Month: November 2010

Quote of the Day – Margaret Thatcher Edition

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We must not focus our attention exclusively on the material, because though important, it is not the main issue. The economic success of the Western world is a product of its moral philosophy and practice. The economic results are better because the moral philosophy is superior. It is superior because it starts with the individual. — Margaret Thatcher

Quoted from Claire Berlinski’s There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters from NRO’s Uncommon Knowledge interview of Berlinski

See also yesterday’s QotD.

National Ammo Day

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Today is National Ammo Day (happy birthday, Kim!)

I’m not buying ammo this year, but I am loading it. Here’s the result of the last couple of evenings at the press:

That’s about 500 rounds of 200 grain hollowpoint .45ACP in a .30 cal ammo can. There’s room for about another hundred, and I’ve got the components for a total of 600 more. I need to find another empty can someplace.

Quote of the Day – Culture Edition

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Really, there is no excuse for this kind of poverty. It’s an attitude, an acceptance, an ignorance that there is something better. Americans wouldn’t leave things this way. We’d figure out a way to make things better, even if it were through pure brutal labour. This is undeniable- even if you hate us, you know it’s true. But somebody will be angry that I made the comparison. They won’t be able to say exactly why they’re angry, but they will be. Because it’s racist somehow.

The wealth of my people is our culture. The things we have are a side effect.

— The Bastidge, The Wealth of My People

RTWT

Loading, not Blogging

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Sorry about the light posting, but I really am loading ammo. Not (necessarily) for the Zombocalypse, but because I’m low on several calibers, most especially .45ACP. I’m down to maybe a hundred of my competition load, 150 defense (200 grain Gold Dot), and 200 factory hardball rounds. I loaded 250 .38 Supers on Monday, tonight I’m planning on cranking out 200 .45 target loads, and I’m going to try to do 200 a night until I’ve used up the thousand 200 grain Rainier Ballistics hollowpoints I’ve got. Next comes .223. I’m down to maybe 200 of those, but I have enough components for another thousand.

I’ll be busy for several days, but I will be posting, just not as much. Oh, and this weekend, I get to tackle reformatting the blog and migrating comments. Oh boy!

Oh, plus a trip to the range. I’ve got some load testing to do.

Quote of the Day – Unconstrained Vision Edition

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(H)ow I see the Right is that the Right is connected to Jeffersonianism and Jacksonian principles. In other words, limited government intervention, freedom and libertarianism. The Left wants the far Right to be known as some kind of Hitler or Mussolini, and unfortunately they’re wrong, or FORTUNATELY they’re wrong, because that kind of right is on the Left, that’s why Hitler and the rest of them were known as National Socialists. Look, yes, I mean if you’re on the Right and we understand the Right, you believe in individual freedom, limited government intervention and basically a free society. Now the Left is attracted to totalitarianism because you see the Left wants to build a perfect planet on this Earth. They want perfectibility in human beings and human institutions, ultimately. They want to build a utopia. So in order to build their paradise there needs to be a transformation. Now that transformation necessitates changing and molding the human being from what and who he is, and therefore necessitates destruction. And that’s why every Leftist experiment, every socialist experiment has led to that kind of bloodshed, from the Soviet Union to Mao’s China, Viet Nam, Castro’s Cuba, the Sandinista’s Nicaragua, you name it. So, to make a long story short, because the Left wants that kind of destruction, to build a new paradise on the ashes of the old Earth, they support – it makes complete sense who perpetrates Ground Zero: radical Islam. So you’ve got the Jihadis trying to build Sharia paradise, you’ve got the Left trying to build classless utopia, so therefore they are united in hate.

–– Dr. Jamie Glasov, NRO’s Between the Covers interview for his book United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.

Blog Changes Coming

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Dammit. It looks like I’m going to have to change the template here at TSM. Chris Byrne has found a way to migrate comments off of Echo, but it requires a template change. I’ve also noticed that my archives in this current template are, shall we say, not complete. All the posts still exist, just you can’t get to some of them through the archive function. Hopefully a template change will fix that, too. Maybe.

Anyway, I’m going to hold off until this weekend to attempt the change. Don’t be surprised if there’s nothing but a black hole here on Monday.

Not Only No, but HELL No!

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There’s a business opportunity out there for some bright coder as of right now.

Many of you (yes, you, U-J, among others) have been complaining about my comment system. I started off with JS-Kit’s HaloScan free service back in 2003, and last December JS-Kit transitioned to Echo. Shortly after I started with HaloScan, I started paying JS-Kit a bit of money annually to allow looooong comments, which my readers over the years have often taken advantage of. When the switch to Echo occurred, paying was no longer an option, it was mandatory, but it cost only $9.95 for the “upgrade,” which included comment threading, and. . . and. . . I’m not sure what else.

But now, via Anarchangel, I discover that beginning December 18 my renewal isn’t $9.95 a year, it’s $10 a month.

Sorry, Echo, but NFW. I’m not paying $120 a year for what you’re providing.

I’ve gotten well over 40,000 comments in the last seven-plus years. I don’t know exactly because I can’t seem to find anywhere on Echo that will tell me. I can export my comments, but not into any format that will handily import into any other system that I’m aware of. Chris puts it this way:

So, I start investigating how to get rid of Echo comments… not so good… Apparently, nobodies comment service will import the XML file Echo exports to. The only way to migrate to another system without losing comments, is to resync back to blogger comments, then migrate from blogger.

In theory, Echo comments should be automatically synced to blogger comments… except they aren’t.

In theory, this is because I’m using a legacy .css template for my blog, rather than the “new” blogger “advanced layout” templates (well… not “new” four years old now).

In theory, “upgrading” my template to a blogger advanced layout template will allow Echo to resync comments with blogger. Once that happens, then I should be able to add Disqus, or Intense Debate… or for that matter just migrate the whole damn blog (which I may do, to wordpress).

I’ll be honest: I have no desire to relocate TSM to another format. I’m actually pretty happy with Blogsnot, though I, too, am running a legacy template.

I’ve exported my comments to this date at this time. Right now the download tells me that I’ve received, let’s see, 46.2Mb of a 13.2Mb file. And it’s still counting.

It should be interesting to see what I end up with.

56.2Mb, and it’s done. The oldest date in the file that I can find is June 1, 2010. Somehow I don’t think I got everything.

This is my surprised face.

Here’s the opportunity: Some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed programmer could get paid some good dough if he/she/it can write some code that will take my comments from Echo and convert them into a format that is importable to some other commenting system, carrying along with them the links to the appropriate posts. (Are you listening, Robb Allen?) I’d be willing to pay money for this service – on a one-time basis. I don’t want to lose seven years and 40,000+ comments, but I WILL NOT pay Echo $120 a year. Period.

HEEEEELLLLLPPPP!