Driving on I35 yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker stating “Guns Cause Violence just Like Flies Cause Garbage”.  This is one of those irritating statements that does nothing but create arguments (as opposed to stimulating debate).  The point I believe the speaker, who appears to be  Zink Mitchell, wanted to make is that guns are not the cause of violence just as flies are not the cause of garbage. Though true in spirit, this analogy is a fallacy.

Let’s look at this statement closer.  I will agree that flies don’t create garbage, they are attracted to the smell in their search for dead organic material to lay their eggs on.  Knowing this, we can determine that garbage must first exist for flies to appear.  Additionally, it also seems that flies are one of the organisms that are responsible for breaking down garbage, or making it disappear.  Some would say that flies make garbage worse, but if you understand the process, you would know they actually help remove garbage from the ecosystem.

Let’s compare the second part of the analogy to the first.  We have determined that flies are attacked by garbage, and are not the cause of garbage.  For the analogy to work guns must be attracted to violence.  If this was true, it would seem to follow that guns would appear anytime a fist fight broke out, or any other violent activity.  I think we must all agree this is not the case.

Once again I hate statements like this, they don’t add anything to what is a very important debate.  Though I don’t believe that banning guns is the answer to violent crime, I can not see how one can argue that strict controls on hand guns and automatic weapons are a bad thing.  I have no problem with my neighbor being able to go to Cabela’s and buy a shotgun or rifle for hunting.  I do have a problem with my neighbor being able to go out and purchase a sub machine gun or assault rifle.  If he really feels the need to fire a sub machine gun or assault rifle, he should join the military. I would guess most of the men and woman in uniform would rather carrying a shotgun any day.

Oh and to make a correct analogy on guns, how about “Guns cause violence like cameras cause memories”.

I went to “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Empire”, Friday night.  Though not great, it was entertaining.  If you like the original Mummy movies I would recommend going.  I swear I saw a review that said Jet Li was a good actor recently.  If you don’t want those hopes dashed I would actually not recommend this movie.  There are a few scenes where he just looks uncomfortable in his role.

The best part of the night though was the previews for both Harry Potter and the next James Bond movie.  I have to say I’m getting back into movies again after a 10 year hiatus where the only movies I saw in theatre were the Lord of The Rings trilogy.

As I wrote previously, I have become addicted to last.fm. I think it is a great service. It not only lets you see your listening habits through a ton of statistics, but the music recommendations are almost scary. I recently updated a friend’s media player using my computer. I just selected Modest Mouse (his favorite band), chose the first recommendation (The New Pornographers), and tossed it on his player. He actually mentioned the band as the one he really liked. They truly have something going on in the recommendations department.
However, there is a problem with last.fm. You cannot submit tracks manually, which is kind of a problem for some people. I have listened to Kill Hannah’s CD three or four times in the last week and that does not show up in my listener history. As far as I can tell, there is no application out there that will allow you to do this easily. There are a few, lastfmsubmitd comes with a couple utilities, but neither is very friendly.
I can understand why last.fm does not have a readily available client for this; it would be easy for spammers to abuse. Luckily, I have some coding chops, and went ahead and wrote a php script to do it for me. I even grabbed an available ID3 class so all I have to do is point it at the song on my server and it submits it for me. I am not 100% sure it’s compliant with last.fm’s user agreement, but for now I’ll just try to avoid getting caught

I have officially become a fan of Last.fm. Ever since I started using Amarok as my media player I have been submitting tracks at a frantic pace. So far I’ve discovered a few artists, but I wanted to direct you to my favorite so far Kill Hannah. Check out their song Lips Like Morphine. Good stuff!

Oh and check out my Last.fm page if you want.

Not to be confused with the band, though they do take a close second.

I’ve jumped back on the Linux wagon and have officially switched to Ubuntu 100% of the time at home.  This wasn’t difficult, but it has made me follow the Linux/Ubuntu world a lot closer.  Of course, the usual jibber jabber that comes out of any open source project was overlooked as usual, until I found out Ubuntu is switching to a new audio server PulseAudio.  I play a lot of music on my system; in fact it’s the only think I use to listen to music at home, so I was interested.  

As I started perusing the docs I found out that PulseAudio is a pretty cool system.  It sits between your applications and whatever the current sound system you are using and just takes the audio and passes it on.  However, it is even better, it’s networked.  Why is this so cool you may be asking?  Because now you can setup a multi-room music box and all you need to play the same music in all rooms is a networked computer hooked up to a set of speakers.   

So I started thinking, I currently use Amarok as my music player of choice for the desktop.  I used to be a big MPD fan, but the lack of good music library support made me switch, but I loved the ability to customize my interface, and be able to control my music from any computer with a network connection.  

So I started looking into mpd again, but it had the same issues as before.  Then I stumbled upon this gem mpdemu.  This little script is a wonderful idea.  It takes the MPD calls and translates them into Amarok calls.  This will allow you to control Amarok with any MPD client.  

So my wheels are spinning, I am thinking along these lines.  A central server in your entertainment room with a nice display running Amarok.  This serve would serve as a PulseAudio server.  Then if you wanted to add music to any other machine all you need to do is install Ubuntu, setup PulseAudio as a client and suddenly whatever you play in your entertainment room is being played every where else.  On top of that, if you happen to be elsewhere in your house and have a laptop with you, just log into your web based MPD client and pass whatever commands you wish and change songs, update your play list, and do all kinds of magic.  

Okay, obviously, some kinks need to be worked out, but the idea is cool.  The best system would be to have Amarok control MPD, but with a little hacking I think a really cool muti room setup may be possible.   So wish me luck, I actually have a technology project I’m excited about and I plan on sharing my success with everyone else. 

Bob Barker is retiring.  I’m not sure how I feel about this.  I was never a big Price is Right fan, but when I watched it I always enjoyed it.  I’m actually starting to wonder how many other classic game shows are going to start losing their hosts over the next 5 years.  Not that there are many left, but shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune have been around forever, and when they either stop airing, or change hosts, it will be quite the change for multiple generations.