I don’t have some religious objection to images in RSS readers, but I really hate the huge, graceless globs of pixels some bloggers toss up regardless of the value they add to the text. But I don’t want to have to toggle images off across the board, either. Sometimes they’re useful.

io9 was the straw that broke the camel’s back with yet another ginormous image that pushed out a bunch of text. I broke down and set up style toggling in NNW with a combination of CSS and UI scripting so I could toggle without having to reach for the mouse and select an option from the dinky style menu NNW presents.

1. Make a Custom Style Sheet

NetNewsWire keeps all its styles in ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/StyleSheets/. They’re all called “*.nnwstyle,” and they’re bundles with a plist and a plain old CSS file called “stylesheet.css.”

I copied the default style (Default (3.1).nnwstyle) over to Default - Image Free.nnwstyle, right-clicked to “Show Package Contents” on the new .nnwstyle file, and opened the stylesheet.css file in an editor.

I added this selector:

    .newsItemDescription img {
    display: none;
    }

I saved the file and doubleclicked the .nnwstyle file, which caused NNW to install it.

Here are before and after shots of NNW with the new stylesheet:

2. UI Scripting to Toggle Stylesheets

Next up, I fired up Prefab UI Browser to figure out how to handle the UI scripting. The fruits of that are below.

Nutshell: return the value of the styles menu in the lower right corner of the NNW menu (note that you may need to toggle “Show Styles Menu” in the “View” menu), then click either the image-free or default style sheet.

Because I’m feeling friendly and expansive, I made the stylesheets variables for easy modification.

3. Connect It to a Keyboard Shortcut

Once I had a working script, I saved it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/NetNewsWire. I use Red Sweater’s FastScripts to assign keyboard shortcuts to scripts. So now ^⌘S toggles between styles.

I started with a recipe from Readymade, but after the first batch didn’t strike me so much, I started looking around for variations. I also added food coloring to the peppermint and pumpkin spice ones so people could tell them apart.

As it turns out, the biggest variable I could spot was how long the proto-marshmallic substance was whipped. Readymade said five minutes, others said eight and yet another said fifteen. A batch of chocolate ones whipped for eight minutes were pretty satisfactory.

A batch of peppermint ones whipped for ten minutes were o.k. but suffered from mistakenly listening to someone who argued for pushing the mixture closer to hardball temperatures before whipping. The mixture took on a mind of its own and there was some panic as I got some stuck to a spatula, then to a knife I tried to scrape the spatula with, then to me as I tried to scrape off the knife. Then a tendril of the stuff stretched over to the counter where I took the bowl when I panicked, and the red food coloring tipped over. I eventually got marshmallow on Ben and the shower curtains.

The neat thing about anything that’s 90% sugar is that no matter how much it seems to have hardened into Adhesive X, a few minutes in warm water sends it packing for the Willamette.

The best batch was the last, whipped for 15 minutes. I don’t know if it really came out that much more pillowy after being allowed to set, but it was definitely easier to handle.

Making the marshmallows was pretty simple in the end. From prep to pouring the mixture in a pan to set overnight, I could do a batch in 20 minutes or so.

The peppermint ones go great in hot chocolate. The chocolate ones are wonderful on their own, and the pumpkin spice ones are maybe a bit too much, but not bad in moderation. And I think they’d be good in hot chocolate, too.

The one problem with marshmallows overall is that some people are simply not Marshmallow People, which to my mind is sort of like being a methane breather, but I’m married to someone who can’t abide coconut, even if it means getting to the marshmallow/cakey/filling goodness of a Hostess Snoball, so I can live with that. I suspect that if we do this again, I’ll make something to offer as an alternative, just in case.

Each jar of marshmallows also got a label and a bow. “A Soviet Poster a Day” supplied me with a source image. The lantern-jawed youth in the back was initially kept but scaled down a little for use as Ben, but I ended up cloning the dad, scaling him down and using much less of the underlying poster to make Ben. Kind of a pity, because I liked the strapping son’s “forward to the future!” gesture, but it worked for me to turn the image into some sort of “Olan Mills on the Volga” family shot, too.

