Someday finally arrived. The stars aligned a couple of weeks ago and I decided to just go out and do it soon. I discovered that there was a test scheduled monthly in Salt Lake and I decided to study and take the exam during one of the tests this summer. I started studying from a library book – Now Your Talking – on Monday. I already knew that much of the knowledge was common sense rules about being considerate and so yesterday when I looked to see what dates the test was to be administered I discovered that the first one was that evening. Haven taken some practice exams and seeing that I almost always got passing scores with the little study I had done, I decided to take the leap and take my test yesterday rather than agonizing over the material for another month. I took the test at 7:00 last night and passed on the first try (you can have three tries in one sitting). They encouraged me to take the test for the General class and I got closer to passing that than I would have expected.

Today my callsign got assigned and published in the FCC database so I am now KF7DQE – a HAM without a radio. (Of course I’ll be on the lookout for an appropriate rig.)

I was laying in my bed at 5:00 AM (when most people should be in bed) and my brain started reviewing the images of the roads I commute on. I began to think of how such a complex road system would be entirely unnecessary if we were not able to travel at the average speed of today’s normal commute. Consider this a stream of semi-consciousness about the impact that our speed of movement has on the kind of life that each of us lives.

Then

Let’s place the year 1889 as the baseline of a slower lifestyle. I choose that year because it predates the advent of the car, it is late enough that we had the ability to move faster than horse and wagon with the use of railroads, and it’s 120 years ago – a nice round number.

In 1889 most travel was done by horse or on foot. As I recall traveling 30 miles in a day was generally about as far as a person could expect to go. In the late 1870’s the Transcontinental Express was able to average about 35 miles per hour traveling across the country. That would appear to be the functional limit of traveling speed for that time.

Now

Today people regularly travel 70 miles per hour on their daily commute (outside of rush hour) only because we have created an artificial speed limit of 65 mph on our roads – without that speed limit most vehicles could easily travel at 90 mph.

For the sake of simplification let’s consider the differences that we would see if we were to limit our physical traveling of people to 5 mph (a fast walk) with a limit of 30 miles per day, as compared to today when I can comfortably make a trip of 600 miles in a long day and regularly commute 20 miles each way to work.

Comparison

In our modern situation the only real limitation on where I work (physically) is how much time I am willing to commute – I can choose to live 50 miles or more from my place of employment so long as I am willing to take the time to commute. In the slower lifestyle if we assume that I am willing and able to spend 6 hours of my day commuting in addition to the 8 hours I need to work then I could work as much as 15 miles from home.

From a community standpoint I could not reasonably interact with anyone outside a 7 mile radius on a reagular basis in the slower community whereas in the modern-speed community I could with no more effort interact with people anywhere in a 100 mile radius. If we had an even population density over that whole area that would mean that I have access to 204 times as many people on a daily basis. If we assume that there really is a limit on how many people I can know well then there I can really only know ½ of 1% of the available information about those I can interact with on a daily basis compared to the slower society

Conclusion

I am really not trying to suggest that our society has gone all downhill since some utopian point in our past, but I do like to think about the real results of what we think of as progress. As I was looking around (on the internet – there’s a new kind of speed there) I discovered an entry in WIkipedia on car culture that focuses on cars and addresses this same mindset of “what has really changed with this progress.”

What are your thoughts on the effect of rushing about in our society?

I have long known that there are many David Millers around (such as the Mayor of Toronto – yet one more reason I should go visit there) and I assumed that I was getting tweets from people who assumed that “davidmiller” on twitter belonged to a David Miller that they knew. Finally today I noticed that more than half of the tweets directed at me from people who obviously don’t know me contained links from blip.fm – I know nothing about the site except that fromt he content of the tweets it is obviously oriented around listening to music. I finally got curious and asked the people who recently sent me blip related tweets why they were sending them. The answer I got was:

holyshadow@davidmiller cause they have integrated twitter and blip, and since you have the same nick, you receive the blips on twitter. that answers?

So now I know why I may be the only person on twitter who has blocked more people than he follows (blocking people means that I don’t get informed every time they send a tweet my way) – due the the mashup nature of so many social networking services I am getting random tweets because some other David Miller has the same username on blip.fm as I have on twitter.com – I wonder if I can just block tweets that contain a url from blip?

In and of itself my initial question does not seem widely important, but it led me to another more general question which I thought about for some time. Is it a good thing for members of the church to create their own resources when the church has already provided resources for the same specific purpose? My conclusion was that we have been commanded to “do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27) I could not predict how much righteousness might come to pass from Mormons Made Simple, but it seems a good thing for people to be doing of their own free will.

My question for other people is, would you be more likely to recommend the official site, or the unofficial site to people? Are there times when one might be better than the other?

version: 1.0 (February 25, 2009)
This version finally adds the ability for visitors to search votes.

version: 1.1 (February 26, 2009)
Fixed a bug in the processing of the Recent Votes Leader variable.

version: 1.2 (February 27, 2009)
Fixed a bug in the vote searching function. I also added a class to the vote search form to allow for styling.

version: 1.3 (February 28, 2009)
Those using widgets in their sidebars can use [ RECENT-VOTES ] within a text widget to display recent votes.

version: 1.4 (March 5, 2009)
Fixed a bug in the display of recent votes.

version: 1.5 (March 9, 2009)
Added the “Days plus” display option for recent votes which allows you to set a minimum number of recent votes to display if recent days are scarce on votes (defaults to 5 votes if no valid default is set). Also fixed some bugs in the vote management page.

version: 1.6 (March 11, 2009)
Fixed a bug in the new “Days plus” display option for recent votes.

version: 1.7 (March 12, 2009)
Improved the handling of the variable for the header on the recent votes list.

