The New Experiment

A few months back I ended my attempt to use Linux exclusively. It just didn't work for what I needed it to do. At that time I mentioned that if I wanted to use a different operating system, I would get a Mac. Something happened since then, it is called Feisty Fawn. The newest Ubuntu Linux Distro. It seems to have added a lot of energy to the Linux Desktop movement. Enough, in fact, to get me looking again. ...

After reading article after article about how-to this or how to that in Ubuntu, I finally downloaded the live CD. I used the live CD a little and was impressed with how easy it seemed to work. It really did seem like Linux anybody could use. My only concern was trying to set up a dual boot system with it, so I could do my testing. Not to mention, Linux is still not capable of playing EQ2. So, although my interest was peaked, I just let my interest wane.

A short while later Fedora came out with Fedora 7. While it didn't have as cool of a nickname as 'Zod', I was drawn to it more than Ubuntu. I'm not sure why, maybe it is just the name. As far as hats go, Fedora's are dang cool. I miss the one I used to have. Anyway, I took a look and I decided to take the plunge again. However, this time I wasn't going to try to make it my main desktop. I was just going to tinker.

After using it a while, I can definately say Linux is ready for the desktop. Since most users don't do much, other than read email, write documents and spreadsheets. If you are worried about playing MP3s and other restricted codec, go with Ubuntu - they have made it very easy to get those codecs while Fedora sticks to their philosophies of Open Source very well. However, if you don't already have MP3s ( or you don't even use them ), either should do well for most purposes.

If you do go with Fedora ( Perhaps you are a hat lover ), then you might want to check out The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 7. The Perfect Desktop is a great article that helps you convert from Windows to Fedora 7.

What's the real issue with immigration?

A little while back I made a blog post on my richardsonForPresident.com blog asking about immigration. If you don't want to follow that link I'll repeat myself

The other day I had the thought that I don't understand the issue of immigration. I learned about the great immigrant heritage of the United States of America and I find it difficult to understand what people are worried about. I know it must be something because immigration seems to be one of the main issues right now. So I'd like to hear from you and get some more information on what people's concerns are.

I will say that I have some thoughts on immigration from what little I do know. However, I will share those after I learn more and my opinions start to take shape based on the larger picture. So once again, I request your comments on immigration and your take on what some of the issues are that make it so difficult.

Since that blog will obviously be limited in perspectives that see it, I ask you the Opera community what you think. I'd like to hear the perspective of all types of people, conservatives, liberals, progressives, other Americans, non-Americans. Let me know what you think I'd love to hear your thoughts.

CNN/YouTube Debates

Since I don't have cable I couldn't watch the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate on Monday Night. Much like the last debates I planned on watching the video from CNN.com. However, when I went to their website today I noticed something, they changed formats since the last debate. Before, they used the windows media format and now they were using flash video. I am a big proponent of flash video, it's truly cross platform ( PC, Mac and Linux ) and it just seems to work better. Their useage didn't, however, allow something that is now well implemented with flash player 9 but was available in the old Windows Media format - Full Screen Video. This really bothered me because I don't want to squint for 2 hours with my face 2 inches from the monitor while my wife and I try to watch the debates and it should have the ability to go full screen if they have the proper version of flash installed ( which is easy to ensure thanks to express updates ). Being who I am and doing what I do I made a player for the debate. It grabs all 4 parts from CNN and allows the watching of the entire debate all in fullscreen if you desire. ...

As you may notice I also took out the commercial at the beginning of each part. Since I did this without permission from CNN.com I don't know how long this will stay up. If they ask me to set it up with the commercials I will be glad to do that for the right to help distribute something I think is important for every American and many others around the world to see. I plan on doing the same thing with the Republican debate as well unless a better, and legitimate source is available.

Unfortunately, I can't add javascript to my blog page so I am unable to add express update to this page. So if you have problems viewing this page you may need to update your flash player to the most current version. It doesn't take long because Adobe has gone to great lengths to keep the download size to about 1MB.

Headers already sent?!

In my experience, the most annoying and hard to track down bugs are the simplest things. Sometimes you misspell a word. Sometimes you accidentally check for a boolean true when you should be checking for false. The worst are misplaced spaces, tabs, carriage returns and other whitespace that makes an bug hard to track down. ...

