The Balkan Yankee

The doctor cleared me to start running again and started back with a short 3km run today to stretch out my legs, and try out the Trail Guru application for the iPhone. I researched a lot of different iPhone running applications that could replace the Nike+ for the iPod Nano while I had the time off running. Trail Guru was the first one I found that looked like a real contender:

On their web site you can see some other graphical data that relates to my workout(ie. elevation, speeds, time).

I’m pretty impressed with how well it works… it is a little screwy with the elevations (it started way to high) but was pretty good on speed, and the GPS map is great. That’s a huge improvement over Nike+. Boyana has been using it already for the last few weeks also, and it sounds like they have been slowly fine tuning it to give more accurate data (First couple times she used it she had top speeds logged at 99km/hr).

My only complaint is that I wish they’d give you some way to lock the buttons on the interface while you run since you have to keep the screen on for the GPS.

I love people that can strike a poignant blow to modern journalism’s lack of substance and lazy approach to fact checking  especially when it comes to statements made by politicians. I hate people that use a combination or distraction, hypocrisy to publish political garbage like this article.

He claims to be someone I love, calling out journalists for failing to point out the “true” culprits of the housing & financial crisis.

His narrow view focuses on the mortgage crisis and blames Democrats for supporting deregulation and legislation in the late 90s which made it easier for people to get loans and says the media ought to “tell the truth” about who bought us to this position. Well maybe Card didn’t see this.

But, lets go back and look at the Late 90s and deregulation specifically: Republican Senator Phil Gramm  sponsored S.900 Gramm-Leach-Blily Act which repealed key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act from 1933, a bill which as a result of the great depression placed restrictions on the relationships between banks, securities firms, and insurance companies. Phil Gramm’s bill passed with overwhelming Republican support.(Now think about where we are with bundled assets, AIG, etc.)

It’s laughable that Card would try to make this crisis the fault of one political party, or the result simply of poor people defaulting on their mortgages. The media ought to be commended for at least not falling into traps set by partisan hacks like Card who can’t see the truth or complexity in the issues they talk about.

What  do you think of the 250 billion partial bank nationalization?

It’s interesting to me for a couple of reasons. Without arguing whether it was the right thing to do economically,  it does have some implications to me regarding our history and the actions of the administration:

The Vietnam War.

The purported purpose of that war was to stop the spread of communism and it cost 58k+ American lives and over 1 million Vietnamese. We took a huge stake in defending our world view and free market economies. Thus, Pres. Bush partially nationalizing the banks says basically one of two things to me:

1)The cynical viewpoint is that we never really were so opposed to socialist ideology. This would prove our reasons for getting involved in various wars are more or less arbitrary and opportunistic on the surface, and things like Communism, Terrorism, etc. are used selectively to garner support for other more nebulous objectives which are found to otherwise be in our interest, or worse, those of powerful lobbyists.

2) On the flip side if this nationalization represents a shift in thinking brought on by extraordinary circumstances, which these clearly are extraordinary circumstances, then the implication is at least as disturbing. Remember, we have “invested” the lives of over 58k Americans in our belief in free markets, and this essentially writes them of in favor of another investment. That makes it just that much harder to swallow.

I’m starting a new category on this blog called Code Sharing to share some potentially useful stuff I’ve been working on for various jobs. This blog is certainly seeing some changes since I’ve left Bulgaria. It has seen a range of topics covered, and I’m going to keep it that way. This new category though, is about exchanging information with developers. Others can just ignore future posts titled “CodeSharing:…”

Anyway, this is a simple javascript widget that allocates percentages between two categories that I built for an application prototype. (I also built one that allocates between 3 and 4 categories). It uses the Scriptaculous Slider Controls so you have to download those libraries and include them in your HTML header. Here is what it looks like:

See the Demo in action here.

