Further proof that the universe is out to get us.

The weather is trying harder than ever to kill us, our heros immolate themselves on the altar of pseudo-democracy, and now it appears that the universe itself wants us dead.

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.....

...The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar....

..."Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)...

[ read the full article at space.com ]

Like anyone would even notice another mass extinction these days. Pfffff.

Hunter S. Thompson Dead. George Bush, still kicking.

I think the title pretty much sums up this little post. Hunter S. Thompson was the very first motivational factor that got me to pick up a pen and start writing. He was a man among cowards and hypocrites and today he lies dead by his own hand. At least, that's what it LOOKS like. I haven't gotten all the details yet, but if it's true and HST did kill himself on purpose I have just one question. Why the hell didn't today's headlines read "Hunter S. Thomson kills 87 in fiery deathstorm". How is it we live in a world where great men like HST cannot find the will to keep living, while somehow George Bush and Dick Cheney continue to sleep like babies by night and to visit their hateful wrath upon the world by day? It's always the wrong people who seem to kill themselves and leave the rest of us wondering why we even bother to care. I've personally known at least 4 people who have taken their own lives and each time I cannot help but wonder why the hell they didn't go on a shooting spree first. I mean, if you hate the world that much, and you plan on removing yourself from it anyway, why not take a few idiots with you? You could walk into virtually any public place and shoot in any direction and probably hit someone that deserved it. So, I'm adopting new policy. If you kill yourself without first making an attempt at visiting some kind of hateful vengeance upon the world that has so mistreated you, then you are a pussy and you deserve to die your meaningless, impotent little death. So fuck you Hunter, you psychotic little mouse. Good riddance. If you want to regain my respect now, there's only one option left for you...kill god.

Using .htaccess files to control directory access on Linux Apache setups

I've been looking for a nice summary of .htaccess directives for use in controlling Apache on Linux and finally found a decent one at the address below:

http://thunder.prohosting.com/~sampieri/freefaq/g_htaccess.shtml#dirindex

Why today's non-violent activists are really mostly just pussies.

I was having a discussion with my boss the other day, trying to explain to him why I felt that non-violent protest no longer had any relevance in America. I couldn't articulate it, until I stumbled upon an interview with a man named Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. Here's an excerpt from the interview entitled Dismantling the Politics of Comfort: The Satya Interview with Ward Churchill

Nonviolent action can be effectual when harnessed in a way that is absolutely unacceptable to the state: if you actually clog the freeways or occupy sites or whatever to disrupt state functioning with the idea of ultimately making it impossible for the state to function at all, and are willing to incur the consequences of that. That’s very different from people standing with little signs, making a statement. Statements don’t do it. If [they] did, we would have transformed society in this country more than a century ago.

[ read the full interview with Ward Churchill from Satya Magazine ]

[ Ward Churchill's Homepage at Zmag.org ]

PrimalScript - The Little Script Editor that Almost Could.

If you work with Flash Actionscript or Javascript, chances are, you're pretty unimpressed with your "stock" options for writing code. I've recently been testing some alternatives to my usual hodgepodge of tools such as the built-in Flash actionscript editor, UltraEdit and a short list of other small text editors and debuggers. Recently I ran across two editors for Actionscript.

The first one, the SEPY Actionscript editor is geared only toward Flash development. It is a very promising editor that you might want to try that includes such nice things as code folding and brace matching. Unfortunately, the second time I used it, it literally destroyed one of my actionscript files and completely overwrote it with a blank file. I don't know how or why, I just know that this editor is not ready for prime time. Maybe in a few months, but not today.

This brings us to our second option, a great little program called PrimalScript, offered by the fine folks at Sapien. This program has just about everything an ActionScript coder would want. But's that's just the beginning. PrimalScript is quickly gaining a following as an editor for ASP, PHP, VBScript and most other scripting languages. For Actionscript 2.0, PrimalScript includes the entire Actionscript function list, making it exremely easy to find the proper syntax. It's got too many cool and very helpful features to bother listing here, so just do yourself a favor and download a trial version from their web site. Give it a whirl and see for yourself. Features such as matching braces, excellent syntax hilighting, function browsing, code completion. Unfortunately this program has one EXTREMELY large problem. It offers no word-wrapping whatsoever. I couldn't believe someone would spend so much time writing a script editor and then leave out the ability to wrap long lines, so I wrote the author to confirm this fact and sure enough, the program offers no word-wrapping functionality. From the author's response, there's no indication that it will be added. It's too bad, because I can't live without word wrapping and I also can't live without some of the cool features of PrimalScript, so I guess I'll just keep my copy of UltraEdit handy for when I need a better view of some of my more unruly code.

So, in summary, give PrimalScript a try, but stay away from SEPY Actionscript editor until they've got some more of the bugs worked out. And if you feel like it, please e-mail the primal script author and hassle him about adding word wrapping.

Cheney Staves off Heart Attack During State of the Union Address

Am I the only one that noticed Dick Cheney's heart attempting a vote of no confidence during the State of the Union address Wednesday? I was watching ABC's coverage, and it was right at the part where Bush starts talking about how Condolizza Rice will be visiting Israel and the West Bank, and they cut to Condi, looking all smug and racially conflicted, and then they cut back to Bush just in time to see Cheney, behind him, suddenly cough and then turn about 5 shades of red. For a second, it looked like there was some kind of liberal agenda lodged in his ass and he was trying in vain to force it out. Then, in an attempt to look inconspicuous with the entire world watching him, he lurched in his seat, fumbled in his pants pocket, then pulled out what I can only assume was a nitroglycerin tablet, and popped one in his mouth. If anyone has this on their TiVO, please verify this for yourself because it looks to me like Dick Cheney had a minor heart attack and none of the media seem to have picked up on it. I thought for sure the bloggers would have caught this before Bush had even finished his 30th "freedom". So now I'm forced to break the story myself. Hopefully others will verify this independently.