Latest Version: 2.0 (March 16, 2009)
Display templates are introduced here giving you total flexibility in deciding what to display. There is one set of template settings for recent votes and another for search results. Each template is made up of a header, a footer, and an item template. Template tags are used to display the variables specific to each recorded vote such as the vote cast or the vote description. There is also a setting for what to display when no votes are returned in the recent votes and another setting for when no votes are returned in a search.

Votes are entered on a dashboard widget:

A vote management page is available from the posts menu:

Recent votes are shown by adding <?php recent_votes(); ?> in your theme templates. You can show a search votes form by using the shortcode [ SEARCH-VOTES ] on a page or post. Options for Voting Record include:

• The option to specify a primary voter (if most or all of the votes being tracked are from one person).
• The option to specify header text/code for the recent vote list.
• How many recent votes to show – limited by number of votes or number of days.
• What to show before a list of recent votes and what to show before a list of search results.
• What to display at the end of a list of recent votes and what to display at the end of a list of search results.
• The format for displaying your recent votes or search results lists, including which pieces of information to show.
• What to display when no recent votes are returned or when a search comes up empty.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Voting Record page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later).

I was very happy to take the opportunity to take the code written by Connor Boyack and turn it into the Kiva plugin for Wordpress so that people can raise the visibility of Kiva by displaying loans in the fundraising stage with a link to donate.

version 1.1 (2/10/2009)
More options over which loans to show

Latest Version 1.2 (2/27/2009)
You can now use a text widget with the shortcode SHOW-KIVA (enclosed in square brackets – []) to display the Kiva plugin in a widgetized sidebar.

Options include:

• Number of posts to show.
• Display format for loan list – Image only displays the image for each loan linked to the donation page, Both displays the image and text information, Text only displays name(linked to the donation page), business, country, and fundraising level/goal for the loan.
• Gender – you can restrict to only show loans for men or loans for women.
• Region – you can show loans only in one of 7 geographic regions.
• Sector – you can only show certain types of loans such as retail or agriculture.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Kiva page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later). Place the call show_kiva(); anywhere in your page templates or use [ SHOW-KIVA] in a text widget.

I don’t expect that this will have any major effect on anyone, but if anyone finds OpenID useful because of this then I am ahppy to have shared. For myself, I like the fact that I have full control over my online ID and that I only have to remember my own domain name at many other sites.

A perfect example of the village approach occurred last night. We went to see a performance of Annie being put on by Bountiful High. Soon after we arrived we ran into my cousins, JP and Marie Feinauer. The kids were well behaved for the first song, but then their ages began to catch up with them. Isaac started running up and down the aisle. He wasn’t very noisy, but with the light coming from the open doors at the back he cast a long (and distracting) shadow. Mariah was pretty good, except that she had to keep switching laps. Alyssa could not seem to stop herself from changing seats, bouncing, and talking (without her whisper voice). Savannah was perfectly behaved. Considering how late it was (late for young children) we decided that we needed to leave at intermission, but that was really not fair to Savannah who was enjoying the show and acting appropriately. This is where JP and Marie, members of our village, come into our story. At intermission I asked if the Feinauer’s would be willing to drive Savannah home at the end of the show. They agreed.

Because they were there, and were trusted by both us and Savannah, we were able to take the three home who were not acting appropriate to the setting while allowing Savannah to stay. Not only was this fair for all of the children, but being able to make that distinction showed in a very tangible way what behavior was appropriate at a public performance. I honestly expect that at the next public performance we attend Alyssa will act appropriately (and possibly even Mariah) because of the lesson from last night – made possible because of some help from our village.

Usually when a loud sound draws many of us to the windows to see what just fell (the food court last week and much of a parking terrace today) the men tend to stay near the windows longer and often there is at least one person making comments about how exciting it would be to operate one of the large construction vehicles that are destroying buildings and sifting debris. We seem to watch a wrecking ball or a backhoe with the same interest that a three year old watches a cordless drill in action.

Speaking only for myself, it is not the destruction that makes it look interesting it is the skill of being able to manipulate heavy machinary to accomplish sometimes delicate work.

{Darrell Cook}, executive director of Mountainland Association of Governments, said if the dedicated bus system linking Utah Valley University, Brigham Young University and Provo’s East Bay works as expected, the system could, in time, be replaced by a light-rail system.

There would seem to be a natural progression for public transit that city planners could prepare for that would allow for public transit to be tailored to the current needs of a community with a defined growth potential as ridership needs increase over time. With advanced planning it should be relatively painless to meet expanding needs by starting early without investing prematurely in expensive systems.

The transition from BRT to light-rail is a last step along one line of progression, but I think there may be two progressions available. There is the regional transportation which starts with simple bus service and graduates to more complex bus service (with BRT and dedicated bus lanes etc.) before converting dedicated bus lanes into light rail – assuming that the growth and ridership supports each successive transition. Then there is the longer range transportation between metropolitan areas which starts with shuttles or express buses and eventually graduates to commuter rail or even high-speed rail. There may even be a step between the express/shuttle phase and the commuter rail phase that can be filled with DMU’s.

If early development incorporated the possibilities of future transit options then it might be easier and less costly to build and maintain transit commensurate with population.

{Al Gore} said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.

“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative.”

I would love to be proven wrong on this, but I’m skeptical of the 10 year time-frame. The only real question in my mind is, will Barack Obama endorse this idea before I publish this post?

I guess my personal expectations are among those that he predicted would require fundamental changes.

The more I think about such technologies the more optimistic I become that human enginuity will eventually allow is to lower our energy usage and raise our energy production from clean and limteless resources such as wind, solar, and gravity (hydro-electric dams which generate power from the force of falling water) to the point that we will no londer need to rely on fossil fuels. Such a transition should also be welcomed by anyone who thinks we have passed peak oil production or who is worried about manmade global warming.

