"I'm Proud to be an American." I saw quite a few of these bumper stickers while driving around Long Island yesterday. I wondered to myself, what motivates people to place these stickers on their cars. What need does this declaration fulfill? Are people so proud that they need to shout it from the mountain top, and in leu of no mountains in their particular region they opt for a bumper sticker. Is it a message to all the non believers, a not so subtle message that America is a country of whom its worth being proud.

Then I wonder, why aren't people proud to be inhabitants of the planet earth. Maybe they are, but they just don't have an overwhelming need to declare it. Maybe there is a geographical limit to the breadth of proudness. Can people only be proud within a particular region. Maybe human beings are incapable of being proud if a land mass is greater than three thousand miles wide, or their affinity for a particular region is unable to span large seas or oceans. This proudness also seems incapable of moving too far north or south, and tends to limit itself to a east west directional movement.

In Germany there were no "I'm Proud to be German" bumper stickers or "God Bless Germany" tinted rear truck windows with a mountain goat proudly clutching the German flag between its teeth. They seemed to have a much different perspective on the concept of nationalism.

I collected over $839.00 for the 2004 Holiday charity, and I want to thank all who donated. I made the donations today, and I imagine none too soon with the suffering in Asia.

Two charities that I imagine could use some help right about now:

Direct Relief

Direct Relief International has worked to improve the quality of life for people in need. We focus on health - by providing essential material resources to locally run health programs in poor areas around the world and during times of disaster.

Action Against Hunger

Recognized worldwide as a leader in the fight against hunger, Action Against Hunger delivers programs in over 40 countries, specializing in emergency situations of war, conflict, and natural disasters and longer-term assistance to people in distress. Our ultimate goal is to help vulnerable populations regain their self-sufficiency for long term sustainability.

Reminded of the solstice by the good folks at Old Shaw Farm, I look forward to the ever extending light on the shortest day of the year.

the solstice is either of the two times a year when the Sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator, the great circle on the celestial sphere that is on the same plane as the earth's equator.

The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice. Hence the origin of the word solstice, which comes from Latin solstitium, from sol, "sun" and -stitium, "a stoppage." Following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.

The precise moment of the 2004 solstice will be December 21, 2004 at 7:42 A.M. EST.

Solstice Time -infoplease

An interesting review of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

do not be fooled - 2 of 5 stars
Reviewed by [...] 12/12/04

I may be the only one to notice but The Life Aquatic is a film rife with satanic imagery and as a whole has a strong pro-satan message. I cannot believe what I saw. Still, it was funny.

And yet, Satanic messages can still be quite funny.

...and just to be clear.

Here, I believe, is humanity's greatest dilemma: does milk ever smell good?

Does it? Have you ever tested the quality of milk by smelling, and have you ever been completely sure it was still fresh. Isn't there always the hint of sour, be it subtle or quite overt. You'd think in this modern space age they could invent a milk fresh testing machine that would let you know if your milk is fresh or not. Or, maybe the truth, the truth that the government and dairy farmers from around the globe are hiding from us, is that all milk is bad, and the technology to build a milk fresh testing machine is impossible, because, dare I say, there is no such thing as fresh milk.

Or, maybe, I should head down to the corner store and buy some milk who's expiration is not December 10^th.

The truth is out there...

"It came without ribbons!"
"It came without tags!"
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled and puzzed 'til his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more."

- Dr Suess

an update on the Christmas Charity front, over $653 donated so far...

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

-Robert F. Kennedy

December 25, when the nights begin to be shorter and the days longer. That is the moment of the rebirth of light.

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth

I've been playing around with fotonotes lately, inspired by the cool stuff that Gina has been doing. She incorporated the overLIB javascript library with some back end GD code to create a dynamic html fotonotes viewer.

After looking at what Gina was doing, I thought there might be a way to create a dynamic html fotonotes viewer without using GD on the back end, and with some specialized javascript in place of overLIB. overLIB is awesome, but I wanted something a bit less heavy.

I incorporated a lot of the great ideas put forth in the comment thread of Gina's post about her viewer (and I gleaned a bit of javascript as well) to create a fotonotes viewer for the new photo album.

Here is the viewer at work from within' the gallery: Dog Park - Happy Dog

Here is a javascript include version of the viewer to allow me to post annotated images from within' this weblog.

