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Sunday, August 31, 2003
showlister is doing pretty well since the .02b release. It has had 1874 hits (actually, page views) on hotscripts and 5,206 on sourceforge. Sourceforge lists 156 downloads to date. Hotscripts doesn't publish that information (not that I can find, anyway). I've had a steady stream of emails from people about it. I think I managed to fill a useful niche.
 
wheatblog, the official--well, the only--blog of wheatdesign.com, silently reached its three-year anniversary on July 13.
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Saturday, August 30, 2003
I've been in Huntsville all evening for the first night of the estate auction. It ran from 5:00 pm to 10:30 pm. We sold all the furniture and household items. Most things did well. All the outside stuff (farm equipment, building materials) goes up tomorow at 10:00 am. I like auctions, though it's sad to see some things go. I took some pictures that I'll post this weekend.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Local editorial writer Don Michael has written a piece on the situation in Alabama far better that anything I could add. The following words from the U.S. Constitution seem particularly relevant:
 
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Article VI; Clause 3).
 
Of course the first amendment also applies:
 
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
 
The trick has always been deciding what sorts of government actions counts as establishing religion. The problem, of course, is that Chief Justice Roy Moore is both a representative of the goverment and a private citizen. In his role as government representative, he has no right imposing his religious ideas on other people. In his role as a private citizen, he has every right to champion his views. It's tricky living in a pluralistic society, full of contradictory agendas. The Alabama debacle has been but one more pitched battle in a series likely to continue.
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Monday, August 25, 2003
Spent most of the day in downtown Charleston while my wife was doing new student orientation. I spent quite a bit of time at the Charleston County Library reading up on all kinds of geek-related things.
 
There's been much to blog and no time to blog it in our trip to Charleston. I'll catch up once I'm back home in Fayetteville. But I did want to mention that I went to Graceland on the drive up, and it was worth doing if you like Elvis at all. Tourist-trap things like Graceland are fun when they're done well, and they're fun to make fun of when they're done poorly, so, given the proper perspective, it's often a win-win situation. More details on that, and everything else, as time permits.
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Saturday, August 23, 2003
Greetings from Mt. Pleasant, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. I'm visiting some relatives and helping my wife get ready for her first day of pharmacy school at the MUSC school of pharmacy. I'll be moving out here as soon as I can find a job.
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Sunday, August 17, 2003
atariage.com has all the roms to fix your Atari 2600 jones. But someone needs to write a better front-end to stella (the Atari 2600 emulator). StellaX is functional but clunky and dated, and I haven't found a better one yet.
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Monday, August 11, 2003
The new version (.02b) of showlister is now available at sourceforge, and the listing has been updated at freshmeat (we're also listed on today's page of releases) . The listing should be updated soon on hotscripts.com. Woohoo!
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Sunday, August 10, 2003
I put in several more hours of work on showlister, but sourceforge is down, so I can't send out a new distribution and new notice about it yet. Maybe tomorow, if I have just a little time. The multiple artist support is working fine. Maybe I should add RSS feeds for bands in the .03b version. Does anyone stay up to date on bands/performers appearances via RSS?
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I worked on showlister for a few hours last night. The new version (.02b -- not out yet) will let you keep calendar info for multiple bands/artists in one db and will make it easy to pull out show data for any or all bands. I decided to add this functionality at the request of a small record label that wants to use it for their site. I decided it was probably a good option for others as well. One more good evening of work on it (tonight?) and I could have it out the door.
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Saturday, August 09, 2003
Just discovered AccuJazz which seems like a handy way to get familiar with artists you've heard of but never really listened to (Windows only, requires Windows Media Player). They also have other genres availible at AccuRadio, the parent station.
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Friday, August 08, 2003
A position paper at osdl.org by Eben Moglen (of the Free Software Foundation) about the SCO case (via rc3.org).
 
More on Novell's move to Linux.
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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Well, if the US won't hold Microsoft to fair business practices, maybe the EU will.
 
"Classic" or ".NET", VB is here to stay.
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003
I always knew that my father once owned a gas station (he would have said "service station") in Shamrock, Texas. It turns out, the one he operated (from 1951 until I'm not sure when) was on Route 66 and is being restored. It's an impressive art decco building. I've found this nice picture of it, and I'll be putting together a gallery of them. The building dates from 1936. Later, it became an inn and cafe known as the U Drop Inn. It's fairly famous among Route 66 fans.
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Monday, August 04, 2003
Back from Shamrock. The interment ceremony was very nice. Since my dad was a WWII vet, the VA sent three soldiers to do the military honors (one to play the music, two to fold and present the flag).
 
Some props for showlister. Also a new site using it. I promise that version .02b is in the works.
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Saturday, August 02, 2003
Dad's funeral took place this morning. I'm off to Shamrock, Tx tomorow for the interment on Monday.
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music writing computing life design