When I couldn’t find the month-old story on Google News I registered with Digg and submitted the story myself (I had already found the link that leads to an article stub when coming from the sites of mere mortals like myself) – through Digg the link produced instant access to a valuable story.

When I learned that Wordpress would be adding native tag support in version 2.3 I decided that I would create my plugin to work with tags after they arrived. Life got busy so I never worked on the plugin until version 2.5 came out (partly because I wanted to convert the post_meta “keywords” from DRPP to tags). I finally buckled down and created my Similarity plugin this week. I have tested it on version 2.3.3 and version 2.5 (I assume it will work with any version of 2.3). I will continue to test it on new versions of Wordpress as they are made public. (Przeczytaj opis wtyczki po polsku)

version: 1.1 (May 1, 2008)
This version adds a randomizer in case there are too many posts that are all equally related.

version 1.2 (December 8, 2008)
Tested compatibility with WP 2.7 and minor modification to the documentation.

version 1.3 (January 26, 2009)
Added the sim_by_mix function and the associated options.

version 1.4 (January 27, 2009)
Fixed a bug related to post revisions and added an option to display {strength} as a percentage instead of as a decimal value.

version 1.5 (January 28, 2009)
Added an option to display {strength} as a word, or a colored indicator. Similarity is now coded for translation and the bugfix in 1.4 is now backwards compatible to Wordpress 2.3 again.

version 1.6 (February 3, 2009)
Allows for the display of a random related post after the list of strongest related posts.

version 1.7 (February 4, 2009)
Private posts may be listed as similar for the post author and users with “read private posts” capability.

version 1.8 (February 12, 2009)
Future dated posts are excluded from results.

version 1.9 (March 30, 2009)
Drafts are excluded from results. If, for some reason, all related posts are private or drafts users will get the no results output (before there would have been an empty list without explanation).

version 2.0 (April 2, 2009)
Non-posts such as pictures are saved as posts by Wordpress with a post-status of “inherit” these are now excluded from results.

version 2.1 (April 4, 2009)
New option to place a minimum similarity strength for list inclusion. The Plus One option ignores the minimum strength for the final list entry.

version 2.2 (April 6, 2009)
New option to place a minimum similarity strength for random item at the end of the list (this is separate from the minimum strength for the list as a whole).

version 2.2.1 (April 7, 2009)
Bug fixes for the random minimum strength.

version 2.3 (April 17, 2009)
Added Shorcodes SIM-BY-TAG, SIM-BY-CAT, and SIM-BY-MIX for use in text widgets (and I just noticed that I first posted this plugin a full year ago).

version 2.5 (April 21, 2009)
New option to display Similarity lists at the end of single posts without altering your templates – just select the function you want to use on the options page!  Shorcodes are now fixed to only display on single post pages.

version 2.6 (April 25, 2009)
Added Shorcodes SIM-BY-TAG-MULTI, SIM-BY-CAT-MULTI, and SIM-BY-MIX-MULTI for use on multi post pages. These codes may potentially cause slow page loads (which is why I restricted the old shortcodes to work on single post pages as of version 2.5). I added these codes after a report in the comments that the old codes worked fine in at least one multi-post setting.

version 2.7 (May 11, 2009)
Fixed a bug in the output so that the Auto Display function lists similar posts at the end of the post consistently. Added div tags with class “similarity” around auto-generated list to allow for custom styling.

version 2.8 (May 14, 2009)
Automatic Similarity lists may now be shown on pages. When no similar results are found only “Default display if no matches:” is shown. (”Text and codes before/after the list” are replaced) If you wish to display the contents of the before and after variables simply insert them into the “Default display if no matches:” field.

Latest Version 2.9 (July 1, 2009)
Functions sim_by_tag_multi, sim_by_cat_multi, and sim_by_mix_multi were added for use in sidebars where you want a similarity list for the first post on a multi-post page. There is also a new button on the Similarity Options page to restore default settings.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Similarity page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later).

Options include:

• Number of posts to show – this is a maximum, it won’t invent connections that don’t exist, set it to 0 (or less) and it will display all matches.
• Minimum match strength – enter a number between zero and one (one being a perfect match) and items related weaker than the number indicated will not be included – this limit is ignored for the one extra if that option is used.
• Default Display if no matches – if there are no matches this is what will be displayed, this is not displayed if there are matches, but fewer than the set maximum.
• Text and Codes before the list – assuming you want to do a list this is where you would place the <ul> or <ol> You may also place any other code you would like to have preceeding the list.
• Text and Codes after the list – this would be the place for </ul> or </ol> You may also place any other code you would like to have following the list.
• Display format for similarity strength – Value displays the {strength} in a decimal format (0.873), Percent displays the {strength} in a percentage format (87.3%), Text displays {strength} as a word (Strong, Mild, Weak, and Tenuous are the defaults), and Visual displays a color block (Green for 100% fading to Yellow and then to Red for weak connections)
• Relative mixing weights – these values determine the ratio given to the weight of tags vs categories when using the sim_by_mix function. Invalid ratios are treated as a 1 to 1 balance.
• Custom text for strength – allows you to insert custom text (including markup) for the strength indicator when using the text display format. (Hint: using markup allows for the possibility of showing custom images.)
• Output template – this would be where you place the <li> tags. There are also 4 template tags you may use (in any configuration you can imagine) to define how the results are displayed
  • {link} – provides a link – equivelent to <a href=”{url}”>{title}</a>
  • {strength} – outputs the calculated degree of relatedness
  • {url} is the permalink for the related post
  • {title} is the title for the related post
• Show one more random related post – dig deeper into the related post list with one random selection (you can set a minimum strength for these random items).
• Auto-display a Similarity list at the end of a single post – without modifying any templates.

