I'm proud of Dabo, a Python framework for developing database desktop 
applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux. We just released 0.7. Get it
here.

I also spent a long day with my 6-month-old son Dylan, testing out my
new Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 digital SLR. I'm not completely sold on 
digital photography, but this camera brings me close. The above image
was, as you can see, handheld using image stabilization at a shutter
speed of 1/30. Results were pretty good, considering that I was only
barely holding it with my left hand.

The other notable things to notice are:

1) Dylan has really big ears.
2) Papa is wearing a red sheet as a sling.
3) We don't make our bed.

Life rocks!

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

AT&T and several other major long distance providers don't take your privacy
seriously. Get even and dump them. Join Working Assets, and support groups
like Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International every time 
you pay your phone bill.

To sign up (easy), just click here. 

(I'll get $10 off my bill if you sign up after clicking the above link, so 
thanks for that!)

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

I rode my mountain bike on one of my favorite loops last Saturday (John Smith
to Santa Ana Valley to Quien Sabe to Southside and back to Hollister). I was
rewarded with a great ride and... this.

Vote for Reb Monaco, he's a proven leader. You can tell from where he places
his signs. Brilliant!

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

After my last blog entry, I've gone on a few bike rides and thought a 
little about all the implications of having such a huge development go
in without much of a fight. While I'm not dead-set against El Rancho
San Benito, a lot of questions are raised that really should be 
explored by the community at large, and not just a few corporate 
interests, politicians, and reporters. So, this is my announcement for
my new web domain http://elranchosanbenito.us.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

A couple weeks ago, my wife, mother and I got into a heated discussion
regarding a proposed housing development that threatens to be approved
by county voters and alter our country setting immensely. Basically,
either you believe that they will be good for the community or you don't.
It isn't that I don't see the economic benefits of having 7,000 new 
homes built (think 12 years of construction, bringing all kinds of jobs
into our recessed county). It's just that all the promises are just
that... promises.

 -> See the El Rancho San Benito Website at http://elranchosanbenito.com 

Of course they are going to promise the world. A new school or schools,
a hospital, low-income housing, etc. etc. That's fine, but I reserve 
judgement until the point that they've actually delivered. Oh, and since
most of the votes for or against DMB's El Rancho San Benito will come 
from residents of the city of Hollister, perhaps DMB can do something 
for downtown Hollister? Like funding small businesses or putting up 
money to speed up the highway 25 bipass?

Anyway, that isn't why I'm writing today. During that heated conversation,
we went over to the DMB website and I noticed a broken link. Wanting to
report the problem, I looked around for a webmaster address and didn't 
find one. So I went to the 'contact' page and reported the problem there.
I never got a response - this is, unfortunately, the norm in the web-age.

However, I just received an invitation to an open house that will occur
next week at our Vet's building. The invitation came to my email address
along with a disclaimer that I received this mail because I signed up for
their newsletter. The problem is, I never signed up to get the newsletter,
all I did was report an issue with their website. Lie number one.

DMB Associates has really made no bones about campaigning for our support
and our vote for allowing them to build their monstrous development on 
some of the most picturesque hills in our region. But their email makes it
official, as the email didn't come from DMB Associates at all, but rather
from a paid service for sending out, tracking, and reporting on email
advertising campaigns. To understand how the tracking works, you 
can check your email headers and you'll see unique message id's and 
return paths - this let's DMB Associates know who read the mail and who
didn't (your name and email is associated with a given id):

From Dorothy's headers:
  Return-Path: <TheElRanchoSanBenitoTeam-44460I24795983@campaignmonitor.com>

From Paul's headers:
  Return-Path: <TheElRanchoSanBenitoTeam-44460I24795986@campaignmonitor.com>

In the message body, you are directed to click on a link to a webpage if
you are having trouble reading the email. This message will only be displayed
if you are using a plain-text email reader, as opposed to an HTML email 
reader. This URL is specifically created to know exactly who you are when 
you click on it:

From the email from DMB to Dorothy:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/e/44460/24795983/

From the email from DMB to Paul:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/e/44460/24795986/

The thing that really gets me is the use of covert web URL's inside the 
message body. What I mean here is that the URL text shown isn't the same
URL you get sent to by clicking on it. This tactic is used in many email
schemes such as emails masquerading as Citibank or PayPal trying to get
you to turn over personal information. My email client (Mozilla 
Thunderbird) even identified this message from DMB Associates as a 
probable scam. The covert URL is the link the message invites you to 
click on to view the draft proposal for El Rancho San Benito - available
for public comment. Here's the code:

<p align="center" style="line-height: 20px;"><font color="#71522F" 
size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A draft proposal 
for El Rancho San Benito <br>
is now ready for public review and comment at <br>
<a href="http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795983
/www.elranchosanbenito.com">www.elranchosanbenito.com</a> Community 
</font><br>

Well, that's a mess to look at. But the key thing to notice is that the
highlighted text is "www.elranchosanbenito.com" while the URL you are 
really getting sent to is a license-plated page at "dmb.cmail1.com". In
other words, lie number two. And just to show that clicking on that
link lets DMB Associates know exactly who you are, here are the license
plates for both Dorothy and Paul:

Dorothy:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795983/www.elranchosanbenito.com
Paul:
  http://dmb.cmail1.com/.aspx/l/44460/24795986/www.elranchosanbenito.com

My DMB license plate is 24795986. Okay, so this license-plate thing
is actually a pretty common tactic these days. While I think it is quite
underhanded, I can also understand why businesses succumb to the temptation
to use them: they provide for great statistics on the success or failure
of individual advertising campaigns. The really underhanded (or
really ignorant) thing that DMB is doing in their email invitation 
is hiding the true URL from the displayed URL.

