Swedish Furniture

Playing with Templates

2010-01-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

Apologies in advance to my readers (however few they are). Over the next week I'll be using this blog to test out Blogger/Blogspot templates for my other blog, so things may get a bit ugly around here.

I'll at least try to put the site back into a readable state while I'm not actively working on it.

Johnny Came Back

2010-01-14T10:58:00.000-08:00

On the night Conan O'Brien broadcast his first episode of the Tonight Show, it was no more than 20 minutes into the show that I turned to my wife and said, "Johnny's back." The shtick, the silliness, the set, the sidekick and most of all the sincerity - all of it was back anew.

I remember the first time I watched the Tonight Show. It was 1978 and Johnny was at the top of his game. His monologue was tight, he has me in giggling with Carnac the Magnificent and his guest Don Rickles brought me to the floor. This is the type of thing NBC really wants. A host that's edgy, fresh and able to build a cult following over time.

Although Conan's ratings haven't been very good so far for numerous reasons, the audience cross section he appeals to is the same as the one that Carson had early in his show. As Carson's audience matured, so did his comedy and after 30 years on the air Johnny know it was time for a hard reset. To achieve this, it was his desire to hand off the show to David Letterman but NBC had other ideas and gave the show to Jay Leno instead. When NBC made the announcement in 1991, the New York Times reported:

[...] NBC executives expressed concern this year about the age of the audience that is watching Mr. Carson and emphasized that Mr. Leno has been able to attract younger viewers.

The age of the viewers is a concern because a late-night syndicated show starring the comedian Arsenio Hall has made significant inroads into the "Tonight" ratings, especially with younger viewers, though in the last year Mr. Hall's show has faded somewhat. Television advertisers most often favor younger viewers.

In the same article, Jay Leno expressed clearly that he has no intention of making significant changes:

[Leno] said he expected the "Tonight" show to change very little when he takes over. "We may have a new set, new music, things like that," Mr. Leno said.

So much for the hard reset. Along came 17 years of drab, predictable humor.

Now don't get me wrong. I like Leno as a person, but it's like he went on autopilot shortly after he took over the show. He used to be that edgy, fresh comedian with the great disposition but that, along with his passion for comedy, all seemed to disappear. Oswald Patton made similar comments on the matter recently as well:

This spring when Conan took over the show, the hard reset finally happened and as expected, the ratings took a hit. That's what happens when you start building a new audience, but the long term payoff is immense. NBC made the right decision to give the show to Conan.

After 17 years on hiatus the spirit of Johnny Carson has, for a season, come back to life. Let's hope NBC makes the right decision and doesn't vanquish it from their house.

Embedding in Blogger with Jump Breaks (Update 2)

2010-01-13T20:01:00.000-08:00

Blogger has an annoying bug where it strips out embed tags in the shortened version of an article when you add a jump break. Everything works fine when you hit the "read more" link and view the entire post, but what if you want to embed something before the jump break? I found a few solutions.

Entertonement

I was trying to embed a clip from Entertonement. Here's an example of their standard embed tag which won't be visible unless you hit the 'read more' link at the bottom of the article.

While looking for a way to make it work, I found that they have a method of embedding via JavaScript, although it wasn't obvious at first. On their embed page, there is a description on how to embed in BBCode. If you go to the page and click on one of the 'show' links in the 'Custom BBCode Values' section (sorry - no direct way to link to it), you can see the JavaScript used to do it. Here's a clip embedded via Javascript:

Update 2: Entertonement deprecated this call. Code removed.

Still, things weren't showing up exactly the way I wanted. The player wouldn't show up in Google Reader and in certain preview modes while I was editing the posts. That's when I came across this post talking about how the embed tag is rather non-standard and we all should be using the object tag instead, so I took one more shot at it to see what I could do:

Viola!

Update: It turns out the best way to cover all bases is not just to use the object tag, but to also include the embed tag as well.

If you look below the fold, you can see which parameters I converted to make it work. You can experiment for yourself (on your own blog) to see which parameters are really necessary for your purposes.

YouTube

So the next thing was to make it work for YouTube videos. Here's their normal embed that's messing things up:

The nice thing about YouTube is that the embed is already wrapped in an object tag, so conversion is much easier. Here's the result:

Update: The YouTube code also works best with the merged object/embed method as well.

