¿Bienvenidos a Borinken?

Congress takes up matter of Puerto Rico statehood: Yesterday the Senate approached the question of Puerto Rico's 112 year relationship with the United States, debating whether a path should be opened for Puerto Rican statehood, or independence for the long-time protectorate.

In 1898, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was invaded by U.S. military forces, and entered the 20th Century under U.S. military rule. The Foraker act of 1900 gave Puerto Rico a modicum of self-governing rights, and in 1947 they were granted the right to elect their own governor. Shortly thereafter, they drafted their own Constitution, as well. Currently, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a self-governing, unincorporated territory of the United States, meaning that the Island is under U.S. "protection", but self-governing.

Since 1917, all Puerto Ricans born on the island are granted all the rights and privileges of U.S. Citizenship, and, IF they enter mainland America, can vote in our elections. However, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, while subject to U.S. law, does NOT currently have a voice in U.S. politics or government, as do our 50 States. As such, while on Puerto Rican territory, Puerto Ricans have no voice in American legislation, while they are subject thereto. They pay U.S. Federal income tax, too. Yes. That means "taxation without representation", which was one of the main reasons the United States declared independence from England 234 years ago.

The question of Puerto Rico's relationship with the U.S., no surprise, has long been a matter of debate, both with in the U.S., and on the island of Borinquen. Should Puerto Rico become a U.S. State, and, thus, have full voting privileges and a voice in the government that imposes law upon its citizens, and continue to enjoy U.S. citizenship with all the advantages that entails? Or, should Puerto Rico cut it's bonds to the United States, and become an independent nation?

Opinions on the question are probably nowhere so divided as they are in Puerto Rico, itself, of course, where many, many families have members on the mainland, and enjoy open travel between the island and the remainder of the U.S. for a myriad of reasons, many of which provide great economic advantages to Puerto Rico, while others feel that Boricua is stifled or oppressed by colonial rule int he current situation.

For my part, I have family from Puerto Rico, and, I hope that both the U.S. government and the Pueblo Boricua (Puerto Rican People) can reach an agreement to bring Puerto Rico fully into the fold, with a full voice and participation in the United States.

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Window managers...again: 2 thumbs up for OpenBox

So, after using wmii (window manager improved) as my default window manager for several months, I find myself using OpenBox, again.

Of course, I use openbox without any desktop icon managers, panels, or other trappings, solely as a window manager, and not as a desktop environment (as is done with, for instance LXDE, a "lightweight" desktop environment which uses openbox as it's window manager). I do keep a small conky script running to display a clock and a few relevant system statistics (cpu/mem usage, running procs, network traffice, clock), but that's it.

Why?
I was having issues with my CPU usage getting ramped up beyond believe, and, when taking a look at running process, it looked as though, for every wmii tab, another instance of wmii was running. Of course, I don't blame wmii entirely for running up my CPU, since I was also running some rather heavy applications, such as OmegaT (translating for very large documents, while using directories chock full of large translation memories, glossaries, and dictionary files, etc.), and, Google Chrome (which, despite being a very nifty, and blazing fast browser, is rather memory heavy). But, I saw that there were numerous instance of wmii running, and killed them, and logged into openbox again.

Gosh...openbox is just so light and fast...seriously.
Now, I really, really dig the tiling feature of wmii and similar window managers, but, that can be achieved in openbox, using a nifty little program called (who'd have thunk it) "tile".

So, I find myself once more happily using openbox, which I've come back to time and again. I really like the ease of configuration, involving only editing a simple xml file.

It is quick and snappy, allows (via editing said rc.xml file) me to program in all of my own preferred keyboard shortcuts for my most used actions and programs, etc., and, I'll even admit, it's nice to have the program menu (rt-click on desktop) at my disposal. wmii offers not such menus. I right-clicked on my desktop once I logged into openbox, and found programs in the debian menu that I'd entirely forgotten I even had on my machine! That was a pleasant surprise.

So, while I still have many positive things to say about wmii, today I give two thumbs up to OpenBox.

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posted with Xpostulate

exorcising bad translations

This, my friends, is why Professional Translators are still a necessity.

