zen.org Communal Weblog

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Retired_Supreme_Court_Justice_hits_attacks_0310.html

O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges.

On a recent episode of the tv programme “Family Feud” [the US version of “Family Fortune”], 100 people were asked to name a famous person to whom they’d like to give a lie-detector test … out of those 100 Americans, 47 responded “Pres. Bush.”

earthsite.org, the “Official Site of International Earth Day” places it on March 20, 2006. On the “Spring/Vernal Equinox” the <title/> says. Which sort of snubs half the Earth. They also insist that EARTH DAY IS NOT APRIL 22. Then earthday.net says it’s on April 22.

What day should Zoë and I take off our clothing and run naked in the park?

I did an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -u on our MythTV box to update it to the latest and greatest. After doing the upgrade, though, we were no longer able to watch live TV. I read through the release notes and found the LiveTV part had changed drastically. (Hmm, is it about here you’re wondering why I upgraded everything before reading what was changing?)

The LiveTV change makes it possible to watch something for a while, hit record, and have it save everything you’ve seen so far.

The fix to let us again watch live TV through our MythTV box was to run mythtvsetup and look under Capture cards and modify the single /dev/video0 entry that’s in there to have a Default Input value of S-Video 0.

When I first set up the box, I’d set up two inputs, one from the “regular” cable (Tuner 0) and one from the NTL Digital Cable box (S-Video 0). The intent was to make the MythTV record shows off the regular cable so we could watch whatever we wanted from the digital cable (no channels changing out from under us). I found the quality of what was being recorded for regular cable wasn’t the greatest, so I finally ditched the idea and stuck to just recording programs off digital cable. (Hmm, perhaps I should give Tuner 0 a try with the new version?) I deleted the Tuner 0 input connection, leaving just S-Video 0.

So it appears the new way of capturing live TV in a style that can be retroactively recorded has closed the part of MythTV that would iterate through input connections if the default doesn’t work. Instead, it will throw you right back at the initial screen for the UI. (Actually, this change is more of a workaround; still need to look at the diffs and figure out the real fix to the code to make it stop throwing us back out.)

Having changed it from the old Tuner 0 to S-Video 0, I restarted mythtvbackend, then mythtvfrontend. Voila, we can again watch live TV and pause it when the phone rings or someone comes to the door. Or to avoid commercials by pausing til we know they’re done (commercials are considerably less frequent in Ireland/UK television than in the US, but they’re still there). Thanks, MythTV!

Just read this in a newsletter that I get. I can’t be the only one who sees this, can I?

Parents Against Junk Food (our effort to improve school lunches around
the country) is being launched April 1. The Web site address will be
www.parentsagainstjunkfood.org . The site will offer a variety of ways
for you to get involved (including contacting your representatives in
Congress), and we will be asking you to send us letters, photos, and
information on the lunches in your local schools. Please help!

Down in the test kitchen, the editors of our sister publication,
Cook’s Country, just came up with a great recipe for oven-fried onion
rings using ground potato chips for a coating and the heat of the oven
(no frying required) to do the cooking. Click here for the recipe.

[tags]cooking, cooksillustrated, junkfood, lunch, irishblogs[/tags]

The grave was shallow and short, but the cadavers would fit. I dumped the bodies in as the sleet fell. Though hidden in the wood, this late winter burial was not hidden by the leaves that will start to grow within a month. My heart beat speeded up as a car swished away on the near by road. I started shoveling dirt over the bodies. Was covering up the sins of a friend worth this? A glassy eye stared up at me, it had to be the last part that was covered. I packed the top of the grave and covered it with some leaves and sticks, hopefully the sleet would turn to snow and give it another cover. Another car.

Earlier that day I was trying to fix my computer, my USB ports seem to have stopped working. Retrieving a needle nose from the junk drawer in the kitchen I saw them out of the corner of my eye. There lay the bodies in the back room, as the killer slept snuggly up in the bedroom. The head was missing from one body, a glassy eye of the mammal stared at me.

After disposing of the bodies, I returned to the back room. Feathers and fur where around the room. Marvin had brought in a dead baby rabbit before, and a torpid squirrel, but this was a full grown rabbit, nearly his own size! It must of been sick, bird flu? Stupid cat.

There was still Daphne, I would have to throw out the rug if she knew about it. All evidence had to be covered up. I vacuumed up the evidence, emptied and cleaned the out Dyson canister. The only thing left is to confess my sins. Daphne never reads my blog…

There is a great talk that is going to happen in Belfast on 16 March, with [tag]Richard Stallman[/tag] and [tag]Bruce Perens[/tag]. This is one of those events that true geeks can’t miss :-). And it’s FREE (as in beer, as well as in speech, that’s even kewler). Sponsored by Google.

[tags] freesoftware, belfast, irishblogs, irishblog, google, seminar[/tags]

I visited a site to see what times Breakfast on Pluto [you need broadband for that link] is airing in our local theater on Friday. So the page came up, I clicked on “Fri”, and nothing happened. Hmm. Try again, try reload, nope. Ok, fine: View->Page Source. The first few lines told me the evil truth:

<script language=”VBSCRIPT”>
Function ScheduleRequest(ByVal ReqDate)
Dim pi

times.seldate.value = CDate(ReqDate)
ScheduleRequest=””
Set oXML = createobject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”)
oXML.open “POST”, times.gateway.value, False
… etc …

Yes, Dark Lord, your wish is my command, no one shall buy a movie ticket online unless they run Wind0ws.

Why the hell would someone choose to implement this in Visual Basic ? <spit/>

(Turns out the movie’s stopping in Ireland on Friday. At least the DVD’s out in April in the US, and hopefully not too much later in Ireland and the UK.)

Just a quick quote from Meat color treatment draws fire:

Hormel Foods and Cargill Inc. are selling raw pork and beef that’s sealed inside packages containing carbon monoxide. It’s a new technology that keeps meat looking bright red, even weeks after it would otherwise age to a dingy brown.

Just got this from IrelandOffline:

The Pat Kenny show today on Radio 1 had a representative of eircom
on-air taking questions about broadband from Pat’s listeners. The show
appeared to be snowed under with callers and emailers but Pat Kenny
had eircom commit to investigating all their issues and to get back to
Pat with answers.

We suggest that you email the problems you had getting broadband to
todaypk@rte.ie (please send a copy to info@irelandOffline.org too) and
Pat’s team will compile them into a file and send them to eircom.
Please include some contact details. In a months time we suggest you
come back to us and Pat Kenny and let us know whether anything has
been done to fix your problems getting broadband.

We’d also like to thank everyone that’s sent in a submission to the
Minister in regards to broadband availability. The closing date for
submissions is tomorrow and if you have not sent in something yet,
then we suggest you do, even if it is just a few short lines. The
Minister and the Government need to understand that there is a large
proportion of the population that are in need of broadband and cannot
get it instead of them doing their best to blame lack of interest as
the reason for the digital divide.

[tags]irelandoffline rte broadband ireland[/tags]