In Damn Right We’re Angry, Paul Waldman lets loose with a long list of why pro­gres­sives are jus­ti­fi­ably angry with what’s happened to the US over the last few years:

We’re angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we’ve been treated, and because of the in­nu­mer­able crimes the con­ser­v­a­tives have committed. We’re angry at the president, we’re angry at the Congress, we’re angry at the news media. And we have every right to be.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural movement we …continue.

In last week’s tip on using the NVelocity template formatting engine, I described what to set to load a template from an absolute path.

Here’s the magic necessary to get NVelocity to load a template from an embedded resource:

VelocityEngine engine = new VelocityEngine();
ExtendedProperties properties = new ExtendedProperties();
properties.AddProperty("resource.loader", "assembly");
properties.AddProperty("assembly.resource.loader.class",
    "NVelocity.Runtime.Resource.Loader.AssemblyResourceLoader, NVelocity");
properties.AddProperty("assembly.resource.loader.assembly", "StencilFormatter");
engine.Init(properties);

We’ve started using the NVelocity template formatting engine. We were absolutely stymied for an hour, trying to figure out how to get it working with an absolute path to the template file, instead of the relative path shown in the doc­u­men­ta­tion.

The trick is to set file.resource.loader.path. Here’s how to load C:\foo\bar\­some­file.vm:

ExtendedProperties props = new ExtendedProperties();
props.AddProperty("file.resource.loader.path", new ArrayList(new string[]{".", "C:\\"}));
velocity.Init(props);

template = velocity.GetTemplate("foo\\bar\\somefile.vm");

In Dies the Fire, the first book of the trilogy, the "Change" instantly and per­ma­nent­ly disabled elec­tric­i­ty, high-powered chemical reactions, and explosives, plunging mankind back into the Dark Ages. Ninety percent of the planet’s population died in the first year, mostly from disease, starvation, or murder. Dies the Fire follows several groups that form in Oregon’s Willamette valley, including the Clan Mackenzie and the Bear­killers.

The second book, The Protector’s War, took place nine years later. The tyrannical Protector of Portland and his feudal barons start to provoke war against the trou­ble­some …continue.

I ordered a 17" Mac Book Pro on Friday night. It shipped from Shanghai on Monday and arrived at work this morning. Scha-weet! And spendy.

I’ve been busy ramping up all day. I estimate that my total lifetime usage of Macs was about one day before today. I definitely have some new habits to learn.

So far, I’ve installed Mac Vim, Firefox (browser), Camino (browser), Thun­der­bird (email), Quick­sil­ver (fast launch utility), Witch (window switcher), AntiRSI (RSI preventer), Adium (multi-protocol chat), Skype (Internet telephony), Remote Desktop Connection (connecting to Windows desktops), StuffIt Expander (for classic archives), and KeePassX (password manager).

Some of these have built-in equiv­a­lents of course, but I’m using these for com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with my existing Windows and Linux setups and data (e.g., Thun­der­bird, …continue.

So, there’s this two-time loser Eddie Coyle, see. Eddie Fingers. They call him that on account of the time that he screwed up and some other guys had to break his fingers. Eddie deals guns and he’s facing time in New Hampshire, so he’s talking to the police hoping to get his sentence reduced. His friends wouldn’t like that if they knew.

This was the first novel published by George V. Higgins (no relation). Written in an im­pres­sion­is­tic, dialog-heavy style, Higgins clearly knew his lowlifes. He juggles …continue.

A small troupe of traveling players spend a few days in the Oxford of 1434 and are nearly framed for a murder.

Frazer evokes the sights and sounds of medieval Oxford during the Corpus Christi holiday, the hard life of traveling players, and the goings-on of a rich merchant’s household. Amazingly enough, she almost completely avoids the colleges of Oxford. The mystery itself is thin and occupies little of the book, as the author prefers to con­cen­trate on the other aspects of her tale.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing.

Lily is a cleaning woman in the small town of Shake­speare, Arkansas. A cleaner with a traumatic past, who erects high walls around herself and works out at the gym and the dojo fervently. One morning, she opens up the gym to find a body­builder whose larynx has been crushed by a laden barbell. Tensions are already high over the murder of a young black man, and racist literature starts appearing everywhere, followed by a bombing at a black church. Lily falls in with a private detective who is trying to get …continue.

This book is not a Sher­lock­ian pastiche, although Mycroft Holmes does appear in two short stories within the story.

Damien March is a 30ish researcher at the BBC, who un­ex­pect­ed­ly inherits a house on a remote island off Cape Cod, from his late uncle Patrick, a once-successful novelist. He moves to Ionia and slowly starts inhabiting the life of Patrick. Brothers are a recurring theme throughout this book: Patrick and Damien’s father; Damien and his brother Vivian; Mycroft and Sherlock; and others. Damien comes to an un­der­stand­ing and a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of …continue.

Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman returns in the twelfth volume of the Flashman Papers. Flashy is a cad, a rogue, a lecher, a toady, and a bully. His reputation for bravery is wholly undeserved, but he has suc­cess­ful­ly concealed that through an extremely long career, spanning much of the nineteenth century. Flashman reveals all in a series of extremely frank memoirs written in his old age, published long after his death by his "editor", Fraser.

Flashman has many un­de­sir­able qualities, but he has a knack for finding himself in …continue.