Il Foglio, an Italian newspaper, has come out critizing the NY Times, who (OMGSTFUBBQ...can't believe they did this!) used a computer generated translation of an article regarding the Vatican's response to sexual abuse complaints.

The failure to translate led the American newspaper to argue that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was protecting a sexually abusive priest from Milwaukee.

The article, titled "New York Times does not translate," starts by saying, "New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd returned to attack the Pope. Commenting on the words of exorcist Gabriele Amorth, who said that behind pedophile priests is the devil, Dowd suggested a way for the Catholic church to solve the problem: hire a 'sexorcist.'" 1

Learn from this, kiddies.

When the text is important, neither Google Translate, nor Yahoo! BabelFish is truly your friend.

Go to, Proz.com and find a real, professional translator.

Of course, if your text requires translation from any of French, Portuguese or Spanish to American English, I've got you covered, right here.

tony

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posted with Xpostulate

Xpostulate v0.2

I've made a ton of improvements and added various features to Xpostulate since posting here in reference thereto.

I've programmed in xml-rpc posting, and added Wordpress, Inksome, and Scribbld, so it now posts to LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, Dreamwidth, DeadJournal, Iziblog, and the above mentioned 3.

I've also customized the script running on my own machine, to post to my custom wordpress installation on baldwinsoftware.com/blog, which means I'll be able to write than in for users rather easily (not posting to MY blog, but to their own wordpress installations, of course).

I've also fixed the identi.ca denting and twitter tweeting to use Tcl's own HTTP library, rather than calling cURL. This facilitates installation and use on Windows, mostly, but also, it's good that now Xpostulate is completely, 100% tcl/tk, without calling outside resources to perform any of its functions.

Today I built install wizards for both Linux and Windows. This was probably hardly necessary for most Linux users, since the installer hardly does much different from the install.sh script (well, except the install.sh installs to /usr/local/bin, and, thus, must be run as root, while the installer can be run as users, installing to the user's /home). The Windows installer, however, will significantly simplify installation for Windows users.

Now, I still have to figure out the google api for posting to blogger, so I can post to this blogspto/blogger blog.
I'm also considering adding a feature for updating facebook status, as well...maybe sometime later this week.

I'm rather impressed with myself, I must say, being an old, creEpy guy with no computer classes or formal technology training. For me, Xpostulate is immensely useful, and, when I think that I programmed it, and that others are using it, too, well, I feel pretty smug and content with myself.

Sometimes I'm so awesome, I can't stand myself...

:P

./tony

Old English text found in New Haven

I found these papers in my basement.

click to enlarge

page 2 / page 3.

PDF version, all 3 pages

Now, we weren't hit so bad with all of the flooding going on in the state, but, we did have a slight issue in the basement. It wasn't so bad, since, about month ago, with snow melt and rain, we'd had a problem and the landlord sent over the maintenance guy to clean out the drain and repair the pump, etc., but, it seems the foundation has cracked, and there was water coming in.
I hadn't been down to the basement, since we hadn't had any issues (last time, with the flooding, the pilot light went out in the water heater), until I went down this morning to bring up some bicycling gear, what with the weather warming up.
When I got down there, I saw a couple of cinder blocks out of place back in one corner of the basement. There was mud and water seeping in, slowly, but, more important, there was a space large enough to push my hands back in there, and even see back into the gap. I saw a cylinder, which appeared like one of those tube thingies you see drafting students carrying around, for transporting rolled up drafting drawings, or whatever. I pulled it out. It appeared to be made of wood (mostly rotted) covered in some form of leather (also rotted, but not entirely).

I opened it up, and, well, within I found these pages.

Now, I studied Beowulf in college, being an English major, and even read the portions thereof in Old English. I even still recall a very few lines (hwear eart þu nu, ge-fera? = where are you now, friend?).

I'm pretty sure the text on these pages is Old English.

Yeah. I find that quite odd, too. Nonetheless, I recall reading speculation that the stone dwellings in the Gungywamp Forest area of Groton may have been built by Europeans, long before the arrival of our Puritan forefathers (vikings?), since they are decidedly not like any type of dwelling constructed by the local, native Algonquian tribes.
I don't know. It's all kind of weird, to me...

But, there you have it folks.

I have what appears to be some Old English manuscript in my hands.

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posted with Xpostulate