What's it all about, Alfie?

While I have no idea if this phrase is really Chinese, it's certainly true of working in the Banking industry these last two months. The Dow has taken a beating that I haven't seen in a very long time: (image from Google Finance)

I worked in the Chicago Board of Trade on the morning of 9/11 and remember everything about that morning and how we ended up leaving the building and the masses of people in downtown Chicago. It was something I hope I don't experience again - for a great many reasons, but especially because of what it did to the collective conscience of the American people.

So here we are, many years later, and greed - plain and simple got us, as a nation, and therefore, a world, into this pickle. I'm glad to see that the markets are working. I have faith in the smarts of the traders I work with, and others like them. They are going to price things reasonably again and be a little smarter in the future about these grouped debt instruments.

I do not support McCain's statement at the second debate about having the government buy up the mortgages, work with the owners to re-value the homes down and then re-finance at this new level - all so they can stay in their homes. Good if you're in a house you could not afford, and now you'll be able to. But bad for the rest of us that didn't get into debt trouble because we lived within our means. Bad idea, McCain.

Let the markets work. It'll get us through this. It always does.

I got a tweet that pointed me to this post talking about the racially motivated statements against Obama fueled by the McCain camp:

This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.

I'd like to think that in America in 2008 this can't happen, but often when I think that, I'm surprised by the single individual, or group, that proves me wrong.

Andrew is right... focus on the issues - stop making this a race race... people should vote for you based on you being a good man, not a good white man. Please, people... stick with me here... show the world that we're still a group of civilized people.

I've been looking for a good (decent) desktop client on Windows to keep my work blog (journal) up to date. I've tried w.bloggar and it's OK, but when I try to edit an existing post I get a time-shift on the posting time by five hours - exactly the same as my timezone offset from UTC. It's OK, but what I have to do is to post in w.bloggar and then edit any posts in the WordPress web interface.

So I looked again... and this morning I tried Deepest Sender a Firefox add-on and it's pretty nice. I'd like it if they had the ability to set the font in the 'Source' view to something fixed-width, but I can live with that as a minor annoyance. The biggie is that when I save an edited post it's not off by 5 hours, it resets the post date to epoch!

OK, that's a little extreme... I just wish these guys would allow an option to leave the posting data/time alone. So I sent in a bug to Deepest Sender as I think I'd like to use that one more as it's cross-platform with Firefox. We'll see what happens.

The Adium team has released 1.3.2 that fixes two bugs that I've been having - problems with MSN (they updated to the latest libpurple) and the frequent disconnects from Yahoo!. There were a few cosmetic changes as well, and that's nice that they're working on the "little things" as well as the biggie like tons of daily disconnects from Yahoo!.

So... pick it up, it's the very best IM client I've ever seen.

When I restarted my laptop this morning after getting the Security Updates, DataGraph informed me that a new version had been released - 1.6. I read the release notes, and it appears that the big changes are in the data table and the help system.

The Help system has been taken out of the app and on-line to make it easier to support, and also keep the size of the application down. Makes sense, but it's nice to have some form of help if you're off-net, and this move makes that really impractical. Designer's choice - I can see the pros and cons, it just might be nice to offer an option to download the current version of the docs if you're laptop-bound, as I am, and want to have the docs with you.

The change in the data table looks very interesting. Much more intuitive and should make dealing with data entry a lot nicer. There were a few additions to the rest of the app - a few new pointers, a few updates here and there, but the big things were help and data. Good enough.

At the same time, I picked up the Framework as I still have hopes of putting this into some apps of mine. I just need to find the motivation and the time.

Today I had a few minutes, and I wanted to spend a little time messing with the CSS on my work WordPress blog because the CodeHighlighter plugin I'm using is great if the background is white, as this guy is, but it's not so great when the background is black - like the YellowJacket theme for WordPress.

The problem is that I wanted a simple <pre> tag to have the same foreground/background color scheme as the regular text - not the code-ified version that the CodeHightlighter uses. So I had to be a little tricky with the CSS... but in the end, I got it.

