a transcript):

Ted Koppel (opening monologue): You have either seen Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central, in which case you will understand or you haven't, in which case its probably too late to explain. We were talking this morning about those television commercials that criticized John Kerry's service in Vietnam.

Jon Stewart (being interviewed): Its like that Swift Boat thing.

Ted: Yeah.

Jon: Those guys are lying.

Ted: Which guys?

Jon: The Swift Boat guys. They're making things up. The public record is all in John Kerry's favor on this.

Ted: It appears to be.

Jon: It appears to be.

Ted: Right.

Jon: Yet, there is this moral equivalency of their story and his story. The burden has been put on him to disprove something that happened 35 years ago that is in the public record because these guys have come out. In that moment, it seems to me that public should care 'cause you have...here is the frustration of being me.

Ted: Alright.

Jon: I have not...I cannot do that. I can only walk up to that line. I can only point at it and go, makes some rather good monkey noises. But, i can't...

Ted: You're doing...

Jon: I don't have the credability...

Ted: You're doing the dancing monkey thing again.

Jon: But I don't have the credability to be able to say, I can only do in Joke form. Which by the way, I'm fine with.

Ted: But you see, the problem with that Jon is and here is where the Republicans have John Kerry dead to rights. They're saying, "Wait a second, refresh my memory now. When he came out there and said, 'John Kerry reporting for duty'."

Jon: Right.

Ted: "When he has made every public apperance in recent memory in the prescence of his band of brothers."

Jon: Yes.

Ted: "When there is not a public appearance that doesn't in some way..."

Jon: ...Reflect on his Vietnam experience.

Ted: "...reflect on the Vietnam experience."

Jon: Absolutely.

Ted: "Then the Vietnam experience becomes central."

Jon: Absolutely relevant, but that doesn't make the lies true.

Ted: No, but...

Jon: And that's the difference here.

Ted: But it makes them particularly resonant. In another words, if he hadn't made such a big thing. And he was doing that of course to contrast his service in Vietnam.

Jon: Right.

Ted: ...with George Bush's service in Vietnam...

Jon: But, but, lies being resonant...

Ted: or not in Vietnam as the case may be.

Jon: doesn't mean they shouldn't be called. You know that's, that's...I think that's the frustration. When you talk about the frustration. I do think its an interesting point. The frustration of the viewer when you watch that. they're looking for somebody. I believe right now the media rewards which team plays the game better. In other words, when people are saying, "George Bush is going to win". What they're not saying is "He is the better man, with the better policy and is giving the American public an honest description of what he is going to do." What the people are saying is, "These guys are good! They're playing this game like masters. Like maestros." They are conducting this election in such a....with such expertise and the Democrats don't have that expertise. They're not making any conclusions based on policy. They're making it based on strategy and that the frustration I think at least I feel.

Ted: I think you are arguing about the difference between fact and proof. Which is the great problem with journalism. Let me explain.

Jon: Fact and Truth?

Ted: Fact and Truth.

Jon: Are you going to tell me that the Holocaust didn't happen?

Ted: For the sake of argument, Let's say President Bush comes out there Thursday night and out of the blue talks about that well-known drug dealer and pedophile Ted Koppel and my colleagues then...

Jon (breaks into the frame and talks to the camera): Are you getting this?

Ted: And my colleagues then, the next morning say the President of the United States last night in a surprising diversion from the rest of his speech accused ABC host Ted Koppel of being a pedophile and a drug dealer. Are they factually correct in reporting that the President of the United States said that? Is it news that he said that? Sure it is. Is it the truth. No. The truth may not emerge until...

Jon (breaks into frame again and addresses the camera): Or is it...

Ted: Or is it...

Jon (still full frame in the camera): We'll be right back...tomorrow on Nightline, Ted Koppel's resignation.

Ted: Come back here, Stewart. But do you get my point?

Jon: Right.

Ted: There is a difference between facts which are reported immediately.

Jon: Right, Right. But here is where I think news is going to go...

Ted: Its a fact, these veterns were in Vietnam, they themselves were on Swift Boats...They are saying these things. The truth may not catch up for another week or two.

And that sadly is where the recording ended. Anybody have the details on what happened next?

I just put together a transcript of Jon Stewart on Nightline and damn that was a lot of work. Thank God for the ReplayTV's "go-back-seven-seconds button". I have a new found respect for people who do this kind of work for a living.

I made Jamie Oliver's Chocolate Fridge Cake last week. It turned out quite well and its very easy to add/substitute ingredients.

On a side note, I have noticed that main US based Food Network site lacks Jamie Olivier based recipes but the Food Network Canada site has them. I can't explain it except prehaps for some silly, stupid licensing reason.

The Guide to Firefox Extensions is a very good listing of add-ons that generally web saavy people might find useful. In particular, I like the EditCSS plugin and the Web Developer & the Sage RSS Reader sound interesting enough to check out.

(via Slashdot)

The XOM Tutorial gives a very good introduction to this Java based XML library. For those that don't know, XOM is an open source, tree based XML library in a similiar vein to JDOM. Its principle author is Elliotte Rusty Harold who publishes the excellent Java site Cafe au Lait and the excellent XML site Cafe con Leche. He has a fanatical devoution to making XOM conform to every detail of the XML specs while trying to making the API as simple and straightforward as possible.