The plugin allows for three function calls anywhere in your page templates or their shortcodes in text widgets (all use the same options):

• <?php sim_by_tag(); ?> – determines similarity based on the tags applied to the posts (shortcode: SIM-BY-TAG)
• <?php sim_by_cat(); ?> – determines similarity based on the categories assigned to the posts (shortcode: SIM-BY-CAT)
• <?php sim_by_mix(); ?> – determines similarity based on the tags and the categories with the relative weights determined by the relative mixing weights setting (shortcode: SIM-BY-MIX)

Alternately you may choose to auto-display any of the similarity lists at the end of posts on single-post pages without getting into the php by selecting the function you wish to auto-display on the Similarity options page.

I got an email as part of an email list I didn’t know existed with the announcement about Mr. Barr. As soon as I located the way to unsubscribe I visited the campaign website. I decided to write about it because of how familiar some of the features were – they looked like they had been lifted off of the Ron Paul website. Some of the widgets he had looked like leftovers from the Mike Huckabee website. It turns out that the firm that designed Bob Barr’s site also designed Ron Paul’s site. (I have no information on who designed the Huckabee website.)

Unless Obama is convicted in October of having McCain assassinated in September there is no way we will be hearing about Barr in November. If he, or any other third party candidate, gets into any debates he will be largely ignored as every minor candidate is (as determined by the media) during each debate where they are allowed a backstage pass – I mean a place at the debate.

Later, the discussion began to focus on blogs and media and I realized that running a blog as an elected official amounts to a certain degree of personal transparency. It indicates a willingness to put yourself out there on record where others can challenge you through comments and other responses. It also provides original source information about your positions where you can explain yourself without a media filter. This can prove very beneficial to any honest public official because anyone who is taking the time to look will be able to see how well you do at sticking to principles or how thoughtful you are in correcting a mistaken opinion as you gain more information.

For those who would say anything to get elected, that inconsistency would become apparent quickly when they blatantly ignore the positions they espoused on the campaign trail or else offer up lame excuses for changing their positions.

Of course blogging politicians will not solve all our problems, and those who do blog are not all perfect, but that willingness to leave a lasting trail and be held accountable is definitely suggestive of a good candidate and a good public servant.

I have been trying, with pretty good success, to be consistent at writing here. I had hope of ensuring that my blog would be consistent enough to hold the interest of those who read it, and attract responses to continue refining my thinking. At one point I had an average of more than 2 comments for every post on the blog. That may not sound like much to some people, but considering the large number of posts from when I started the blog where there was nobody to respond I felt pretty good about that. Then I went through and added something above 100 posts from my earlier blogging and the comment count was again well below the 2:1 ratio I had achieved – I’m almost back to that ration thanks to much feedback from a half a dozen regular readers.

I have recently recognized that I have been holding back somewhat because of that relatively arbitrary goal (the 2:1 comment ratio). I have avoided writing about things that don’t feel very current or likely to generate some interest. I have decided that being picky is not my strong suit and I would like to make more strides on another goal that I had made – to go through all the founding documents (especially the Federalist Papers). I have decided to push for two posts per day until I achieve that goal – one covering Federalist papers, and another like what I have been posting regularly (that way I won’t put off studying one of the Federalist papers just because I saw something interesting to write. Hopefully that study will make my other writing and thinking deeper and more grounded in principle.

Wish me luck.

The only argument that I can imagine in favor of the straight party option on a ballot is that someone might accidentally vote for the wrong candidate when they mean to vote for candidates from a single party. Imagine that they vote D, D, D, D, D, D, R, D where that R was a candidate for the school board that they accidentally mixed up the name since there was less advertising for that race.

This is where technology can help us. Since we have already moved to touch-screen voting machines (here in Utah as well as many other places) we could change the straight party selection so that instead of casting our votes for us that selection would make the candidates from our chosen party stand out (change color, larger font – there are plenty of options) but the voter would still be expected to select the individual candidates for their votes to be cast in each race.

• Bennett in Blogs
• Bennett News
• Bennett Votes
• Hatch in Blogs
• Hatch News
• Hatch Votes
• Matheson in Blogs
• Matheson News
• Matheson Votes

I have long admired the way Misty Fowler has widgets showing the recent votes of her representative and senators in her sidebar. I don’t know if I will display this kind of thing in my sidebar, but I will definitely be following them in my feed reader. Now I wish I had a site like OpenCongress at the state level.

Once upon a time there were three options for who could comment (assuming that you allowed comments on the blog in the first place). The options were Anyone, Registered Users, and Members of the Blog. I can understand the drawbacks of allowing anyone to comment but not everyone uses blogger – that makes for less than ideal choices to be made.

Recently there has been a new option added. Registered users used to mean people with blogger accounts but that has become “Users with Google Accounts.” The new “Registered Users” option allows people to use WordPress, TypePad, AIM/AOL, or LiveJournal identities to make comments. This is nice because users like me are no longer forced to use a defunct identity to comment. Please consider using the new “Registered Users” option if you currently only allow Users with Google Accounts.

Yesterday I found one final post that was not included in the other archives. This was the last post on my old site and it explained why I was pulling the blog. What I found very interesting is that the date on that final post was December 17, 2005 – exactly 2 years prior to the day I restored those old posts.

I wonder if there’s something about December 17th that I should be wary of.

I learned about this through the video by one of the authors of the book (posted below) and my only two questions are – will we really do it? and is there a catch (such as did they account for the oil necessary to make the carbon-fiber materials referenced in this talk)?

Government laws and policies, especially the Community Reinvestment Act, pressured lenders to invest in people and places where they would not invest otherwise. Government also created the temporarily very low interest rates that made the mortgages seem affordable for the moment. . .

As for the flames sweeping across southern California, tragic as that is, this has happened time and again before — in the very same places in the very same time of year, just like hurricanes.

