He'd Rather Fight Than Switch

This morning's Guardian has an amazing transcript of a joint interview with the writers Christopher and Peter Hitchens, brothers who hadn't spoken in four years.

I love this exchange between an audience member and Christopher Hitchens:

Female audience member: Excuse me. I'm not usually awkward at all but I'm sitting here and we're asked not to smoke. And I don't like being in a room where smoking is going on.

Christopher Hitchens (smoking heavily): Well, you don't have to stay, do you darling. I'm working here and I'm your guest. OK. This is what I like.

Ian Katz (Guardian interviewer): Would you just stub that one out?

Hitchens: No. I cleared it with the festival a long time ago. They let me do it. If anyone doesn't like it they can kiss my ass.

(Woman walks out)

Politics · 2005/05/31 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Choosing a Programmer's Editor

A reader laments the difficulty of writing programs in a plain-vanilla text editor:

I have a question that I can't seem to frame correctly. It relates to my inability to format nested punctuation (in any language, on any day). I would dearly love to see a quasi-visual editor which replaces the {{ ... }} with nested shading, and bold type used to identify classes, italics for variables, etc. etc.

It clearly calls for a different approach to the text-bound, linear approach to coding. What would such a beast be called?

Most programmers choose their editor with more care than they put into the purchase of a car. I've been lusting after this vi reference coffee mug and I don't even use the program. I feel like H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona, driving past convenience stores that aren't even on the way home.

For years, sheer laziness caused me to write my Java classes, Perl scripts, and other software in Windows Notepad. When I did some professional development last year for Best Blinds, a local ecommerce company, I decided it was time to find a decent programmer's text editor for Windows.

I settled on UltraEdit-32, a $40 programming, web page, and hex editor that gets great reviews in places like PC Magazine.

There are some quirks with the software, such as a hidden-character issue that was causing the header() function to fail in PHP scripts, but otherwise I've liked the editor for both programming and web design.

UltraEdit offers some great features for programming (screen shot), including keyword and class highlighting and the identification of matching brackets.

Though I recommend UltraEdit, I'd dump it for an outliner that supported code highlighting. After writing UserTalk scripts in Radio UserLand's outliner, I'm convinced an outliner is the best way to write programs. The ability to expand and collapse blocks of code as you're editing, to see exactly what you need to see, is a huge benefit.

Radio Userland · Java · Programming · 2005/05/29 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

Sixth Singer Joins Podcasting Choir

Mark Pursey has become the sixth member of the Creative Commons Choir, the asynchronous podcasting singing group that's now one-sixtieth as large as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I'm disappointed that the music press has yet to take note of our new genre, which takes MIDI orchestral accompaniment of Dixie to a place no one could have imagined.

When our choir stops growing, I will go the Jandek route and self-release this song commercially, putting all choir members one step closer to membership in the Recording Academy.

Anyone with a credit on six commercially released tracks can pay the $100 yearly dues and receive voting rights in the Grammy Awards and other perks. I just have to find one store on the planet that will sell us.

Podcasting · Music · 2005/05/29 · 1 COMMENT · Link

An e-mail from a reader of Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours:

i really enjoyed reading what you wrote and especially the way you wrote it!! all i want to know now is how i can make a virus because some of my pals are bugging me and i'm really pissed! and like you i feel that i'd rather be georgia vs. mafiaboy !! thanks again and please send me a repley as soon as possible and please please make sure to include a virus making "formula in it". bye

Java · Publishing · 2005/05/28 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

Non-Olympic Sports Test Medal

News to me: The World Games are an every-four-year event that features several dozen sports that haven't made it to the Summer Olympics yet, including fin swimming, korfball, sumo wrestling, and tug of war. This year's event begins July 14 in Duisburg, Germany. Nine of its competitions have become Olympic sports since the event was founded in 1980.

Out of all of the obscure sports, the most unusual may be korfball, a co-ed sport in which players throw a soccer-like ball into an 11.5-foot high basket and aren't allowed to dribble, run with the ball, or guard a player of the opposite sex.

A competition video shows how the sport works (warning: contains hazardous levels of throbbing Eurodisco music), and it appears to value the set shot that once ruled the game of basketball. Only two colleges field teams in the U.S.

Sports · 2005/05/28 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Jacksonville blogger Joe Dougherty made Howard Kurtz's column this week with his reaction to the Senate filibuster deal:

... starting today, I will now do everything in my power to see that John McCain's chances at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 are non-existent. In fact, I'd like to help out if there's anyway we can get another Republican to run against him for his Senate seat.

This man is not a Republican or a conservative. He is a curse on the party and the movement and he must be removed from the political landscape.

I'd never talk Republicans out of forming a circular firing squad before the 2008 election, but Sen. McCain has a lifetime 83 rating on his voting record from the American Conservative Union, which compares to the scores of Sens. Chuck Hagel, Elizabeth Dole, and Rick Santorum.

I don't see how he erased two decades of conservative votes with a deal to uphold the filibuster, a practice that has been a fundamental part of Senate debate since 1806.

I wish the guy was another Jim Jeffords -- McCain's one of the only national political figures so well-liked he'd be a strong contender in the other party's primary.

Jacksonville · Politics · 2005/05/27 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Mark Cuban's Getting Jobbed

I found a great Dallas Mavericks fan site that lists all future contractual obligations for the team, showing how much owner Mark Cuban has to pay for a few underperforming players:

• $7.9 million for Tariq Abdul-Wahad in 2006
• $7.8 million for Shawn Bradley in 2008
• $13.1 million for Erick Dampier in 2010

Cuban's surprisingly candid about this stuff on his weblog, so I sent him an e-mail inviting his comment on the strange basketkabalistic world of salary capology.

As I told him, I don't see how an NBA owner can afford a playoff-caliber team when he's committed to paying someone like Abdul Wahad, a player yet to start a single game for the Mavericks, almost $8 million five years after he was acquired in a trade with the Denver Nuggets.

Sports · 2005/05/27 · Comment · Link

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