My Father and his siblings

In the end, I'm just pickin' scraps from Gina's table, so many thanx to her and all the good people who posted comments to her entry.

update: some weird positioning problems in IE while scrolling a page with an image with notes, sorting it out...if you are using IE and want to see it work, go the the photo gallery. Also, the notes do not work in IE 5 for macintosh at all. I was able to sort out the IE on widows issue. For IE on mac, well, let's just say that browser is dead to me.

From a friend who works for a cell phone company...

In a few weeks, cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. Call this number (must be from your cell phone) 888-382-1222. It is the national Do Not Call list. It blocks your number for 5 years. Please pass this information on to anyone you know.

update: You can also use a web site to do this www.donotcall.gov. -via brian

more updates:

A directory of cell phone numbers will soon be published. - Urban Legend

the gist of the message...is correct in alerting consumers to a proposed directory of cell phone numbers, it is misleading in stating that such a directory will "soon be published" (the word "published" implies making a printed directory available, which the wireless consortium maintains they will not do) and in directing readers to sign up with the The National Do Not Call Registry. The latter step will not keep wireless customer listings out of the proposed Wireless 411 database -- it will only add their phone numbers to a list of numbers off-limits to most telemarketers, a step which is premature (because the Wireless 411 directory has not yet been implemented) and largely unnecessary (because the Wireless 411 directory information is not supposed to be supplied to telemarketers, and because FCC regulations already in place block the bulk of telemarketing calls to cell phones).

- via ben

Tonight I've reached OS bliss. A merging of worlds has combined the best, and worst, of three operating systems and placed them lovingly onto one beautiful terminal.

a full screen shot @ 1280 x 960.

Maybe some clarification is in order. I installed Fedora Core 3 on the old bitter pill server, the one I lugged back from Minneapolis in a large suitcase, the one that was searched and fondled lovingly by security at MSP airport. I imagine a large metal case with circuit boards embedded in a suitcase wrapped in laundry can be a tad bit suspicious. This machine is to be my new home Linux server/workstation/mp3-arama. I currently have a g4 Mac, an Athalon 1 gig windows XP machine and an old red hat linux server running in my house. Three in total blowing heat and dust around my office.

The new fedora machine will replace the old linux box, and then, stealing a great idea from Brian (as if I ever have any good ideas of my own), I opted to run vmware on the new linux machine. Vmware, if you don't already know, is a x86 emulator. It allows you to run a virtual x86 machine and load other operating system on it, such as Windows XP. So, I get to kill two birds with one stone. I saved the larger of the stones to kill my old windows machine, and now I have one machine to run both linux and windows, mainly linux. I need windows to run an ancient version of Quickbooks Pro, and to do some IE testing and such.

But wait, here comes the best and and most technically boring part of the story. After getting the new machine up and running with linux and a vmware virtual instance of windows, I got an idea. X windows is a network windowing protocol, and OS X has an X windows server. If I could be smart, or just plain lucky, I could run my linux X windows session over the network on my mac. And wait, then I could run a virtual vmware windows session in linux over X on my mac terminal. One terminal to rule them all!

note: if none of what was said above makes any sense to you, you probably have a life and a boy and/or girl friend, so don't worry about it.

I now have all three operating systems lovingly nested under one terminal hosted by OS X. And they all lived happily ever after.

THE END

In the mirror of reality, of the unbeautiful world, it is hardly reassuring and requires much strength of character to look and see oneself.

Arthur Miller - Focus

I've been doing a little research of search/indexing tools, so as a test I updated the search to use Lucene.

So far I'd have to say me gusta mucho.

You may have noticed the 'a bitterpill christmas' image to the right. You might think it safe to assume this means drunkin' rum-eggnog induced photo copied asses, and a little santa love below the mistletoe. You're not far off. I'm making an attempt to define for myself a holiday tradition where good will towards men/women means more that a drunkin' pat on the ass from a sauced up middle manager during the holiday party, I'm looking at you Jennifer.

...this is a start of a new tradition for me. A way to define a spirit of holiday where I strive for compassion and selflessness, where I attempt to turn away from the ideals of consumption and consumerism and towards a sense of hope and humanity.

a bitterpill christmas