Political Cartoons

After this past week's political bruhaha over the DNC and McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate I found myself a bit annoyed. I constantly heard everyone talk about first black presidential candidate and first female vp candidate. Rarely have I seen a news source make it clear that this is in regards to the major parties. That's why the cartoon above was nice to see. ...

This website has some good alternative politcal cartoons. By alternative, I mean not mainstream politcal punditry in cartoon form. A perfect example is a recent cartoon about bipartisan militarism in American politics.

For recent entries you should check out their page of new ones.

StudioBendIb is definately worth checking out.

FSI Navigator Alpha 2 released

I have released the alpha 2 version of my FSI Navigator AIR Application. The only new feature is that it uses the AIR Update Framework to check for an update once a day. At this point the updates are automatic only, with no way to manually update. Manual update checks will be available before the 1.0 release.

It is recommended that all current users update to this version so that they can keep up with the latest news in the pre-release process.

Also, don't forget to report bugs and request features at my issue tracking site:
http://www.ducharme.cc/mantis/

FSI Navigator news update

To make it easier to install, I've added an install badge to my previous post and I am adding one here.

I have also set up the project in my issue tracking system. If people would like to give constructive feedback and help the development of the FSI Navigator project that is the place to go.

Why I support Ralph Nader

Read on to see a well put together speech by someone ( not me ) who supports Ralph Nader and why. For me, this puts into words what I sometimes can't. Perhaps Nader is not the candidate who supports your values, but which candidate best supports your values? Is it Barr, McKinney, Baldwin... just look through the list of candidates on Wikipedia. ...

Language Lessons 2 - My first decent AIR app

A while ago I wrote a blog post titled "Language Lessons." It was a post designed to showcase some of the 'cheap as free'™ ways to study a language. One of those ways was fsi-language-courses.com, a website dedicated to making the public domain FSI language courses freely available in an electronic format. While it is a great resource, the site isn't extremely usable. Adobe Integrated Runtime(AIR) to the rescue. ...

For all my talk of being a Flash/Flex expert ( Flexpert? ), I have yet to make a decent AIR app. Sure I've made a couple of tools to help me out with some minor tasks( get map lat/lon coordinates, creating a tool to help me learn degrafa ) but nothing very usable for anybody else ( or exciting to make ).

With all that in mind it is with great excitement that I announce my first alpha release of th AIR FSI Navigator. This tool allows you to navigate their different language programs and view the pdfs while you listen to the accompanying audio ( if they are available of course ). As with most alpha software, this has a long way to go before it is considered released ( and I will most likely release it as open source long before that ), but you might find it useful.

FSI_Navigator.air
This application requires Adobe AIR 1.1 be installed on your computer. If it is not you can download it from the Adobe website.UPDATE: It is easier to just use the install badge at the bottom of this post.

Known Issues ( not an exhaustive list )

• Certain courses do not work. Especially if the course contents are located in a zip file.
• PDFs take a while to load and there is no download notification. Be patient, if you have Adobe Acrobat 8.1 and the screen is black,it just means the PDF is loading ( some of them are quite large ).
• Closing the MP3 Playback window shade and then reopening it decreases its height.
• Downloads are not saved to your hard drive for offline work. This feature is planned for the future, in fact it will be the default so that files don't have to be downloaded from the server every time.
• Volume thumb bar isn't visible when the program starts. Just click on the volume adjustment area and it will show up.

Update: I thought I'd do a quick attempt to add an install badge for this:

Quote of the day

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider God-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, wrongly believing that he has the Gods on his side.

–Aristotle, Politica bk v (ca. 340 BCE)

Help Me Win Dinner with Ralph Nader

Friend:

I've entered a contest.

It's sponsored by Nader/Gonzalez.

And first prize is a dinner with Ralph Nader.

There are a bunch of other prizes.

Like -- an autographed copy of Ralph's classic -- Unsafe at Any Speed.

But I want to win the dinner with Ralph.

The contest works this way:

The person who brings in the most e-mail sign-ups to Ralph's web site wins the dinner with Ralph.

Nader/Gonzalez will set up a leaderboard to keep track of how I'm doing.

But, I need you to sign up.

And for you to be included on the list of people who I got to sign up, you have to do it in a certain way.

By signing up, you will get a daily message from Nader/Gonzalez -- they are always politically interesting -- and sometimes funny. And you can unsubscribe at any time.

But for me to win a dinner with Ralph, you have to sign up.

So, please, do it for me.

I want dinner with Ralph!

Help me out.

To sign up and help me win I'll need to send you an email through their website. To make sure your email address is safe, please don't post it in the comments but use the my.opera message system. If you do post it in the comments, I will do my best to sanitize your email out of it once I have sent the request. The contest ends August 7th.

Flexbuilder for Flash post on Flexcoders

Okay, so the title sucks but this morning I posted a workflow for using Flex Builder for working with Flash (FLA) files.

Check it out at Flexcoders.

The Rush(ians) are coming!

I don't get cable so I could have missed it. Last week on The Colbert Report one of my favorite bands, Rush, appeared on the show. Not only that, but the whole show got Rush-ified from the opening monologue, to the Word, to the actual interview. It was quite enjoyable to watch. This just proves that there is some worthwhile information in those Adobe blogs. ...

Since the whole show was rushified, here it is. This may not work for IE users so why not get Opera ( or if you must Firefox, Safari, etc. ).

^{If you have a debug version of the flash player you will see a sandbox violation. You can just continue past that and everything should work fine.}

Welcome to the grand illusion...

...come on in an see what's happening.
Pay the price get your tickets for the show.

As a member of the Green Party member and supporter of the Ralph Nader campaign there are a lot of perceived realities that bug me. From spoiler conversations to the types of people that can be president, the entrenched beliefs are rampant. One that's been on my mind lately has been the illusion of the 2 party system. ...

The two party system really is a grand illusion, in that even the people who are against it continue to speak about it as if it is real. While we may currently have what amounts to a defacto two party system in the United States, we do not have a two party system. This is a very necessary distinction and I'll paraphrase Styx to explain why.

Don't be fooled by the radio, the TV or the magazines. They'll show you photographs, of how your party should be but they're just someone elses fantasy

When the media that has the largest market share chooses to only focus on two parties they help to spread the illusion of a two party system. However when we, as members of any party other than the two being focused on by the larger media corporations, speak about the two party system as if it is real it becomes even more real. Perhaps, if we begin treating this country as a democracy open to all parties and independents alike we can start to change the conversation to one where everyone knows about the cornucopia of choices they have come election day. Perhaps, inside of the conversation that the US is a true democracy we can start to wake people up to the fact that we have not been acting like one. Once again, that is a subtle but important distinction.

Perhaps, when the party members who feel snubbed by the media, the corporations and other parties start to treat the country ( and thus the people ) as a multi party system we can start to break down the barriers to it being its true self.

So if you think your life is complete confusion because you never win the game, just remember that its a grand illusion and deep inside we're all the same.