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Diddy Blog #12 "Gas Prices are Too High"

I use VLC to see these: NBC Streaming feed CBS News streaming feed If anyone knows of more useful feeds, let me know and I'll compile a list.

I use a Dvorak keyboard mapping exclusively. Sometimes, though, certain computers make it difficult to change the keyboard mapping from its default QWERTY configuration. Assuming your browser has Javascript enabled, you can use this online application to translate the keyboard map for you.

I'm not voting for him, I really do like McCain. Although I don't know much about Palin (besides a cursory overview), I like the spirit behind the choice. She's fiscally conservative, but apparently doesn't always toe the line of the GOP base. She can give us a better perspective about our energy resources in Alaska, and she is a new face that challenges the Democratic Party's characterization of McCain as the same-old,same-old. Regardless of who wins, this is going to be a historic election. One other thing: if you haven't seen this ad by McCain, its worth seeing: Pure class: "Convention Night" (McCain congratulates Obama on Obama's historic receiving of the Democratic nomination)

If you've trying this on any of the alpha releases of Intrepid, you've probably gotten a kernel panic while its trying to boot up. If you've had this trouble, then apparently there is good news on the horizon. According to the main bug reporting page , a fix has been recently committed. I'll test it out in the next couple of days and post any instructions or tips on getting it to work. Check back!

I understand why they are trying to tightly link McCain to Bush - Bush is unpopular now and the closer you can tie the two the more likely voters will feel uncomfortable with McCain. The only problem is - of all Republican senators - McCain has been one of the most visible and staunch critics of Bush during his presidency. While most other Republicans either fell in line or else criticized Bush for not being conservative enough, McCain was constantly in the news for opposing Bush policies. Boortz (who's very amusing, though I very rarely agree with his opinions) has a good list of issues where Bush and McCain did not agree: McCain fought for campaign finance reform — McCain-Feingold — that Bush resisted and ultimately signed because he had no choice. McCain led the battle to restrict interrogation techniques of terror suspects and to ban torture. McCain went with Joe Lieberman on a tough measure to curb climate change, something Bush denies is going on. McCain opposed the Bush tax...

A really nice interview with Rev. James Cone, who wrote the seminal work on black liberation theology, can be found here .

Often the South, esp. the "Deep South", gets characterizes as resistant to new ideas. And sure, this is not totally wrong. But I think it is misleading. In fact, when it comes to politics, the big cities of the South (I'm not so much speaking of the rural areas) are some of the most vibrant and politically active places in the country. This fact gets less visibility because the activism isn't so much about pushing the envelope (as is, for example, California), but it is more about coming to terms with the past and dealing with society that is constantly changing. In opposition to the Midwest (where I've been living for the past couple of years), it seem to me that people in the South are more willing to state their views openly to each other, even if they don't agree. Sometimes the sparks fly, but at least there is a continued discussion. Notice that my home state of Georgia is a prime example of the sort of political activism I'm talking about. The fact i...

Meet Emily - Amazing Lifelike Animation Technorati Tags: technology , software

In Rick Warren's excellent interview with Obama there was only one part I found disturbing: Obama's response to the abortion question. His response reflected a lack of thoughtfullness, which struck me as odd - because I definitely think Obama is generally more thoughtful than McCain. In response to Warren's question: "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?", Obama answered: Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade. Given the context, this was not a good answer. It was very bad. It was somewhat flippant, elusive, and inappropriately incorporating humor at a moment requiring upmost seriousness. What he says afterwords I can whole-heartedly agree with, but it does not answer the question: But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that...

For about a week now I haven't been able to view videos on The Daily Show in Ubuntu. Has anyone else experienced this problem lately? Rather than wait to see if it gets sorted out, I decided to go ahead and file a bug report . You can track its progress there. Edit : I've uploaded a temporary workaround Greasemonkey script here . This script allows Linux users to view The Daily Show videos that are found on a subdomain of The Daily Show website: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/ (Notice that it doesn't work on The Daily Show front page.) This is something I hacked together without knowing a great deal about Javascript, so there is tons of room for improvement. There also may be bugs. Please post in the comments any patches, fixes, or enhancements. Hope this helps some of you get your daily dose of John Stewart! Technorati Tags: ubuntu , daily show

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For the past few days I've been really pissed that I couldn't access videos on nbcolympics on my Ubuntu box. I'd have to proxy out of the country to watch them on the BBC (but proxy servers are notoriously unreliable and it was definitely a pain). Recently I discovered a very nice way to watch the videos from nbcolympics.com on my Ubuntu box. I cannot take credit for any of this at all - rather we should all thank k_i_k on the Ubuntu forums. In this post I'll tell you how to set things up. Install (if you haven't already): w32codecs, totem-xine (or your preferred media player. Note: vlc doesn't seem to play sound), python-libxml2, python-lxml, python-xml The quick way to do this is with this command: sudo apt-get install w32codecs totem-xine python-libxml2 python-lxml python-xml Once everything is installed, download this python script - it does all the magic. chmod 755 nbcquick-rev2.py Then, as instructed here , browse nbcolympics.com , find the video you wan...

I'm an information whore - I want to be able to access huge amounts of data either when I'm online or when I'm offline. So getting a copy of the whole Wikipedia has been a pet project of mine for a while. I've searched the web and here is what I've found (Note - I don't have an ipod or an iphone, so even though there are options for getting a version of wikipedia on these, they wouldn't do me any good): Tomeraider - This was my first discovery of a nice offline build of Wikipedia. Unfortunately it is not free, so unless you don't mind forking over the dough (about $30 last time I checked) I would look elsewhere (also doesn't work on linux). Moulin - For about a year now I've been keeping my eye on this project which looks very promising. The main problem, though, is that it doesn't offer an English version of Wikipedia yet - though your in luck if you read Arabic! Build your own on Linux - Recently I made the full switch to Linux (and I ha...

It will be time for me to reinstall everything from scratch. My system, although not unstable, still feels plagued by problems that accompanying the Hardy release. I got to agree with lots of the points made in Hardy is a hard time . In my experience: Flash still crashes Firefox too much, some applications are still not compatible with PulseAudio, Rhythmbox can't handle the size of my music collection, the Tracker Search Tool supposedly finds matches but doesn't display them, etc., etc. I don't know how many of these problems will be fixed in the next release, but hopefully it will feel more stable (ironiclly, given that Hardy is a LTR). What I'm not looking forward to, though, is re-figuring the configuration I have become accustomed with. This post is a future reminder for me of how I want things set up: Applications to Install : Accessories Unison Chm Viewer Games GFCE NES emulator ZSNES mupen64plus PCSX Internet Deluge Google Earth Filezilla Office Grism Bibus Progr...

Others have been having this problem as well. To solve it - download VBoxGuestAdditons 1.6.0 from here . Uninstall the 1.6.4 (or the 1.6.2, which also seems to cause problems) version of guest additions and install this older one. Reboot. Hopefully this problem will be fixed soon.