The Press, Politics and Police

The Democratic and Republican National Conventions are the perfect place for protesters to voice their opinions to the people that can affect policy. They are also the perfect place to see a concentration of what is going on in politics and on the street. The first amendment grants the freedom to assemble and the freedom of the press but if anything, these conventions have proved that both major parties don't seem to care much about the Bill of Rights when it is inconvenient for them. ...

First up is an excerpt from Democracy Now!. Though biased, because its reporters were arrested, I feel that they did a good job of presenting the fact and minimizing the amount of story they added. However, some of that experience does come through fairly loud in their telling of it.

Second up is for those thinking this has everything to do with the Republicans and that the Democrats will be our salvation. If there is anything WTO protests in Seattle taught us is that the Democratic leaders hate protesters as much as the Republicans. I seem to remember a Clinton leading that charge. It's so inconvenient when people are so upset they uproot their lives to organize and be part of a protest. It also seems the Democrats don't like reporters nosing in on public streets outside their lobbyist dinners.

Anyone who loves freedom needs to be aware that our freedoms are corroding quickly and neither of the major parties are doing much about it. We need to force them to stand up and listen, we want our freedom. However, if the word freedom makes you say,"meh, it's not for me." Then by all means keep quiet.

UPDATE: Just looking around and I found out this. Sheriff Lott in Richland County, South Carolina is ready for the next convention.

Google's Browser - Chrome - goes live today

In Google's quest to take over the universe :lol: they have finally released their very own browser. They have named the browser Chrome. ...

I've only been test driving it for a short while but so far it seems pretty quick, even from an Opera user's point of view. Some of this might be because of features such as compiling page javascript or each tab having its own process. Either way, I like quick.

Another nice feature, which really comes from the reason they created Chrome, is application URLs. Since many things people use the internet for are actually applications that stay open all day, they've decided to allow you to create links on your desktop, start menu and quick nav bar that will open up a chrome-less ( pardon the pun ) version of the browser.

As an Opera user, the first thing I did was run it through the acid 3 test. Unfortunately it failed fairly miserably. I find it somewhat suprising, considering it was built off of webkit. Also, there are no mouse gestures and many of my keyboard shortcuts aren't applicable. I've grown too used to those to give them up. Oh well, they are google and as with all their apps it is in beta :)

UPDATE 9/4/08: I tried the acid 3 test again and chrome recieved a 79/100. Perhaps the acidtests.org website was experiencing difficulties on Tuesday.

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.