Either DMB Associates has no idea what they are doing, or they think we
back-country citizens can't think for ourselves and won't notice wool
pulled over our eyes. Well, I'm noticing, and I have confidence that a
majority of Hollister and San Benito County citizens are noticing too.
Whether by design or accident, DMB Associates have already been deceptive.

Are we sure we want to wait until they occupy our beautiful countryside
before we figure out that they are just another large corporation,
that the only community they care about is their small circle of 
shareholders? Does an infusion of money really bring about community?
Think about it. We still have time to say no to this.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

It was sad last year that happycookers.com had to close. Along with the 
gourmet products you could buy, there was also a popular database of
favorite recipes.

Well, I've put up a new site for Dorothy (Dorothy is my mom) and have her
recipes there, easily searchable, at http://dorothymcnett.com/recipes.

Some of my current favorite recipes are:

World's Best Fruit Cobbler
Basic Pizza Dough
Pad Thai

Enjoy!

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

'cause to kill it's always been
an easy way out.

Saved by the music makers
Speed boat to freedom
With the beautiful people
Bullet holes in your head
But you're running out of time
And you're running out of freedom
Now the animal crackers
All set to go flying

A branch of cold flames
Hangs over your head
The only thing you could never burn
It's shadow's hanging over you
The shadow's never there
Explode all over you

Your eyes flash bright
But no longer have fire
Everywhere you turn
This world is your shadow
With a pretty face
You burn so many eyes

Swap your dull grey thoughts
For fierce demands you can stand up to
Don't put yourself down, you'll never win
So let's all smash through
Through the fear of being real
Through the fear of being really you
'cause living it up, it's a big deal
It's good for you

Tell me why do we always
get what we want
When we don't want it no more
And how do you feel now
We still sound so thick
'Still fish around,
in waters you know so well

The above stanzas are from Tones on Tail, 'Pop', 
Beggars Banquet 1984, words by Daniel Ash. They are 
gratuitously copied from the liner notes for the following songs:

LIONS
WAR
PERFORMANCE
MOVEMENT OF FEAR
GO!
REAL LIFE

'Pop' was originally recorded in 1983, but remastered in 1998 and 
released on the "Everything!" CD, which -go figure- contains 
everything Tones on Tail released, which adds up to at least 
2.5 full albums worth of clear, crisp, experimental/cerebral
post-punk pre-electronica not-quite goth with bass, guitar, 
and drum machine that you have to listen to with headphones to 
really appreciate.

Don't buy it, you'll probably hate it. But I was compelled to 
praise it. Play Loud.

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

What a great trip. We flew from San Francisco to San Salvador, El Salvador, and
then to San Jose, Costa Rica. Then we found a small SUV to rent for $50 per day,
and we set out for La Fortuna, with a view of Volcano Arenal, which is active
and gives a nice light show at night. Lava spews forth as we sip wine at an
outdoor patio restaurant.

From La Fortuna, we travelled on less and less paved roads with the last 20 km
on some of the roughest dirt roads I've ever driven on. Rocks and boulders and
potholes, making the drive to Monteverde take 5 hours, made us appreciate the 
great-by-comparison West Street in Hollister.

We had some of the best pizza ever in Santa Elena, while rain poured outside.
We eventually decided that we should find a hotel, and settled on Hotel Belmar
in Monteverde and were not disappointed. $64 per night got us a room with a 
spectacular view of the cloud forest in the nice quiet eco-lodge with all the 
amenities, including an outdoor jacuzzi and comfortable lobby to hang out in 
and play scrabble while sipping yerba mate.

Monteverde is simply an amazing place, and words can't do justice. It rained
like crazy, there are no sidewalks, and we walked to dinner every night, 
arriving with muddy feet to beautiful restaurants with fine wines and excellent
cuisine. The birds woke us up at 5am each day but then let us sleep from 6 to 8,
and then we'd spend the day zip-touring the canopy, perusing the local art
galleries, walking through the cloud forest, touring the coffee plantations,
and deciding that we could really live here.

From there we drove down to the Pacific coast to Tamarindo, a laid-back surfing,
boating and resort community where we were offered on more than one occasion to
purchase some "weed", which we of course politely declined but admit to being
tempted to. One day we did some SCUBA diving, other days we basically just 
hung out and relaxed by the beach.

Twelve days passed like that. Here are some pictures which I'll be reorganizing
into the narrative:

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Personal/CostaRica2005] permanent link

"Think logically, act incrementally."

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link

...and playing around with the filters in The Gimp is kind of fun, especially
when you don't know what you are doing!

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Personal] permanent link