Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

‘Gallery Shortcode Style to Head’ Version 1.2

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As I mentioned last week, I’ve become the maintainer of the ‘Gallery Shortcode Style to Head‘ plugin for WordPress. I have just made my first release since becoming maintainer.

Version 1.2 of the plugin fixes an issue that caused WordPress to ignore users’ gallery settings for ‘Link thumbnails to . . . ’ when the plugin was active. This is the issue that originally prompted me to contact the original author.

In addition, version 1.2 updates the plugin’s author link information and other bits to point to me.

You can download the plugin from my info page (linked above), the WordPress plugin directory, or through your WordPress automatic plugin updater (which should pick it up within the next 12 hours).

Please contact me if there are any problems!

PS: Since the ultimate goal is to get this issue fixed for real instead of requiring a plugin, I’ve submitted a patch to WordPress. We will see if it gets included :-).

First Shotgun Experience

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I mentioned very briefly last week that I bought a Mossberg 500A ‘Persuader’ 12 gauge shotgun (here is a stock photo of the particular model I got). This is my first long gun; all my firearms experience to date had been with handguns. Shotguns are generally regarded as the ideal home defense weapon and, since we’re buying a home, it made sense to get one. As an added bonus, shotgun ammunition seems to be unaffected by the severe ammo shortage we gun owners have been suffering under since the beginning of the year. I haven’t been able to find any ammo at all for my little .380 Auto since January, and both 9mm and .38 Special ammo has only been sporadically available since then too. Various kinds of 12 gauge shotgun rounds, however, can be found in volume everywhere—sporting goods stores, Wal Marts, gun stores, etc.

So I finally made it out to the NRA Headquarters Range yesterday to try it out (and put a few rounds through my other weapons too). The range only allows the use of slugs (something more like a traditional bullet, as opposed to pellets, comes flying out the end), and I shot twenty of them. At relatively short target distance of 7 yards, a reasonably defensive range, I did pretty good and hit near to the middle of the target. Boy, those things kick when you shoot ’em though. My shoulder is a bit sore but, luckily, I read up on the proper way to hold it and am only slightly bruised.

All-in-all, it’s a pretty solid weapon, especially given its low price. The Mossberg 500 is also very, very common and popular (second only to the Remington 870), so there are plenty of options for tweaking and accessorizing. I’m considering getting a longer hunting-style barrel (they are very, very easy to switch) and maybe learning to hunt ;-). Maybe.

Ducks, a Spider, Two Cats, and a Frog

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Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of ducks, a spider, two cats, and a frog all together . . . that would have been fun. No, each of the photos below is limited to one species per picture. Oh well.

As usual, they’re just low-quality camera phone photos so don’t expect anything award-winning here.

Support Net Neutrality

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As you may know from reading this site over the years, I am a fervent supporter of ‘net neutrality’ regulations. In fact, I think that the principles of net neutrality should be codified in federal law—but I’ll take a firmly established Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation as a fine stop-gap.

To oversimplify the issue, net neutrality means that the various Internet service providers (‘ISPs’ like Verizon, Comcast, Cox Cable, etc.) should not be permitted to discriminate between different bits of data on their network. The service providers should be neutral. From the foundation of the Internet, each bit and byte moving over the network has been treated equally—whether it be part of an email, a web site, an image, a newsgroup posting, an instant message, a video, a song, a piece of software, etc. Some service providers, however, want to have the ability to give preferential treatment (for their own business purposes) to some bits and bytes over others.

Many justify this on the basis of network strain. Videos, for example, tax the Internet infrastructure much worse than a regular web site, so ISPs might want to limit the usage of video on the web. There is a fair case to be made for this kind of discrimination, to a point, however there are several documented cases of ISPs—many of which are also phone companies—attempting to block traffic for Voice Over IP (VOIP) companies like Vonage that compete with their own land-line phone services. If we give ISPs the authority to decide which traffic moves over their networks, we run a very real risk of turning the Internet into a giant toll road that benefits ISPs at our expense.

Read more . . .

Stop Calling Me A Racist

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President George W. Bush (R) was president for two terms—eight years. During those eight years, he was roundly ridiculed for his supposed lack of intelligence, for having a southern accent, and for occasionally mangling words. Public protests against his policies regularly portrayed him as a monkey, used unflattering photos of him, and associated him with the horrors of Nazi Germany. Much of this was directed at the president personally, although a fair amount of it was directed at regular folks like me who happened to agree with certain Bush policies. I wrote about the Degradation of [Political] Discourse in 2005:

Supporting the Iraq war does not make me a liar, a murderer, a criminal, a fascist, a neocon lackey, a war-monger, or a gullible moron—though I, either directly or by philosophical association with others who support the war, have been called all of these things. I looked at the information available and came to a conclusion, and despite the dearth of WMDs (an inexcusable failure of our intelligence services) the vast majority of those conclusions still hold true for me today. Saddam Hussein was a brutal, dangerous dictator; a free Iraq is a better Iraq.

But my opinion is often dismissed right-off as a selfish drive to obtain cheap oil, put a Starbucks on every corner in Fallujah, and generally dominate the world. Rather than listening to what I say and considering it and debating it, I’m derided as a murderer and barraged with mindless anti-war catch phrases. It has finally reached the point that I cannot even talk about why I support this war anymore. I keep my mouth shut because I am tired of being simultaneously screamed-at and ignored.

Read more . . .

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.