Why would people risk building million-dollar homes in the known paths of wildfires? For the same reason that people choose to live in the known paths of hurricanes. Because the government — that is, the taxpayers — will get stuck with a lot of the costs of dealing with those dangers and the costs of rebuilding.

Why is there such a huge amount of inflammable vegetation over such a wide area that fires can reach unstoppable proportions by the time they get to places where people live? Because “open space” has become a political sacred cow beyond rational discussion. . .

In other words, government preserves all the conditions for wildfires and subsidizes people who live in their path.

As for water shortages . . . The federal government’s water projects supply much of the water used in California that enables agriculture to flourish in what would otherwise be a desert.

We have created a culture where government is the solution to every every social “problem” (many time government is used to address preferences like open space which are not actually problems) just as technology is the solution to every technical problem. Lawmakers don’t intend to create crises, but crisis is the natural result when government gets involved in things that it was not designed to address (things like the cost of water or the price of home loans). In other words, if you have a hammer everything may look like a nail, but no matter how skillfully you hammer on a screw it won’t work like a screw – you need a screw driver to succeed with screws.

“Was it yes2george.com or vote4george.com or am I mixing up the sites for George Perkins and Mike George? Nevermind, I’ll stick with the flyers.

I have created a basic website but I’d like to know how much interest there is for this. If you are a candidate, or know one, who would be interested in having a profile on such a site let me know in the comments. I would also be interested to know if other people would want this as a resource for information. What I do with this will depend on the level of interest generated. (I do not expect enough interest to try charging for the service – ever)

Once I have fully polished my theme I will release the code I used to implement the Archive Menu but I want to make the plugin available before then. Download the plugin here.

I think that every news site should be offering RSS feeds. There’s no reason that people should be required to come to the site to find out if there is new content, or what that content is. The day’s of “bookmark this” and “make us your home page” are ancient history on the internet because anybody who really wants to be informed is going to be looking at multiple sources of news and information these days. If I have to visit your site to find out what you’ve got you can expect me to look elsewhere for my news.

This is not really a plug for the Deseret News. Mostly I am just excited by this because I remember looking at a variety of newspaper sites a while back for my RSS reader and there were hardly any local (read state of Utah) news organizations that had RSS feeds available. I’d still like to find something with news centered in Lehi, but at least I have one more option than before in the state.

For the reporting, I wonder if it would be possible to get by with less than 5 paid employees. One would serve as editor and head of the paper, perhaps three would be paid reporters, who would be expected to extensively use bloggers and comments from readers as sources of information to drive their reporting, leaving one employee to manage any other administrative functions. I wonder if there would be any possibility of collaboration with the high school or with university students interested in reporting as a way to add some unpaid staff to the press corps.

The initial move in starting such an organization would be to find out how much interest there is. Are residents interested in having a Lehi-centric source of news? Are there bloggers who are interested in their community (as opposed to some other special interest they might blog about) who would be willing to contribute and work with reporters? Are there others who are not current bloggers but who are interested in contributing to an ongoing discussion of local news items? Would the city council and local businesses be interested enough to provide information relative to whatever discussions are current?

Anyone from Lehi or surrounding areas is welcome to answer.

If you are not near Lehi I would still like to hear your thoughts on this – would this interest you in your location? Does the idea seem sound?

Less than one week and Safari has its first security patch (it was cracked within hours) – I thought to myself “It’s genuine Windows software.”

I got PHP working on IIS 6 and then it magically stopped working. I got it working again (not sure what changed) and then it stopped working again as soon as the server got rebooted. Does anyone know how to make IIS play nice with PHP?

P.S. Let’s just pretend that I have no choice about IIS or PHP. It won’t help me to hear anyone suggest their favorite alternatives to either of them – if I could change the setup I would not bother with this combo.

This just goes to validate the effort that I went to in adding plugins to show related posts. Hopefully the classic-posts plugin will help to assure that those posts which are of interest to my readers will never be lost in the archives. This all just goes to prove that Joshua Porter was right in his lessons for would-be bloggers about the value of linking to other posts and displaying your best work even after it is off the front page.

The second item is an addition to Google Maps called Street View. Some members of my family will probably be familiar with the view I linked to. I can’t wait until they expand the coverage of this. It will make trip planning much different. As it is, I can sit in my own home and explore New York City.

The third item is Microsoft Surface. The concept of multi-point interactive touch screens that this is based on was demonstrated in February of 2006. I have been excited about the possibilities of this technology for months now, but Microsoft has added the interaction with objects on the surface which makes this idea even more appealing. Like Livescribe, they hope to have this to market by the end of this year although it will not be targeted at the consumer market by then.

Create your map at world66.com

1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED.” VISA requirements state that merchants should ask cardholders to sign their cards even if they have written “see ID” on their cards. My brother also tells me that stores where he lives won’t take unsigned cards even with Photo ID.
2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card Accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the “For” line. Instead, just put the last four numbers.
3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks.
4. Make a photocopy of both sides of any ID you carry in your wallet and keep the copy in a safe place. This preserves any information you might need to report fraud or place a hold.

If your wallet is ever stolen:

1. Cancel your credit cards immediately – the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy.
2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen.
3. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number. From the email:

I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact if your wallet, etc., has been stolen:

• Equifax – 1-888-766-0008 (Place a fraud alert)
• Experian – 1-888-397-3742 (Place a fraud alert)
• Trans Union – 1-800-680-7289 (Fraud Victim Assistance Department)
• Social Security Administration – 1-800-269-0271 (Fraud hotline)

One thing that I thought about was that having a photocopy of all your credit cards (front and back) would be a little bit like keeping post-it notes with all your passwords. I think that credit card companies should send a fraud card that you could keep and even copy which would look like your regular card, except that it would be changed.

