Fresh from the Mind of McPhitty
The first code release of the Jaris FLV packager has been posted on Sourceforge! I’ve released it under the GPLv2.
It’s an exciting time, and I have a few other projects (one of them very big and cool) in the works.
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I don’t have too much to say, life is at least as busy as usual. However, I am working on my first Open Source project! It’s a little packaging utility built around the Jaris FLV Player, you can check out the projects at:
http://jaris.sourceforge.net - Jaris FLV Player
http://flvpackager.sourceforge.net - My Project (still in the planning stages, so there’s not much here yet)
I’m thinking I’ll have the code posted within a few weeks.
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First, let me say that much of the current global warming debate is little more than a colossal boondoggle. Is global warming real? It may surprise you to hear that my answer is yes, it probably is. That’s not the right question, at least not by itself. How can I sit here in the coldest January in a decade and talk about global warming? Again, that’s the wrong question. In the case of looking at your kitchen thermometer, and drawing conclusions about the global climate, well that’s a naive approach at best. Climate and climate change (which yes it does change), are very complex subjects. Here’s the thing though, you must ask the right questions. There is not just one question which must be answered, there are at least five:
Now maybe you can answer yes to the first four (but I’d argue that the matter is far from settled), but even so, the last question is the death-knell for the Climate Change movement (at least in its present form). You see, there are no viable proposals on the table to deal with the “problem” of climate change. There is no end of bad and ill-conceived ideas, but no viable solutions. Now of course, in all of this, I haven’t given my own opinion on the subject.
So, is climate change (that’s the new PC name for global warming) real? Yeah, I think so. According to the scientific evidence, our global climate is very dynamic. Is the climate today warmer than it was in the past? Well, that depends upon how far back you want to look. The climate today is significantly warmer than it was in the 1300’s, for example, but in the last decade, it’s virtually unchanged. If we look at Arctic Ice Core data, then we find that in the far distant past (before the Ice Ages), the global climate was substantially warmer than it is today, and if we believe the Snowball Earth theory, then before that it was very substantially colder. Now, the question you have to ask is this: How does the time since the Industrial Revolution compare to the geologic history of the planet?
Now, the next thing that must be taken into account is the fact that there was an Ice Age only about 11,000 years ago, and a “Little Ice Age” much more recently than that. So in light of that, I would expect the global climate to be warming. I also think that the human contribution to this warming is overstated at best.
So why all this fervor over climate change? One word, money. Follow the money, always follow the money. I should say a lot more, but this post is already long enough. I’ll save anything else for a future installment.
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So I have fans and detractors now (I just approved several hate comments). Now here’s the rule, I reserve the right to approve or disapprove any comment I choose. I really don’t care if you don’t agree with me, I just ask that you be respectful. I love a good debate, I consider it a sport. But please, if you want to debate me in your comments, at least read and understand my post first. Then, come up with a reasoned argument, dogmatic assertions just make you look bad. My blog is my opinion, on anything I choose to have an opinion about, anyone who wants to subscribe to my blog is welcome to do so, I don’t censor any comments, but if you can’t maintain a reasonably civil tone, I reserve the right to block your comment. To my readers, fans, friends, and haters: I think 2010 is going to be a fun year, enjoy the ride. Oh, and for those who get it, John 15:18.
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It’s 2010, a new decade, “The Year We Make Contact”, whatever. I feel a sort of melancholy hopefulness mixed with dread. 2009 was the worst year of my life, yet in the midst of it all, some pretty cool things happened along the way. So what do I want for 2010, well, I think the Goo Goo Dolls said it well a couple of years ago:
My New Year’s Resolution is to update this blog more often, let’s hope it lasts longer than all the diets.
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I’m convinced that eBooks are the future. In fact, I just ordered a Kindle. Why Kindle, well it’s the same price as the Nook from Barnes & Noble, and cheaper than the Sony model, but best of all, it’s actually in stock now. My only beef is that the Kindle doesn’t support the ePub format, but since I don’t have any books in ePub format that I’m just dying to read, I’ll wait until the eventual firmware update that will add the feature.
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I’m 3 of the top 10 hits when searching for “James F. West” on Google! By Web 2.0 standards, that means I’m somebody. I just wanted to celebrate. BTW, all of the other top 10 “matches” are completely bogus (e.g Baird, James F. - West Brookfield, MA). So the only three that actually match the search are all me. That’s so cool.
-McPhitty
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I’m #2 on Google! This is cause for a celebration! See the proof below:
Even better, the first hit is bogus (click the picture above and look closely). So there you go, I am finally in the top 10, and I’m the first legitimate match. Woo hoo!!!