Here is the HTML:

<div id=”slider_bar”>
<div id=”slider_handle”></div>
<div id=”slider_inner”>

<div id=”slider_left” >
<div style=”left:75px;” id=”slider_display_left”>50%</div>
</div>
<div id=”slider_right” style=”width:178px”>
<div id=”slider_display_right” >50%</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Here is the Javascript. You can change the slider_width and font_size variables. The spacing of numbers is adjusted according to the font_size:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var slider_width = ‘358′; //set the width of the slider in pixels
var font_size = ‘24′; //set the font size in pixels
var handles = [’slider_handle’];
var slider_left = $(’slider_left’);
var slider_display_left = $(’slider_display_left’);
var slider_display_right = $(’slider_display_right’);
var slider_right = $(’slider_right’);

new Control.Slider(handles, ’slider_bar’, {
range: $R(0, slider_width),
sliderValue: (slider_width/2),
onSlide: function(value)
{
var left_percentage = Math.round(value/slider_width*100);
var right_percentage = 100 - Math.round(value/slider_width*100);

if (left_percentage>10 && right_percentage>10)
{
slider_left.setStyle({ width: value + ‘px’});
slider_display_left.setStyle({ left: value/2-(font_size/2) + ‘px’});

slider_display_right.setStyle({ right: (slider_width-value)/2-(font_size/2) + ‘px’});
slider_display_left.innerHTML = left_percentage + ‘%’;
slider_display_right.innerHTML = right_percentage + ‘%’;
slider_display_left.setStyle({display: ‘block’});
slider_display_right.setStyle({display: ‘block’});
}
if (left_percentage<(font_size/2))
{
slider_left.setStyle({ width: value + ‘px’});
slider_display_left.innerHTML = left_percentage + ‘%’;
slider_display_right.innerHTML = right_percentage + ‘%’;
}
if (right_percentage<(font_size/2))
{
if (right_percentage==0){}else{
slider_left.setStyle({ width: value + ‘px’});
}
slider_display_left.innerHTML = left_percentage + ‘%’;
slider_display_right.innerHTML = right_percentage + ‘%’;
}
},
restricted: true
});

slider_left.style.backgroundImage = “url(green.png)”;;
slider_left.style.left = “0″;
slider_left.style.height = “35″;
slider_left.style.position = “absolute”;
slider_left.style.zIndex = “3″;
slider_display_left.style.zIndex = “13″;
slider_display_right.style.zIndex = “12″;
slider_display_left.style.position = “absolute”;
slider_display_right.style.position = “absolute”;

</script>

This is the CSS code I used in the example along with the three images: slider.png, orange.png, and green.png. Change this and the first two javascript variables to suite your needs:

div#slider_inner{ width:356px; margin:10px 0px 0px 10px; background-image:url(orange.png); background-repeat:y; height:35px; position: relative; }
div#slider_bar { width:376px; margin:10px 0; height:35px; position: relative; }
div#slider_handle { z-index:5; width:20px; height:25px; background-image:url(slider.png); cursor:move; position: absolute;margin-top:27px; }
div#slider_display_left {font-family:’Trebuchet MS’;font-size:24px;color:green;padding-top:3px;font-weight:bold;}
div#slider_display_right {font-family:’Trebuchet MS’;font-size:24px;color:darkorange;padding-top:3px;font-weight:bold;}
div#slider_left{padding-left:0px;position:absolute;width:178px;}

Freedom of the Press is suppose to mean that we access to the full and best information without government censorship or restrictions. We decry instances of censorship by the governments of China, Iran, or Cuba and hold up our system of constitutionally protected press as a golden standard by which to judge fair and open from closed and oppressive.

Even those less cynical than me would admit our system isn’t perfect. For example, conflict of interest can sometimes arise between journalistic interests and corporate interests. Or, the encroachment of entertainment driven broadcasting into our traditional news outlets.

Most people think that it’s not that bad and  at the end of the day our system is pretty good and better than anywhere else in the world. But is it?

CNN recently conducted a 30 minute interview with Vladimir Putin. ou wouldn’t have found that transcript unless you searched for it, and they didn’t air it on TV. Apparently, they just decided to edit it down into sound bites.  I’d encourage you all to read both the links.

So, what’s the big deal? They did publish the full transcript on their website and the information is still available to those of us who care to search for it, right?

CNN took a powerful interview which at the very least would offer challenge to the popular American assessment of Russia’s actions in Georgia, and its ambitions in the world, and they turned it sound bites they could use to continue driving the narrative they’d already written. The result is still a largely misinformed public. A public no closer to understanding the recent conflict, and no closer to understanding the country which will play an increasingly large role on the global scene.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it was completely censored or not. And it doesn’t matter if it was the government that did the censoring or a news outlet. The public’s opinion is being shaped.

The only silver lining is that we as individuals don’t have to worry too much yet about being hauled off by the FBI and sent to Gitmo for writing in our blogs.