Wordpress 2.2 Upgrade
I upgraded this site to Wordpress 2.2 last night. As always, feel free to drop a comment if you see something that just doesn't look right. Of course, it's probably my fault and not WP's. Also, I added a new plug-in called Bad Behavior that purports to eliminate, well, bad behavior by such menaces as spam bots. Basically, it keeps them from crawling the site and posting comments, thus saving on web hosting traffic and my time managing the site. An interesting concept, and seems well worth experimenting with. If anyone has experience with Bad Behavior, post a comment and let me know how well it works.
Programming Flex 2
In a recent post entitled "Flex Flexing It's Muscles", Tim O'Reilly discusses the success of the recently published Programming Flex 2. Describing the recent announcement of Flex-like products from Microsoft and Sun as "Flash Envy" he mentioned that interest in Flex has been very strong and growing, based on his experience as a technical book publisher. The Flex book has been one of their hottest sellers in some time.
I took a quick look at Amazon today and was amazed at how well this book is doing. At press time it is ranked #581 among all books, and #4 in the General Programming category. It does slightly worse in the Web Development category, although that category is jammed with Photoshop how-to books and similar titles that skew the rankings.
Abode seems to be taking this product in the right direction, and is gaining similar momentum with the new Apollo environment. After years of being margainalized for being "not open source, and not Microsoft", the former Macromedia (former Allaire) tool set is starting to get the attention it has long deserved.
Beckett Gets Seventh Win
Red Sox starter Josh Beckett went to 7-0 last night in a trouncing of the Blue Jays. Without taking anything away from Beckett's accomplishment, I wondered how much of this fast start could be attributed to the Red Sox offense. Turns out to be both great pitching and a potent offense. Beckett's ERA after last nights win was a respectable 2.51. However, fellow starter Wakefield has a better ERA of 2.11, but has a record of only 3-3. Wakefield has a history of not getting great run support from the Red Sox batters - they seem to take the night off whenever he is pitching. Beckett has much easier time - the seven games he has won had scores of 7-1 (4/4), 14-3 (4/10), 7-2 (4/16), 7-5 (4/21), 5-2 (4/26), 6-4 (5/2), and last night 9-2 (5/8). If the Sox batters can keep this up, Beckett could get 20 wins.
Home Rule in Northern Ireland
Home Rule started (again) in Northern Ireland on Tuesday. Ian Paisley, a staunch unionist, and Martin McGuiness of Sein Fein are in a power sharing arrangement atop the new government - Paisley as First Minister and McGuiness as Deputy First Minister. To say these two men are mortal enemies would not be much of an exaggeration. NPR ran an interesting story that paraphrased the two leaders regarding why they are optimistic about this new attempt to bring stability and self-rule to NI: The reason previous agreements failed is because moderates from both sides negotiated the deal, leaving the radicals on either side unsatisfied. Paisley and McGuiness were very involved in this agreement, so they both are coming into their new positions with a certain amount of pride on the line. Having been enemies for so long, they are well aware of each other's opinions on practically all matters, and have agreed to disagree. I'm not sure how long this will last, but it's a great thing to witness.
Stylish Buttons using CSS
Alex Griffioen presents a technique for making great looking "application style" buttons for your web page using only CSS. No Javascript needed! Not sure if this technique would work well for a blog or simple web page, but maybe with the right page style it'd look just fine.
XM Radio: A Love Affair Ends
I canceled my XM Radio subscription after being a subscriber for four years. Both cars, and two home units - four receivers in all - I canceled them all. Like a love affair that has gone on too long I put off the decision as long as I could, but once the decision was made the rest was easy - even a relief. The impetus for this change was when I bought a new car. I cleaned out my old car before trading it in - including removing the satellite radio and the antenna. When I picked up my new car I took a look at the radio sitting in a box in the garage - and just left it there.
The beginning of the end was when XM started dropping some of their "niche" channels, and adding additional programming from Clear Channel, who are almost single-handedly responsible for the dismal state of FM radio these days. One of the channels was XM Music Lab - a progressive rock/guitar jam channel I listened to very frequently. Once that channel was gone, I started spending more time exploring the other channels. That's when the disillusion started to set in.
The variety of news stations kept my interest for some time. However, many were simulcasts of television broadcasts, or syndicated terrestrial programming. You don't realize how many commercials CNN has until you are sitting in traffic and have to listen to them all. Also, the kinds of advertisers XM attracts tend toward the infomercial, get rich quick, and sub-prime mortgage crowd. Listening to a nearly endless barrage of these commercials - and paying for the privilege - will quickly drain your soul.
This didn't start off as a diatribe against XM. This post was prompted by a television commercial for XM that made me ponder why I dropped them. If you like popular music of any decade, or are a fan of a music genre that is still well served by XM, then a subscription is well worth the price. Country music is a good example, with additional commercial-free stations being added to an already broad range of stations. In my case, the stations I tended to listen to were playing tunes I already had on my iPod, and there wasn't much beyond that I found compelling. I will miss the excellent baseball coverage, but I'm not often in the car when the game is on.
The pending merger between XM radio and Sirius will be interesting to watch. Both companies have been losing boatloads of money in a rush to build their subscriber bases. Once that battle is over, I have to assume that the companies will take a hard look at their business models, and start to make the adjustments necessary to eventually turn a profit (if that's even possible - operating a satellite network is NASA expensive). I fear that what I have observed is only the tip of the iceberg, and that satellite radio will become more and more like the wasteland of terrestrial radio it once tried to replace.