Code samples below.

I formatted and trimmed down these versions of the source code to make things easier to read and understand, but they're fully functional.

Update: samples have been updated to reflect the merged object/embed tags. Added code in italics.

Entertonement Embed
<embed width="320" height="35" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   src="http://media.entertonement.com/embed/OpenEntPlayer.swf"
   flashvars="auto_play=false&e=&skin_pid=wfxswdnlkf&image_size=flash&clip_pid=rlqmbtyyxl"
   allowscriptaccess="always"
   wmode="transparent"></embed>

Entertonement JavaScript (Update 2: Entertonement deprecated this call)
<script type="text/javascript"
   src="http://www.entertonement.com/clips/bbcode?clip_url=http://www.entertonement.com/clips/dnyznbfblm">
</script>

Entertonement Object
<object width="300" height="30" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   data="http://media.entertonement.com/embed/OpenEntPlayer.swf" >
   <param name="flashvars" value="auto_play=false&e=&skin_pid=wfxswdnlkf&clip_pid=ydlwpvjgfl"></param>
   <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
   <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
   <embed width="320" height="35" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
      src="http://media.entertonement.com/embed/OpenEntPlayer.swf"
      flashvars="auto_play=false&e=&skin_pid=wfxswdnlkf&image_size=flash&clip_pid=ydlwpvjgfl"
      allowscriptaccess="always"
      wmode="transparent"></embed>
</object>
   
YouTube Embed
<object width="320" height="265">
   <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7Y33BI8L-_8"></param>
   <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
   <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
   <embed width="320" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
      src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7Y33BI8L-_8"></embed>
</object>

YouTube Object
<object width="320" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   data="http://www.youtube.com/v/QVZhdHIW-Ko">
   <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QVZhdHIW-Ko"></param>
   <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
   <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
   <embed width="320" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
      src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QVZhdHIW-Ko"></embed></object>

Don't Blog Drunk

2009-12-27T22:56:00.000-08:00

I have a rule. Don't blog drunk. Except tonight. Morren and Wareen Blukausli are in town and silliness ensues. Or is that the Blutauskies? Platouskies? Tim, we miss you.

We are celebrating Festivus. There is much airing of grievances. Next year I think we'll celebrate Kwanzaa or perhaps Hanukkah. Perhaps Kwanukka. 12 days of home made gifts. The Bro or Manziere is a good gift.

Apparently they want to sell my gently used Swedish furniture. The is a Borgensctupher for sale. Anyone want it? This is not to be confused with a Borgenstoofer which they make Morren's feet itch.

That's all for tonight. More tomorrow.

Fixing the Apple Remote in Snow Leopard

2009-09-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've seen many complaints about the behavior of the Apple Remote since the Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), so without getting technical on the cause of the problem, here's a way to work around the problem.

Problem

Pressing the 'Menu' button on the Apple Remote launches Front Row.
Pressing the 'Play/Pause' launches iTunes.
Button events go to both iTunes/Front Row as well as the application you're REALLY wanting to control (like VLC, Hulu, etc.)

Solution

Part 1: Stop Front Row from Launching

As root, edit /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist and replace the contents of the file with this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
      <key>Disabled</key>
      <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Reboot.

Part 2: Stop iTunes from Playing Songs

Open iTunes. Create an empty playlist (call it 'Empty' - makes sense). Minimize iTunes.

Rollback

So you want to put things back to normal. Well, here's the original contents of /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
      <key>Label</key>
      <string>com.apple.RemoteUI</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
              <string>/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/MacOS/Front Row</string>
      </array>
      <key>MachServices</key>
      <dict>
              <key>com.apple.RemoteUI</key>
              <true/>
      </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Put that file back to normal and reboot. Happiness ensues.

Bill O'Reilly is a Reasonable Man

2009-09-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I just said that - but with all the 'Czar' stupidity being pushed on Fox News, Billybob actually did something I admire. He called Glenn Beck on his Van Jones propaganda machine.