They could include a bogus name on the card (since you know your real name) which would have the same structure as your real name – John Doe or John B Doe. If they wanted to include a magnetic strip on the back it could be encoded to indicate that the card was fraudulent. They could include exactly as much of your real card number and expiration date as they would want if you are reporting a stolen card – the rest of the numbers would be bogus. Even if that was the full card number, the card would not have the correct name so thieves would not be able to use it. The back of the card could include the phone number to report fraud rather than the phone number for account maintenance (assuming they are different). They could also include a falsified CVV2 number – that would be on the front of American Express cards and the back of other cards. I imagine it would look similar to the card below.

UPDATE: As suggested in the comments – make sure to call your bank right away if you have checks or a debit card stolen.

Essentially a DMU (diesel multiple-unit) is a single-unit self propelled vehicle that runs on rails. If the rails are compatible with light rail or commuter rail systems (and I’d like to find out if this is the case) they could be used as an introductory transit option in areas where the population is not yet dense enough to support the larger systems – especially in areas like the north and west parts of Utah County where we know that the population will become large enough to support a transit system like Salt Lake County already has. They can also be used to connect the further outlying areas with the main transit systems that serve the larger population centers.

California is looking at a high-speed rail line that would make lots of short-distance air travel obsolete between San Diego and Sacramento. Here in the States we love to fly everywhere. It’s so bad that Amtrack is almost useless because we are not willing to take the extra time to ride the train that is slightly cheaper. If California actually puts in the funding to build this high-speed rail line they will have a train that is cheaper than the planes and faster than airport security. If that could be done in a number of other travel corridors as well we would have fewer planes in the sky, less fuel being used, and faster travel through airports due to lower volumes of travelers when most air travel is for longer distances.

Similar benefits could be realized on a smaller scale by implementing good transit options in population centers so that we would not be so reliant on cars for all our local travel. At least on those we can look to some examples of good transit systems here in the States rather than wondering what the rest of the world knows that we have not figured out yet.

UPDATE 5/14/97: I stand corrected – as Hyrum points out, Amtrack is not slightly cheaper than the airlines on cross-country trips.

I have also included some files that I used to test and develop this – in case anyone wanted to make further modifications. Instructions are in the readme.txt file.

Download wp-mail-rich.

I have only tested this with Gmail so it is possible that other rich text emails might not be exactly right coming from Yahoo, Hotmail, or your company mail server. Let me know if this is the case.

I have no particular desire to own this plugin so if Chris and Chris want to adopt my modification into their official plugin they are welcome to it. If they do I will link to their version of the file, but until then here is my version: Classic Posts plugin with List Option.

UPDATE: I found the error on the plugin (I had to add two characters to the code) and I have the working version up now (same link as before).

UPDATE 2: Chris has added my modification and the bug fix so I will include a link to the official version.

After reading the analysis I thought I should see if Twitter does have some use for me, even if it never consumes me. I decided that it might suit for the many articles that I come across which are worthy of a blog post but which I often never get back to posting about. I created a Twitter profile an then thought about what I was doing. I remembered del.icio.us which is for bookmarking pages like I was thinking. When I first heard about del.icio.us my thoughts were much like Twitter – fine, but it does not suit my patterns. Now my patterns have changed enough that it might be a good fit. I created an account and I am starting to mark pages that I might want to post about later. When I get time I will get that list displayed in my sidebar in case anyone out there cares to read the things that I’d like to post about but never do.

When we moved from temporary mattress filling to permanent mattresses we did not keep all the beneficial traits of the old mattresses. Perhaps someone should market a disposable sick-bed. Hospital beds have vinyl coverings so they can be wiped, disinfected, and covered with new sheets. Crib mattresses (at least the ones we have) are the same, but regular mattresses have lost that trait from the mattresses that our great-great-grandparents used to have.

I’m not suggesting that we should go back to those mattresses – though I was tempted to when the thought first struck me. I think we have many products to help mitigate that difference. However, the thought struck me that there is no such thing as a flawless upgrade when we start using new technology like that. There is always some characteristic that we might overlook which has its benefits. It’s something to think about as we rush onward with new technologies and find that it is easy to see their strengths. Sometimes we have to take a step back and see if we might have missed some strengths from the old technology.

Add this to the fact that I have to go edit the post later if I want it anywhere but the default category, or if I want to add tags or anything else besides text, and you can be sure that I will only use email as a place to compose posts that are still in the formative stages. I will also be looking at other plugins with more versatility in this department.

Enough griping, it’s still a new feature for me so this may be a small step, but it’s a forward step.

Update: There is another catch – extra line breaks show up when posting this way – definitely not for regular use.

By way of comparison, here is a screenshot of the code from my WordPress blog:

For anyone who might still be skeptical (or who might care) I later found a more obvious reference to WordPress in their blog code:

After I got started on the project I thought it would be fun to put it on my website so that I could access it and update it from anywhere. To do that I used MiniTiddlyServer (MTS) which allows makes a server environment for TiddlyWikis. Normally they are displayable on the web but not they can’t be updated online without some help. I think that MTS is the best tool to give that help that I have seen. Admittedly I work with Sean Hess, who created MTS, but even if I didn’t know him I would consider this to be a fine piece of work. The first version of MTS that I used was only 9 files zipped up to less than 100Kb. The version I am using now is much bigger (over 500Kb – still very small) and much more powerful.

This opens up a world of future possibilities. For the present, anyone can see what I am planting in my gardens (flower and vegetable). Later I may choose to allow others to contribute to the wiki by invitation. Eventually I could choose to open parts of it up for general comment and contribution. MTS can do that kind of thing, the question is, “will I want to try it?” The answer is, “time will tell.”

In the last 3 days I have been approved for $12,428,000 in refinance loans. The beauty of it all is that the largest of these loans is under $500,000. That’s starting to make my credit limit look puny.

