Bleah. The Coding and Writing Life.

Well, I thought it would take me longer, but it only took me about twenty minutes yesterday to write a quick script that will convert an RTSP log file into an HTTP log file. It's not very precise; it can't tell you how long someone listened/viewed an RTSP document, but you can pass as an argument on the command line a way to specify "only show me those people who listened for at least five minutes" or whatever. The log also doesn't include ranges, like where people started or ended, only the total number of seconds they listened.

But it can be run through Analog and gives a good sense of who's listening to what. Not too shabby. The Apple streaming server doesn't include referrer information, apparently, and its logger throws a fit when the client-OS field isn't set (which happens when the client is Linux).

I haven't been writing as much as I want, so I only mananged to cobble together some 7000 words this week for chapter three of Bones of the Dragon, and it's gonna need a re-write. The opening is weak.

Still have that cold, still fighting it, but I'm better today than I was Tuesday. My voice is almost normal, but it can't stand much abuse. I was croaking by the time I was done reading to Kouryou-chan the other night. My hunger is back. My libido has returned a little bit, not much.

We took Yamaarashi-chan to her school's "Culture Night" last night so I could meet with her teacher and find out how she's doing. She's doing marvelously with her reading, and she's doing okay at math too. It was very quiet this time, far fewer kids and parents, and not as overtly about Native American religion as it was last time. I forgot to mention that last time there was an array of tables where local natives could sell very kitschy beadwork and artwork wares, completely unremarkable, comparable to the lesser-quality stuff at the west end of Pike Place market.

Kouryou-chan has started to ape adult writing. She's picking up a pen and writing down letterforms as she sees them, then asking us if we can read what she wrote. Most of the time, I can. I've also been showing her how to make letterforms better, staying in the lines, things like that. She really gets it, which is cool. And she's actually been good about sleeping in her own bed this week, finally.

WTF, Over?

So I'm doing the news thing today and there's the usual load o' bollocks available. There's this charming article in which a Jewish seminary student tells gays and lesbians that the Nazis didn't kill enough of them for them to lay claim to the Holocaust. Concerned Women For America wishes to inform you that not a single signer of the Declaration of Indepenence "really wanted" to own slaves. They all had to, y'see, because, uh, well, money was more important that principle to our Founding Fathers, or something like that. Agapepress tells us that same-sex marriage threatens military readiness. And Susan Sanford in Colorado reminds her readers that the penalty for "abomination" is death.

But what floors me is an article by teaching school graduate Marquis Harris. Mr. Harris has rather an impressive resume: Rhodes nominee, National Dean's List honoree, former intern to Representative Saxby Chambliss, various other honors. He wanted an inner city teaching job somewhere in Georgia, doing high school.

Here's what he was told:

Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become.

My jaw just about dropped out of my head. This is the complete opposite of Megazone's recent observation that American kids expect too much. Here, black students are being told to expect very little and being kept away from role models who might hold out more hope from them than dead-end service jobs.