The Hobbit: The Official Movie Blog:

Peter Jackson and Newline have announced:

“* MGM and New Line will co-finance and co-distribute two films, “The Hobbit” and a sequel to “The Hobbit.”

“* Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of two films based on “The Hobbit.” New Line will manage the production of the films, which will be shot simultaneously.

“* Peter Jackson and New Line have settled all litigation relating to the “Lord of the Rings” (LOTR) Trilogy.

[…]

“The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with the intention of “The Hobbit” release slated for 2010 and its sequel the following year, in 2011.”

Well, cool.

I don’t know what counts as “‘The Hobbit’ and a sequel to ‘The Hobbit,’” but AICN says, “the second project is believed to be a bridge between THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy - culled from the titanic amount of periphery/ancillary/notated material found in Tolkien’s works.”

That’s o.k. with me, I guess, as long as it doesn’t completely suck and as long as thorazine drips are being prepared for everyone who ever posted to rec.arts.books.tolkien.

So … assuming a 2010 holiday release, Ben will be six-going-on-seven when this hits. Considering the ease with which he’s absorbed The Dark Crystal, I’m sure he’ll be cool with this. The main movie challenge Ben will pose will involve hiding the existence of SW Ep’s I, II & III.

“No, no, son … you’re right. In real Roman numerals, ‘IV’ does mean ‘4.’ But in the ‘Star Wars’ universe it means ‘1.’ If someone tries to tell you about some fake ‘prequel,’ yell for help as loud as you can then run and find mommy or daddy … that person is trying to confuse and hurt you.”

“As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose.”

Well, good for Movable Type.

I haven’t seen much of MT4 outside the confines of an unprivileged user account, but I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t think about converting the MT3.x installation I’ve got running some other blogs. I don’t like running anything due to fall off the support grid, and there’s a small professional incentive for me to learn MT4 from the admin’s POV while we convert at work, if only to make my bug reports and feature requests more lucid.

Time to figure out a “roadmap,” I guess.

I’ve been meaning to post these for no good reason. This one’s noteworthy because it’s a little faster than the one I’d been using for months.

I got a pretty bad cold a few weeks ago and it knocked me out of a routine that was already wavering. I’d dropped from 3.5 mile days down to 3 miles, then the cold benched me for the better part of two weeks, so I knocked myself down to two miles last week and brought myself up to 2.5 miles to start this week.

Very frustrating, because I was ending my 3.5 mile runs with a sense of relaxed completion, and I really had my eye on the 4 mile mark as a spot where I could settle in and mount an assault on standing personal bests. I could do a 28 minute four-miler at Ft. Bragg, which was well below the 36 minute airborne standard and relatively fast for my unit (which had only a very few good runners and only one experienced cross country runner).

After six months of punctuated Couch-to-5k, I was pulling my 3.5 milers at about a ten minute pace.

So the playlist this week is a little faster than the previous one, because I figure if I’m going to habituate myself to a pace, it should be marginally faster than the 75bpm I was sticking to before. As I nudge up distance increments, I’ll probably play with the tempo of the playlist, too.

Speaking of Ft. Bragg … I overlooked an anniversary last Monday. On December 3, 1997, I packed up all my crap in a U-Haul and left Ft. Bragg with discharge papers in hand and no clue what I was going to do with myself or if I’d even done the right thing. I wasn’t the best soldier ever, but I did o.k. for myself.

At the same time, as I got short … maybe six months to go … I began to start warming up again, and thinking that even if I could imagine good ends in the army, I didn’t care for any of the bad ends I could also imagine. An officer I respected said he’d support me if I decided to apply for officer candidate school, and my CO went along with that (though I read her support as perhaps more polite than enthusiastic).

