Actors in Prison

story in the NYTimes today about Shakespeare behind bars, a program designed to teach some inmates something about the world. When they asked if anyone had some acting experience, one wrote a pretty good reply: “As for acting experience, one man had played Simon Legree in a Milwaukee prison production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” while another was in “Three Billy Goats Gruff” back in kindergarten. William White, who is halfway through a 32-year stretch for burglary, wrote on his application that for 15 years he had “acted like I didn’t have a drug problem.””]]>

Police

ABC and others are reporting on a detective shot by a suspect in a police station. After he killed the detective, he jumped out a window to escape. CNN just showed a picture of him wearing a Hanibal Lector outfit (face guard). His eyes are black and blue, and his skin is all cut up. CNN said “jumping out of the window may explain the bruising.” “May?” How about “shooting a cop is probably the reason for the bruising, as he got the snot kicked out of him after he was arrested.” CNN needs to be more accurate.]]>

Gas Prices are rigged

Maryland Gas Prices has become a regular website for me of late. Lately I’ve been looking at a new car, possibly a Land Rover. No, I’m not a soccer mom–it’s just that the Land Rover has one of the few engines that can handle LPG fuel instead of gasoline. I’m thinking of switching to an LPG/Propane vehicle for my next car, but we’ll see how a lot of other things go before we get around to that.]]>

You have to do this

Follow this link and do as they say. Since June or July of last year, the FCC mandated that all Cable Boxes have FIREWIRE ports. This is very cool because with some free software from Apple, you can turn you Mac into a TIVO to record your favorite television, time shift, etc. I’ve been recording my favorite MTV videos off of VH-1 Classic (which sucks a lot more now than it did before I left for Hong Kong I should note). But then discovered my cable company has On Demand videos, which created a dilema. Why should I time shift something that is always available? In a world with a jukebox in the sky, why do I need a local copy of anything? This is the kind of thinking RIAA needs to get on board with. Give us what we want and we won’t steal it. ]]>

Great Protest

Even the BBC is reporting on the demise of the protestors at the World Bank this weekend. Traffic was snarled around DC not because of roving gangs of anarchists–no, it was because the cops closed down the roads expecting roving gangs (that never came). Fewer than 200 demonstrators showed up, Ramsey said. There was so little activity that commanders sent officers assigned to protest duty back to their districts for crime patrols. “It was quiet,” Ramsey said. “There was no comparison” to past protests. I don’t mind protests. I just hate wimpy ones.]]>

Run Hirata Run!

Hirata Masanori is a friend of mine running for the Japanese Diet. He graduated law school at Notre Dame and then went back to Japan to practice law and accounting. He’s now running as part of the Democratic Party of Japan (the opposition). Most of his site is in Japanse, but it is neat to see. Hirata was struck by a car when he was 19 and confined to a wheelchair. It’s good to see that that has not stopped him. ]]>

Podcasts

podcast directory is still under construction. I had a problem where certain items kept clogging up the system, leading me to belive it had to be something serious, like a bad server or a permissions error in the database or something really complicated. It was a ‘ mark. A misplaced ‘ mark messed up my code and nearly crashed the entire server. Man it is a pain sometimes. Like the early days of HTML where you had to match ‘ > < " and all that with a text editor. Anyway, in other computer news, the new version of Adobe Go Live is out, but I haven't decided if I will buy it. I bought the last "upgrade" only to discover, afterwards, that they took out the most important function--dynamic websites via php. That swore me off buying software for a year or so. But then again, I did just buy a version of Eudora instead of using the free one. The junk mail filters are only available if you buy a version, and WOW--what a difference. Before my e-mail would be alerted every 10 minutes or so for some spam (95% of the spam is caught at the server, but about 40 a day still get through). Now those e-mails get routed to a junk mail filter and I only get "new mail" alerts for basically legitimate stuff. Really has saved time and helped me keep focused as I'm not always checking my e-mail. Ok, off to the long commute.]]>