I had always seen genealogy as more interested in finding and connecting with generations past. Obviously this can lead to making connections with other relatives further from your immediate family. I found Geni through a post by Paul Allen who is actually working on an online genealogy collaboration site called FamilyLink. Based on what I could see I thought that FamilyLink might be more what I would have expected.

I am curious to know what other people think of Geni. Is it what you imagine when you think of genealogy, or could it be used for genealogical purposes? Does it look like something you would want to use? I am, as yet, undecided.

I am not talking about efax.com or any of the other services that you can sign up with (often for free) to have faxes delivered to your email. Those still require that you have a fax number. Someone sends a fax to your fax number (which is maintained by efax) and they route the fax to your email address. They can even convert the fax into a different file format, like PDF or TIF which can be read by software that your probably already have.

I m talking about a system, perhaps a device that could be connected to the fax machine, that could be used to send a fax directly to an email address rather than a phone number. This allows those that have legitimate uses for faxes to continue using them and have access to the many people who do not have a fax machine. While we’re at it, perhaps we should create some kind of software that can send any printable file as a fax – oh wait, we already have that in the form of fax software programs.

On a side note – this is another example of how technology leaps ahead of us and we have to scramble to keep up with what is available. This scrambling is what leads to mistakes like DRM and obsolete laws like traditional copyright and DMCA.

Users of IE will not see all the beautiful effects of my style, but they will get a functional page now and see a button to get Firefox. People without IE will miss the extra button, but I prefer that they see my site with no extras.

I learned how to do the rounded corner effects with CSS from: Arve Bersvendsen @ virtuelvis.com. Once I understood his code I was able to create the scalloped tab effect for my menu options. Who would have thought that my left-brained self could wax creative like that.

My header image is: “Ripples” by Jeremy Stanley @ www.flickr.com/photos/jpstanley. This image is licensed under a Creative Commons – Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. I was thus able to crop it to fit my header. When I share my theme I will include the cropped version and the original version of the image under that same license. All other parts of my theme will be shared under a simple Creative Commons – Attribution license.

I wanted a cohesive color scheme for my site and I found the Color Palette Generator by Steve DeGraeve @ DeGraeve.com. I used my header image to generate the original palette and then used the color picker to generate further colors from that palette. Steve has many other useful programs available on his site as well.

Here is the html code for the election projections:

<a href=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/”><img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /> <img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small-house.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /></a>

On to my reactions.

I have never used the electronic voting machines before and I was pleasantly surprised by one feature – I got to read the printout of my ballot before it was officially cast. I thought that was great. Assuming that the very paper I read (but could not touch since it was behind a window in the voting machine) is the same paper that would be read in the event of a manual recount, or an audit of the votes (which I believe/hope is mandatory) then I am confident that there is no way, short of collusion, to manipulate actual votes cast.

This means that the machines cannot be responsible for any problems related to the results of an election where they are used. Admittedly this only applies to this model of voting machine. I can’t speak for any other model. This also says nothing about efforts which discourage voters from casting votes or efforts which seek to disenfranchise specific portions of the electorate. Those are separate problems.

As for the ballot itself – I was disappointed with the number of offices in which there was no Democratic candidate. It is a sad statement when one of the major parties fails to even field a candidate. The worst section of the ballot was where I got to “vote” for county officials. Almost without exception, at the county level there was a Republican candidate running unopposed. I don’t mean no to say there was no Democratic challenger, I mean no challenger at all. If it were not for the fact that we could put challengers on the ballot it would be like voting for Saddam Hussein when he was in power in Iraq – no challenger means that he won between 95% and 100% of the vote – it’s not an election.

You can vote as often as you would like – I believe that the poll will only allow a person to vote once every two weeks.

I was only allowed to include 20 options in the poll I created so I included 10 of the most prominent republican hopefuls and 10 of the most prominent democratic hopefuls. I have listed all of them alphabetically. I have made no indication of their party affiliation, although some of them will be obvious.

There were another 11 potential candidates that I could have included. If I notice candidate who are consistently failing to get noticed in the poll I may drop them and add some of these other candidates that I could not include.

What I had wanted initially was a ranking system similar to the way college football teams are ranked where voters would rank the various candidates and their rankings would be weighted to give an overall ranking. If anyone has an idea of how I could do that I would love to hear about it.

I am looking to have this circulated as widely as possible so feel free to let friends of all political persuasions know about this poll. Also I would appreciate if anyone has any ideas of how else I can make this poll known to a wider audience.

UPDATE: I have decided to make create a separate page for the poll so that it is not necessary to scroll to see it. It will still be included on the sidebar here, but it can also be found at http://mr.david.miller.googlepages.com/poll.html. If anyone does choose to share the poll with their friends, that page is where they should probably point.

Oh well, I have the email now.

I save a bunch on Cable, a little on internet, and pay two and a half times for the phone. Nice marketing.

Thinking about the Mennonites, and their Amish offshoot, I began to wonder what the cost of living was for them compared to the people who lived near them. The way I figure it, they still have property taxes like the people around them, but they don’t pay for telephones, or cable television. On the other hand, they have horses and other animals to feed and care for. They have carriages to maintain. They mostly grow their own food and make most of their own equipment. My best guess is that there are financial benefits and drawbacks to their lifestyle, but overall I would expect that their cost of living was lower than most people in this country.

I’ll admit that money is not everything in this life, so the real relevant question is – are they any less happy than those of us who have all of our modern conveniences? I suspect that any pollster who was willing to go door-to-door to ask them that question would discover that they are at least as happy as the rest of us. It’s something to consider next time your kid says he’ll die if he doesn’t get what he wants for his birthday.

I don’t know how many other major newspapers pose this challenge for news bloggers nor if any of them also have such tools, but this is a great tool for anyone who does that kind of blogging and likes nytimes.com as a news source.