What I was trying to do was simple. I just needed to add a class file into my PHP code for an application I am working on. After I added the class file like so:

require_once( "../../../fileDirectory/my_necessary_class.php" );

I started to get errors.

Because this was a Flex application using AMFPHP, my first error popped up in the service browser.

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.	at RawAmfService/internal::readData()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/flash.events:EventDispatcher::dispatchEventFunction()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
	at flash.net::URLLoader/flash.net:URLLoader::onComplete()
	at [io]

Ack! Near useless errors, at least it looked like the AMF reading abilities of the flash player were being confounded by whatever they were getting sent. From what eventually came up in the Service Browser's results window I had a bit more information to work with:

(Object)#0
  message = "faultCode:INVALID_AMF_MESSAGE faultString:'Invalid AMF message' faultDetail:'

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /a/long/path/to/a/site/root/fileDirectory/my_necessary_class.php:464) in /a/long/path/to/a/site/root/amfphp/core/shared/exception/php4Exception.php on line 38
'"
  name = "Error"
  rootCause = (null)

Eureka! proper AMF file headers were not able to be sent because, headers were already sent before the call to send AMF headers.

My deductive process to find the error went like this:
1. Perhaps the file isn't where I think it is. I change the require_once code a little and get an error that tells me that I had it right before.
2. Look for any obvious errors in the class - it works in other programs so I wasn't counting on this to work out for me. It didn't.
3. So that I could edit the class without breaking other applications I made a copy in the same directory and to see if somehow tha was affecting the headers. Still a no go.
4. Finally I decided to comment the entire file out and try it. Success! Slowly I uncommented function by function. In the end I uncommented every function and it still worked.

Not being one to fix a bug without understanding it I did a comparison of the original file and my new version. The only difference was my new version did not have an extra line after the closing ?>. When I saw that I remembered something I read about the PHP include functions( include, include_once, require and require_once ).

When a file is included, parsing drops out of PHP mode and into HTML mode at the beginning of the target file, and resumes again at the end. For this reason, any code inside the target file which should be executed as PHP code must be enclosed within valid PHP start and end tags.

What was happening was that the last line of that file was being sent as HTML, so PHP sent regular HTML headers when the file was included and before the AMF headers were sent. So if you are trying to output non-HTML and your run into a problem where the wrong headers are being sent, check to see if you have some extra whitespace outside of your <?php ?> tags.

----
Daryl "Deacon" Ducharme is currently Director of Application Development for the Interactive Agency Provis Media Group, LLC which helps organizations enhance identity, connect with customers and increase productivity.

Ah, The Memories

With the imminent return of Triple H, I have been thinking about the first time he returned from a quadricep injury. At that return he let everyone know he was entering that year's Royal Rumble and ended up having an altercation with another one of my favorite wrestlers Kurt Angle. Being that this is Independence Day in the USA and Kurt Angle is my olympic cheeseball hero, I thought I would like to see one of the great moments WWE history. Read on to see a clip of Milk-o-Mania running wild on Raw. ...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwzjPb36p6M]
A great parody of the old Steve Austin Beer truck. My favorite quote was from good ole JR

The million dollar princess has become the dairy queen

Considering this was a time when the WWE was combining its acquired brands ( WCW and ECW ), I'm not sure what this really has to do with Independence but hey, Kurt Angle is an All American :)

Return of the Game

If you don't already know my favorite wrestler is Triple H, bar none and hands down. Yes, there are others I like as well but nobody puts it all together as well as Triple H. Triple H is a true heel when he needs to be. When he is a heel, people hate him. They really hate him and will talk, blog and write all about it so everyone can hear. What better praise can you get? He can also be very silly at other times. It looks like he is about to come back to Raw from his injuries just in time for my favorite pay per view of the year Summerslam. ...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7YDucuVlhA]
If this return goes anything like the last one, I am stoked.

Benoit

I've had a lot of emotions this week about the Benoit family tragedy. I've wanted to write about it all week in my blog, so as to let some of it out. However, all my different thoughts are jumbled up in emotional streams of conciousness. I've decide to just let it rip and see what comes from it. This post may not flow very well but feel free to read my thoughts. ...