The trick for me was to realize that the CodeHighlighter really just set the class of the <pre> tag to the language (give or take). So, if I added those specific tags to the CSS for the theme, I could make the code <pre> tags different from the other <pre> tags and that was the ticket. Trying to make the 'standard' <pre> tag different was a waste - and never got me what I wanted.

So, the CSS looks like this:

  pre.java, .sql, .c, .cpp, .css, .bash, .python {
      font-family: 'Luxi Mono', 'Courier New', Courier;
      font-size: 90%;
      line-height: 100%;
      background: #fff;
      color: #000;
      border: 1px dotted #ccc;
      padding: 0.2em 0.5em;
  }
 
  pre {
      font-family: 'Luxi Mono', 'Courier New', Courier;
      font-size: 90%;
      line-height: 100%;
  }

With this, I can get the code segments with a white background so they look nice with the CodeHighlighter, and at the same time, I get my simple <pre> tags looking like they fit in with the rest of the text. Nice.

UPDATE: I decided that I liked it so much, I saved off my copy of the theme to my WordPress home on HostMonster. Now I don't have to worry about losing it. Sweet.

UPDATE: Another thing to note: Don't put the <pre> tag on a line by itself if you're using a 'language' option. It'll put in an extra line at the top and bottom and thus space out your code more. Keep it tight.

I saw today that HostMonster had the update from Fantastico for WordPress 2.6.2 - and I needed to upgrade. These upgrades have become very routine - but the first few were real nail-biters for me. Thankfully, the Fantastico guys know what to do and the upgrades have been flawless.

Now we're on the recent version of WordPress and that's good to know. I have to say that getting an account on HostMonster was an excellent move for me. I can't imagine having a better hosting experience.

This morning I saw that VoodooPad (Pro) 3.5.2 was released with quiet a few fixes and enhancements - some of which are getting the application ready for 4.0 (I've read on the Flying Meat support boards Beta testers are already being sought out).

VoodooPad is the self-Wiki, indexed, free-form database with search capabilities that can form the basis of a nice help-system that you create yourself. I use it to put in all kinds of things that I need to be able to get at occasionally. I know that if I had time, I'd take about a week and put in a lot more, but those docs are OK for the time just being text files and I can search them.

The Pro version has several nice features, and most importantly, it supports the indie Mac developer that goes to all the trouble to make this available. You have to support good work, or there won't be any.

OK, I'm not a big "pictures leaked" fan, but if this is true, the Kindle has taken a major step backwards. The photos show a much wider Kindle with a larger keyboard (totally unnecessary in my opinion) with a much larger border all around the unit. This is in stark contrast to the new Sony eReader that was announced last week. The Sony is sleek with a touch-interface, and far more compact with the same fantastic screen.

If the photos are true, then I can say that the first generation Kindle is far far better than the second. I can honestly say that had the new Kindle been the only Kindle when I was looking to buy, I would have passed. It's just too big and clunky.

Which is why I hope it's just a rumor. Please, let it be a rumor.

Over the weekend, DrawIt 3.6 was released, and very quickly, it seems, 3.6.1 and 3.6.2 were sent out to address specific problems found by the first few users. I saw this just this morning, and I just got the 3.6.2 update. There are a few significant changes in this codebase - primarily the exclusion of the pixel editing features. Rather, they opted for a cross-licensing agreement with the Flying Meat crew to give you a license to Acorn for those features, and then allow a 'shell out' feature in DrawIt so that the integration is smooth.

I realize the need to specialize, and if you're not that good at one thing, take advantage of the fact that someone else is. Acorn is something that I use daily, and to see that DrawIt is acknowledging that as well is nice, and providing a clean interface to it even nicer. I don't see this as loosing something from DrawIt - as gaining a nice integration to Acorn.

That you get a free license, is nice, but I've already got licenses. No harm.

Two great products. Now specializing in what each does best. That's a great Mac tradition. Keep the faith, Boys! Gotta love it.