I was reminded of this tool when I linked to an NPR story yesterday. I don’t know how much I will need it since before I was often commenting on Op/Ed pieces which are mostly only Times Select (paid service) now. Since I don’t pay for that access I may not use the tool much, but hopefully it can be useful for other people.

For the time being I will be trying to find my own voice again by commenting on other people’s blogs. Eventually I will be back to running my own blog again, but in the mean time I will leave static pages of some of the latest entries in the blogs that I had to pull.

My new feed is located here. It is RSS2 but if you go to my new site you can also find feeds to my posts or comments in earlier versions of RSS or Atom.

One day I ran across a new Virtual Laser Keyboard which would allow me to have a full sized keyboard for a PDA. Nice idea, but after thinking about it I think we can do one better. If we can project a keyboard onto a desk or table, why not project the text onto a vertical surface and fix the whole small-screen issue. Get a gadget that combines a sound recorder and a hard drive with a mini-projector. We could use a virtual keyboard and suddenly we have a device the size of an iPod with the battery life of a PDA and more than enough storage for all the notes I could ever take. Give it a USB port as a means of transferring your files to your desktop and you have the perfect not-taking device. The operating system would have to do input and output and manage files, but this would be meant to not browse the net or anything else so security and processing power should be minimal concerns.

Who wants to invent my idea?

I was pleasantly surprised by IE6 though.

It rendered the CSS 1 properly.

My question is, if viewing ads and pop-ups is part of my social contract, how can I cancel the contract?

I have written about this topic multiple times so my position should be clear that internet access and broadband should either be regulated or provided by the government because the industry refuses to play nice with customers.

As a bonus he never had to worry about his internet access since he used 16 high-speed lines for sending out all that email.

“Whether building a wireless system, installing fiber directly to homes, or exploring broadband over power lines – or some combination of these options – local communities are finding they can get better service for less money if they do it themselves.

“Big telecom and cable companies have responded by furiously working to slam the door on community wireless. The telephone and cable giants are trying to use their lobbying clout in state capitals to pre-empt local control, preserve higher prices and preclude competition.” (thanks to Matt Barton for quoting this perfect synopsis from Freepress.net)

Everybody should realize that the telecom companies have nothing to gain when municipalities prove that broadband can be affordable. Somehow they need to be held to the standard of capitalist doctrine and forced to actually compete to create a system that provides the best service possible for the lowest price. If the municipalities can offer equal service for less than the telecoms then the telecoms should get out of the business.

Congratulations Google on another big score by the Picasa team.

Unfortunately my needs include having multiblog support because I am unwilling to run multiple sets of tables to manage my multiple blogs and I want some central control for all my blogging. This meant that I had to find and attempt to use Wordpress MU. I finally got it installed, but for some reason it does not produce blogs, just entries in my tables. Well, actually it produced a blog at wp.php rather than index.php but for the non-admin blogs it produced table entries only.

I considered some other OSS platforms for my site blogs, but I decided that – at least for now – they are not what I want. I have finally concluded that I have spent too much time on this project and I would rather devote myself to another, more altruistic, project on another site where I will be combining the wordpress software with phpGedView for a platform which will support online genealogy collaboration

While I will be focusing on that project, I would welcome any suggestions as to how to implement an OSS platform for multiple blogs that I can easily customize to look just like my current site and be fully valid XHTML.

We have the technology and the capacity to deliver broadband to everybody. I realized that this went even farther than broadband. We have 6% of our workforce not working right now and we have people who do not have access to every good thing that they want because of prohibitive costs (college students have plenty of use for broadband, but can rarely afford to pay $50 per month to pay for it). I am convinced that both telephone providers and cable providers could still make a profit on broadband while offering it for $20 per month – which would be affordable enought to virtually eliminate dialup service.

Wait for a later post where I will list some of the benefits that I see of having universal access to broadband.

I finally found a solution. I am going to set up a blog etc. on my family genealogy site. If I get a working system I will test how easy it is to port these blogs to the new format. If I find a good combination I will change all of this, but hopefully the end users (if there are any of you) will see almost exactly what you are seeing now. I have a couple of systems to try – WordPress (it will probably get a second chance), Mambo and Drupal.

I will report progress on the site development here as it progresses . . . slowly.

I don’t know the answer to that, but if the answer is yes then I think we have a very powerful tool for increasing our teacher bandwidth.

What is the value of technology in teaching? I suspect that more than making teaching intrinsically better through technology the thing that we can look forward to gaining through technology in education is the economies of scale. The teaching may not be much better than it was before from an individual standpoint, but being able to spread education and expand collaboration may make the education of mankind much better.

This was a very interesting study. Erin has promised to get the paper up on the web. When I know where it is I will post a link to the paper if anyone is interested after reading my thoughts from the paper. I promise that what I have written here will not spoil the information in the paper.

The next consideration I thought about was ensuring the integrity of the information being added to the files. That is as easy to ensure online as offline if you limit the people who can contribute to the people you know who participate in genealogy offline already. The problem is that I expect the list of names to grow and converge with other lines so that new people would like to participate who I don’t know. If I open it up to unknown users I have to find a way to know if someone is playing a prank on me or really interested in adding to my genealogy file. Actually I know that very few people would waste their time playing a prank on my genealogy, but I do not want people adding information if the information is based on poor research. I think that the solution is to require logon credentials and only allow people to log on if they can prove a connection to the line. This will give them a vested interest in keeping the information as accurate as possible. The logins would be simple and not designed for security, but we would also be able to trace who was entering information and contact them if the information was consistently suspect.

As for Microsoft, they don’t care to write good HTML, but where’s the incentive for them? I had to tweak my code after it validated to keep IE from displaying it incorrectly. Why write good code if you are busy supplying a browser that cannot interpret the code correctly?