Last monday I was at my brother in laws house. Like me, he doesn't have cable so we couldn't watch wrestling. He had a girlfriend over who is a big wrestling fan and a fan of Chris Benoit. As my wife was flipping through the small selection of available channels hoping he somehow recieved USA so that we could start to see the Vince McMahon death storyline play out, I noticed my brother in laws friend was on the phone talking to somebody and very upset. From the parts I overheard it was wrestling related and she was trying to confirm if it was just another storyline or the truth. At some point she plops her laptop down in front of me with the article about the death of Chris Benoit and his family. I was shocked! Another one!? An active wrestler!? A top card!? I had just gotten an Eddie Guerrero shirt for fathers' day. I was wishing I could watch RAW to honor a wrestler I truly respected.

On Tuesday, we made the long drive home and picked up D'Artagnan from his grandpa's house. It was a whirlwind of a day, and very long so I didn't look into the case any further. I wanted to know what happened, was it foul play? Was it a carbon monoxide leak? However, when the end of the day came I could barely keep my eyes open and wasn't ready to deal with any of that information emotionally.

Wednesday morning I woke up early and thought, they probably have some information out by now I'll go check. As I started to read, I didn't want to believe a word of it. It couldn't be. I didn't know Benoit but... it was too much to bare. All at once I wanted to talk it through with everybody and never speak of it again. On the way to work my wife made it clear that I needed to talk to Stro. Stro knew both Chris and Nancy from WCW. I needed to talk to him, he would be hit harder than anyone else I knew. However, that was going to have to wait for me to get to a point where I could be there for him. I wasn't ready for that yet. As I walked into the gym that morning, Brenda and Andy made a comment about how McMahon's storyline got ruined by the Benoit tragedy. I talked with them a bit. It helped to talk with others but I needed to know more.

Work didn't go well on Wednesday. I was fairly productive, but I remember a 2 hour period where I just couldn't focus on work enough to distract myself. It was during this time that I called Stro. Devestated is probably the best description of how he sounded on the phone. He didn't believe Benoit did it. He believed that someone murdered all of them and set it up to discredit Benoit. I let Stro know that he could call me anytime, if he needed to talk about it. I haven't talked to him since. During this 2 hour period I also read as many articles as I could find. I watched the McMahon announcement at wwe.com that originally aired before ECW. It was all coming together but I still wasn't going to believe Chris did it.

Thursday came and the articles I started to read focused on Steroids. This angered me. Not all of them really. Steroids and body dysmorphia are terrible parts of the sports and entertainment industries. Just the ones that were using this to ride their high horse about steroids, or about how evil the WWE, wrestling and/or Vince McMahon are. Those articles were obviously biased and contained a lot of false, misleading and/or completely bullshit pieces of information. Other articles were much better and I was coming to the realization that Chris most likely did perpetrate these heinous acts. However, I didn't go the route of cutting the legacy he worked so hard at out of my mind. He was a great wrestler, and I will always respect his in ring abilities. However the end of his life really went down, while unbelievable ( no matter the truth ) it was a tragic end to an amazing career.

I'm going to quit giving a timeline now. I'm having a bunch of my thoughts I need to make sure I get down. First and foremost it pisses me off how people passed judgement so quick on Benoit. People went from either admiring and respecting him to hating him and speaking about him as a monster. It's not like we just found out he was a serial killer for the past 25 years. In fact all the evidence about the past 25 years says he wasn't; except for a period in 2003 when there was the possibility of divorce with his wife but that their was only 1 restraining order and they obviously worked it out. From my limited knowledge of batterers there are usually more signs than that. In hindsight anyway. Let's turn this around for a second. If someone is a serial killer for 25 years but then in their last acts on this earth they suddenly spend their life saving another, do we then hold parades in their honor, and create statues, buildings and holidays in their name? The tragic end, is a tragic end. He was not a monster. He was a human being who reached a point where his reality altered beyond anything I can imagine. My wife's first thought when she found out it looked like he murdered his family was he must have suffered from depression so bad it got out of hand. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. It doesn't make the acts any less terrible but it does start to make more sense.