This is a long timing coming but here are the photographs from a brunch and dinner for Jena and Barb's birthdays. The brunch was helfd at Jena's Mother's place and the dinner was at UpStarCrow, the new Blues/Jazz resturant in Newport. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the crow. I felt it was a bit overpriced in terms of drinks and food. I realize that is probably to compensate for the live music and no coverage charge but that does little to put me at ease since I wasn't really there to enjoy the music (Its not my thing by a long shot). I will say that they handled our large group with grace and the room configuration and sound levels allowed us to actually converse with one another. That is a definite plus.

There are more pictures in the gallery.

Here is another item that should have been posted a long time ago. One item of interest from this is that the Angie and Jason honeymooned in the path of the one of the recent hurricanes. I haven't yet heard if they were around when it made landfall.

More pictures are available in the gallery.

Subversion Tips for CVS Users is another great article from O'Reilly. Subversion is looking more and more like something I should learn sooner rather than later.

Team Development with Visual Studio.Net and Visual SourceSafe turned out to be a very helpful article. I'm mostly a Java/Python w/ CVS kind of person so doing team development with SourceSafe and VS.Net was a bit challenge to get things all setup and automated properly. In particular, finding a way for each developer to have private configuration settings for things like a local database connection string is vital. Chapter 4 of this article had a very neat and simple way of solving this problem. In your Web.config file's <appSettings> tag add the attribute <file=User.config>. Then create that file and add a <appSettings> element it and use it as normal. The .Net runtime will use the values found in the User.config instead of the values in the Web.config and it will silenting ignore the User.config if it doesn't exist. This makes it a great place to store developer specific properties. Just remember to exclude this file from being checked into the SourceSafe. To accomplish that, you right click on it and choose the confusingly named menu item Exclude from Project. That will do the trick and let you keep the production settings in the Web.config file (and thus under source control) while developers can keep their own settings without stepping on anyone's toes.

This was a nice find because it saved me a lot of effort. I was prepared to use Nant with its xmlpoke task to script up a scheme to switch preferences on the fly. I'm glad I don't have to do that (and the Microsoft solution is much more elegant).

Finally got around to watch my recoding of LAX and I have to agree with the Boston Globe's opinion that this show is essentially the Love Boat in the airport. This is my same feeling of their show Las Vegas (i.e. Love Boat in a casino). Granted, this is a pilot, but this thing is all over the place both stylewise and characters. As far as style goes we are treated to:

• Tons of elapsed time photography
• Wide shots of terminals
• Slo-mo bumbling baggage handlers
• Slo-mo super closeups of Heather Locklear feet in a really slow reveal of her character

There there is the characters. There is every cliche in the book: Bumbling baggage handlers, idiotic cops, gambling problems, characters with drinking problems, drunk pilots and so on.

I will probably give this another viewing if nothing else is attractive in its timeslot jjust to see if they work out the kinks, but I am not expecting much.

One last thing, and this is one of my pet peeves. Like a lot of shows that are filmed in LA, this show uses the Los Angeles Convention Center as a stand in for a large open public space (in this case an airport terminal). If you have ever been in the building you will suddeningly realize that this building shows up in tons of movies, commercials, and television shows and of course hardly anyone goes to any length to hide this fact. In the pilot episode, they didn't even change the signs in the building. They have a bunch of money to spend for this episode and they can't put up a fake sign or two or cover the ones that are up?

Update: I've seen a couple of episodes since and I think this one is a goner. It can't decide if it is going to be dark serious drama or Love Boat-esque fantasy farce.

I got to hand it to Alton Brown again. I made his Good Eats Meatloaf over the weekend and it was wonderful. It was moist and delicious (and Angela said it was far better than her mother's). The only things I would do differently next time is to pack the form better so that the final product stayed together better and used more honey in the glaze. Oh one more thing, it took about twice as long to cook as the directions suggest.

One of the great things about this meal is that it provides lots of great leftovers for use as sandwhich material. Angela and I have been piling up the luv on some crusty white bread with some mustard and it is very nice. Since I had half an onion and pepper left over from the meatloaf, I used them to make Oven Home Fries with Onion and Peppers. The fries and the meatloaf sandwhich are very nice companions.

Sorry about the downtime, but Billy was doing some work on the network and the server hosting these blogs was unavailable to the outside world.

James, Jeff, Joe and I went to the Bengals vs. Ravens game yesterday. The Bengals got throttled but the seats were good so it was a fun time (plus the Steelers won in a seperate game so that made me happy.

In other minor news, Joe's hawk like eyes picked out Bill Hemmer, anchor of CNN's American Morning. He's the one in the off-white polo shirt. He saw the writing on the wall and left at halftime.

More pictures are in the gallery.

James pasted along this site, Cincinnati Tomorrow which hosts a boat load of forums about the future of our fair city. I've spent the last few hours reading through the postings and have found a small but very vibrant and optimistic group of people discussing what can be done with our city. Its very uplifting. I am going to try and make this a regular read and participate.