Either way, once I was eligible to start ACAP, it became more and more clear to me that it was time to move on. I had to get one more jump in to stay on jump status until my separation date. I got smacked in the face with a static line and baubled my exit, losing my helmet and coming down in a small bare patch among some trees right on the edge of the drop zone. I decided to call it an omen. Less than six months later I was standing outside the barracks and locking up the U-Haul. My roommate gave me a carton of Marlboros as a going away present. I smoked and drank YooHoo from Ft. Bragg to Charlottesville.

• Young Prop Joe, 1962
• Young Omar, 1985
• Bunk and McNulty first meet, 2000

They’re free and streaming.

If you aren’t already a fan, they won’t do anything to in-fanize you, but they do offer a sense of the texture of the series.

I don’t like police shows but I came to “The Wire” at the beginning of the last season and it took two or three episodes for me to decide I needed to see all of it. Al & I watched the first three seasons as quickly as Netflix could get them in the house. Three or four episodes a night sometimes.

Taken as part of the HBO arc-series canon, “The Wire” stands above all the others. I know there are people who might want to make the case for “Deadwood,” and it’s one I’d entertain if “Deadwood” had ever truly ended. It didn’t, though, and I don’t think of it as a complete work. I love it for what it is, but it doesn’t inspire the same awe in me that “The Wire” has.

“The Sopranos” suffers, I think, from a little surprise at its own success. The last season could have been the fourth, fifth or sixth. It was ready to be done well before it ended, and the complete series feels like too much for what you ultimately get out of it.

“Six Feet Under” approaches it in formal terms, but I’ve felt there are episodes of that series that were readily disposable, and I always had a sense that the writers would strive for a certain quirkiness that didn’t work for me all the time.

Each season of “The Wire” has taken us somewhere new, but added to the whole. Barring an utter disaster in the upcoming season, when the series is done it will have a narrative integrity you don’t usually see on television. Each season will be essential to the complete series, and each episode will be essential to its season.

I’m not a huge fan of formal considerations though, and I throw all that out more as a way to inoculate you against any hesitation over the apparent effort it would take to catch up. The show’s underlying sensibility is what kept me coming back.

Here’s Reason interviewing creator David Simon. The quote that most compactly sums up the way the series resonates with me is this one:

“Reason: Would you describe The Wire as a cynical show?

“David Simon: It’s cynical about institutions, and about their capacity for serving the needs of the individual. But in its treatment of the actual characters, be they longshoremen or mid-level drug dealers or police detectives, I don’t think it’s cynical at all. I think there’s a great deal of humanist affection.”

In that respect, it’s a thematic cousin to “Deadwood,” though the temporal proximity of its setting makes it less of a fable or allegory.

The rest of the interview is pretty good, too.

Wikipedia’s entry is worth reading as a primer, and has a lot of good outbound links.

You really should give “The Wire” a try. Can’t say it any plainer.

Tags: melita, coffee, yogurtlids

The fix last time was “do backups to a disk image, then unmount the disk image so the apps in the backup can’t be indexed and show up in the list of dictionaries,” but that’s a bad “fix” because the behavior is poor if a simple mounted backup is going to cause all this clutter.

So off to the search engines I went, where I first found my own question on Ask MeFi, then this from last week:

Script Editor, Dictionaries, and Time Machine - The macosxhints Forums:

“I notice that the ‘cloned’ applications are coming from Time Machine. Apparently, Script Editor is finding “multiple” versions of the application from the applications appearing in TM’s repository. That wouldn’t be bad if there was only a single clone, but it appears that Script Editor is finding EACH AND EVERY hard link in all the backups!”

If you want to see why this is damn annoying, click (76kb JPG):

This is the second “Time Machine is neat but also kind of stupid” bug I’ve come across. The other one is the “Time Machine resurrects apps you deleted” misfeature.

Tags: applescript, leopard, mac, timemachine