A few things seem to have gone wrong with the Wordpress 2.6 upgrade. They are,

• Permalinks broke completely, still haven’t fixed this. For now, just using an ID call (static links to articles are nonfunctioning right now).
• RSS feed also seems to have gone down the drain. This is due to the same bug in 2.6 that caused the permalinks problem. I haven’t yet been able to fix it.
• Note that for you authors the login page has moved from ‘admin’ to ‘wp-admin’. This was a quick fix to another bug in 2.6 which I have decided to leave unresolved for the time being. Expect this change to be permanent.

Sorry about all this. The permalinks and RSS feed issues will either be fixed by me if I find the time/motivation or they’ll be fixed in the 2.6.1 release whenever that comes out.

Cheers.

The storm season in Indiana has been particularly active this spring/early summer. A couple weeks ago we had one hell of a storm come through north-central Indiana, hitting northern West Lafayette the hardest. It remains the only storm I have ever been through (and I’m including living in Florida for 9 years) which has actually scared me/caused significant damage.

This was a nice storm: decent MCS and individual supercell formation leading to a squall line. Loving thunderstorms and the study of weather as I do (thanks Meyers!), I was pretty busy taking pictures/watching/looking at weather data when I saw a swirling cloud of debris headed straight for the back of the house. I figured it couldn’t be that big of a deal so I just sat there and watched. Then the 100 mph winds hit the house and I hit the deck (and subsequently an interior room). While the damage to our house was moderate (shingles, aluminum siding and gutters missing, thrown AC unit, etc.), some other people right down the street didn’t fare so well.

Pictures of the storm and of some of the damage are available here.

Cheers.

One of the major cases before the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions” has concluded and awarded a win for free speech. While the outcome is gratifying the fact still remains that the Canadian government still believes it just and correct to regulate speech, which I (and many others) posit should be free and unfettered despite its message or content.

This has been one of the few “political” topics followed by vdov.net but I believe it has been an appropriate topic. For a little more background on the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions” vis a vis free speech you can see this previous article. Any debate and/or comments on the topic are always appreciated.

I am sure that the vdov authorship remembers our old, Canadian pal who ever so politely and succinctly let us know that “…hate is illegal in Canada.” The sacrifice of free speech at the altar of “not being offended” has now come to fruition in our good Nation to the North.

For those not closely following (anything in Canada) the dust up over free speech in Canada I will provide a couple basics. Several individuals including Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn have been hauled before provincial “Human Rights Commissions” to be tried for things they have said or written that may have offended individuals or groups. The idea being that what these individuals wrote or said was “hate speech” that disenfranchises people.

My general view is that all speech should be free, naturally. I take the “sticks and stones” approach with the caveat of speech that incites immediate violence. I am very much in line with standard American legal thinking. By placing restriction on forms of speech considered “offensive” or “hateful” a broad and completely subjective stifling of speech can occur which I find completely unacceptable. The point of all of this being that the current “trail” of Mark Steyn for his writings provides an excellent example of the farcical nature of limiting some forms of speech “for the greater good.” Andrew Coyne has been liveblogging the trial of Mark Steyn. The whole process is not only ridiculous from the standpoint of truly free speech it crosses into the realm of self parody because the Human Rights Council itself seems completely unable to justify or conduct itself in any kind of competent legal framework.

I am hoping that folks around here will take a crack at this one. It’s at least worth some discussion.

There was a time when I sort of believed the standard blogging doctrine “blog often”. I’m not exactly sure what the point of this was, other than to increase the likelihood of something you write being picked up somewhere significant. Or perhaps it was to “keep your blogging skills sharp”, if there are such things to sharpen. Recently though I’ve been subscribing to a huge number of politically influential blogs because I’ve been very engaged in this election cycle. And I have to say, regardless of what side of the isle these people come from, their work is almost exclusively terrible (there are rare exceptions).