I realize that many people are just going through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. My first reaction was denial as I'm sure many people's was. Both to the death and then to the murder-suicide claim. My friend Stro was, and may still be. Like I said, he actually knew both Chris and Nancy and none of it makes sense to him. The anger was clear. Many people were angry at the WWE for honoring Chris Benoit on Monday. Of course the WWE had no knowledge of the details surrounding the case at that point. Obviously much of the anger was pointed towards Benoit and monstrifying him. Others, like me, went the way of getting angry at people who discredit his whole career for one terrible act, especially since we still don't have all the details yet. More people got angry at the WWE for their role in this.

The WWE has it tough. Professional wrestling, though very popular, is still a subculture that is looked down upon by many people. Many people outside of the business, especially non fans of present day, have a very false and unflattering view of the WWE. Vince McMahon has it worse. Being the Chairman of the WWE, he is it's figurehead. However, as Mr. McMahon ( not Vince, there is a difference ) he plays a heel - bad guy for all the wrestling ignorant - and so he doesn't have a very good image on purpose. People tend to think he is as evil as he plays on TV. I'm not saying he is a saint but from everything I've heard he seems like one of the better hugely successful business people to work for. Very rarely, in the Western world at least, do you find a businessman whose handshake is as good as his signature on a contract. Of course, given the number of wrestlers who have died recently the WWE needs to look at its own business. And it does! However, given the number of celebrity's who have issues how many of us look in the mirror and ask - how am I responsible for what happened? If you read that and think you aren't in any way responsible think again. We crave celebrity and we have very demanding standards. Our celebrities need to look a certain way. All the "way too thin" celebrities we hear about are the equivalent of the steroid abusing athletes. It's all body dysmorphia. One group just says I'm too big, the other says I'm too small. Why do they say that? Why do they think that? Is it because Vince McMahon thinks that bigger wrestlers get more butts in the seats and thus keep his business and dream alive? Whose butt is in those seats? Who is watching that actresses movie? Who is watching and reading every little piece of gossip about how anorexic, bulemic, drug addicted someone is? It is you. It is your friends. What about the need to stay in the limelight. Entertainment is a rough business. If people aren't seeing you, they forget you. So you need to stay in front of them. In wrestling that means you need to be on the road 300+ days a year. Does it really? Why do the wrestler's think that. Is it because the fans demand it. Is it because wrestling gets so little respect that very few wrestlers can branch out into other forms of entertainment and be thought of with respect in that genre? Think again about your own responsibility in situation like this before you start to pass the blame on to others. It's a tough pill to swallow, especially after an event like this, but you may transform your life out of what you find behind that inquiry.

I'm going to miss Chris Benoit in the ring. I will never know everything that happened but the tragic end will never diminish his career in my eyes. I wish everlasting peace to the Chris, Nancy and Daniel Benoit. I realize that no matter what the situation truly is, 3 people we're killed that day. I am deeply, deeply saddened. More so than I logically think I should be. It hits me as a father, a husband, a wrestler, a wrestling fan and a friend of someone who knew the family. Now that I have written this much, I do feel better but the saddness is still there.

Steroids:
I hate that shit. It does terrible stuff to the body. In fact, I'm not clear that we still know every way that it affects the body. Of course, I have a hard time taking medicine to clear up a stuffy nose. I'm pretty amazed with the human body and I always give it a chance to handle things itself. I don't like the side effects. I still take medicine and go to the doctor when the side effects are better than the body doing its thing but I often wait longer then most people I know.

Given the pieces of the case I have read about I'm clear that steroids were most likely a factor. They may have led to 'roid rage if Chris was back on them. Or, by being off them, he could have had very intense depression. I heard that Superstar Billy Graham said that he thought they were only a piece of the puzzle and most likely other drugs were also involved. I'm sure they were. How they were, however, is way up in the air. Drugs, prescribed and otherwise, effect the body in ways we only partially comprehend. Every body is different too. Every drug combination is different. How they interact is only known to a certain degree.

My only hope is that this will make people rethink some of the stuff they are doing to their bodies. I hope that coaches rethink recommending kids take this crap. Not only that, but they need to start nipping it in the bud and kicking those kids off the team. But it comes back to how we are responsible. Those coaches usually get paid better when they win, no matter how they win. The butts in the seats, paying for tickets and buying the overpriced items at the concession stand see to that. I realize each individual is responsible for their own actions and can make these decisions for themselves. We live in a skewed culture. We hate knowing about steroid use, but we like to see big strong men do amazing things after they take them. As long as we don't know about it, we are good. Heck, even when we do know about it sometimes 'winning' is more important. Perhaps we need to rethink winning. Is our team really winning if the are risking their lives to get bigger, stronger and faster. Is our team really winning if our kids, who look up to the athletes, think the only way to make it to the top is destroy themselves. Making it to the top is now more important than staying healthy, than staying alive. We need to look in the mirror and see how we are responsible for these aspects of our culture and take steps to make a difference in the lives of people we touch.