See it here (clip from Media Matters):

Chuck vs. the Camel

2009-03-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

I was watching Chuck on Hulu last night at at 42:20 into the show, what should make it's appearance but the Perl Camel Book:

(click on picture for full size)

It seems the writers of this show are truly geeks. If you look carefully, there's another book on top of it that looks an awful lot like either The UNIX Programming Environment or The C Programming Language.

Classics all around - too cool!

Making Peace with Baked Goods

2009-03-03T10:05:00.000-08:00

Over the past month, I've been following the election contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken for the last outstanding federal senate seat. I've watched one election official after another came to the stand to testify on the minutia of what happened in their precincts and verifying facts about individual ballots. All were forthright and honest in their testimony regardless of their political leaning, but near the end of the contestant's case Pamela Howell took the stand. That's when things got interesting.

In Minnesota, it's standard practice to pair up election judges so that every precinct has an equal number of judges from each of the major parties. Ms. Howell was a Republican judge but unlike other Republican judges that previously took the stand, her desire to have Norm Coleman win this election was obvious.

This is my spin on her time in court. For a complete play-by-play, there's plenty of coverage out there.

Wed, Feb 25 - Ms. Powell takes the stand. Team Coleman (i.e. his lawyers) gets the first shot at questioning her and everything goes nicely, but as Team Franken begins the cross examination all that changes. Her answers become more and more terse. When questions arise that would disadvantage Team Coleman, she gives answers that are clearly intended to hide details. As she gets more and more nervous, she starts answering, "uh huh" instead of, "yes" to many questions, eventually being repremanded by the judges for doing so. For her, this is not going good.

During cross examination it's found that a document she produced after the recount and gave to Team Coleman was never given to Team Franken. Team Franken asks to have her testimony stricken. The court takes recess to allow them to receive and review the document. After the break, more questioning reveals that Team Coleman showed a copy of the document to Ms. Howell and talked with her about it during the recess - a double no-no. The court grants the motion to have her testimony stricken and dismisses her.

Fri, Feb 27 - The court reconsiders it's motion and allows Ms. Howell to take the stand again (way to go, judges - erring on the side of prudence making it less likely an appeal will succeed). Very quickly, Team Franken reveals that there are more e-mails and documents that were not given to them and once again ask not only to have the testimony stricken, but to also impose sanctions on Team Coleman for the flagrant violation of discovery rules.

Mon, Mar 2 - The court rules on the motion, limiting testimony and imposing a $7,500 file on Team Coleman. Ms. Howell completes her testimony but not before sharing this nugget:

Howell told Lillehaug [of Team Franken] she didn't make a public statement earlier because, "I did not want the press at my door ... a target on my back." She said she felt vulnerable as a Republican living in largely DFL south Minneapolis. - Star Tribune

This invoked sympathy from me. Sometimes I think through the, "If I were famous ..." scenario and all the privacy I would lose. Imagine how much worse the, "If I were infamous ..." scenario would be. Protesters in front of my house waving signs and throwing all forms of rotten vegetable matter at my doors and windows. My car with all the tires flattened. Bill O'Reilly's producer constantly calling me to get an interview. Ugh!

This girl is afraid of us and all the nasty things we could do, but that's not what we're all about. We're all about the love, and if there's one thing that's really apparent, this girl really needs to feel the love.

So today I call on all her DFL neighbors to do exactly that. Bring her cookies and pies. Offer help by shoveling her driveway and clearing her gutters. Invite her over for a fondu dinner and talk about everthing that interests her.

Who knows. In the end we may get a convert.

Making my Wife a Bit Happier

2009-03-03T00:12:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't about buying her Swedish furniture. In fact this blog has nothing to to do with Swedish furniture. It's about is finding a forum in which I can ramble on about nothing in particular.

Today I found out that all my yackety-yacking has been irritating my wife. I endlessly blather about annoying TV commercials, proper capitalization of pronouns in reference to God, the effective use of behaviorism to influence our children and the seemingly endless election contest between Coleman and Franken. It's not a new realization, but not one I wanted to admit. I thought I was the most interesting person west of the Potomac. Or perhaps the Rhine. I'm starting to think it may have been a river in Egypt. Did I mention that I blather?

So, here's my solution. Instead of turning her mind into mush with verbal diarrhea, I'll unleash my worst on you and everyone else on this planet.

Save her sanity and destroy the world. A cunning plan if you ask me.