I was reminded of a quote from way back in the day when I was first learning BSD (as introduced to me by the first Mac OS X … yes, I was a late bloomer in the grand scheme of things). From Ray & Ray’s Mac OS X Unleashed, reproduced without permission,

Caution [...] Just as some of us are safer not owning super-fast sports cars, some are less a threat to ourselves and others if we don’t have a big box of firecrackers, and some would be better off if we couldn’t buy donuts by the dozen, Unix is just too much for some people. It might be too much power, or too much flexibility, or too much information to remember, but Unix seems specifically designed to create a user who epitomizes the phrase knows just enough to be dangerous.

Each of these examples deals with “excess” in some way shape or form. While I disagree with its application to Unix for obvious reasons, it’s perfect for some of these people. Some of those to which this commentary is directed (not listed) I believe are extremely intelligent and linear in their thinking when writing through other mediums, but good lord, they all just become trivial little assholes who’d rather post off-the-cuff remarks then actually think through anything logically anymore.

Vdov.net has often published prolifically, through just as often we lag in our content production. I will no longer care if in a given month we lag … microblogging belongs at twitter.com.

Cheers.

“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.” -Samuel Adams

Vdov.net is not normally prone to politicking and this post is mostly about principles rather than politics. The authors here, from what I know of them personally, tend toward unfettered freedom rather than more tempered and restrained freedom. I am personally enamoured of the cause of liberty wherever it arises. I have a soft spot in my heart for all democratic reformers and movements that sincerely want to replace repressive regimes with open societies governed by democratic principles, whether that be anti-theocratic student movements in Iran or the Free Tibet movement. (more…)

I am trying to move Vdov into the times with some major updates (mostly coinciding with the release of Wordpress 2.5). Unfortunately I had the old mechanics of the site heavily customized and/or written from scratch, so now that Wordpress is actually capable of doing what it is I want, it’s taking me some time and effort to make the switch. Point being, Vdov will probably look a little weird now and then as I test some stuff out. Don’t worry, all your favorite content is still here (and even backed up, theoretically).

Cheers.

Why? has bubbled incredibly beneath the surface for far too long. They now have 3 LPs and 2 EPs without ever garnering major attention even amongst the indie crowd. With almost no “mainstream” recognition “Elephant Eyelash” was one of the best albums of 2005 that no one heard. Perhaps this was due to the tepid 7.8 from “Pitchfork Media” for the wonderfully energetic, breakthrough LP or the refusal by front man Yoni Wolf (Why? himself) to conform to normal indie musicality. My guess is that despite the fact that Chris Dahlen at Pitchfork seems more concerned with understanding Why? (“…I finally understand how he feels.”) what really throws people is the genre bending, musical avalanche unleashed on Elephant Eyelash and, more importantly, this year’s “Alopecia.” Why? is tracing out a wonderful arc with every album rising higher than the last and Alopecia makes the trend solid. The quartet of Yoni Wolf (the original holder of the moniker “Why?”), his brother Josiah, Matt Meldon, and Doug McDiarmid are ready for some attention, which they seem to be getting. Or at least the indie critic establishment is taking them seriously or at least writing more seriously about them as can be seen here and better yet here.
(more…)

I don’t normally just repost something that someone has already done. However, I thought that at least someone might like this little gem about the calculation for the date of Easter. The Wikipedia article also goes into a lot of depth. I had no idea this was such a complicated endeavor or that ancient people had spent so much time calculating the occurrence of this most glorious date. My absolute favorite part of the whole calculation is the beautiful condensation of all of this math into a nice easy to read, no math involved, histogram. The only anomaly seems to be Easter dates that fall on the 26th of April are moved to the 19th. The upshot of all of this is that this very Easter (today) happens to be the earliest Easter that any of us sad mortals will ever experience barring massive increases in human longevity since the next march 23rd Easter will be 2160. The earliest date possible for Easter is March 22nd which last happened in 1818 and won’t happen again until 2285. We can all rest easy though because barring rapture most of us will still be around in 2038 when we have the latest Easter of our lifetime (barring once again ludicrous increases in human longevity or singularity events). For those that don’t care a whit about Easter… well have fun roasting in the fires of hell for all eternity. I hope all your fancy math comforts you then.