Thank you for reading my rant. I love you all.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

On Saturday I got to do something very special. Along with my wife and brother in law, I went to see Rush in concert. It's been a while since I've been to a concert, and I believe the last one was Rush as well. But it was a pleasure for more than just a chance to see them play live. The nights playlist was different than what you would expect, and yet it was the same. ...

I love live albums and there are some perennial concert classics that always seem to get played. For instance, Spirit of the Radio, Tom Sawyer and some part of 2112. All great songs, but I've heard them live. In some cases I have 3 different live versions on CD plus the Rush in Rio DVD version. Because of this I went in with some songs that I would love to hear, but I wasn't expecting them to play.

Limelight is one of my favorite songs and it was likely to be played ( in fact it was first in the playlist ). Some others that I like were played as well. The song that has the line from the title of this posting, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", Circumstances I didn't think would get played. The songs from Hemispheres that usually get played are The Trees and La Villa Strangiato, neither of which was on the playlist. Instead, they played Circumstances which was awesome. Another song that was unlikely but very cool is Natural Science. They played it! In fact the whole first part of the show was a mix of stuff from their new album Snakes and Arrows and older stuff that you don't usually hear.

During intermission we heard a part of 2112. Not as played by Rush, but the string quartet version of 2112. That was quite amusing and gave way to a conversation about how cool it would be to have a string quartet play Rush songs during intermission, then the band could play the songs they didn't.

The second part of the show started out with more of the same mix. A bunch of great Rush songs that you wouldn't expect mixed in with songs from their new album. As the saying goes though, the more that things change, the more they stay the same. Then the familiar opening to Spirit of the Radio started and we began a set, albeit short, of more expected songs. They did mix things up a little and had a great intro into Tom Sawyer by the boys of South Park acting as Lil Rush.

All in all, a great concert. My wife wrote down the playlist and might be putting it on her blog, but I think their was only 23 songs played that night. Given the number of albums they have and the fact that some albums got more coverage than others, not every album was represented. However, much of their career for the past 30+ years was represented including the theme song from Summerslam 2005, the cover of Summertime Blues.

If you haven't bought their new album yet, make sure to pick it up. While you are at it check to see when they are coming to your area and get yourself some tickets if you can. They once again put on a great show and played some great music.

Moving from point A to point B will never be the same.

A page I like to look at from time to time is called, interesting thing of the day. Recently it had an article on parkour, which I found extremely interesting. What is parkour? And why do I find it so intriguing? ...

If you check out the wikipedia article on Parkour, it says:

(Le) Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement[1] (English: the art of displacement) is a physical art of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.

That sounds neat. As I have mentioned before I am drawn to things of french origin. I am also an artist and appreciate it in many forms. As a wrestler and former personal trainer the bit about using the abilities of the human body was a bonus. Given that hat trick I had to check it out for myself.

Being the true netizen that I am I promptly made my way to the google video search ( which I have "v" set up in my address bar to do the search in Opera ) and put in Parkour. There are many great videos there that show it as an art and/or philosophical practice as well as videos showing how bad ass people think they are. Then of course there are David Belle videos. Being one of the creators of the parkour movement he obviously has some great practice. He does a good job of showing off both sides of the art.

Here is a great documentary showing off some of the movements in a small space that people use to train:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkHPQPozDRs]

Here is a clip of David Belle in action from the french movie District 13:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01du2W6VJis]

If you are interested in finding out more and you live in the US, a good place to start is American Parkour dot com. On another note, if my sister or any other Madonna fans are reading this - parkour was featured in Madonna's "Jump" video.

Fathers' Day

To all the men who take the time to be a male role model for a child - Happy Fathers' Day.

As a son I know how much it means to have all the special times with your father.

As a father I know how much it gives you, and how much it takes, to provide those special times.