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Happy Sysadmin Day! It’s time to show your appreciation for all those dedicated, hard-working, under-appreciated sysadmins, like myself. Check out http://www.sysadminday.com/
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My wife wanted to see the movie “My Sister’s Keeper”, which premiered yesterday, so we went to a Matinee. I have to admit that I wasn’t really looking forward to this movie, because I’m not really a fan of such movies. Even so, I went in with an open mind, because I’ve been surprised before. Unfortunately, the only surprise here was just how much New Age drivel was in this movie. Here’s my complete analysis, fair warning, this review contains spoilers, don’t read it if that bothers you.
***SPOILER ALERT***
First, the positives: Abigail Breslin is a very talented young actress, and on the whole, the movie is well acted. The writting is pretty good, and it is engaging. Now, the negatives: The movie is pretty well written, and engaging, thus it draws the viewer into its world, and its worldview. Herein lies the problem. The movie is strongly New Age, with a good stiff dose of nihilism thrown in for good measure. The movie begins with Abigail Breslin narrating. She explains that we’re all just accidents, that children are seldom the result of planning, except in the case of infertility. She explains that most often, children are the result of drunken carelessness and failed birth control. She, however is different, she was planned, in fact, she was engineered. Her parents had a doctor design her in a test tube to be an exact genetic match for her sister who is dying of cancer. OK, now you know the basic plot. God is completely absent in this movie, as is any sort of real religion. That is not to say that the characters worldviews don’t come through. We are told more than once that when we die, we “become a little bit of blue sky”. When the cancer-stricken girl is dying in the hospital at the end of the film, one of her aunts gives her a book saying, “It’s full of guided meditations… real healing stuff, it’s good for you”. Other relatives tell her to use the power of positive thinking to heal herself. “Command the cancer to leave your body”, they say. I guess that there is a certain realism to the characters, that is to say that you can imagine these events really happening. You’re supposed to walk away from this movie thinking nice happy thoughts, realizing that we’re here for a moment, then… nothing. “I wish I could tell you that some great good came from my sister’s death… but it didn’t”, says young Anna (Abigail Breslin), that about sums it up. The mother, played by Cameron Diaz, is amoral and overbearing, until she finds out that her 15-year-old daughter has had sex with her boyfriend, then she is morally outraged. Why, I’m not sure, because she has no qualms about genetically engineering a child for no reason other than to serve as a donor for her sister. The father, played by Jason Patric, is weak and passive, he demonstrates no leadership whatsoever in his family. The strongest force in the family for most of the movie is Sara (Diaz), who runs roughshod over the entire family, in her unyielding quest to save Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), by any means necessary. This results in the family’s oldest child, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), essentially being forgotten. His dislexia is basically untreated, and we meet him as a dropout. At one point, he misses his bus, and has to walk home from downtown LA late at night. He is worried about what kind of trouble he’l be in, but when he comes in, and is met by his father, the father assumes that he’s up because he can’t sleep for worrying about his sister Kate. So the two of them go off to spend the night at the hospital. The centerpiece of the film is the lawsuit brought by Anna Fitzgerald (Breslin) against her parents who are trying to force her to donate a kidney to her sister (Anna is 11-years-old). ***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*** In the end, we find out that she is suing, not because “she wants to have control over her own body”, which she has maintained all along, but ather because her sister wants to die, and her parents won’t let her. Finally, Kate dies, Sara (the mother) goes back to her law practice, becoming a successful and wealthy attorney again, Brian (the father) quits his job as a firefighter, and becomes a mentor to inner-city youths (of course he never did start being a leader in his own family), and “best of all”, Jesse goes back to school, and gets into an art academy in New York. As for Kate, she died, no good came of it, no meaning was found in it, the world wasn’t changed, no new laws were passed, no great truths were uncovered, she just died, and “became a little bit of blue sky”. If I’m honest, I have to admit that by 1-hour into the movie, I was ready for her to die, and get it over with, by the end, I was ready to be sick. The New Age nonsense made me naseous, and the nihilism revealed in Kates death was the final straw. Oh, the family ends up taking a vacation to Montana every year on Kate’s birthday to remember her, but there’s no meaning in anything. What’s the message of this movie, there isn’t one, that’s the problem; it’s nothing but 109 minutes of wishy-washy, New Age, purposeless, emptiness. Of course that’s not what we’re supposed to see. We’re supposed to applaud the characters. We’re supposed to applaud Sara for being willing to do anything to save her daughter; we’re supposed to applaud Anna, because she fights for the right to control what happens to her own body; we’re supposed to applaud Kate, because she bravely fights cancer, finds love (sex), and bravely chooses to die when it’s her time; we’re supposed to applaud Jesse, because he goes back to school, and moves to New York, and we’re supposed to applaud Brian for, well I’m not really sure. We’re supposed to applaud, but I just can’t do it. A world with no God, no meaning, and no purpose, is a world that holds no appeal for me, but this is the world of this movie, and that’s supposed to be a good thing. All in all, this is a terrible movie, there’s really nothing else to say.
“My Sister’s Keeper” is rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language and brief teen drinking.
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