Has anyone watched the Lost episode from last week? I think Teebs did if his away messages are any indication. They went back to the whole flash-forward thing again. I may be in the minority here but generally I like the idea of flash-forwards. I think they added a lot to episode 401. This episode was a complete wash though. They focused way too much on Sayid in the future and seemed to, once again, just randomly introduce ridiculous plot lines (with the whole Ben Linus boss thing in the future) that can’t possibly all be resolved no matter how long the show goes on. And, most importantly, they sacrificed any significant development on the island for this new crap in the future. Lame.

On an unrelated note, I was talking with afischer tonight about some random things and brought up my previous ‘Gmsh’ post. He said mostly what I expected … that is, “no one will remotely care about Gmsh”, but then said (paraphrasing), “no, I bet there is some ridiculous vdov.net groupie out there somewhere who feverishly anticipates anything new that comes onto the site”. I replied, “yeah, there may be, but I’m pretty sure if I met this person I would likely hate him/her … what does that say about vdov.net?”.

Nothing good, that’s for sure. Ha!

You have all probably forgotten that once there was a podcast on this site. The podcast isn’t coming back but something very similar is! That’s right, the Rt. Rev. Fischer, like Lazarus himself, has risen from the tomb. I am now an official DJ for Brown Student Radio (BSR). They liked me enough to give me a 1.5 hour timeslot on Saturday starting at 5:30. You can listen to it streaming live or you can get after the fact at my very own archive of the show. The on air radio station is WELH Providence 88.1FM. However, you are not going to hear my show on the actual radio airwaves. This is because BSR shares their station air time with The Wheeler School, a very nice private high school in Providence. So Wheeler broadcasts from 6:00am to 7:00pm and BSR gets the rest of the time. My show inconveniently ends at 7:00, just shy of actual airtime. Hopefully, I can get a real on-air slot over the summer (who knows?). There are a lot of things that are nice about BSR compared to my former radio home WBOR Brunswick 91.1FM. It is a more tightly run ship, their website is much better, and their internet broadcast is much superior. The drawbacks are a meager 150W broadcast tower (compared to 300W at WBOR), the fact that they share the air time with the Wheeler School and a Spanish language station, and they really make you work to be a DJ (8 hours of service a month… not that bad really). However, BSR is trying to get a license for a Low Power FM station under the official call letters “WBSR.” Low Power FM stations are something that I have wanted for a long time and in my opinion would radically change the US music scene if they proliferate. For more information check out The Prometheus Radio Project and the Wikipedia article on LPFM. I am planning on generating a good rant on the FCC and its problems, corporate radio, LPFM, and various related topics, but for now just know that the Rt. Rev. Fischer is back on the air.

This is a bit old but it never seem to have caught on. Some of you may have seen the wonderful work of Brad Neely in the form of cartooning Cox and Combes’ “Washington (NSFW or the kids) or in the form of his own History Lesson Part 1 among others. He has a kind of Mitch Hedberg hilarity (RIP) that is so understated and strange that it cannot help but make you laugh (although Mitch doesn’t much do it for me… Neely does). I finally got my act together to watch the difficult “Wizard People Dear Reader.” WPDR is a set of two CD’s (freely downloadable) that can be played concurrently with the movie “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” You play the DVD on mute and through the CD’s Neely provides the narration for what you are seeing. Hilarity ensues. Perhaps the easiest way to watch the movie is on youtube. Youtube user “HarryPotterCentral” has uploaded 35 short videos that comprise the whole movie synced with Neely’s narration. It is definitely worth a gander, even if you only make it through some of the full length movie.