Nothing to say

…but I love the guy’s blunt honesty and direct follow-through.

The current French president is a private man and does not discuss personal matters with the press.  He is happy to discuss his opinions on politics, though.  He wants Americans to know “that they can count on us. But at the same time, we want to be free to disagree.”  Seeing as how the United States were founded on the ideal of the freedom of the expression of contrary ideas, that’s simply brilliant.  In fact, it says something about the current state of this nation that it even needs to be said.

That quote is from an interview Sarkozy did for CBS program 60 Minutes a few weeks ago (and two weeks before his divorce.)  During the interview, the interviewer asked about his relationship with his wife.  Sarkozy replied, “If I had to say something about Cecilia, I would certainly not do so here.”  He then removed his mic and left the set.

I’ve got about three thoughts on this subject:

1. Sarkozy is awesome.  This wasn’t an arbitrary insult to CBS, his interviewers, or the USA.  He made it clear that you don’t ask about his personal life, and when asked, he expressed his frustration.  I think that’s far.
2. Shame on the interviewers for being pushy, attempting to invade Sarkozy’s privacy, and for wasting his time.
3. Shame on the consumers of the media who favor the sensational, personal-life details over actual, intelligent, political discourse.  These are the people who create the media, and mold it into what it is.  If you buy it, they will produce it.

It’s back to supply and demand.  If there was no demand for the photos that paparazzi take, there would be no paparazzi.  If there was no demand for cheap puppies, there would be no puppy mills.  If there was no demand for cheap, fattening, carcinogenic, mass-produced fake foods, it would disappear from supermarket shelves.

If there was no demand for the intimate details of Sarkozy’s personal life, we all would have had another 5 minutes in our day to actually enrich our lives with something worthwhile.

I’ve got a friend who is doing web design professionally, now. For being generally untrained on the subject, she’s putting together some good stuff for very good rates. I’ve been offering some feedback and support with the project, and it’s been motivating for me (which is a good thing). As a result, tonight, I put together a tiny demo page where I illustrated two things.

Firstly, how to have Javascript display a message when Javascript is, in fact, disabled (instead of the scripted content breaking, or not showing up at all.)

The second part was how to integrate a flash MP3 player. There is a project on Sourceforge (therefore Open Source) called, simply, Music Player that uses XSPF files to load your playlist into a box-, bar-, or button-sized player. There are several options available, from autoplay and loop to display text, and it is very simple to load. The entire process of downloading, reading, learning, uploading, tinkering, and SUCCESS took less than half an hour, and I was doing a couple other things at the time. Very simple.

You can find the demo page, for as long as I keep it up, here: http://ruiz.cabeen.net/testy/  (I chose that site because cabeen.net itself is blocked at the office, but the subdomains aren’t.)

I just put up two posts and am already on my third.  Weird.  I guess a flood sometimes follows the drought.

For October, I changed to a pink template.  The template, it turns out, does absolutely nothing to lead the eye.  I apologize for the faltering readability of the site, and promise to work that out with something less … poorly designed.  Not that it’s the template’s fault.  I’ve seen much better implementations of it.  Regardless, here you go.  It’s pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I even renamed it Breasts.  Two reasons.  1. The new template doesn’t show my subtitle, and “Nothing to say” doesn’t have the same impact as I intended when it isn’t followed by “Why let that stop me?”  2. Since I was changing it anyhow, why not Breasts?  Any excuse is a good excuse.

Additionally, the new template works with WordPress Widgets, a newly implemented feature.  To enable that feature, I upgraded to WordPress 2.3 (and updated the database to match that).  Ok.

Que mas?  Spanish class is going well.  The green Cabrio is running well (though there’s a notable leak in the front roof seal).  Things are great with Kia and I.  Work is alright.  Todo bien.

I love the Costa Rica that I’ve met.  The people are wonderful, the land is gorgeous, and the food is amazing.  Everything is laid-back, chill, pure, excellent.  I haven’t been to the Pacific coast where the resorts are.  I haven’t been to the Very Money parts of the country.  I never like such things.

You might know I’m getting married in Costa Rica, on the southern Caribbean coast.  The place we’re staying is on a dirt road.  Yeah, the pavement just doesn’t go quite that far.  Neither do many cars.  It’s mostly bicycles from that point on, and I love it.  It’s one of the reasons we’re going there.  And I worry that the precious calm of that area is going to begin dispersing soon.  Alas, the road is slated to be paved.

What’s more, I read today that Costa Rica may ratify a free trade agreement with the US that requires CR to create “state telecom and insurance monopolies.”  I was torn on the topic until I read that sentence.  Seeing what has happened in the US with the telecom and insurance industries, that is definitely something I DON’T want for the Ticos.  Fortunately, there is strong opposition for the agreement, but the current president (elected by a 2% margin in February of this year) favors it.

Fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

For my first October post, I wanted to do something to keep with the breast cancer awareness theme. Conveniently, Google informed me of an interesting story on Discovery. The Center for Materials Research and Innovation at the University of Bolton is working on developing a brassiere that will detect changes in cell temperature that could indicate cancer. As of yet, the technology isn’t small enough to integrate into a garment, but going by currently available parts, and integrating them through existing technologies, they believe it will be possible to have a prototype within a year.

So the story seems a bit premature, perhaps. I mean, the story merely says “Hey, this is possible.” Who wants to read that? Well, for one, I do. It’s also nice to know that not only is it possible, but someone’s already on the task.

There are arguments that self-exams are pointless, or even counter-productive as they create more false-alarms than anything. I tend to think that, if done regularly, a person will be familiar enough with their own body (START TODAY) that they will be able to draw a definitive conclusion about what’s going on in there. So until this thing is on the market, do the most that you can with what you have, right?

Remember, guys, you can get breast cancer, too.